Originally Posted by
Retrieving/C.D/Searain
You're both missing the point, as did others. I was a single sophomore in university when I started playing XI, had about 0 responsibilities and pretty much all the time in the world and could afford doing fuck all with it.
Fast forward to 2k15, I'm 34, I'm employed and also run my own business on the side, I own an adorable yet dastardly dachschund who never seems to run out of energy and I've been living with a SO for the past 7 years - it's not that I can't afford paying XI measly monthly fee, in fact my apartment and car are paid off, my gf is a journalist and, despite the crippling financial crisis that's been plaguing our country for the past decade, we're pretty well off for our age (I guess not having kids helps), the problem is that neither my fiancee nor anyone in our circle of friends is into videogames, thus, there's no way I could ever justify paying even .50/month to keep playing a game I have, for all intents and purposes, already bought, without looking either like a dork or like an egotistical manchild;
these are people who don't know a damn thing about gaming (let alone online gaming) beyond Angry Birds because they stopped caring when they got out of puberty, which was around the time the first Playstation went mainstream (just like your parents and all the systems being "Nintendos", does it ring a bell?) and who just wouldn't get that, as far as entertainment goes, you'd be getting a better mileage off of those 12.95 than you would spending a commensurate amount going out.
...and yes, as unreasonable as it may sound, I could probably go off and buy 5 PS4 games and it'd be less frowned upon than paying month in, month out for a MMO. Go figure uh.
Bottom line, for a lot of people playing videogames at 30+ just isn't socially acceptable anymore, so you've got to try your best to be as low-key as possible (and I'm absolutely fine with it because aside from the gaming thing we're having a terrific relationship left, right and center and my friends are total bros, so whatever).
Betcha a lot of people posting in this thread can only afford playing at night for a couple of hours when everyone else is asleep and they have to match whatever amount of money they're spending on games with a similarly expensive gifts for their kids and/or SO (that's what I had to do when I bought my last console) or else they'll be called out on it.
Furthermore, the sheer fact that I'm paying for a service would then prompt me to get the most out of it (which means playing way more than I'm comfortable with) or else I'd feel like I'm wasting money, and, given the amount of RL commitments my day is comprised of, I don't think I could get away with that either. Catch my drift?
That's why free private servers or F2P would be perfect and I'd expect an adult to at least see where we're coming from instead of going "hurrdurr you cheapskates".