You're not paying only for the privilege to play the game. Every MMORPGs I played added new quests, items and content every months, so I've been buying a new expension every months. That's awesome.

For exemple, in Asheron's Call 1, every months we got at least 3 new quests and dungeons. Every 6 months or so, we got a new landmass.

The story also kept evolving. One month, the capital got invaded by monsters and it was blown up. For the next year it was a crater until they rebuild it.

Once, dev controlled monster attacked the high level city, killed every player, and kidnaped the npcs shopkeepers, and we had to go free them in a dungeon.

Once, we had to keep a week long 24 hours per day vigil against dev controlled npcs and evil players to protect the seal of a demon.

The legendary characters of the world were played by devs in events. We had tons of different storyline. When that demon got released, he went into towns to threatened and kille people. One guy even got to swear fealty to him because the demon liked him.

Often we had to make choices that would affect the storyline. In one event, we had to decide if an npc that got manipulated into betraying us would survive or die. Once, a guy that was our ennemy alied with us against a greater foe, and died fighting it... That's just the surface. I played it 3 years and kept getting things like that all the time. Invasions, allies, ennemies... I only stoped playing when I lost access to a credit card. I never got to see or do everything there was in the game, and I played 3 years.

It was the same thing in Ragnarok Online and Lineage II, it will be the same thing in World of Warcraft...

Show me a single player game that give you that much. Are there any single player game that give you a new expension every month for 10$. I don't think so...

[ 11-10-2004, 01:46 AM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

and your point is?? [img]tongue.gif[/img] :D

Morrowind or NWN got mods where it added new contents to the original game whereby it can be downloaded from the Internet for free. That's pretty close to a mmog imo.

Well I started the monthly paying debate in the other thread, but by gripe isn't with the monthly payment at all, in fact I think for that sort of server resource intensive game a subscription makes perfect sense. My gripe is with the large upfront cost.

Comparing an online only game with a single player game is apples and oranges.

SP or Lan games... you pay your $50 bucks and ever after you can play that game, anytime, anywhere. There IS risk that the game will sink, but the up front cost is the only way for the developer to recoup their costs, they HAVE to charge you at that point... and you HAVE to accept that risk.

MMO have access to a longer term and potentially FAR more profitable revenue stream, subscriptions. They don't NEED to charge 50 bucks up front, a good MMO will make far more money than a good SP game... because they can keep people on the hook... month after month. As long as the value proposition is there, the people will pay.

Essentially good MMO's don't need to charge you A CENT for the client, and the MMO that distributes it's client for free is saying "OUR GAME ROCKS!, in fact it's so AWESOME that we know you'll be hooked by it after playing once... so WE'LL take the risk, we'll let you have our client and in return you'll pay 15 bucks a month to connect that client to our servers"

The rest of the MMO world is saying "We're not really sure how good our game is, but look at how much money we've spent developing it. We're going to charge you $50 bucks up front just on the off chance that our game sucks. We're going to force you to take on some of our risk because we don't trust our product."

Simple economics, risk transference. If you're comfortable accepting that risk than the current business model for MMO's is fine for you, personally I'm waiting for an MMO that's so good that the developer is willing to stand by that product and sink or swim on subscriptions alone.

I simply don't have enough spare time to play to make a monthly subscription worthwhile.

Uh... no, that's not how economy work. It's a proven fact that most people will disdain something they can get for cheap.

I even saw a NIKE doccumentary where they tried to sell a particuliar pair of shoes at a resonable price, and got almost no sells. They removed it from the market and put it back a little later for 200$ and it was an instant and spectacular success in sales.

Some games have given their game for free. Like Asheron's Call 1. For a while you could get the basic game for free, and the extension that was sold in shop was sold 10$ with a free months of play, if I remember well. It didn't boost their number of customers. People probably thought they were desperate, and you dont want to play a MMORPG that might be running out of money. (They are not, it's still going and a new expension is coming soon).

I saw a dev post about this once, and he explained that the up front cost was mostly to pay for Shipping, Distribution, and buying the servers and such, with a little profit left.

