You could argue that actually the cost of a lot of everyday items has gone down. Food is one example (although the price of wheat is high now). But I digress.
Actually no, food prices are going up, it's just that they're going up with inflation, so it doesn't seem like they're going up. Though this isn't the case in the UK and most of Europe, because the prices in those countries are rising above inflation due to the EU Farming Policy.
The simple fact is, sub fees for MMO's should have been hiked up a long time ago. If they were rising with normal inflation, they'd already be well over $20 a month. You should all be thankful you've managed to get away for so long without having to pay extra, and things are just starting to normalise now. I imagine most big MMO's we see in the near future will start charging over $15 a month, and I wouldn't be surprised if the likes of Blizzard started charging a little extra for WoW either. If WAR and AoC can charge 17.99 a month for example, there's no reason WoW shouldn't charge 15.99 or even 16.99, especially with another expansion as justification.
Why should we be lucky? The inflation reasoning would only work if inflation causes the price of mfg or distribution to go up. But in the case of (especially) technology and to a lesser degree of gaming that isn't the case.
The reason food prices go up due to inflation is because the cost of operating a farm for example goes up unless new technologies are created to make the cost of farming go down (in which case the cost of food would in turn or should in turn go down).
This is a touchy subject in I have always pondered why MMO's cost the EXACT same as single player games, or games with single player options, YET still costs nearly a quarter of the actual software cost EACH month just to play it.. I may be looking at it the wrong way, but what does software costs have to do with maintaining the servers? I understand the sub costs are to continually keep the servers up and running, but why charge 50 dollars for just the software which is useless until a subcription is paid for usually? I understand that most mmo's with hefty box costs include a free month, but why not, as an actual reason and incentive to buy the box, lower the price to say 20 bucks (5 more dollars higher than sub price) which pays for your subscrition and they could throw neat things like added bonuses and maps to box customers.. I just dont understand how a box, with nothing more than a 15 dollar subscrition included can have to cost 50 dollars ( as much as a game that can be enoyed WITHOUT added subscrition costs). Hopefully we will not let any company get away with raising that price, because I feel its already stretching into the "greed" category, anymore per month and either (A) the software will need to start being completely free downloadables or (B) or it will push the mmo's into a recession where less people will be able to afford, or willing to pay more than 15 bucks for EACH game they want to play + soft fee.... I truly think all NORMAL software mmo's should be free to download OR include bonuses in boxed retail versions
I can understand your point of view but I also understand it from the companies point of view. The box fee comes from the initial amount spent developing the game. Its all about making money. Its entertainment for us but for the company its about the paycheck. When investors invest millions of dollars on something they want to see imediate returns. I wish I could remember the article and link but there was a study done on this topic. The average MMO with box fee and subscriptions takes almost a full year before they break even on the game. That includes the start of development and all costs for that year. If anyone else remembers this and if you can even remember where to find it I would greatly apriciate the link to show people I am not just talking out my arse.
As a consumer of corse I want to spend less money. As a company of course I want to make the most possible money. Call it greed if you want. Think of it this way. You may like your job but if another job offers you more money your sure going to think about, and probably take the other job. Isnt that greed on your part?
You could argue that actually the cost of a lot of everyday items has gone down. Food is one example (although the price of wheat is high now). But I digress.
Actually no, food prices are going up, it's just that they're going up with inflation, so it doesn't seem like they're going up. Though this isn't the case in the UK and most of Europe, because the prices in those countries are rising above inflation due to the EU Farming Policy.
The simple fact is, sub fees for MMO's should have been hiked up a long time ago. If they were rising with normal inflation, they'd already be well over $20 a month. You should all be thankful you've managed to get away for so long without having to pay extra, and things are just starting to normalise now. I imagine most big MMO's we see in the near future will start charging over $15 a month, and I wouldn't be surprised if the likes of Blizzard started charging a little extra for WoW either. If WAR and AoC can charge 17.99 a month for example, there's no reason WoW shouldn't charge 15.99 or even 16.99, especially with another expansion as justification.
Why should we be lucky? The inflation reasoning would only work if inflation causes the price of mfg or distribution to go up. But in the case of (especially) technology and to a lesser degree of gaming that isn't the case.
The reason food prices go up due to inflation is because the cost of operating a farm for example goes up unless new technologies are created to make the cost of farming go down (in which case the cost of food would in turn or should in turn go down).
Your not thinking clearly here. Think of everything that goes into the development of a game. You have to pay your employees. They have to pay for gas to and from work. They have to buy food. They have to support families. So there wages increase. More cost for the game.
Electricity to keep the lights and computers running to make the game goes up. That means its costing you more to develop the game.
