I think that I am definatly going to get Final Fantasy XI.
It sounds good, £24.99 for the game with 2 expansions. From what K_D has said and told me it is pretty cheap the monthly fee. I will try get it a.s.a.p. I will getit and have enough for GTA:San andreas even with the monthly fees. (just)

dude u should get it.. i have a friend who got it for like £20 on ebay and ive been up and played it.. its a great game man.. very different but u can play it for hours and hours and not get one bit bored.. its damn good

Well, since K_D has got it I asked him about a price I saw he said it was the best deal.
Also Im gonna order it today! Just sorting credit card stuff out.

nice one man :)

Have fun playin :D.. You wont be dissapointed one bit :)

Well, I might get it a bit l8r on..a week (max).
Also, when you sorta register to pay monthly, is it easy to un-register? So your not paying.

hah.. sounds cool.. but definetly get it.. i am gonna get it some point soon as well.. just too good not to have

i believe that you pay for a specific amount of time (usually estimated in months). Then when that time runs out you gotta pay again (or not, if you don't feel like playing anymore ^^), so it sorta "unregisters" itself, kinda, in a way...
At least that's what most MMORPGs do... but i haven't got FFXI so i can't be sure.

and the Monthly Fee ain't all that cheap, isn't it something like 10$ a month? that's pretty common.

The monthly fee is about $12 but £7 pound in the U.K.
Sounds easy then.. I just want to know if its easy to un-register because some companies can con you and they make it difficult to un-register.

12$ is pretty normal for a MMORPG, but it's not cheap (there's a LOT of MMORPGs that's a lot cheaper... but, they aren't FF ^^)

and, do you ever think Square Enix would "con" you?.... (maybe they would... but i wouldn't wanna think that way >.>)

I couldn't really care if square is conning me £7 quid is pretty cheap. Its when they start getting over a tenner you start to worry about money.

You don't unregister automatically you have to actually cancel it yourself. it works as a direct debit so it'll automatically take the money at the right time, if you wanna unregister then you just do it!, it looks easy to do but i haven't done it b4!

I would never play an online game that you have to pay for, thats the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You've bought the game, why can't you play it without spending money? Fucking pigs.

i'm pretty sure you've heard this before... but the monthly fee is to keep the servers good & running, and it's also like a pay for the (hopefully) frequent updates...
BUT, i DO agree that's the AMOUNT of money spent is ridiculous... they would be able to pay for the server costs & stuff if players only paid 1 or 2$ each... (and they would get a lot more players that way too, i bet.)

ffxi for only £25 including the 2 expansions, thats not bad at all and after playing it i'd pay upto £15 a month for it it's awesome

true, it's cheap to buy (25$).... but, you must be rich to pay 15$a month?! that's like..... a lot of money y'know...

yeah i agree.i would pay that as well.. u dont have to be rich to be able to do that.. i wouldnt say.. my family aint rich

i must be truly poor then ^^'

i wonder if there's any FFXI private servers.....
i'd just wish they were just as easy to find as Ragnarok Online private servers...

Just because people don't want to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a game does not make them poor! I'll buy FFXI eventually, that is, if they ever cut the monthly fees.

As for your comment on the money going back into the game, I hate to break it to you but it really dosen't. Square has plenty of money to keep the game supported, all that money really does is make the workers at square have bigger wallets!

i would imagine they might cut out the monthly fees when the games a bit older.. otherwise nobody would really bother anymore... at leats reduce them a lot!!

I havent got a problem with paying the fees though.. i mean you get a free trial period... which is good... at least you can see if you like it before you make an decision about whether you think its worth the monthly fees or not...

i will get round to buying it i think... but i wouldnt even have time to play it atm... and i definatly dont want to be paying monthly fees for something im not even playing very much!!!!

edit - oh wait.. i didnt really say what i actually think there!!!.... you shouldnt have to pay monthly fees coz it is a rip off.... unfortunatly thats what companies do now (yes, even square!) because they know that the consumer market will pay them.. and unfortunatly.. much as i hate to conform to these things.. i will probably just pay it anyway... even though i dont agree with it.. and its ppl like me (and probably most people who play FFXI who also probably realise that theyre being ripped off.. but pay it anyway.. coz they want to play the game) that cause these montly fees.... becuase the companies know that they can charge these things and people will still pay it... its all a vicious circle!!!

