I've said this before, but I'll say it again:
How many hours of play do you get out of the average game? 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 months, 6 months? For me, probably 1 month (and that’s a generous figure). After a month I've either beaten the game or lost interest in it, and it gets shelved alongside all my other `never-to`-`be-played`-again titles. Sure, occasionally a game comes along that redefines playability and gets reinstalled for months to come, but then how many single games do you play continuously for over a year?
Online games, good ones, provide you with a gaming experience that simply doesn’t have to end. In most cases the world is dynamic and the characters are realistic (‘cause they are real people). And guess what, after 4 months of playing, you’ve probably forked out as much money as your would have on a `single-player` game that got shelved long before the `4-month` mark.
If you actually pay money for your games (we’re not those kinds of pirates I hope), you’ll find that online games are far more value for money and will last vastly longer than `single-player` games, and just when you think you’ve done just about everything that can be done in the game, the constant revenue the game produces allows them to update it and lift the bar even further.
So, pay 40 bucks for a `single-player` game that could be great, but you’ll still most likely be finished with it after a month or two (unless it’s a gem, and there are very few of them), or pay 40 bucks towards an online game that will be constant fun for 4 months, you’ll get to experience it with heaps of other people and there will be constant updates.
Now if you are seriously enjoying it and find it inevitable that you’ll be playing it for over 4 months, just continue your subscription. This is where people start to think, “This game is gonna cost me over $100 bucks a year!†So? If you stick with one online game all year round, ‘cause it’s just so much fun, consider how many other `single-player` games you wouldn’t have bought to fill that gaming gap? A lot more than 100 bucks worth, that’s for sure!
It costs more to go to the cinema for 2 hours than it does to play the average online game for as much time as you can spare in an entire month.