It would be great to have something as adictive as DiabloII on PS3. Maybe DiabloIII. However, there is no way i am paying a monthly fee.

 Exactly, you and millions of others. I feel much the same way, especially if one is going to play several MMO's over time, it'll cost you a whole lot. This also makes MMO development very hard; either you make it free or you make sure that your title is of such quality that you'll remain loyal to that one game. Over 90% of MMO players play only one game, but not out of choice, rather becuase of fees!

I'll be shelling out for Age of Conan when it arrives, and stick to that. And besides; Sony has maintained that online gaming on the PS3 should and will remain free. In other words; a free console MMO must have extraordinary sales in order to make profit, being able to make profits solely on software sales! 

Phantasy Star Online and Final Fantasy Online .. I think we can all look upon those for the bushiness model. As to everquest being mentioned in this thread some people think it was released on the ps2? Those games were just diablo type clones. EQ3 is not coming out on ps3 lol.

A few thoughts.

Worlds of Warcraft definitely raised the bar, but its not the measure of success. In the same way a console game does not have to Have Halo level sales to be a success. A MMO developer is doing very well for themselves with a user base of a quarter million. They basically can generate a lot of money with fees. Given a base of a quarter million, and a years worth of subscription. Each subscriber basically pays two hundred dollars per game, and the net result is fifty million dollars for the first year. Thats enough to cover development costs, and operation costs with profit left over. Actually there is a lot of room in the market for developers to turn a profit.

I think there are a lot of factors as to why MMO gaming hasn't really blossomed on the console. The first is how the games are played. You have to remember these games are played with a keyboard and a mouse and it shows. With hundreds of functions every key on the keyboard can be used, and needs to be used especially when communication with fellow players is required. Tell a PC player they have to play with someone on a controller, and their first response is dismay. The first thing that jumps to their mind is that the game will be simplistic in design. The controls will neither be complex or the in game mechanics. I think they are probably right in that regard. I find it hard to believe a complex control scheme can work on a pad.

I wish I had time to go in depth about the head out the door, but I don't think the issue is actually fees playing massive games is actually cheaper then regularly buying new games. Not to mention the human interaction, and the game depth. The problem is the genre has technical hurdles to overcome to be compelling on a console.

Should be interesting to see how Conan deals with the issues. Will it be a multiplayer adventure game, or will the combat, and RPG elements have lasting depth. Can the game overcome the limitations of a controller, and how will human interaction be handled. The only answer would be using the mic, but that raises its own problems within congested areas.

no more MMOs! I used to play Ultima Online and Asheron's Call back in the day and there is no way i'm getting into another one. They are so addictive (for me anyways) that they turn into a colossal waste of time.

IT would be good if it supported a usb keyboard and mouse. Then you have a pc without buying one.

You do know NCSoft business model for MMO on PC if free to pay, right?  You buy the game and that's it.  The rest is free - no monthly fees.  I'm assuming Sony was smart enough to see this model as a great fit with PSN (free vs fee you see) and a great chance to take advantage of how many people go online with their consoles now.

Actually, looking through the thread I can see most people are assuming a standard fee based model... my eldest son plays Guild Wars and it looks good, plays well from what I can see and is has no ongoing fees.

Dude!  What are you talking about?  NCSoft already has no fees model on PC with Guild Wars!  I thought that fact was fairly well known as I've seen quite a few articles looking at the difference with their approach vs the traditional monthly fee.  I've never checked the sales but my kid plays it and the service looks great so they must know how to make it work

If there is no month cost then I am suddenly more interested in this

The Guild Wars game has sold fairly well, or even very well here in Scandinavia so the revenue from software sales is high. They also release expansions all the time, or chapters if you will, and these cost as much as the original game. So basically, you'll end up loosing a heap of content if you refuse to purchase anything besides the core game, so it's not really hugely different from monthly fees in that sense. And these expansions and the game itself has high dev costs, and all the other obvious disadvantages I mentioned for consoles still apply. Fact is; making MMO's is very expensive (Age of Conan has a budget of over 200 million NOK), so if you have no fees monthly, you need to sell software add on's or big amounts of core software to make money on it. So, whether you pay (here in Norway) 100NOK a month or purchase a 250-300NOK expansion every 3-4 months, it still ends up costing the player quite a bit, making the two bussiness models more similar than one would initially assume.

Of course; with the optional expansions you actually have a choice whether to spend more, but when 95% of the players have the packs and you don't, there's basically nothing there for you in the end, which is why (as the developers know) you'll end up buying the expansions anyway and net them steady revenue even after the core game's purchase.