Re: Java and avoiding software piracy?


"Bent C Dalager" <bcd@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:f7jl3n$ukm$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Without the copyright regime, anyone will be able to establish WoW
servers running their own WoW-compatible worlds. Certainly, they will
first have to reverse-engineer the protocols (and this needs to not be
illegal) and this poses something of a problem but is unlikely to be
excessively difficult. Once this has happened, competition would arise
for WoW-players' subscription money. Most likely, the original vendor
will have a considerable advantage for a number of reasons but if they
turn out to be incompetent, or if you find some niche server somewhere
that interests you for some obscure reason, you can quite happily
switch content supplier. Or run with both for that matter.

This is already happening, actually. Google for "Private WoW Server"
and the 3rd hit is entitled "World of Warcraft top 100 - Private servers",
implying that there is a sufficiently greater than 100 private servers
available such that a top 100 list is meaningful.

[snip stuff I don't disagree with and have no further comments]

A new, retail, pay-once game usually costs around $60. MMO subscriptions
are typically on the order of $20 per month. I'm a relatively busy
person,
so I don't have too much time to play games. I might be able do a
"serious" gaming session (i.e. longer than 5 minutes) maybe 2 days out
of
a given month.

That's about 6 days of play in an MMO versus an potentially infinite
amount of play for a typical retail game. Now given, most retail games
get
boring after a while, but the good ones tend to be more fun than merely
6
day's worth.

I am not convinced that this is much of a problem. For a large number
of people, $60 just isn't a whole lot of money. Neither is $20. And
neither is $20 a month. The latter is somewhere around the amount that
people really don't bother much with at all. (Obviously, it varies
with wealth levels, but I think this is common enough.)

I guess you're wealthier than I am. $20 a month is enough to make me
stop and think "Is this really worth it?"


(The one thing that really surprises me is that MMOGs seem to be
charging for the "first dose", i.e. the game box. I can only conclude
that this is to cover the cost for putting boxes on shelves and so
it's basically a marketing cost. In a mature online MMOG market, I
would expect the game software to be downloadable for free, with some
free initial playing time thrown in, just to get people hooked.)

There are a couple of pseudo-free MMOs: You download the software and
play for free as much as you want. However, you need to pay (real life)
money for certain things. This may be merely cosmetic things like
clothing, or it may be arguably-critical things like a weapon powerful
enough to make overcoming your next challenge of "reasonable difficulty",
or it may be objectively-critical things like an item which is simply
required by the game rules to continue advancing your character.

I play around with some of them, but I find I tire of them relatively
quickly.

- Oliver


.

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