Subscription......

[awaken]

Hmm. subscription, what does everyone else think? I've had a free barrysworld account and email pretty much since they started the membership thingy, and I've been playing on barrysworld server for 4 years, since about 1998, and I can say one thing.... even with my wubbly student loan, I'm never gonna pay for gaming, which means I'm going elsewhere.

Paying for clanservers is one thing, maybe even a small fee for renting a server, but paying for public servers? I think a quick scan of gamespy says it all, empty, all empty. Whos going to pay for something you can get free, and ESPECIALLY whos gonna pay to play on empty servers?

Also, it puts out a lot of younger gamers who cant easily pay their pocket money to barrysworld, and to be honest, much as us older 'veterans' like to own the whole show, a large proportion of people who play are under 15.

I like the idea of other schemes whereby advertising is placed in game, anyone see Nerf Arena? An unreal based game a few years ago. Loads of nerf posters placed around during play, its fun in a way, adds a level of sports event feeling to the game.

Anyway, what do you think?......

 

[echo]

Did the in-game posters make you immediately open your wallet in Nerf's direction?

Barrys needs to make money somehow, and this seems a good deal really, but still it's your money

 

[awaken]

Well, other services survive being free..... how come barrysworld doesnt? And its not the amount thats the problem, its the principal of paying for a service thats free elsewhere.

Say you want to buy a small bag of tobacco

Its about £2 for a 12.5 gramme pack in one shop, shop A. You walk along the road to another shop, call it shop B, and see it for £1.50!!! Thats good, but u resist the urge, then walk along even further, to shop C. Amazingly its labelled as £0.00 , so you pick up a pack and walk out.

Where would you rather shop?

 

[awaken]

and tbh, how much advertising on the net makes you buy anything? The advertisers will still pay out.

 

[dysfunction]

What made you come to Barrysworld then??

 

[echo]

Barrysworld is the daddy though, and for daddyishness you have to pay..


Shop A's baccy is excellent
Shop B's baccy is a bit ropey
Shop C's baccy is arseflakes

Where would you shop now?

 

[awaken]

I came to barrysworld cos it was the best value for money, ie.. they were all free, and they were the best of them. Its not thaaaat far ahead. And besides, Wireplay was more of a daddy than barrysworld to be honest, they were around longer (methinks, correct if wrong, but i vaguely remember adverts for it years and years ago when it was rolled in with an ISP).

Jolt? Blueyonder? NGI? NGUK? (actually i think NGUK have gone now). Maybe not as good as barrysworld were originally, but now barrysworld have started charging, it means its bad value in comparison. Its not just the cost, its what the cost does to the servers, I just refreshed, and they are EMPTY. Whos gonna pay to play on barrysworld as it was? I might, lots of people might. Whos gonna pay to play on barrysworld the ghost town. Not me.

 

[Nozzer]

OK, you said you've been using Barrysworld for 4 years now. You get a Game Reward card... that's £12 for a year's subscription.

4 years of service, £12... £3/year.

One way of looking at it.

 

[kryt]

Yes, go elsewhere : that elsewhere will soon become over crowded since too many morons think "pay to play? what a shit idea, i'll go elsewhere"

Elsewhere now has to upgrade servers, buy more bandwidth, hire more staff.

Elsewhere is losing money.

1. Elsewhere goes bust
or
2. Elsewhere goes P2P.

It is imminent : you will **HAVE** to pay if you want to play. Maybe not so much now, but in the not too distant future, you won't be able to get on any free servers left (which then will more than likely be people running servers on their own PC's, peoples rented clan servers et al) : the choice won't exist. You either pay or you sit for 2 hours hammering a free service to get on, and get a laggy, shit game.
anyone remember X-Stream 0800 Dialup? If you do, you know EXACTLY how it works.

Otherwise, I'm afraid a lot of people are not looking at the full picture for P2P, when you have seen it all, perhaps put a proper opinion on it then. For now, feel free to go and bugger small animals on free servers.

 

[Embattle]

Originally posted by awaken
I'm never gonna pay for gaming, which means I'm going elsewhere.

Bye.

 

[S-Gray]

Yeah, You pay for Servers which hardly ever lag now, there will be hardly any cheaters now (What cheaters gonna waste £12/24 just to get caught?) and also you get Admins who will be there 99.9% of the time, i would rather have all that for £12 than have a freebie server full of pricks

 

[Krazeh]

Gsp's simply cannot continue to survive using the free server model, they are all going to go p2p or go bust. Afaik BY is planning to introduce it's p2p in a couple of months, jolt are gonna go p2p sooner or later.

Sooner or later you will have to pay, and I think 12 quid is a bloody good deal and to have played on BW for 4 years and be so cheap that you can't give them 12 quid seems plain rude. BW and it's staff have gone through so much to keep bw running over the past 4 years including some very worrying financial troubles and you can't even spare 12 quid. If the servers end up empty (which i doubt) then you can think of it as paying for all the enjoyment you gained over the past 4 years, it's not as if your gonna miss 12 quid, as a student I was spending more than that a day in the bar.