The monthly fee was to pay the support/gm team, the devs you need to keep for the new content that get added every month, as well as bug fixing and such. Then they get profit.

MMORPGs cost way more than a single player game with a multiplayer option. They need servers that can accomodate thousands of players at the same time as well as the bandwith and they need the money to set up and maintain those servers. Most conpanies don't have that money from the start, so they get it from retail.

So really, selling the game for a price make sense both for marketing and finance. You don't want your game to seem cheap, and you need money to pay those big servers you just bought and set up, pay the development team that made the game, and hire the live team/gm/support for the future.

Come on, it's 10$ a month.

Let's pretend that in the whole month, you played 6 hours. That's one hour and a half per week.

That mean that you're paying 1.5$ per hour. Cheaper than renting a movie or a game for a day.

Let's pretend you played 5 hours per week. That's 0.5$ per hours. What else can you get for that price?

Read a book?

Uh... yes, that IS how the economy works, or at least risk management is a PART of how the economy works. You're talking about human nature, and the above is true to a point... but it has nothing to do with why game companies charge you 50 bucks up front for a subscription based game. I didn't say let people play for free... I said let your subscriptions earn your money, people pay from the first month whatever the subscription rate is.

You're talking about a fashion item when you're discussing shoes, the laws of supply and demand are skewed when you're dealing with fashion by appearances (or Percieved Value, which when it comes to fashion has influences that traditional retail doesn't have). MMO games are not in the same marketing niche as fashion items, and they will follow traditional economics to a much greater extent.



How do you know it didn't boost their customers? A subscription only pricing scheme doesn't insure success, it only will insure that a wider range of potential customers will try out your product... if you've got a winner you WILL make more than a product with a high barrier to entry. You'll gain more exposure, which will equate to customers. If your game is good enough to hold those customers you'll make more money. As I said... simple economics.



Everquest has 450,000 active accounts, that what... 5 million bucks a month. There's a whole lot of proft after accounting for 1000 servers and a development team.

Anytime a new game comes out a developer is putting a LOT of up front cash into development. Other than infrastructure I tend to think that MMO games are only as expensive or possibly less expensive than cutting edge sp games (since MMO games typically use outdated graphics... at least all the one's I've seen have). Anyway, I said earlier that developing a game is risky, and large capital investments are part of that risk. It doesn't change the fundamental fact that the marketing scheme MMO's use is based on transferring risk from themselves to YOU. Of course selling a game for $50.00 up front makes sense to a company if they can get away with it, they're dumping a good chunk of their development risk onto YOU... I'd do it if I was in their shoes. However, that doesn't change the opportunity for a newcomer into a saturated market to steal significant share from the established players by A) having an excellent product, and B) Allowing players to play for a month for the price of a one month subscription instead of 5 months.

The research indicates that the market is barely growing... the current business model has gleaned as many players as it's going to, and now you'll get to see the catfighting as companies fight to gain share in a stagnant market. I suspect eventually someone will see the value in lowering the barrier to entry as a means of pulling new customers (growing the market is always more profitable than fighting for share in a stagnant one). Time will tell.

[ 11-10-2004, 05:46 PM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

No, it's not like that for vanity items only. I know that every time I go to a shop and see a product sold for less that is commonly accepted, I'm expecting it to be of lesser quality and craftsmanship. I'm not the only one, percieved value has it's effect on every product.

I know that Asheron's Call didn't get any more subscribers because I played every day, and the number of people loged on every day didn't raise. This show that they didn't get enough new players to make a population increase.

No company want to take a risk. Also, those games take years to make. By the time they come out, they are outdated already. As far as I remember, Horizons was in development at least 2 years. WoW around that much probably too.

There has been games that allowed people to play for free for a month. Ragnarok Online is an example of that. You can download the client, or even have a cd shiped to you for free, and then you can create an account and play it for free for a month. No credit card asked, nothing. I have a friend that created an account every month and just transfered his items.

