Online gaming costs

Sick Boy

Sick Boy

New member
More questions. What are the cost's involved in playing on line games do you need to pay the site or how does it work and does it chow lots of internet time
 
Well it depends on what game you are looking at. You get games like World of Warcraft and EVE online where you pay a monthly subscription fee to play the game. Then you get once-off purchases like Call of Duty 4, Guild Wars and Counter-Strike : Source. Only thing you pay for then is your line rental and bandwidth.
 
Zomosa has covered the main bit, many of the more popular online games such as World of Warcraft require you to pay a monthly subscription (such as R1500 per month) alongside buying the actual game (say another R200-R500) in order to gain access to their servers. Whereas some other games may only require a once off payment for the actual game (like CoD or Guild Wards) and then other crappier online games might be free if you are able to download them online (legally).

Establishing a sufficient internet connection is probably the most costly aspect of online gaming, because you could play a free online game or an expensive monthly payment online game and your internet costs could be very much the same. You won't survive playing WoW as addictively as I do with a 356kbp/s (or w/e the low line speed is) and only a 2GB monthly cap.
 
If you are looking for a free game to play you can try League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth (Both similar to DotA), Team Fortress 2 or World of Tanks.
 
Ok that sounds cool, Ja I only got 2gb and then another 2gb but only between 12 till 8 in the evening. I will just have to make that work for know
 
The MMO market is HUGE. There are so many different types of MMOs to choose from. The pain is getting a game client. Remember that any MMO client software can be shared legally. Yes, you can get a copy from someone LEGALLY! MMOs come in two main flavours:
F2P: Free to play. This MMO payment type means you can copy the client from someone or download it and then play for free. Yes, free, but.... These MMOs have items available in a cash shop, where you spend using your credit card to buy items to make your life easier in the MMO world, anything from health potions to easier levelling to mounts (horses etc) to get you around the MMO world easier and quicker.
Subscription based This payment model gives you everything you need to play at a monthly cost of (usually) around R100-R150 a month. World of Warcraft is one such model.

Most MMOs have a trial, which allows you to play for a while to see if you like it or not. Might be worth looking into this.

Basically you must decide if you want to play fantasy or sci-fi.

Well known fantasy MMOs include: World of Warcraft, Warhammer, Runes of Magic, Lord of the Rings Online, Rift, Aion, etc ,etc, there are TONS of them.

Well known sci-fi MMOs include: Eve, Black Prophecy, Fallen Earth etc.

Good luck choosing one ;-) or some!
 
Sick Boy said:
Ok that sounds cool, Ja I only got 2gb and then another 2gb but only between 12 till 8 in the evening. I will just have to make that work for know
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Two things here.

First: I'm assuming, but if you're planning to game on Vodacom/MTN/Cell-C/8ta/etc on 3G, I would have to say don't bother.
The pure frustration factor is immense when it starts spiking endlessly, making gaming impossible.

Second: 2GB really wont be enough. I've been there, done that. Gaming alone chews up about 6-10GB per month on my monitoring. That's WITHOUT UPDATES and additional browsing for information (which you will do a LOT with new games and complex games like MMO's).


I would really urge that you consider an ADSL line with a decent Uncapped ISP.
I'm currently on 384k with OpenWeb Gold Uncapped (Shaped). Works very decently and is superstable.
The downside with 384k is patching and other such use. But most games patches finish in less than 8 hours, which means I update when I sleep and maybe just miss one night of gaming per month for that particular game.

All in all, my DSL+ISP costs me just over R500 per month. Add to that any game subscriptions you might want to play as well. Like WoW and EVE etc, most cost (like someone else already mentioned) around R150 per month.

Hope you find any of this at least somewhat useful.
 
Just to add, here is a list of MMOs and there data usage on average per hour:

Eve: 2-5 megs an hour
WoW: 10 - 25 megs an hour (25 megs an hour if you raid)
LOTRO: 6-8 megs an hour
Fallen Earth: 5-6 megs an hour

It gives you an idea, also as Wheunis said, updates is what kills your bandwidth, patches are huge.
 
A very good online game is Starcraft II, you just buy the retail game and it's a once off payment, then you can play onlne as much as you want, the patches are usually small between 10-20mb, and the game doesn't use alot of bandwith, not sure how much. But it's really little usage
 
wheunis said:
Two things here.

First: I'm assuming, but if you're planning to game on Vodacom/MTN/Cell-C/8ta/etc on 3G, I would have to say don't bother.
The pure frustration factor is immense when it starts spiking endlessly, making gaming impossible.

