So my friends and I were hanging out last night at the bar and one of them made the statement that the reason he sold his 360 and bought a PS3, was because the online was free. This is also the same guy who pays a monthly fee to play WoW and is going to be soon paying a monthly fee to play TOR...hypocritical much? There is no valid arguement as to why paying for an MMO is justified over paying for xbox live. It's the same premise, except you get to play more than one game for less

So I guess my point is, when is it a legit reason to pay a monthly fee? Why should you pay for an MMO? Why should you pay for XBL?

I pay for Xbox Live because it's a better service than PSN. And I pay for MMOs because I find them fun.

@ozzdog12: I guess with MMO's your paying for severs and game-up keeps. XBL is just the HUB to access the other games, so that money is just going to 'annual' updates from M$.

If you like the service and want more of it.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that by 2014/2015 no new MMOs will use the subscription model as it stands right now. This question would've been better asked 5 years ago. 
I think Guild Wars 2 could be a huge game changer in the land of MMOs, especially with the rise of free to play pricing models in the last 2 years.
 
and reasons why paying for an MMO is justified over paying for Xbox Live? Well, you are getting new, free content because of that subscription (At least on WoW you do) and you are paying it because you want to play that game. On the 360 you aren't getting anything new, you're just getting the ability to play games online using that service, it's pretty fickle but he has a point. If there's nothing you want to play on the 360 that subscription is a waste of time, with an MMO you pay until you stop playing. I don't know any people that have an active WoW subscription but never play it.

Psn vs Xbox is really down to the individual. If you only care about online gaming with no voice chat or friends then XbL isn't as good value as TOR or WoW, and you may aswell just use PSN.

@CL60 said:

I pay for Xbox Live because it's a better service than PSN. And I pay for MMOs because I find them fun.

Pretty much this. I dont get how anyone who has really used PSN and XBL can deny that XBL is just a much nicer service,

So to the OP, the legit reason is when the quality matters to you.

It's justified when the service you pay for either needs your money to keep going or constantly updates and improves. I would consider Xbox Live more of an annual $60 fee than a monthly one, and the way the dashboard and software has evolved over the years justifies the cost in my mind.

  If you only care about online gaming with no voice chat or friends then XbL isn't as good value as TOR or WoW, and you may aswell just use PSN.

@BionicRadd: I have XBL and I think its every bit worth the money. My argument was just saying that if paying for xbl is a waste, then paying for MMO isnt any different...in this person opinion

@Sooty: I think he meant to say xbl isnt as good a value as psn if all you care about is playing online.

The justification here is pretty simple: there isn't any legal way to play WoW without paying the subscription fee for it, but there is a legal way to play multiplatform online games without paying a subscription fee. On a related note, requiring users to pay for LIVE in order to use Netflix is complete bullshit. It costs Microsoft exactly $0 to allow players to use Netflix.

My argument was just saying that paying fir xbl is a waste, when paying for MMO isnt any different...in this person opinion

@Sooty: I think he meant to say xbl isnt as good a value as psn if all you care about is playing online.

@ozzdog12: Maybe your friend just wanted to save some money by switching to PSN so he could continue playing MMOs. You don't make it sound like he was bashing Xbox Live, so I don't see why you're calling him a hypocrite.

@ozzdog12: @ozzdog12 said:

So my friends and I were hanging out last night at the bar and one of them made the statement that the reason he sold his 360 and bought a PS3, was because the online was free. This is also the same guy who pays a monthly fee to play WoW and is going to be soon paying a monthly fee to play TOR...hypocritical much? There is no valid arguement as to why paying for an MMO is justified over paying for xbox live. It's the same premise, except you get to play more than one game for less

So I guess my point is, when is it a legit reason to pay a monthly fee? Why should you pay for an MMO? Why should you pay for XBL?

I wouldn't say its hypocritical at all. He can get largely the same online console experience for free. He can't get something as good as WoW, from what I've been told I'm not really into MMO's, for free so he pays for it.

@ozzdog12: @ozzdog12 said:

So my friends and I were hanging out last night at the bar and one of them made the statement that the reason he sold his 360 and bought a PS3, was because the online was free. This is also the same guy who pays a monthly fee to play WoW and is going to be soon paying a monthly fee to play TOR...hypocritical much? There is no valid arguement as to why paying for an MMO is justified over paying for xbox live. It's the same premise, except you get to play more than one game for less

So I guess my point is, when is it a legit reason to pay a monthly fee? Why should you pay for an MMO? Why should you pay for XBL?

I wouldn't say its hypocritical at all. He can get largely the same online console experience for free. He can't get something as good as WoW, from what I've been told I'm not really into MMO's, for free so he pays for it.

@SuperSambo said:

  If you only care about online gaming with no voice chat or friends then XbL isn't as good value as TOR or WoW, and you may aswell just use PSN.

