That's why the pricing structure is discussed so much. The monthly payment alone is an inconvenient thing, but combine that with the fact that you have to pay for extra content (in some cases you basically must buy a certain track if you want to race a certain car) and that you basically have NOTHING once your subscription ends make this very harsh indeed.

If the monthly pay was only for their "online service" then I guess it would be much better received, but as of now, you never buy the game, you just rent it, along with the extra content you rent for a single fee.

Even though I got an invitation and paid the 20$ - I'm not longer interested.
It's a nice sim, no doubt and a pretty Nascar2003 reminder. But for me it's way too serious, too restrictive and finally too expensive.

The thing is, there's no offline play in iRacing. For every session you are connected to iRacing servers and statistics are being uploaded to your racer profile. If you decide to take a break and unsubscribe for a while, your account won't go anywhere and I'm pretty sure you can even access forums and all that stuff except race. To get racing again you just go to account management page and setup new payment plan.

I think I can understand why there's no offline play because it would make pirating way too easy. I suppose it can be done but that gameplay experience would be severely limited without all online functions. It also helps to fight against other common problem with racing sims and that is illegal conversions to over to other titles. Considering how well everything is done, it can be a big target for reverse engineering and have bits and pieces ported into other sims which I doubt would make dev crew too happy. Point I'm trying to make is that if game is not accessible through P2P networks, it will be so much harder for people to convert stuff over if they don't have legit account in the first place. And even if they do, I'm pretty sure it's against Terms of Service and reason enough to get your account suspended.


As for pricing, I don't completely agree with track and car prices but I can live with it. Your monthly subsciption also gives you some "iRacing dollars" to spend on extra content and I paid 2$ or something for Skip Barber due to extending my subsciption.

In any case... 2000 posts later we're still debating about the pricing :P

i completely understand no racing, but i did wonder if there was a test only setting offline until you renew your subscription

Quote from Crommi :

I think I can understand why there's no offline play because it would make pirating way too easy.

Well, it wouldn't have to be completely offline. The game could still do an online verification that everything is OK, and then simply let you race offline once you have an account and paid the minimum subscription of $20, even after the subscription is over. Or maybe they could offer an upgrade to allow permanent offline usage for $xx, even though it sounds ridiculous, would still be better than the current situation.

I don't think they're even bothering to cater offline racers, to me rFactor seems better choise if that's what you want to do.

I have no problems with their business-model, I just want to know if the sim is worth it. I spend more money on ice-cream every month than I would on iRacing

Is there any news on the possibility of tournaments/races with rewards in iRacing dollars btw? I read about that somewhere and it would certainly make investing more time into the sim even more worthwhile ;D

Edit: Does anyone have a spare invite for me? or how does this work? I'd like to try this

Quote from Jertje :

I have no problems with their business-model, I just want to know if the sim is worth it. I spend more money on ice-cream every month than I would on iRacing

I'd say LFS offers more in terms for gameplay for it's price, but so far I've been very impressed what iRacing has to offer so I can see past the pricetag.

Quote from Jertje :

I have no problems with their business-model, I just want to know if the sim is worth it. I spend more money on ice-cream every month than I would on iRacing

If you want a realistic sim, and you will play it every day, then yeah, it's worth it.

So do I wait for them to send me an invitation at some point? or does it work like gmail once did with friend invites?

Quote from George Kuyumji :

If anybody is interested to join I can pass some post-invitations invitations. Write me a PM with your real name (you have to drive with your real name) and your email address.

If the Server-System-Stats etc. doesn't have major problems in the coming weeks, new people will be able to join, it could be anything between 2 and 6 weeks depending on how trouble free everything works.

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Quote from Gil07 :

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Quote from George Kuyumji :

And we all know that corner is hard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUv2iwFr-7A

Pretty scary how far the roof dents in when the car is fully rolled

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dBzqWsEMvCE

must say, this is impressive.

that's cool.....

I am going to miss the solstice on limerock next week when it moves to Laguna Seca ......

Yeah, I've got to say I'm really enjoying Lime Rock. It'll be nice to have a change but at the same time I don't enjoy Laguna as much...

Yeah, Laguna Seca may not be as challenging as lime rock park, but maybe that will improve the driving of the slower drivers.
The race I just finished was quite ok, but the backmarkers are not paying too much attention right now, and are sometimes dangerously slow through corners.

Hopefully the relative "easyness" at laguna seca will make it possible for them to keep up with the main field, and cause less problems when lapping them.

I think we'll see many beginners off the track on that fast left-hander before corkscrew...me included.

I'm also getting little worried that I'm more looking forward to next oval race than road courses :S

Well I just got 3/4 of the way through a Solstice race, was quite a way in the lead, and lost my connection! Doh! Ah well, it wasn't that much fun anyway given that everyone else I was with was at least 3 or 4 seconds slower per lap! Still having lots of troubles with backmarkers just being completely oblivious. That's something I didn't expect to be honest, but hopefully it'll improve with the addition of blue flags and then maybe penalties if you ignore blue flags for however long....

Quote from Stigpt :

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dBzqWsEMvCE

must say, this is impressive.

lol I'm not to be honest. I have to say iRacing is not a YouTube friendly sim, not that it matters

I hope they'll connect how well people react to a blue flag to your safety rating,which will hopefully make backmarkers a bit less annoying. I'm actually pretty sure they'll do this because this makes ratings a lot more useful and truthful.

Anyhow, I've just joined the 1:03 club

There is no way to detect how good someone reacts to a blue flag, so I very much doubt there will ever be any influence of this on the SR.

So, from which point do I start to gain on my actual irating?

You are gaining/losing it already but it's not being displayed during rookie season because the focus is on getting through the race with good SR.... atleast that's what I've been told.

well, when do I get rid of my rookie status then?