Of course being able to play for free like that created a game full of exploiters, bots and macro. People would just register a dozen accounts and have them bot 24/7.

AC and RO didn't get much from their policy. Why? Because most people get a game because they like it, not because it's cheap. They won't mind paying for it, they might even pay extra for a collector's edition if it's a game they are really interested in.

Games are a luxury. If someone can't afford 50$ or 10$ per month, he should be trying to find a better job instead of worrying over a cheap luxury item.

Again... I never said let people play for free, I said let them play for the monthly subscription rate... which means they have to subscribe and cough up a Credit card number.

When taking the full risk up front you need to balance cost and percieved quality... that's because YOU'RE accepting the risk when you pay up front. I'm suggesting manufacturers not force people to accept that risk of quality. In such an environment the decision to continue a subscription won't be based on luxury type triggers like how glossy the box is and how expensive the game is... the decision will be based on performance. That's the whole advantage of a low cost of entry business model... assuming of course you have a quality product. The ability of artificially inflated cost to draw customers is a fashion phenomena, and most products fall on a continuum between fashion and commodity, which is very price sensitive. Another aspect of fashion is low real incremental value between cheap and expensive products, the quality difference between a $40.00 and $150.00 pair of sneakers is virtually zero. Value is based on superficial aspects like "this years model" and "all the stars are wearing them".

The MMO market doesn't fit the fashion mold at all... it's more like a cable or cellphone subscription, you pay and get a service. If you think another provider offers a better service then you switch unless something stops you.

Now the big up front cost does a couple things, it adds a barrier to entry (reducing patronage), but also a barrier to exit once someone is in (I paid 50 bucks so I don't want to quit and go to product B). In all likelyhood it's the exit barrier that's of most interest to the MMO companies (if you honestly think their business model is based on recouping sunk costs with an entry barrier then... well... perhaps I'm wasting my time).

Now Cable and Cell phone manufacturers are more mature businesses that have had time to work through the the models we've been discussing. What they ended up with is a system that eliminates the barrier to entry but still retains the exit barrier (1 or 2 year contract with free sign up)... it's a slightly less sleazy way to play the game but it's still intended to tie you into the services whether you want it or not. I expect the next variant on MMO pricing we'll see is going to be something along those lines... "Sign up for six months and get the client for FREE!". That's a $90 dollar commitment that you'll be responsible for if you decide to cancel early. That will likely be where it ends, because that's the model that we see most often in similar businesses. I guess I could live with that, assuming there was a one month "get out of subscription free" provision, which most of those models have.

As far as complexity, most SP games are also 2-4 years in development, MMO games as I said are no more complex and possibly simpler than well made SP games because they take advantage of generation old technology. You think a game like EQ2 is more complex than Half Life 2... a bleeding edge technology game? Yet EQ2 costs almost as much, before you start paying the subscription.

Frankly, how much money a person makes has nothing to do with their willingness to be suckered in by these sorts of marketing schemes. My salary puts me in the top couple percent of Americans (my stock options alone last year were more than the median US salary), but that doesn't mean I like feeling like I'm being ripped off, that's a red herring.

I with Thoran on this one. I have a little bit of an idea to deal with this.

What if a downloadable SP demo was distributed *for free* that allowed you to make a character, walk around, look at stuff, kill a few things. Just to see how the game worked. If you liked it, you'd go out and buy the game.

The problem with MMOs is that you have to cough up $50 for the game, plus $15 for the subscription, just to TRY THE DAMN GAME. That's ridiculous. As a result of this, there is no way for people to gauge whether or not they like the game, except on past experiences. I played EQ for about 2 months, hated it, and quit. In that time, I probably spent over $150 on the client / expansion packs, plus subscription, because I was promised that I would like it.

With UO, I got a free CD with one of my PCGamer magazines. It also came with a free subscription. I was like "hey cool, a demo". I played it, hated it, and threw it out. The only difference was I wasn't out $150 like I was with EQ.

