Why would anyone pay a monthly subscribtion or multiple subscribtions to play multiple characters simultaniously when u can pick up a copy of dragon age or a similiar title that alows u to do practicly the same thing for just the price of the game? Dragon age is an open world 3d dungeon crawler with class interdependece in a large fantasy world. What makes Pantheon or other mmo so much different?
And to this i would reply.
-Persistent World
The town of Akanon where my first gnome warrior was born more than 15 years ago has had npc's and other players wandering through it questing, fighting, and trading etc for more than 15 years. It doesent matter that 23 expansions have come out, Akanon and Steamfont mountains still persist. U cannot pick up a copy of Dragon age inquisition and then take your party of characters back into Dragon age oragins. A persistent world is an ever evolving world that interconnects with its starting points.
-Social interaction
-Grouping
-Guilds
-Raids
-Prestige
-In game Items and Toons with real world wealth
-Challenge
-Contested areas
-Content additions and updates
But doesent WoW have all of this>?
Log into WoW click on group finder, get automaticly put in group, go to instanced hallway kill boss at end of hallway. Equip shiny item that took no skill to get. Join a guild go into instanced hallway with 25 people that ive never talked to nor will ever and kill boss at end of hallway. Be very annoyed with shitty cartoon graphics and tiny character scale. Log out and then Pray that Rallos Zek smites WoWs shitty existence. Then plot the assasination of whoever created repeatable daily quest. Then deficate on the everquest/minecraft abortion called next/landmark. Turn on diablo 3 walk down an instanced hallway and get sprayed with 700 epic items after killing 20 monsters. Then play dragon age for 30 minutes and realize without a persistent world its pretty pointless. Play Skyrim for 5 mins and be like man i wish i could go raid naggys lair instead of soloing a dragon every 47 seconds. Then go play a Moba and be like cool this is like warcraft 3 exept way shittyer, when does warcraft 4 come out? Watch the Nintendo Switch teaser and be like why doesent the portable nintendo 64 play nintendo 64 games? Then Contimplate going outdoors. Then realize that going outside won't fix anything. Then Blog on the pantheon forums because Visionary Realms are the only ones who can ascend us from this age of videogame darkness.
This was a great read. You summed up absolutely everything I feel about the current gaming landscape.
One other thing to add to your arguement. Dragon Age cost, what $60 new? You get say 200 hours of gameplay before you finish the game (just throwing out numbers).
I play MMOs on average 4 hours a day on week days and 6-12 hours each on saturday and sunday. So say 20 weekdays and 8 weekend days in a month (actually more but lets keep the math simple). So on average I play 128 hours a month on the conservative side, and i'm fairly casual. I pay $15 a month. So in 4 months I can play at least 512 hours. Thats $60 right there. I just paid the exact same amount of money for slightly more playtime. I also get the bonus of all of the points OP made on what is gained on the social side. I made new friends. I have built a character up that I will play for months or years to come. Everything I do will persist and carry on into the future, and it didn't cost me any more than buying a PC or console game. Most non-MMOs don't even have that much playtime in them. You can tell me that these games have replayability, sure they do, but how many people continue to play through the games over and over and over for months or years to come.
There is just no downside to subscription based MMOs, as long as you have the means to pay of course. Then if you can't pay for an MMO subscription you probably can't pay for a $60 game every couple weeks - months.