This isn't an easy thing to do though, they are a company and do have to make a profit in somewhere. If it cost them nothing to run the game, this would be a different story altogether; but with server/maintenance costs and employee payroll profit is inevitably a heavy part of any company.
I think if this was 1999 or something yeah, maintaining a server for a game such as Lineage 1 is costly, but we are 2014 and such a small, outdated game like pox...
Unless you where directly involved with Lineage financially i doubt you would even know the numbers they pay for there servers, you can Google an estimate but it's just that an "estimate"; the same goes for Poxnora. Just because Poxnora is an older game does not mean it's server/maintenance cost are free now, and as i said before the Owl's still have to eat; this is not to mention the fact that in order for the company to produce anything beyond where they are currently they need "excess" funding if they charge only enough to "break even" you can rest assured future content will reflect that outcome.
There's a big difference between non-zero cost and 'expensive'. This is 2014 man are you really saying it costs an arm and a leg to maintain servers for such an old game like pox? Your first argument would work against you too, since you are not involved with poxnora you can't prove that their maintenance cost is expensive either. But we know this is 2014 and this stuff is not as much as you think and they can easily make money with a big player base had they went true F2P
There are also secret runes put in (Christmas/Presidential Skins, Grimthir, Legendary versions of Angels and some other things people have not come across yet), but all in all yes you can get legendaries in the core boxes.
My arguments are all valid, and do not apply to me; as i never stated i knew the cost they pay for there servers the point is neither do you. I also never stated it cost them an arm and a leg, but it is a cost nonetheless. I also never stated there maintenance was "expensive" either. Better yet please reread my statement and reply "if you must" as you may have read it incorrectly.
Just to add some sense of perspective, I looked in some places and sites about maintaining a server, and I think the most relevant link I could find was this: In another forum: The same forum user later claims: If I have learned something interesting about this, is not all the games have the same cost when talking about maintenance, mainly because a dynamic game which streams data (a FPS) consumes much more bandwidth than a static cache game like many flash games in sites like cartoon network, and for what I can understand, that stream vs cache data is more relevant than graphics when calculating costs. Considering that, Pox Nora is more on the "stream" side of the spectrum because it requires to constantly receive and send data from the opponent, which increases the costs of maintaining the server. Another thing I have learned is there isn't a single server, but one to store the website information, another for the game itself, which implies, once again, more money. Now, in the previous boards Ragic post a link to an article where a developer explained the financial status of his game. One of the many things he explained was the cost for the server, and iirc, the average number he said for his game was $60,000 at year, but I may not remember correctly.
As a game developer I do have a rough idea of what server maintenance costs for the type of game that is Pox Nora, and if it's anything more than negligible (compared to developer cost of living), then they are doing something wrong. Nobody is saying that Owls should work for less, that would be stupid. The reason to make the game cheaper and more accessible is obviously not to make less money, but to make more money. You have to understand the economics of free to play: The only reason to make a game free to play is to appeal to a large number of players. If you cannot make a profit by converting only a small part of them to paying customers, then your business model is completely screwed up. The more users play for free, the more you will convert to paying customers and the more profit you will make. I'll leave you with an inspirational quote from Riot Games president Marc Merrill: That's how you make craploads of money. You don't force your players to spend, you make them want to spend.
also consider this, lets say only 100 players will actually spend money. would those 100 players want to spend money if they were the only players in the game? its no fun being a big fish in a small pond let alone a small fish in a small pond. now add in the other 1000 f2p'ers. They may never spend money. But they help create the environment where the 100 payers feel like their money is being well spent.
Exactly, a larger player base benefits the game in a multitude of ways. It would be shortsighted to only be concerned with average revenue per user (which is probably insanely high with Pox Nora).
On the other hand like i said in a previous post we don't even know what they are currently paying/producing profit wise. They could be sitting back eating cheetos and laughing at our posts as we speak.
Why don't you illustrate us with your numbers? Seriously, tell us the server model, energy consumption, and technical aspects like bandwidth. I already posted a link where a guy explained in detail how your average flash game in facebook costs around $30,000 a year, which while not exorbitant, isn't "negligible". I can't find the link Ragic posted on the previous forums, but a developer who have been running a game also explained how the costs were above the $50,000. C'mon, illustrate us with your expertise. Unless you're as much a developer, as I have been rank 1 with every faction. (Pro-tip: TinyDragon is just one among my hundred alts)
Ha, found it! Combat Monsters: A postmortem Ok, got the numbers wrong. However, the above post suggest between tax, rent, server costs and so on, they will loss $40,000. Which does sounds more accurate to the previous post. Care to refute anyone?
