Subscription......

[Sar]

Still a daft and unworkable idea tbh.

There's about 3000 Q3 servers throughout the world running atm - how much do you think it would cost to even partially subsidise all those servers?

And that's only for one game - think about how many games a particular publisher outputs in one year, then multiply that by the average lifespan of a game online (in years).

Q3 has had three years so far, HL has had 4 (CS about 3 prolly), Q2 five, Q1 6 and so on.


Server Stats:

Top Game Servers By Players

Half Life
22513 servers, 70042 players


Battlefield 1942 Demo
1067 servers, 8273 players


Medal of Honor Allied Assault
1452 servers, 7191 players


Unreal Tournament
3392 servers, 4790 players


Quake 3: Arena
2944 servers, 4660 players


Return to Castle Wolfenstein
1091 servers, 3957 players


Soldier of Fortune 2
627 servers, 2989 players


Army Game
288 servers, 2846 players


Neverwinter Nights
1132 servers, 2251 players


Tribes 2
619 servers, 2018 players


That's current.

 

[awaken]

Well, its obvious that most people who didn't want to pay have deserted already. Just out of interest, how many people who have posted here do NOT have a barrys paid account?

The communities issue :

How is it going to improve communities if we split up into gaming communities? How are truely great clans going to form if they are limited to drawing players from whoever has paid to play on a particular group of servers. Also, leagues are going to be shrunk, clans will play in the league of their server providers and nothing else, we won't be able to test our mettle against others so easily.

Also, wireplay started off charging, it was alright, it had its benefits, good connection for modems. However, over time, as broadband became cheaper and alternatives got better, the reasons for paying disappeared, and forced WP to open up its gates to all. When it did that, it became better, not worse. Why travel up the road we have come down?

Oh yeah, also.... Counterstrike Sucks! Down with counterstrike!

 

[S-Gray]

Originally posted by awaken
Oh yeah, also.... Counterstrike Sucks! Down with counterstrike!

Thats a Negative

 

[Kempo]

cant honestly see myself paying for bw any time soon.

have said why before, but to add to it, the subject of admins and cheats/lamers on servers. Jolt ctfs servers are much more highly monitored and cheat free than bw ones are, admins are on hand almost all the time and ban anyone caught. So that reason for singing up is a non starter for me ( and anyone else who plays 3wave )

 

[Sar]

Originally posted by awaken
Also, wireplay started off charging, it was alright, it had its benefits, good connection for modems. However, over time, as broadband became cheaper and alternatives got better, the reasons for paying disappeared, and forced WP to open up its gates to all.

That's complete bollocks.

Broadband wasn't introduced into this country until about 2000. WP was "free" since 97/98 iirc, and went like BW used to be in 98/99.

Like I said earlier, if you don't know about the history of GSPs in the UK then shh.

 

[xane]

The point that is being missed is that most games designed for multiplayer are in fact free to play over the internet, I could fire up a server of Battlefield 1942 right now and invite you plebs in to play, for free, gratis, no charge.

But as thousands of morons have demonstrated recently, you get shite performance running on a 400Mhz PC loaded with pr0n and using a can-and-string Winmodem whilst downloading MP3s at the same time.

What you pay for, from a GSP, is use of the nice shiney high tech communications equipment and the dedicated stonking Ghz box sitting there. You are not paying to play the game, you are paying to play on that server using the GSP's equipment.

BW aims to provide as many varied games on its servers as possible, including *COUGH* *COUGH* Neverwinter Nights *COUGH* *COUGH* *AHEM* at some point

 

[legendario]

Originally posted by camazotz
What you pay for, from a GSP, is use of the nice shiney high tech communications equipment and the dedicated stonking Ghz box sitting there.

500Mhz pc and higher bandwidth string

 

[xane]

Originally posted by legendario
500Mhz pc and better string for the modem

No pr0n, but lots of kitten piccies

 

[kryt]

Actually Awaken, Wireplay shut off its P2P system LONG before broadband, when it was still 90% hpb, and the LPB's were either rich or european.
I don't know enough about WP to know the reasons for this, it certainly wasn't lack of players, the community was already massive.

Makes your point a moot one tbh, since WP certainly did not close its P2P doors because of broadband etc.

Either way, it's just a matter of time : hopefully the servers get busier, more popular, and Barrysworld will probably grow the same way it has done since the start : by word of mouth.

A recommendation from a friend says a lot more about a product then an advert in a magazine.

 

[~Lazarus~]

dont know if this has already been mentioned :

It might be worth asking / enquiring about some form of "loyalty" for the first x number of people that signed up for the subscription service.

Might be a nice gesture from BW to say - Thanks for the support guys, when we have a large number of members, you get 6 months free play

or something like that.

Just something to the people who paid immediately and arent finding full servers to play on.