For those against monthly payments in MMORPGs...

[Luvian]

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 ]

[Harkoliar]

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

[Kakero]

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.

[Thoran]

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.

[Stratos]

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

[Luvian]

Originally posted by Thoran: 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.

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.

[Luvian]

Originally posted by Stratos: I simply don't have enough spare time to play to make a monthly subscription worthwhile.

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?

[Seraph]

Read a book?

[Thoran]

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

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.

Originally posted by Luvian: 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.

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.

Originally posted by Luvian: 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).

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.

Originally posted by Luvian: 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.

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.

Originally posted by Luvian: 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.

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 ]

[Luvian]

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.