I could go on more and more but think for yourself here. Just because the gear doesnt cost more does not mean that all the little things dont cost more. When you factor in the cost of making anything, be it tech or anything else you have to factor in all the small things as well. Thoes things add up. THEN you add corperate greed and there you have it, increased sub fees.
We all know a good MMO is making great money. Thats why they make the games, to make money. Even if you enjoy your job, you still work to make money. Game developers are no diffrent. Sure they love to see there work succeed but first and formost its all about the money.
Pfft. It better offer more value. And from what I hear, WAR is just WoW with a different IP. Right now I pay $25 per month to Gamefly. I rent roughly 5 games (about $200 worth) per month and get tons of entertainment out of it. When I want to do some group play, I load up Halo 3 (one of the few games I own) or play some Guild Wars or whatever. A lot of games aren't worth the purchase for the, as a previous poster said, 12 hours or less of gameplay they offer.
Why would an MMO be worth that much to me? And worse, you have to pay for the box too? I'm already sick of paying $50 for games. I could be convinced to pay $15/mo for a game worth playing (I did this with WoW, then Eve for a couple of months each), but typically it's all for one game that doesn't even play that great. If a game goes beyond that $15/mo, it better offer some added value to compensate. I'm talking frequent GM-run events and new content (read that as not charging for expansions). Operation costs for an MMO are pretty low, yet they can't be bothered to retain just one guy to keep making new and fresh music?
If Sony could get away with charging $30 bucks for Station Pass what's stopping other game companies from doing so. The first massive commercial mmo like UO/EQ charged $9.99 back in 1997-1999 era then it went up to $14.99 for the 2000-2007 era.. i think $15 bucks is rather low if you're going to adjust for inflation... however, I think the game companies have to account for what the current market can bare... A good price range would be around $15-25 ..... $30 is probably a bit too much.
I think your forgetting something here , the Station Pass gives you access to 5/6 games plus other goodies so what are SOE getting away with exactly ? 30 dollars is excellent value for money and for me in the UK Station Access works out to just £ 3.00 a game and with the launch of Potbs its going to be even better value.
I think the monthly fee was dreamt up one day by the guys who made Ultima Online. It's been roughly that value since.
I'm not sure I quite understand that statement.
In 1985 I was on an online service called: Quantum Link. They developed a game which was the first multi player online game I played called "habitat". It was an island.. you had an avatar, apartment etc etc
Anyway the service was $9.95 a month and you got 1 hour of "premium" service. Beyond that it was 6 cents a minute to be connected.
This was in the USA and back then you connected through GTE Telenet pretty much. So basicly $3.60 an hour and of course where I lived there was no local "node" but that's another story.
So in effect the monthly fee was much higher at that time. How many hours do you play a month.. x $3.60 an hour plus $9.95.
Regardless when UO started it was $9.95 NOT $14.95.
EQ was $9.89 and the FIRST MMO to raise to $14.95.
In fact UO was the last of the then exisiting MMO's to raise to $14.95.
So blame SOE... (ha ha j/k).
Anyway if a game was really good I'd pay more.. but if its not above what is out there and doesn't offer more in general then you would set yourself up to fail imho.
Enough games fail now... I mean apparantly people won't pay $14.95 for crap. Basic idea? EA better release a stellar product.. I'm not talking about speculation.. I just mean when launch comes if there isn't something "bigger/better" about it.. I won't pay more.. PERIOD.
Also I don't hate EA atm really.. except that they have NO ToS enforcement at all currently in DAoC and if they allow the same BS to happen in WAR... well anyway... we'll see what happens.
Your not thinking clearly here. Think of everything that goes into the development of a game. You have to pay your employees. They have to pay for gas to and from work. They have to buy food. They have to support families. So there wages increase. More cost for the game.
Electricity to keep the lights and computers running to make the game goes up. That means its costing you more to develop the game.
I could go on more and more but think for yourself here. Just because the gear doesnt cost more does not mean that all the little things dont cost more. When you factor in the cost of making anything, be it tech or anything else you have to factor in all the small things as well. Thoes things add up. THEN you add corperate greed and there you have it, increased sub fees.
We all know a good MMO is making great money. Thats why they make the games, to make money. Even if you enjoy your job, you still work to make money. Game developers are no diffrent. Sure they love to see there work succeed but first and formost its all about the money.
Actually I am thinking clearly thank you very much. There are 2 aspects to the equation. One is the box cost (assuming it isn't a free to play game) and the second is the subscription fee. The purpose behind the box cost is to get a return on the initial investment made 3-5 years before release for the development of a game. The cost of that is controlled by a budget that includes the cost of paying for the starving children of the development community (face it developers are generally shafted because it is a "cool" job).