... if ya know what i mean!!!

Ross, i know Square had more than enough to keep the servers running & the maintenance team well paid, but they would still lose money if there was no monthly fees.... (even though it's only a small amount), so i'm just saying it's perfectly fine with the monthly fees, but they could be a hell of a lot cheaper!!!

No the monthly fees serve no purpose. A company as massive and as successful as Square dosen't lose money that easily. They could still cover the costs of keeping FFXI running from using their reveunes from fricken... original FF1 for nes, its still being sold and they are still making plenty of money off of it.

dude if they could then squares shares would just constantly go up through the roof. Like all companys they are only making a certain amount of profit which isn't enough to cover wages of the thousands of people who work for them doing so much stuff. you've seen the credits for an ff game imagine paying all of them $50K a year, square do need money to pay the wages for the servers etc BUT they don't need THAT much, ffxi gets regular maintenance about once a fortnight which is a lot, in that 2 weeks there are loads of peeps working together to figure out what to do in the maintenance to keep it a top class game!

Exactly, that's what i'm saying ^^

I still stand by my previous statement, I've played online games that get updated just as frequently and they stay top-notch even without any sort of online payment. You're just being ripped off.

0.o would you mind mentioning some of them?? ^^

1)

Just wanted to add about the unregister thing:

if you stop playing the game and unregister AND want to start playing the game again on a later time THEN you have to buy the game again for new keys...

<= that's what i find stupid, because you can't take a short break


2)

The montly payment is also an issue for me, but you have to understand that they have to PAY PEOPLE to maintain all the severs, solve problems on them, create more because there are too many people on the servers, extra space for all the added data, etc. etc. ... These are montly costs that have to be paid for.

That said I do think that the current montly fee is a bit TOO HIGH. Maybe it's because of the Play Online Email System and stuff (and because they want more money dhu)

Anyone know what you pay for something like hotmail with all those exra features?

3) I don't care. I want to play FFXI online. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Starcraft, Warcraft (all of them), Diablo (all of them)

Blizzard seems to have no troubles supporting online games without ridiculous monthly fees.

Other games like Half life, counterstrike, etc. all are good games that require no type of fees (other then actually purchasing the game).

well what about world of warcraft... there you have to pay as well ^^....

but still i dont think that the games you mention there needs the same amount of supervising and maintenence as some of the new very big/resourcefull games (lets face it those games vere not resourcefull, there may have been ALOT on the servers but not as resourcefull... + that those games were not made only for online gaming, and it is always the same there isnt any new changes in the Diablo world at all, there is alot of that in online games were you have to pay, for example new cities rising, major historic battles, faction camps, change to the scenery and such... thats why i believe there is a monthly fee on some online games...

well, some of the "old guys" at blizzard created Battle.Net which runs in some special way so it's wayyy easier & cheaper to keep going, but those guys left and created ArenaNet (the teams that's currently making Guild Wars, the MMORPG) but it seems that all other developers can't (or won't) create something like Battle.Net EXCEPT ArenaNet, did you know GuildWars is going to be FREE after you purchase it? (THAT ROCKS!)

and also, there's not any "Full-time workers" on Diablo, Starcraft or Warcraft. Since there isn't released "updates" to those games in a way that's comparable to the average MMORPG, so it's not nearly as expensive.
Also, Starcraft, Diablo, Warcraft etc. is not MASSIVELY, there can only be 8-12 players in a game at once, in a MMORPG it's more like 1000-10000, which requires a LOT more bandwidth...

so, MMORPGs & Diablo/Starcraft/Warcraft can't even be compared.

for information on ArenaNet go to: ArenaNet Webpage

for information on GuildWars go to: GuildWars Webpage

final fantasy xi gets updated roughly every week with new quests to go on and is HUGE beyond belief! it wouldn't suprise me if they need that much money, i'm sure they'd probably break even of half of it tho, but they're not a non profit organization so what dyou expect

So they update it? Every game updates. I still haven't seen one good reason why you need to pay monthly fees.

I think that if you played FFXI actually once, you would know what the reason is for the montly fee without getting technical about it...

yup, after playing it for the free 1 month trial i think every1'd be happy to pay, if not then they can simply sell it on e-bay

Right, although the 1 month free Trial isn't really free.... since you have to buy the game first >.>