Oh and one more thing, Wireplay lasted so long first time round because it was p2p, when they opened it up to everyone for free it got crapper and crapper then died.

 

[awaken]

Okay, you are all paying to play on barrysworld? How often do you get a decent game? I've just refreshed again, and on a saturday afternoon, not even that, a bank holiday weekend, the halflife servers are about 5% full, if that. THATS PATHETIC.

Even if it is inevitable that you have to pay eventually (which I dont think it is), is Barrysworld prepared to sacrifice themselves as a martyr to the cause? Like it or not, thats what they are doing, and give it a year, and they will be going bust for the second time.

Its not the amount thats the problem. And even on that note, hadn't you noticed? 'Introductory' offer? Their intention is to merely softenin the blow for existing gamers, before whacking up the price for newbies.

As I said before, £12 to play on barrysworld aint to bad, but £12 to play on barrysworld the ghost town, IS. I'll be sorry to see it go, but it's set for a slow and painful death.

 

[Krazeh]

Originally posted by awaken
Even if it is inevitable that you have to pay eventually (which I dont think it is), is Barrysworld prepared to sacrifice themselves as a martyr to the cause? Like it or not, thats what they are doing, and give it a year, and they will be going bust for the second time.

And without asking for payment how exactly are gsp's supposed to cover the cost of new servers, electricity, bandwidth, wages etc?

 

[Damini]

Twelve quid a year. Thats buying FHM three times a year. 12 bottles of Oasis a year. You probably give nearly that amount in small change to washing machines, gutters and the back of the settee every year. As prices go, to the individual user it's a fairly irrelevent amount; its the total sum that it contributes that really is of any significance. Name me a fifteen year old that doesn't have a mobile phone, or smoke, or drink, or have a secret stash of porn mags? Damn sight more following a single one of those larks for a year than £12.

You want it for free? Fair enough. Go and get it for free elsewhere. You've already said that you will. But the places that do this for free are going to rapidly diminish. It's the natural progression. You say you aren't complaining about the price, but surely thats the own real issue? Actually, the real real issue isn't the price, it's people scared of parting with £12 and so not joining, and then pointing out that people aren't joining, and so why spend my £12? Its a Catch 22 situation.

Do you actually click on banners? I bet you don't. I don't. I treat them the same way as dog poo on the street, you just continue where you're going and try your hardest not to step there. When online industries started, they were seen as the way to pave your site with gold, but I'm thinking that those same banner advertisers have discovered that actually they are getting fuck all trade from them. You'd have to really saturate a site to get some honest pay back from banners now, so unless you want a site that runs like Kazaa on ketamin, it's not really an option.

I can understand warezing windows, and the hedonistic wail of the online man "It should be free!!!", but what you're getting for free isn't a one off hit, its a continual and sustained, and maintenanced system that requires man hours and dedication and attention. Barrysworld have offered this for free for years, its true. So what, you think suddenly TTD and DBS have turned into overt marching capatalists, thinking only of imperealistic gain, and setting small Thaiwanese toddlers to work on admin at 36p per hour? £12 per person isn't going to see TTD strutting down the street Bling Blinging his Mr T jewelry collection, nor is it going to see you selling your internal organs on the black market to make ends meet.

You either pay, or you don't pay. There are no terrible people in this situation, no situation to rally a war cry over. The servers may well dip at first, and as BW are the first people to implement this I would be very surprised if people didn't jump ship, fearfully clutching their sacred £12. But this is the way things will invariably have to go most places, so I think you can run but you can't hide for too long.

That's my tuppence.

 

[Durzel]

I reckon the point he is making is a valid one, and a lot of people are missing that point - namely that paying £2 a month to play on BarrysWorld is perfectly reasonable, but paying £2 a month only to find you're pretty much the only person playing there - is not.

And therein is the Catch 22.

Until such time as all the GSPs go P2P - there will be a mass exodus from any GSP bold enough to make this step and the net result will be that anyone paying to play on BarrysWorld (or whoever) will end up feeling disgruntled because everyone else will be playing elsewhere. I don't care what your rose tinted view of BW is, that's a fact. As has been said many times in the past, the allegiance of gamers begins and ends the moment they're asked to pay for something they've previously had for free for years.

BW have made a very bold step, and time will tell as to what will happen in the long term. I'm sure the other GSPs are watching carefully to see what happens, and Im sure some of them will postulate about how "we're still free", etc. Par for the course.

 

[Rubber Bullets]

You have a lovely way with words Damini, and IMO they were worth much more than tuppence.

I agree, by the way.

s

 

[Summo]

The defence rests.

