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Thread: Call to all Entrepreneurs

  1. #11

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    It seems my lengthy explanation got discarded instead of posted, so I'll just post the abridged version instead.

    The idea is stupid. It would take long for discs to arrive at customers and cost too much to be justifiable, involve far too much complication on the customer's part and would involve them waiting considerable amounts of time for the disc to arrive in their post as opposed to just downloading the patch and paying for used bandwidth as necessary.

  2. #12
    Lydon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by nanonyous View Post
    In addition, you are confusing 'expansions' and 'patches'.

    Expansions add new content.

    Patches fix bugs and made modifications to existing content.
    Not true. The days of patches being mere bug fixes and content modifications have long passed. World of Warcraft patches are just that - patches, not expansions - and the vast majority of them add new content. The Zaishen Manegerie addition to Guild Wars at the end of last year was a patch, too, far from an expansion...I've played close to 40 MMO's and basically every one of them introduce or have introduced new content through patches

    And secondly, I disagree about it not working. Perhaps now with our sudden internet price drops and potential looming speed increases, yes, but in the past I have personally had people send me countless MMO's and patches in the mail and vice versa - which we happily covered the costs for. I know of many who have done the same, as it worked out cheaper to have someone overnight courier a disk filled with what we needed than to pay and wait for it to download. I find it hard to believe the idea is stupid if it's worked very well for me and many others in the past...

    But as I said, the internet landscape has changed now, so now the idea could become obsolete.
    PSN: LydonMcG


  3. #13

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    Sorry, but exactly what are you saying I'm wrong on?

    I stated that patches are patches and expansions are expansions, and you told me "no, you're wrong, patches are patches and expansions are expansions"?

    As for your second statement, you are the one that is wrong here. Such transfer of files on discs is a niche among friends. Someone had to still download those files, and someone else had to still get them from that person. You still have to sit and wait for that guy to burn the files you want to a disc, get to the post office and post them, then wait for them to arrive in your mail.

    The uncapped accounts on the other hand are available now, and in comparison to non-broken DSL accounts like the SAIX 5gb offering, would be senseless not to use if you're sitting on 384kbps or 512kbps, as opposed to 1-4mbps.

    And by the time you're sitting on 1-4mbps, why are you crying about the cost of a patch/expansion download anyway? For what reason are you sitting with a connection that can cap you in a matter of hours of downloading if you don't actually use it for anything anyway? Why are you bothering to waste so much money?


    I'd like to see you list these 40 MMOs, too.


    Your reference to what happened in the past in a thread about something that someone wants to do in the future is also entirely senseless, because we aren't talking about what did work in the past here, we're talking about what someone wants to do now, with the options that are available to them.

    There are situations where sending hard-drives around can work. It carries risks, however, and generally also requires you are able to trust the person you are sending your drive to. A company providing a service as mentioned by the OP isn't going to send you a hard drive full of stuff, it's going to send you DVDs with the specific patches/expansions you asked for on it. It's going to cost that company money to source the data, prepare it, write it to disc, verify the written data, prepare the package and get it to the courier.

    That means someone needs to get paid for that process. The company has an initial, albeit small in comparison, cost to souce the data, as well as store and maintain it, constantly verifying data integrity. They also need some degree of redundancy to ensure that they don't suffer major service outage or data loss, and would need to organise licenses for the vast majority of the software/data they are redistributing. Any software they want to distribute that is intended to be provided in a retail package or a specifically pay-to-download online purchase format would need to be paid for just the same as if you got it from say Direct2Drive, Steam or Gamefly; the only difference is that your download source is now local, which is still of no consequence if you get a once-off uncapped 384kbps account and just download up to 95gb in a single month.


    Now, if we DO look back onto the past, let's take the Openweb IS local only account as an example and work with a group of five friends that all trust eachother. None of them has the expansion or patch(es) they want yet. One of them needs to drive out or source the data from another friend before he can redistribute it amongst his four friends. He runs a cost, namely, say, R25 for DVDs+distribution/person he sends it to, not to mention fuel to get to the post office if required.

    That's R25/person, unless the friends all live close enough to eachother that they can simply cycle/skate/walk over to get the disc to another friend. R100.