Second: 2GB really wont be enough. I've been there, done that. Gaming alone chews up about 6-10GB per month on my monitoring. That's WITHOUT UPDATES and additional browsing for information (which you will do a LOT with new games and complex games like MMO's).


I would really urge that you consider an ADSL line with a decent Uncapped ISP.
I'm currently on 384k with OpenWeb Gold Uncapped (Shaped). Works very decently and is superstable.
The downside with 384k is patching and other such use. But most games patches finish in less than 8 hours, which means I update when I sleep and maybe just miss one night of gaming per month for that particular game.

All in all, my DSL+ISP costs me just over R500 per month. Add to that any game subscriptions you might want to play as well. Like WoW and EVE etc, most cost (like someone else already mentioned) around R150 per month.

Hope you find any of this at least somewhat useful.
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Thanks for all the info, it really helps you are right I am using Vodacom 3G, I dont think I am going to be playing large MMO's I am more interested in FPS game. someaybe some Quake 3 or AVP things more like that. Do you still think the Vodacom 3G will be usless.
 
I do not think that there is a big community for Quake 3 in South Africa at the moment. You will probably have to play on international servers if you want to play against other players.
 
Sick Boy said:
Thanks for all the info, it really helps you are right I am using Vodacom 3G, I dont think I am going to be playing large MMO's I am more interested in FPS game. someaybe some Quake 3 or AVP things more like that. Do you still think the Vodacom 3G will be usless.
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3G of any flavour remains utterly useless.

Doesn't matter what type of game. The major problem is not with it's POTENCIAL latency, but instead in it's latency SPIKES (or inconsistencies).

Here's how your average hour of 3G gaming will look like.

Log into game.
Get disconnected. Connection switched tower.
Log into game.
Get disconnected. Tower overloaded, connection reset.
Log into game.
Success.
Join a group/server/etc.
Get disconnected. Random problem with 0 throughput.
Log into game.
Get disconnected. Tower switch again.
Log into game.
Join a group/server/etc.
Check latency. 80m/s. COOL!
Play for 5 minutes.
Get disconnected. Tower overloaded, connection reset.
Log into game.
Join a group/server/etc.
Check latency. 80000m/s. NOT COOL!
Wait for 5 minutes.
Check latency. 50m/s. NICE!
Play for 15 minutes.
Get lagged to 987000000m/s for 20 minutes. Unable to do anything.
Ragequit game.
Drink coffee and have a smoke to calm down.
Repeat from start.


3G latency just isnt stable for very long periods.
It may look fresh and fast right off the bat, and it is. But it's EXTREMELY prone to problems when faced with the need for consistent latency.

Trust me when I say that a 2000m/s stable latency is better than 50-1000000/ms latency that fluctuates every other second.
At least when it's stable at any number for prolonged periods, you LEARN TO ADJUST to it.
There's no learning to adjust when it unpredictably jumps from playable to medium to unplayable to disconnect every 5 seconds.
 
Shrike said:
Just to add, here is a list of MMOs and there data usage on average per hour:

Eve: 2-5 megs an hour
WoW: 10 - 25 megs an hour (25 megs an hour if you raid)
LOTRO: 6-8 megs an hour
Fallen Earth: 5-6 megs an hour

It gives you an idea, also as Wheunis said, updates is what kills your bandwidth, patches are huge.
Click to expand...

LOTRO - 25-30mb an hour
Fallen Earth is a bit more apparently
DDO - 30mb an hour

And I can't see WOW and EvE being any less
 
Really? That much for LOTRO?
lotrousage.png


This shows me playing all day.
I sure hope my tracking app is not making a mistake here. What are you using to measure your bandwidth usage?
 
Well I switched accounts (coz Mweb was borked) and when I play, I close everything else and in an hour, I used 45mb ..... I took away 7mb odd as 'trash flow' just in case. But yeah, it chows bandwidth.
 
Sick Boy said:
Thanks for all the info, it really helps you are right I am using Vodacom 3G, I dont think I am going to be playing large MMO's I am more interested in FPS game. someaybe some Quake 3 or AVP things more like that. Do you still think the Vodacom 3G will be usless.
Click to expand...

Yeah dont even bother with the 3G if you only want to play FPS games.
You can still get away with 300-500 latency in a MMO or a Moba game, but in FPS games you will just die and get kicked from servers!
 
Satarial said:
Yeah dont even bother with the 3G if you only want to play FPS games.
You can still get away with 300-500 latency in a MMO or a Moba game, but in FPS games you will just die and get kicked from servers!
Click to expand...

+1 for truth right there.
FPS is the one genre that has zero tolerance for latency.
 
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