The calculations given by that guy on the forum are very detailed, but he is talking about a completely different use case which isn't easy to translate to a game like Pox Nora. The Combat Monsters post mortem doesn't tell you anything about server costs without further context. It should also go without saying that more users equals higher server costs, but also higher revenue. What I can say is that I would be confident that I can rent a server for $50 a month that supports a turn based strategy game with ~200 concurrent users. Make it a few hundred and you are on the save side. All I'm saying is, that it pales in comparison to providing reasonable salaries to even just three developers. Have a look at the pricing for a managed hosting solution (which includes various game services and multiplayer capabilities similar to what would be required for a game like Pox Nora): https://playerio.com/pricing/ Managing your own server is going to be cheaper than that (not counting your own time and trouble of course), the pricing they give you is obviously calculated in a way that still allows them to make a profit. It is unlikely that Pox Nora with its current user base would create more traffic than even their Plus tier can handle. You say that Pox Nora is "more on the streaming side", which isn't true. The game is turn based plain and simple, the fact that moves are sent immediately doesn't matter. You don't have constant real-time updates, which means that a lot less data is being transmitted. Real-time games transmit positional updates non-stop (many times per second), which sucks up a lot of bandwidth. Pox Nora simply sits idle and waits for the occasional "move that unit to that square" or "activate that ability with that target square" command. Aside from traffic, you also have to factor in CPU cycles, but with around 200 concurrent users, the server code would have to be extremely inefficient for that to be a significant factor. If you don't want to believe me, then just use some common sense: The average free to play game makes in the ballpark of $1 per user per month. How much do you think Pox Nora makes per user? We know that Pox Nora has been catering almost exclusively to its whales for years now and the pricing is definitely on the extremely high side. If that is not enough to cover the server costs and a handful of developers, then how are games like Dota 2 (which is realtime by the way) or even Farmville profitable, which have millions of users, hundreds of developers to feed, and a much much lower average revenue per user? Granted, server costs become more efficient as you scale up, but that's all the more reason to target a larger number of users at a lower price point.
And that alone disqualifies you from the "developers club". At one hand, look carefully at the price list you have provided. Copy-pasting a link from some host service is meaningless because, and that's like the second message on the link I posted, the resources each game requires vary wildly, and just picking an option from a site like that doesn't guarantee fulfilling the specific needs. Once again, the vary same post I'm talking about specify that making wrong assumptions is the cause of bankruptcy among several on-line games. BTW, did you read the description from the site you're talking about? Yeah, sure, the services for a turn based strategy game with a stand-alone client based on java are the same than some flash or a browser based game. Now, at the other hand, you say "don't have constant real time updates", yet Sokolov wrote a long post time ago how the game is actually more complex than what it looks, and as quick example he pointed at the surge ability which... well, if you're a developer, you should know how surge operates, and why is actually an ability that requires a constant stream of data, and if you're a developer, you should know how this also affects abilities like block or damage resolution itself.
Yes they are actually. Whether the client is running as a Flash app in the browser or a full fledged console game, makes no difference whatsoever to the server requirements. You could create a Pox Nora client that is identical to the current Java client for all practical purposes, but runs on Flash in a browser. In fact, the new Faeria card game which has been mentioned around here a few times recently does exactly that (it is also a mix of turn based strategy and TCG). Do you have a link to that post? This summary alone doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I am sure that the game is quite complex, but I can't think of any good reason why it would require a constant stream of data. Anyway, I really couldn't care less if you believe my credentials or not, anybody can make up their own mind. This point really isn't important enough for us to hijack the entire thread.
Old boards were wiped by SoE. Quick explanation: surge as ability is a passive ability that is constantly checking the board to determine the presence of certain champions which matched the criteria. If you take a look at the surge champions, the damage constantly updates to reflect the destruction or spawn of certain champions, disregarding if is the player's or opponent's turn. Consider the following: how do you imagine surge: shadows and insubstiate abilities work? And that's just an example, those are not the only abilities that are actively registering and updating data. As for the rest, is hard to believe half of what you have said, and more important, is hard to give any value to your opinion if you're trying to support them on credentials that can't be proven, and can be easily contested. Hey, it wasn't who said "I'm a developer, hence I know server costs are negligible". And based on what have we argued so far, I tend to believe said statement was just a made bull-crap in both, your credentials, and your affirmation about costs.
Yes I get that, but why would you implement this as a constant stream of data? Even if we take into account that the damage numbers in the champ infos should be kept up to date at all times, it's enough to send a single update whenever some state changes. Frankly, I think you must have misunderstood what he was saying. Complex, sure. The game probably sends a lot more updates than is immediately apparent, but anything resembling the data stream created by a real-time game would be crazy. If it upsets you so much then ask other developers what they think, I really couldn't care less. You are welcome to pretend that I'm a plumber.
