Global Chat: Follow the money edition
Welcome to this week's Global Chat! We love hearing what you have to say at Massively, and we love it even more when we can share the best comments with all of our readers. Massively staffers will be contributing some of their favorite comments every week, so keep an eye out every Sunday for more Global Chat!
This week's Global Chat is all about paying for things, not paying for other things, and giving even more things multiple chances. Follow along after the jump to see some of the best of what our readers had to say!
The Daily Grind is a Massively feature that always generates plenty of talk, particularly when the subjects of gaming and money combine. Eliot recently asked our readers how they feel about monetizing third-party utilities, and he got some great responses. Reader Equal Opportunity Dork had a little something to say for both sides of the argument:
It entirely depends on what you are talking about. I honestly don't know what I would do if something like Auctioneer for World of Warcraft started requiring a fee to use (I realize Blizzard doesn't allow this). That is a mod that requires a tremendous amount of work for its devs and genuinely costs them a fair amount of money in hosting fees, I am sure. In that mod's case, advertising doesn't help much, since people only need to go to the site when they need an update for it.
In a game like EVE, where I imagine there are a lot of very intricate tools involved and the potential for real money to be made in-game, I could see this as a good thing for all involved. EVE has this almost Second Life mystique to it in terms of people making real money off virtual items. At the end of the day, not allowing people to make money off these things puts a ceiling on how much innovation you are going to see. Hobbyists will take it only so far before it becomes a financial burden. On the other hand, this opens the door to swindlers charging money for garbage to make a quick buck.
Fallen Earth's impending transition to free-to-play caused a huge splash in MMO-land last week. PrimeSynergy said what a lot of people are probably thinking -- and what we imagine GamersFirst likes to hear!
Am I the only one who gets the urge to sub to a game after it becomes F2P?
Like, "Ooooh, this game is free? It's pretty good too. Oh wow, and I get all this stuff if I subscribe? Well, I feel like I'm losing out by not subscribing so here, take my money."
Speaking of trying games, Lenn gets credit for tenacity in his reply to the latest Captain's Log:
I hate Star Trek Online. And I love it. I don't know what it is about that game. Every so often I resubscribe for a bit and have an absolute blast for two weeks, then all of a sudden complete boredom and disgust set in again.
It's the oddest thing. I'm noticing the same thing happening in Champions Online. It must be a Cryptic thing. You can tell a lot of love has gone into making this game, and it certainly has come a long, long way since its launch, but it still, imho, lacks some fundamentals like open space (let us beam down to any planet, let space be open and uninterrupted) and more engaging away missions. The space combat is great but sluggish as hell. Still, seeing how far it's come, it would be interesting to see where the game is a year or two from now.
Now it's your turn to leave a comment and tell us what you think!
Global Chat is the weekly feature that's all about you, our readers. Every Sunday we collect the best, funniest, and most thought-provoking comments from the Massively readers and round them up into Global Chat for discussion. Read over them for yourself, hit the comment button, and add your own thoughts!
