You Have The Time, But What About The Money?

World of Warcraft and other MMOs also have the downside of requiring somewhere around a fifteen dollar monthly stipend to play online, and the monthly fee only applies to playing World of Warcraft, though there are discounts with longer subscriptions and sometimes with multiple game subscriptions. Xbox Live is just under twenty dollars a month, except with Xbox Live, you can play any game you have online, as well as get downloads and updates/upgrades from Microsoft at no additional cost. Xbox Live is more expensive monthly, but unlike World of Warcraft, buying the online play option is not required to play or beat a game, and just like with Warcraft, the longer you subscribe at once, the cheaper the service is (per month). Since MMos update often, adding new items and races and professions, people have to check online all the time. There are almost no options available to a gamer offline, so the gamer has to keep paying the monthly fee, not knowing how much he or she might play that month. Any game requiring someone to pay monthly for the game and for the online service, is asking a lot of a gamer, capital-wise, and a lot of gamers might be pressed for cash. Even if a gamer just goes one month without playing, like my roommate did in December, in an effort to save money, can cost them something else. My roommate missed a special Christmas time giveaway and he was angry because can never get those items again. It is only because he did not want to pay for another month because he did not know how much time he would have for playing during that month. It seems like sports games have the advantage in yet another category, requiring payment only once to purchase the game, and having almost all of the gameplay options available offline from the beginning. Besides playing online, and paying at a monthly rate for that, one must learn online, all the while paying for that too, and with MMO-RPGs, learning the game can take forever, especially without someone to guide you.