About paying 1800€, that's completely wrong, especially since people wouldn't buy 3-4 games month. They'd buy 3-4 games a year. MMOs however are with monthly payments.
That's the whole point. If people would buy 3-4 games a year, but pirate 18 or more games a the pirated copy/lost sale ratio cannot be 1:1. It has too be much lower. I simply cannot assume that people would buy 18 games a year on top of paying monthly fees for WoW. There is a limit to what people will be able and willing to spend on entertainment.
You keep bringing up Crysis, you do know that Crysis isn't the only FPS out there.
Half-Life probably sold a million times better than it because it was better and/or more famous thanks to CS I. But it probably sold a lot better than many single player game who did lose out because of piracy.
I keep bringing up Crisis, because originally this thread was about Crisis. You make one mistake: You assume that I said piracy has no effect on sales. But that's not true. In several posts within this very thread I explicitly stated that piracy has an effect, but that it is not as bad as the industry wants to make us believe. It's a myth that developing for the pc inevitably leads to losing money. I mean Crytek is the best example. Crytek is moaning that they sold only 1.5 million copies of Crisis so far (it's certainly not the end of the road, I'm sure they'll sell a few more copies). Now fact is, that 1.5 million is not even bad in terms of exclusive pc titles. It's true there are games that sold more, but the overwhelming majority of pc games sells less copies. If I take that number of 1.5 million and multiply it with the exorbitant high price that Crytek asked for their game it becomes quite clear, that neither Crytek nor their publisher lost money here - quite the opposite.
Ok, guys my main point with brining up MMORPG's was to show that there is a gaming audiance that has enough money to buy single player games, and good enough computers to play single player games. To ask if WOW was single player how many would buy it? this kind of question is pointless. I have also tried WoW to play it as a single player game is really boring. There are much better single player offerings out. It was made to be played togheter.
No it's not a pointless question unless you do not understand what I am aiming at. You said: MMOs sell well, because they cannot be pirated. I tell you: They sell well because the online environment offers something that makes people want to play the game. What I wanted to show is that the conclusion that something sells well, just because it cannot be pirated is wrong. If you turn WoW into a single player game, even if it could not be pirated, you'd probably not sell many copies, as you said yourself, because it would be a very boring game. Hence it cannot be piracy alone that influences sales, there MUST be other factors. The assumption that every game must sell well, if it doesn't it must be due to piracy is wrong from a logical pojnt of view.
Many WOWers I know would stop to play WOW for 40 hours when a new great SP game came out, until they played it through, and after that get back to WOW.
Did all of them? How do you know all this without the smallest bit of empirical data? Isn't it much more probable that the emergence of several big commercial and countless free-to-play MMOs since Ultima Online is an increasing competition to the single player market?
Some of you guys still appear to think pircay is just a small factor in demise of PC gaming, and you think the publishers are wrong to keep adding stronger and stronger piracy protection. Do you guys think all the publishers are stupid and they all add CP just because they made a wrong analysis of the market? even Blizzard who is the king of PC gaming ? They know it hurts how many games they sell. But they still put it there.
Yes, the content industry is stupid and it has vividly proven it in the past. Take for example the music industry. For a very long time the music industry thought that harsher DRMS mean more sales. First they tried to protect CDs, then they tried to protect MP3s. Still, sales numbers kept falling. Nowadays new CDs and new MP3s usually only have mild DRMS or none at all. Strangely enough it doesn't seem to hurt the industry much, because in the last few years the music industry is doing better again.
The content industry has an interest in portraying the piracy problem in an exaggerated way because it helps them to push a more restricted copyright. Latest example of the movie industry: Students are responsible for 40% of all illegal downloads. The music industry's very own LEK study proves it. So they wen't to congress and told them that they should put some pressure on colleges and universities. A lot of congressmen fell for it and asked them to do something against their networks being used to download stuff. That was in 2005... now in 2008 the MPAA admited that the LEK study might have been incorrect and that students are only responsible for 15% of all movie downloads...
And that's always the case if you look at the numbers that the content industry presents. Sooner or later it turns out they are not what they seem to be. In 2004 the BSA for the first time published their losses through piracy. A lot of academics and journalists said straight from the beginning that the BSA is greatly exaggerating. Meanwhile even the BSA has admitted that what they publish is the retail value lost, but not the real value.
You asked if all the publishers are stupid, now I'm asking you why they should be right and all the academics and experts should be wrong?
People pay for coffee for the social event? What do you suggest the single player game company does in that case? Start selling the game in a café so people could play it togheter? Diablo 3 single player Coffee come here to play Diablo 3 togheter with your friends. Instead of playing it by yourself at home. The environment here is much better, so do not have your friends come over to your place to play it togheter it is better to play it here! There is already such a place called internet café but people mostly go there to play MMORPGs or multiplayer games? oops. hmm. So how to solve the problem for a single player game?
As I said before, new business models might not even be necessary if the content industry would agree on an alternative model of compensation together with a more liberal copyright. Read the whole thread then you'll know what I'm talking about. Now, even if the industry does not want it there are possibilities to get additional revenues. I don't want to go into details, but just think about rental services, episodic content, community building, and so on - the possibilities are endless. Take for example Neverwinter Nights, great community building there. NWN sold great, NWN2 sold great, both games can be pirated, and still people buy them. It's true it has a multiplayer component, but let's face it - you can implement a multiplayer component into pretty much every game. We know things like level editors and free-to-download content help to sell stuff. Look at Valve's Steam. They do not only sell multiplayer games, they sell all kinds of games. They offer service and convenience, and on top of that they'll give you free stuff. Right now there is only a couple of rental services (which, with a few exception offer only mediocre games), and none of them is run by a big publisher. All these companies that manage to forge a community and support their products over a very long time seem to be doing fairly well.
So they are fine to pay for water which they could have for free legally, but they want to break the law to play games?
I have found few even deep in the forest trail. People fetch water from them with big canisters. Im happy with tap alone though.