Now, back to the technology which is actually where a huge portion of the budget will be spent. Hell even the computers that the developers are working on could cost 2-3x more than they are getting paid in one month. Not to mention the license or development cost of whatever technology you are using. If you purchase a graphics engine (depending on the engine and licensing cost) you may be paying anywhere from 100k-2 million. That doesn't include any of the other multiple products you may license to support and construct your game. BioWare has purchased 2 that we know of. The license cost of these technologies is relatively the same or has gone down as they become easier to make and more common.
Couple this with digital distribution and the margin for profit has increased in favor of the publisher and not the consumer. This is what I think as consumers we should be questioning.
On to the subscription fee. They may have a justification for the higher subscription fee. Maybe they plan on having a larger post-launch development team of high skill quality but they don't plan on making you ever pay for another box of content (such as an expansion). If that is the case I'd believe a higher subscription rate is justified.
My argument is that the cost of the game's development should NOT control the subscription fee and if the subscription fee goes up (which may be justified), I think it is the responsibility of the publisher who set that price to justify why. It is also the responsibility of the consumer to ensure the publisher fulfills their responsiblity.
8 pounds ( $14.99 or there abouts most likely it is more since its $2 per 1 pound last time I checked) is the average fee for a MMO monthly which is not that much. Currently the market leader WoW only charges that, so it is the current standard for what is the acceptable monthly price for an mmo is.
Mythic are not going to charge more than that unless it was a very very small amount more. It is common business sense, you do not charge higher than the market leader it will give a lot less incentive to go to you for a product.
Mythic has even less chance to do something like this as well, they are making an mmo that anyone could mistake for a common WoW clone if they did not look into the game. Therefore charging a monthly fee that is higher than WoW would be a mistake.
They are basically selling a very similer product to the market leader, therefore it would be in their best interest to charge the same, or less for their product not more to incourage people to give it a go.
I can however see Age of Conan putting their subscription fee up higher and getting away with it. Because it does look different, it looks like a vastly superior product from a presentation standpoint. (Notice I am saying looks, personally I am not interested in the game at all) Most charge higher for products that appear vastly superior, so consumers are more willing to pay a higher price.
Therefore I think if any one was to charge higher it would be Funcom, or Blizzard but most likely that would be for whatever mmo they are making, rather than Mythic due to the reasons above.
Comments
The simple fact is, sub fees for MMO's should have been hiked up a long time ago. If they were rising with normal inflation, they'd already be well over $20 a month. You should all be thankful you've managed to get away for so long without having to pay extra, and things are just starting to normalise now. I imagine most big MMO's we see in the near future will start charging over $15 a month, and I wouldn't be surprised if the likes of Blizzard started charging a little extra for WoW either. If WAR and AoC can charge 17.99 a month for example, there's no reason WoW shouldn't charge 15.99 or even 16.99, especially with another expansion as justification.
Why should we be lucky? The inflation reasoning would only work if inflation causes the price of mfg or distribution to go up. But in the case of (especially) technology and to a lesser degree of gaming that isn't the case.
The reason food prices go up due to inflation is because the cost of operating a farm for example goes up unless new technologies are created to make the cost of farming go down (in which case the cost of food would in turn or should in turn go down).
As a consumer of corse I want to spend less money. As a company of course I want to make the most possible money. Call it greed if you want. Think of it this way. You may like your job but if another job offers you more money your sure going to think about, and probably take the other job. Isnt that greed on your part?
The simple fact is, sub fees for MMO's should have been hiked up a long time ago. If they were rising with normal inflation, they'd already be well over $20 a month. You should all be thankful you've managed to get away for so long without having to pay extra, and things are just starting to normalise now. I imagine most big MMO's we see in the near future will start charging over $15 a month, and I wouldn't be surprised if the likes of Blizzard started charging a little extra for WoW either. If WAR and AoC can charge 17.99 a month for example, there's no reason WoW shouldn't charge 15.99 or even 16.99, especially with another expansion as justification.
Why should we be lucky? The inflation reasoning would only work if inflation causes the price of mfg or distribution to go up. But in the case of (especially) technology and to a lesser degree of gaming that isn't the case.
The reason food prices go up due to inflation is because the cost of operating a farm for example goes up unless new technologies are created to make the cost of farming go down (in which case the cost of food would in turn or should in turn go down).
Your not thinking clearly here. Think of everything that goes into the development of a game. You have to pay your employees. They have to pay for gas to and from work. They have to buy food. They have to support families. So there wages increase. More cost for the game.Electricity to keep the lights and computers running to make the game goes up. That means its costing you more to develop the game.