    For R100, they can get the 30gb local only account, and each use up 6gb/each to download it from the previously listed sites/FTP servers.

    4.7gb/DVD/package (fair enough you can generally get at least three in before the dimensions of the envelope I'm familiar with will swell to being too thick and/or become too heavy) or 6gb/person.

    Even at 384kbps and 80% speed efficiency, you're talking about 1.62gb/12 hours, or 3.2gb or so in a 24 hour period.

    Patch comes out 5pm on the 1st of the month. Nobody among your friends has downloaded it, including you.
    A friend with a fast connection has it by 8pm on the same day, you can't get it from him until the next morning.
    You get it from him by 8am, get home by 9, write it to four DVDs and are at the post office dispatching it by 10am.
    The envelopes arrive at their destinations by around 3pm the next day, sometimes as a 'soonest' timeframe, assuming it's not a weekend. That's 3pm of the 3rd of the month.

    1st 17:00
    2nd 17:00 (24 hours)
    3rd 15:00 (22 hours)

    Total time = 46 hours.

    Total download in 12 hours = 1.62gb, so download in 46 hour period = 6.21gb

    Five people served for the same price in the same timeframe for what likely exceeds the total amount of data they each needed to get ahold of anyway. Keep in mind, however, that this is using a 'then' model, not a 'now' model.


    Now, on the other hand, if you'd like to share a lot more data, then sure, go ahead and keep sending discs between eachother. You'll be spending a lot more of your time just doing that than you could be spending doing other things, but that's probably of no concern to you. You can't source the data in particular you want, as opposed to finding exactly what YOU want and beginning to get it when YOU want it, but that's fine too.

    At R25/parcel with three discs in it, or 14gb, you're looking at around R170 to get 95gb worth of data to one person, unless you mail them a hard-drive.

    R200 for an uncapped 384kbps account getting that amount of data, or R30 more, and you get to choose what you do with that data, not to mention you actually get to browse the internet etc without having to spend any further money on a separate DSL account in addition to the mailed packages.

    This doesn't even take into account the broken DSL packages that have existed since the launch of ADSL in South Africa, nor the abundance of people that made proper use of R7-a-call and dialup/ISDN.

    Hell, way back then, playing MMOs was a niche in South Africa anyway considering the costs involved in dialing in after-hours to play, and the limited amount of time anyone with work or school could actually put in an evening or over weekends, and how it restricted them.

    LANs have been common in South Africa for, at the very least, the past 11 or so years, not to mention general data distribution among friends that saw eachother frequently and held small lans at eachother's homes.

    At the end of the day, your reference regarding getting patches and/or expansions distributed amongst friends using discs is just daft, because it's such a low-key thing for people to bother doing that a service like this would have an extremely limited customer base at best. With how ADSL has been since its launch here, anyone with a clue that has also been playing MMOs has been able to utilize the variety of broken DSL accounts that have existed without problems.

    On the whole, I'm not sure why I'm even bothering with this post..

  4. #14
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    I, too, do not know why you even bothered with the above post as:

    1) This thread was started before these new, cheaper uncapped plans were announced last week. Labelling earlier posts as "stupid" simply because they were posted when the local internet market was in a very different place is a silly thing to do in itself.

    2) You earlier stated that "expansions add new content. Patches fix bugs and made modifications to existing content," which I said is not completely true, as patches, too, include new content, do they not?

    3) You're treating this small service as if it is going to be some multi-million-Rand company the OP is suggesting someone start up. It is not. It's a simple service someone could easily provide in their spare time, or, as he said, an existing established store could simply bolt on to their current service offering.

    4) Please do not assume to know what I do and do not do within my friendbase. This service is one many of us in this forum has provided to others on numerous occassions. I find it laughable that you're suggesting a service that has worked for many of us does not work. Formalising it would simply make life a whole lot easier for everyone.

    4) If you're suggesting that downloading a 9GB client on a 384Kbps or 512Kbps line (because the majority of people do not have a 4Mbps line) is quicker and, before last week, cheaper than having someone stick their already-downloaded client on a disc and sending it to you overnight, then I find that rather amusing.