I personally think that a playable demo would solve all the problems. Once you know you actually LIKE the game, you probably wouldn't be opposed to paying the necesarry money for it.

As an example, I already know I will like HL2 based on my past experiences with HL. So I coughed up the money for the Collector's Edition. I was willing to pay the money because I knew I liked the game. I am willing to bet that other people would be willing to pay the money for MMOs if they KNEW they liked the game.

Make free playable demos!!!

A demo is an idea I can agree with. It leave the prices as is, and allow people to try the game for a while.

The problem is that you can't really make a single player version or a MMORPG. Or at least, it wouldn't have the same feel at all.

There was a mmorpg in development a few years ago that had planed something like that. I think it was mimesis online. They had the intention of creating a seperate trial area people could play in to test the game. I don't know if this recquired a different client and you then had to buy the game as usual if you liked it, or if they gave you the real client for free.

Anyway, I'm not even sure the game got released. I never heard from them in ages.

Thoran, I don't see the 50$ as a marketting scheme. To me it's just the price of the client. Just like you usually buy a cellphone and then get a service. And yes, I know some companies give you a basic cellphone for free. It still doesn't change the fact that most people buy theirs, and that cellphones aren't considered free. They're just sometimes a gift if you subscribe.

You're really tight with money if you care about 50$. I paid about 90$ for Cities of Heroes and a 3 months time card, and just because I wanted something to play in the 2-3 weeks until WoW's release. And guess what? My salary put me in the poorest Canadians.

[ 11-11-2004, 10:55 PM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

i agree for the free demo one. but most (well some that i know), offer free one month free subscription i guess thats the best alternative they are willing to give you.

You may not just go and buy the game after a demo though. Firstly, there is the fact that a small percentage (I couldn't tell you a figure) would not like the demo, and therefore would not buy the game. These people might otherwise have bought the game. Take for instance Doom3, there was a lot of hype and so many people bought it, yet some people only played it for a few hours, decided it was crap, and then left it. Now obviously this is a minority, but still.

Also there is the fact that if people realise they can download the demo for free, then they will also realise that they can probably download the entire game for free, albeit illegaly. Now this obviously wouldn't affect everyone, but I mean it would still decrease sales.

Maybe playable Demos seem like a good idea, but this is only for the player. They don't actually do much for developers, other than that they may get some extra people playing as it is free who may like the game. But if a game is good then it will get a good repuation->people will recommend it to others->it will become widely known->more people will buy it.

Anyways, back to the original topic . MMORPGS are a good idea, both for customers and developers, the potential danger is that you get hooked. I have never been hooked on an MMORPG yet (I haven't played that many to be honest) but I have been hooked to multiplayer games, not if they were ppm games I would have spent a lot of money. And if you think about it, after you have played for say 10 months you have been paying far too much. Although it also means you are probably not buying any other games, so it may be balanced.

I will be getting WoW simply because I am a WC fanatic. I'm not sure if I agree with you Luvian. If a shop has a sale, then they will sell more. Why? Because the prices of the items are lowered, and are therefore more widely accesible.

Well I don't think my wife would call me tight with money [img]smile.gif[/img] (I don't think much of dropping a hundred bucks on a bottle of Scotch, or 60 bucks on Half Life 2, or a couple grand on go-fast goodies for my car), I am however extremely PICKY, and if I feel someone is trying to put something over on me I'll go out of my way to avoid it... whether it's $5.00 or $5000.

I guess in this instance I understand enought about the various marketing options available to these vendors to know that the one they've chosen is NOT being used for altruistic reasons. It's being used because it's the most agressive one they can get away with and customers are swallowing it.

Riftmaker has the perfect example of MMO Marketing in action. They KNOW that there are a certain percentage of Riftmakers are out there... people who will buy the game and not like it. Instead of allowing those players to try before you buy they force them to take the risk and buy... and in his case throw a hundred bucks down the toilet. THAT is exactly what I object to, because it's not necessary, it's a greedy money grab on their part. SP game makers provide demo version of their games (at least the good ones do).