What do you mean with no voice chat or friends?   WoW has a friends list, and voice chat. You can use other software to use voice chat on PC, Skype, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, Mumble...etc   Also with regards to friends, 99% of games have friends lists built-in, the same as voice chat. Or you can use something like xfire/Raptr to have a global friends list. Or hey, you can just use Steam to manage all your friends, that also has voice chat built-in, too. Do you really think PC gaming can't have a friends list or voice chat? LOL

online services on the 360 are mostly peer-to-peer, so the service that you get from Microsoft is really just matchmaking (which means that 60 bucks a year is a pretty big ripoff, especially considering that you get ads anyway). MMOs require a hell of a lot more infrastructure to run, so the price is actually justifiable.

@Sooty said:

@ozzdog12 said:

My argument was just saying that paying fir xbl is a waste, when paying for MMO isnt any different...in this person opinion

It is different. I highlighted why. As much as I dislike WoW these days I won't deny that Blizzard have provided a lot of content for their subscribers. You get nothing by subscribing to Xbox Live except the ability to play games online. You don't get free content for anything. You're paying for the ability to play online, that's on top of the cost of a game itself and any additional downloadable content purchased.

Not true, now while M$ may not give you anything 'free' you do get game content free occasionally from those developers(if M$ permits it)

@ajamafalous: I find it hypocritical in the fact that he had a 360, then sold it to get a PS3, literally bought the same games he already had and still had like 3 or 4 months left PAID of XBL. The guy is in no way trying to save money. He even went as far to buy one of those 360-type controllers for the PS3 to play Call of Duty. He is paying his monthly fee for WoW in which he made the statement that he hasnt played but like 4 times in the last 4 months. I might also add he originally bought a years worth of DCU...on the PS3... but yet he made the statement that "If i buy a console, I should not have to pay anything to play games online"....He has this mentality that only MMO's should charge a fee.

Im not saying the fact he switched over and plays MMO's and all that is wrong, I just think he reasoning behind it all is wrong.

Never played any mmo's, how much does it typically cost to play wow for a year? Also I think I read somewhere that on xbl certain games are hosted on microsofts own servers, is this still true?

@nintendoeats said:

online services on the 360 are mostly peer-to-peer, so the service that you get from Microsoft is really just matchmaking (which means that 60 bucks a year is a pretty big ripoff, especially considering that you get ads anyway). MMOs require a hell of a lot more infrastructure to run, so the price is actually justifiable.

the fringe benefits of XBL (smooth, fast updates, faster downloads, not having to sync achievements, cleaner store integration) are what happens when you charge people for a service they are willing to pay for (online play). The opposite is what you get when you have a huge infrastructure that brings in no money to support it (PSN). Looking at Gold and saying that all you pay for is online play is incredibly short sighted. You are paying for everything that is nice about having XBL on the 360. Silver members just get the benefit of reaping a lot of those rewards for free. Also, Gold Members get access to the Deal of the Week which is a nice bonus if you like playing XBLA games.

@ozzdog12:

By the sound of it he is wrong, but being wrong does not make him hypocritical.

Hypocrisy:

1. a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially: the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion

@BionicRadd: I agree actually...but they charge a lot more than those benefits are worth, at least as far as I'm concerned.

I pay for Xbox Live because it's a better service than PSN. And I pay for MMOs because I find them fun.

Paying a monthly fee use to be justified because the games who used subscription models were providing cutting edge technology via servers that could host 1000s of players at once on a massive scale. As the reality sat in they were also providing a highly addictive service, greed started to manifest itself. Companies like Sony Online Entertainment used an early mmorpg monopoly to abuse its customers. Other open pvp models of mmos have spent a decade of failures trying to recapture what many gamers consider to be the "best" pvp in mmo history, but UO also sucked hard, you just didn't have any other good choices until DAoC came along. As so this pattern of herding sheeple into exclusives continued for a time until a mmorpg came out that focused on the whole package. It had an open, massive world, respectable small scale pvp, and immensely successful end game. Since then WoW has set the bar for every other mmorpg out there using a subscription model, and with wow's budget and scope of content, there has simply become no other way to compete with WoW except on price.

You can't offer more content than wow. There's no way to create a bigger world and expect it all to work. The only thing companies can do to compete is offer their services at a discount or cheaper, which always leaves WoW with a hefty advantage while the new guy tries to struggle. Age of Conan, Star Trek Online, Aion, Warhammer Online, RIFT,.... all of these games were "WoW killers" that have failed to deliver and are either F2P, or transitioning to F2P not to bolster their ranks, but out of sheer survival. World Of Warcraft has single handedly ruined every subscription model for the entire video games industry because they offer you so much for so little. No publisher/studio can ever hope to hold a candle to it.

So, it is my conclusion that unless a studio using a subscription model can provide the kind of premium content and service Blizzard provides their customers, then no, it is not worth it.

You can only pay so many monthly fees per month. If you don't care about the bonus features of XBL and just want to play games online, why pay the money for XBL when that would let you into TOR?