    5) Most importantly, you've got the total wrong end of the stick here. The service in question isn't aimed at people already playing a game who have a few hundred megs to download...it is aimed at people who install an MMO and have gigabyte upon gigabyte of patches to download after installation, such as someone just installing Warhammer Online, or someone attempting to play a trial and being required to download the entire updated client of the game in question. Countless times this has been the case with me, and I'm sure many others.

    And lastly, goodness knows why you want it, but the list of MMO's I've played is in the similarly titled thread somewhere in the depths of this sub-section.

    On another note, however, there is no need to come out all-guns-a-blazing and attacking people with what appears to be a "know it all" attitude, as this forum is one in which many of us have enjoyed peaceful and friendly discussion for many months. Please, do not disturb the peace, as that's just going to make people annoyed with you.
    Last edited by Lydon; 26-03-2010 at 01:04 PM.
    PSN: LydonMcG


  5. #15

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    I will say this again, the act of sending discs (DVDs or CDs, not hard drives) between friends is something that, while it was done by some people in South Africa as well as many other parts of the world, was and still is limited.

    This isn't because the infrastructure supporting it is poor as much as because it costs people money; money they may not be willing to spend on people they don't personally know or trust. You are, from what I can tell, a kid. You have, from what I can tell, luckily not been screwed over majorly by anyone before.

    As such, you likely don't see the personal security risks, the financial security risks or the other risks that one runs by performing such disc trades with people you do not personally know.


    Hard drive swaps are multiple times more risky, as you're sending a several-hundred-rand reusable device to someone else, not a once-of disc costing a few rand.Again, sending discs from a *games retailer*, such as BT Games, would be a costly exercise for the company itself, nevermind the clients.

    1. Someone has to source the data. This costs bandwidth used as well as that guy's time, costing the company money.
    2. He has to write the data to a disc and verify its integrity. He also has to make sure to work against a checklist of requirements of the client and potentially add in some 'value added services' such as subsequent patches the client may not have asked for, if there is space left on the disc. This, again, takes his time and effort up, and thus costs the company money.
    3. He has to prepare the discs, possibly label them and get them into casings and prepare them for being mailed. This takes up his time, costing the company money.
    4. He has to get the disc to the courier or post office; someone has to either come and fetch it, which costs money, or someone has to go and drop it off, which costs money.

    To save on step four, this would need to be done in once-daily batches; if a customer asks for stuff after the company has already dispatched that day's packages, that customer has to wait till the next day for his package to be prepared, and then wait another day for it to arrive at his premises.

    This goes back to the three-day argument.

    Next, as I said earlier, for some games, expansion material is free. As such, anything labeled as an expansion may well not be legal to charge for, even if you are charging for only the service of distribution, as the vast majority of the world does not have to pay for it; why should some little backwards country be allowed to monetize and make business of distributing something that's free?

    Look at Ubuntu as an example. The officially supported distributors are allowed to charge for nothing but the disc the distro is written to and the cost of posting it to you. They aren't allowed to charge for their time/effort put into their writing of the disc, preparing it for you and posting it.

    When it comes to expansions such as those for WoW, you can just as well get the expansion boxes directly from your local or online retailer, as even if you buy them online towards your account, you still have to download the content. That takes WoW out of the picture almost entirely.


    Now getting back to the argument of expansions vs patches, a few key differences set the two apart.

    Expansions:
    1. Major content additions in the form of new textures, models, NPC entities/items (not modifications of existing items as would be seen in most MMOs, WoW and EVE included), whole new models+textures for entirely new entities or items.
    2. Major changes to game mechanics that ultimately change how a massive portion of the game is played; think sovereignty changes for EVE, if you follow its development or play it at all.
    3. 10x+ the size of any general maintenance patch for the 'expansion', keeping in mind that some patches for WoW weigh in at an ultimately unjustifiable 130mb or so, even when they add no content beyond 'event' content related to a fictional or out of game holiday or such. These, if anything, would count as mini-expansions or event content updates included within a patch, similarly to what was seen in EVE with the addition of faction warfare specific LP store offers.