I understand a demo might be tricky for them, but certainly a one month trial is WELL within the realm of possibility, let users download or order a one month subscription (or maybe 15 hours of play or something) for $15 bucks (DON'T give it away free or you'll have every little shit in the country on there babbling incoherently)... if after that month they love the game then go for the full subscription. At that point if the game maker STILL insists on front loading the package (something I still feel is unnecessary) at least the user knows what he's paying for. The only MMO that I ever tried was UO and that was the situation. I played for an hour and all I encountered were a bunch of illiterate kids, and the graphics STUNK... so I lost interest almost immediately. However, I have read reviews of MMO's I'd be interested in trying (WoW specifically) and the inability to try it out has and will keep me away.

[ 11-12-2004, 10:08 AM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

You just proved my point. You're going to get the game because you like it. Not beause of it's price.

I'm sure all the people interested in the game will buy it regardless of the price.


Thoran, that's what open betas are for, a free test. Everyone know they're not really looking for bugs at that point. It's just a way for them to get people addicted before they even buy the game. You could have joined it if you wanted.

Why do you plan on keeping away from something you might like just because of a small risk. Just think of it as investing in a company, and them potentially paying you back in entertainment. Haven't you ever lost 100$ on the stock market before?

[ 11-12-2004, 01:15 PM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

How much is Halflife 2? Likely $50-60. What if you dont like it? I really cant see the difference. Any game can suck, it doesnt really matter if its an online game or not.

Return the game back to the shop you bought it from.

Ehm...I think you'll find that isn't allowed...Well, at least not here anyway.

As a kid, I can no way afford the monthly payments over and over again. My parents? They'd do anything to get me off the computer, let alone on it more. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

While the payments annoy me, I guess they are necessary, so I'm not going to complain.

Well, I can always look on the bright side; I have four or five years of sanity and freedom left. :D

Haha, same here. Now I go out quite a lot, but before I spent nearly all my time on my PC, which wasn't healthy. I make sure I go out at least twice/three times a week.

I did play an MMORPG a year or so ago, [URL=www.play.net/dr]DragonRealms] made by Simutronics. My dad had 2 accounts, so I used one while he used the other. He paid, which was the best thing :D
We stopped playing when they rose the prices without warning. It wasn't because of the money (which was why I didn't see the reason to stop) but the fact they said "Ok for this month you owe us $__", I think anyway.

Different to me. Living in my household I have no sanity any more [img]tongue.gif[/img]

The whole point of the developers is to get people to play MMORPGs for a long time, that's how they make their money. Subscriptions are the biggest money maker out there.

You can't just counter it by saying that a demo will decrease sales, and therefore decrease revenue. The only difference is that you'd be forcing a person to pay $50 for the the game, which they find out they hate, and then quit.

So as a developer / publisher, your goal is really to please your customers. If your customers want a demo server, give them one. You'd gain potential customers out of people that never heard of it before, and aren't willing to buy a MMORPG just to find out they don't like it.

Sure you'd lose those short-term $50 customers, but you'd easily gain at least that number back from the long term ones, or at least be able to absorb the losses from all those subscriptions.

Another thing to remember is that 99/100 times, you can't play cracked versions of MMOs anyway. So that argument doesn't really hold any water.

Well I've seen free pirated servers for about every MMORPGS, but let's not get into that.

Well I can't afford it. I have better things to spend my money on AFTER I buy the game. [img]smile.gif[/img]

That's why I am a single player guy. I buy the games and play them to death. I am not about comaraderie anyway... I want to be alone, kickin' butt and saving the world. :D

I still think the inital price of the game should be toned down. If not that, then the monthly fees. Besides, I don't like the fact that some people are there just to hack your account and all that... sad.

There are no real hacks.

99% of the time, it's either a guy that gave his password to a net "friend" and had his password changed, or it's someone that downloaded a program that was advertised as an hack for the game but really just stole his password.

The rest of the time it's just some guy finding your password because you used a stupid easy one.