 

[Durzel]

I've had a thought (shock horror)

Wouldn't it be a good idea to open up the publics to the general non-paying public for a set period of time on given days, then booting them off at the end of this "free period". Think of it this way, its a tried and trusted means of getting people on board, plus it would limit the times that the servers are desolate.

For example, the servers could be available to the public for, say, 2 hours a night on 2 nights a week or something. Any time outside of these "promo" times the servers would be locked down to subscribers only.

I can imagine the net result of the above is that people would be having such a good lag-free, cheat-free time that at the end of the free period they'd want to keep playing, ergo would be more prepared to shell out some cash. No one is going to pay to watch a film they know nothing about, where no previews have been aired - for example.

It's the exact same principal as pay-per-view adult channels*

Makes sense non?




* Apparently.

 

[Nylex]

Originally posted by Super_Gray[SG]
Servers which hardly ever lag now

Wtf?! BW servers lag quite a bit.. especially their Q3 Clan Arena ones..

 

[Mellow-]

Originally posted by Damini
That's my tuppence.

Looks more like £12 to me.

 

[Damini]

What can I say? I'm cheap

 

[Mellow-]

Originally posted by Durzel
For example, the servers could be available to the public for, say, 2 hours a night on 2 nights a week or something. Any time outside of these "promo" times the servers would be locked down to subscribers only.

That would just make the servers chock full of the usual people during those specific times and when the switch was flicked and it went subscribers only, it would empty again. I'm not suggesting this would happen in the long term, but for the first few months of testing that idea, it would probably happen.

 

[Mellow-]

Originally posted by Damini
What can I say? I'm cheap

*resists urge to comment on females hourly rate*

But due to the world economy, your tuppence could easily appear as £12 in some foreign countries.

 

[Daffeh]

well maybe the HL servers are only 5% full cos there are so damn many of them



maybe if BW supplied servers for an even wider selection of mods/games more people would be interested.

how many pure CS players, who only play CS will bother subscribing to BW, as there are thousands of free CS servers.

on the otherhand smaller/older mods may benefit. How many decent AQ2 servers are about these days, apart from BW's.


tbh i hardly ever play on BW servers, but i still subscribed as i think i owe them at least the £12 it cost, and i still can play on the servers if i happen to pick it, dont need to check if allowed to play on that server cos i dont pay

 

[awaken]

Another thing, what are you gonna do if your friends play on different servers? Its gonna dissolve the communities around gametypes, and force people into a gameserver camp.

You wanna play on barrysworld, your friend wants to play on by, what yah gonna do? Each pay a sub to both services?

You aint gonna meet as many new people. Sure, maybe we do tend to play on the same servers, but we do go elsewhere and talk to other gamers.

Its going to divide the community, and reduce the multicultural nature of servers, its appartite for the gaming world! Are people who live abroad and dont ping well to barrys servers gonna want to subscribe? They might want the occasional game with their friends from the UK, but now they cant.

What do you say to that?

And: Some of you seem to say that the cash is needed to run this service.... HOW THE HELL DID THEY SURVIVE BEFOREHAND THEN? It was the community that ran it for gods sake! Barrysworld started with a server called barry for a Quakeworld clan, if I remember rightly, and it was run by players for players, and funded by their occasional clicks on adverts. Now we decide we want to pay someone else to do it for us?

 

[Embattle]

Not a lot since it's all been said before, also all answered before

 

[Mellow-]

Originally posted by awaken
And: Some of you seem to say that the cash is needed to run this service.... HOW THE HELL DID THEY SURVIVE BEFOREHAND THEN? It was the community that ran it for gods sake! Barrysworld started with a server called barry for a Quakeworld clan, if I remember rightly, and it was run by players for players, and funded by their occasional clicks on adverts. Now we decide we want to pay someone else to do it for us?

That was then, that was only one server, times change, there are lots of servers now. Get a grip. Whining about things that have already been decided is fruitless. Either pay to play, or don't. Leave like you've promised you would since the beginning of this thread.

 

[S-Gray]

Originally posted by awaken
Okay, you are all paying to play on barrysworld? How often do you get a decent game? I've just refreshed again, and on a saturday afternoon, not even that, a bank holiday weekend, the halflife servers are about 5% full, if that. THATS PATHETIC.

Decent Game? i just had shitloads of Great Games, the Counterstrike Servers are always pretty full if they have good maps on

 

[Embattle]

Originally posted by awaken

And: Some of you seem to say that the cash is needed to run this service.... HOW THE HELL DID THEY SURVIVE BEFOREHAND THEN? It was the community that ran it for gods sake! Barrysworld started with a server called barry for a Quakeworld clan, if I remember rightly, and it was run by players for players, and funded by their occasional clicks on adverts. Now we decide we want to pay someone else to do it for us?

On handouts, donations, banners,etc and they didn't survive.