    Patches:
    1. Fix identified bugs in game mechanics, NPCs, items or general game code.
    2. Make minor changes to game mechanics to tweak balance in the game (think the recent Druid changes for WoW - these changed how druids were used a lot, and came in a pretty beefy patch, but would you consider that an expansion when all it's doing is changing stuff that already exists in the game?).
    3. Add or remove information, such as quest/mission information, item information or the like as necessary for consistency in the game content - information modification which in itself just not justify being labeled an expansion, or even a mini-expansion.
    4. Fix exploits.


    From an entrepreneurial aspect, this idea was flawed before the launch of the now-cheaper uncapped accounts.

    Refer again to the aforementioned 30gb local only accounts, and keep in mind that there are business offerings for uncapped local only accounts available with a variety of ISPs; this ignoring accounts such as the one Openweb had available for a brief period that had entirely free, unmetered local-only uploading.

    For 30gb, you could easily download all of the content for WoW, including all its expansions, from a local source; this right up to the latest patched version of the game.

    You could also fit in getting the EVE Client installer, which weighs in at sub 3gb and is patched up to the latest, if not just behind the latest version of the game.

    You could also fit in Guild Wars with some of its expansion packs' data.

    You could still fit in a variety of other things, such as map packs or custom content for non MMOs, including fat patches such as those for TF2.


    All that for ~R130 for a 30gb account, before these uncapped accounts came about at what essentially boils down to R200 for roughly 100gb of data on 384kbps.


    This still doesn't even take into account the variety of 'broken' DSL accounts that various ISPs have had available for years, allowing dozens of gigabytes worth of data for prices under R200. That data, at full international rates. This, again, ultimately boils down to a situation of customer awareness and utilization.

    It is again important to take into consideration the cost of bandwidth just to play some MMOs, completely disregarding the patches or expansions that come out for them. Some of them take up quite a large chunk of cap, WoW being a prime example.

    If you are at all into market manipulation in EVE, you'll again use up massive amounts of bandwidth, as market transaction updates and the like can easily rack of several megabytes for just a few minutes of tinkering or research.

    Then there is VoIP, commonly used by those playing MMOs as a more convenient method of communicating with their friends.


    Then you still have the monthly subscription(s) to take into consideration.


    If a guy is paying R150 for one game, he has only one game to patch or get expansions for. With a game like EVE, the expansions generally weigh in at sub 1gb and only come about twice a year; easily manageable by even a 5gb account, especially considering the player is forewarned of the expansion several months in advance. For a game such as WoW, as covered earlier, you have to pay for the expansion to have it linked to your account anyway, so you might as well get the boxed version by the time you'll have spent money on the bandwidth AND buying the expansion online.

    If, on the other hand, that guy is playing several MMOs, such as WoW, EVE, AoC, WHO, he's paying R100-R150/month per game.

    Surely this guy can afford to spend money on the cap he's already burning up to play all these games, not to mention the time he's investing into each (time is money)? Hell, he probably also has an expensive PC given the requirements for a game like AoC, not to mention he likely has a 4mbps connection.

  6. #16

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    Sigh... now the other half of this got nerfed by the windows clipboard.

    Gist of the continuation: There are costs involved in setting up any kind of legally guaranteed or insured service like this. Anything that doesn't carry a legally backed guarantee or insurance effectively allows the person operating the service to screw over his customers without having to be responsible for it, citing that the issues are 'out of his hands' and that a different service provider have to be blamed.

    As such someone doing this in their spare time could screw over the people he's doing this for. I have experienced first hand how this can affect people and have seen second hand how it can affect people; it's a fairly common concept, because there are plenty of 'entrepreneurs' in South Africa that are perfectly willing to screw over their customers to make a few extra bucks.

    The more important bit of the second half was that in many parts of the world, you can go to a kiosk at a local game retailer and use a touch screen to select patches/expansions to copy to a USB flash drive, or pay for a DVD to have them written to in the store. These are ultimately free to the customer as a service, but still cost the company or individual operating the service money in the form of electricity for the kiosk(s), maintenance, keeping its content up to date and verifying its integrity etc.


    I still don't know why I'm bothering with this at all, as I doubt at this point that you have any real idea as to what would go into any of this, and are looking at the general idea and just thinking "that sounds cool, someone should do it!" like a naive teen that doesn't care 'how' something is done, only that it is done.

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