All of those can be prevented by being prudent.

I've heard that some people use brudeforce (sp?) to get your password. Don't know how's that done.

Also by visiting some shaddy websites and clicking links there your account may get hacks. I've heard visiting such websites alone is eenough for your accpount to be hacked.

Bruteforce is guessing your password.

Or sometimes they can use program that try random combinations and words, but games have protections agains that now.

Actually, Bruteforcers are programs which automatically, systematically go through every available combination of passwords until they guess the correct one. These are often used to crack sites, but I have never heard of them being implemented in games, probably because of the protections Luvian mentioned.

Yes, I mentioned the program approach, but some do it manyally and still call it bruteforce.

Don't know about you guys, but I stay away from MMORPG is because:

1. Don't want to commit my time and money

2. Get tired/bored of games easily, even if there are new quests here and there being added or updated on regular basis.

3. slow connection.

4. Poor PC peformance.

I guess we each have own reasons to get indulged or not to get indulged into MMORPGs.

Well if you get bored of the game then you don't have to pay the money any longer. Although I suppose the time is an issue, some people get totally immersed in MMORPGs and just spend all there days playing, eat, play MMORPG of choice, sleep. Pretty sad life really.

It's not like I can't AFFORD to play MMO's, it's just that I don't play enough games nowadays to make it worthwhile to buy the game and sign up for a subscription.

My only reason for not playing MMORPG is that I always end up playing alone.It kinda lonely you know. If I do have friends they always use macro/bot. I message to them but they don't reply. Like what happen to me in Ragnarok Online.

thats what i have been doing for the past 4 days. heh.. its really addicting although i think ive gotten most of it out of my system to play regularly now [img]smile.gif[/img] . slowly but surely im starting to act normal again. [img]tongue.gif[/img] .
for people who cant really escape from eq2 then they have a problem :(

yeah it sucks when that happens.. thats why you should make new friends online with the same time period as you if possible. i joined a guild and we have met up several times in the game already when they are bored doing quest and stuff.

thats what i have been doing for the past 4 days. heh.. its really addicting although i think ive gotten most of it out of my system to play regularly now [img]smile.gif[/img] . slowly but surely im starting to act normal again. [img]tongue.gif[/img] .
for people who cant really escape from eq2 then they have a problem :( </font>[/QUOTE]Hark what you are saying you do is understandable. I was exactly the same with WC3 (I know it isn't an MMORPG but heh!) and I got addicted 3 times and played for days. But there are some people out there who actually live in game. They will play all day. That is quite a sad existence I think.

When I first left home in early '98, my girlfriend and I got an apartment together in the city. We would play Ultima Online together (actually at two side by side computers) for hours and hours on end, mostly PK'ing. I think our record was two days straight, barring restroom breaks.

Looking back, it was pretty weird ... but I don't at all regret those months.

NWN's is both a single and multiplayer game - and it does have offical mods you can buy and dl. Maybe not each month, but you can. But you can also download a lot of free ones too. Far more variety, imo.

It all adds up. Frankly, I've better things to money on - much better just to buy NWNs, pay for the occasional offical expansion and dl the rest of the free mods, per example.

Fan content don't count. it's not part of the game.

Yes, now they have 3 modules you can buy. It's still pretty far from a module a month for 10$.

Also, all those are different "games". It's not more element in one. You can't just create a character and play him in basic, the 2 extensions, and then into the pay modules. You also can't play your character into all those fan made modules.

You could of course import him, but it would ruin all those storylines and be very unbalanced.

Over here, NWN plus extensions cost 150$ +15% taxes. For that price, I can buy and register a mmorpg for at least 6 months.

Renting 2 movie a month also add up. Buying a couple candy bars a month also add up. So is buying a beer or two. I spend more money on coka cola every week than I spend on my mmorpgs.

If you consider "money adding up" as a reason not to buy something, you're going to die of hunger...

I'm assuming you're not going to get D&D online either, right?

[ 11-18-2004, 01:37 AM: Message edited by: Luvian ]