I could go on more and more but think for yourself here. Just because the gear doesnt cost more does not mean that all the little things dont cost more. When you factor in the cost of making anything, be it tech or anything else you have to factor in all the small things as well. Thoes things add up. THEN you add corperate greed and there you have it, increased sub fees.
We all know a good MMO is making great money. Thats why they make the games, to make money. Even if you enjoy your job, you still work to make money. Game developers are no diffrent. Sure they love to see there work succeed but first and formost its all about the money.
Pfft. It better offer more value. And from what I hear, WAR is just WoW with a different IP. Right now I pay $25 per month to Gamefly. I rent roughly 5 games (about $200 worth) per month and get tons of entertainment out of it. When I want to do some group play, I load up Halo 3 (one of the few games I own) or play some Guild Wars or whatever. A lot of games aren't worth the purchase for the, as a previous poster said, 12 hours or less of gameplay they offer.
Why would an MMO be worth that much to me? And worse, you have to pay for the box too? I'm already sick of paying $50 for games. I could be convinced to pay $15/mo for a game worth playing (I did this with WoW, then Eve for a couple of months each), but typically it's all for one game that doesn't even play that great. If a game goes beyond that $15/mo, it better offer some added value to compensate. I'm talking frequent GM-run events and new content (read that as not charging for expansions). Operation costs for an MMO are pretty low, yet they can't be bothered to retain just one guy to keep making new and fresh music?
go play runescape its better than war and wow go play it hurry
Getting the NEWS of MMO Games
Games playing :Exactly AoC
Well...I play guild wars which has no monthly ffee...and i also pay wow and others but i used ads to pay for em
I think your forgetting something here , the Station Pass gives you access to 5/6 games plus other goodies so what are SOE getting away with exactly ? 30 dollars is excellent value for money and for me in the UK Station Access works out to just £ 3.00 a game and with the launch of Potbs its going to be even better value.
I'm not sure I quite understand that statement.
In 1985 I was on an online service called: Quantum Link. They developed a game which was the first multi player online game I played called "habitat". It was an island.. you had an avatar, apartment etc etc
Anyway the service was $9.95 a month and you got 1 hour of "premium" service. Beyond that it was 6 cents a minute to be connected.
This was in the USA and back then you connected through GTE Telenet pretty much. So basicly $3.60 an hour and of course where I lived there was no local "node" but that's another story.
So in effect the monthly fee was much higher at that time. How many hours do you play a month.. x $3.60 an hour plus $9.95.
Regardless when UO started it was $9.95 NOT $14.95.
EQ was $9.89 and the FIRST MMO to raise to $14.95.
In fact UO was the last of the then exisiting MMO's to raise to $14.95.
So blame SOE... (ha ha j/k).
Anyway if a game was really good I'd pay more.. but if its not above what is out there and doesn't offer more in general then you would set yourself up to fail imho.
Enough games fail now... I mean apparantly people won't pay $14.95 for crap. Basic idea? EA better release a stellar product.. I'm not talking about speculation.. I just mean when launch comes if there isn't something "bigger/better" about it.. I won't pay more.. PERIOD.
Also I don't hate EA atm really.. except that they have NO ToS enforcement at all currently in DAoC and if they allow the same BS to happen in WAR... well anyway... we'll see what happens.
Your not thinking clearly here. Think of everything that goes into the development of a game. You have to pay your employees. They have to pay for gas to and from work. They have to buy food. They have to support families. So there wages increase. More cost for the game.Electricity to keep the lights and computers running to make the game goes up. That means its costing you more to develop the game.
I could go on more and more but think for yourself here. Just because the gear doesnt cost more does not mean that all the little things dont cost more. When you factor in the cost of making anything, be it tech or anything else you have to factor in all the small things as well. Thoes things add up. THEN you add corperate greed and there you have it, increased sub fees.
We all know a good MMO is making great money. Thats why they make the games, to make money. Even if you enjoy your job, you still work to make money. Game developers are no diffrent. Sure they love to see there work succeed but first and formost its all about the money.
Actually I am thinking clearly thank you very much.
There are 2 aspects to the equation. One is the box cost (assuming it isn't a free to play game) and the second is the subscription fee. The purpose behind the box cost is to get a return on the initial investment made 3-5 years before release for the development of a game. The cost of that is controlled by a budget that includes the cost of paying for the starving children of the development community (face it developers are generally shafted because it is a "cool" job). 
Now, back to the technology which is actually where a huge portion of the budget will be spent. Hell even the computers that the developers are working on could cost 2-3x more than they are getting paid in one month. Not to mention the license or development cost of whatever technology you are using. If you purchase a graphics engine (depending on the engine and licensing cost) you may be paying anywhere from 100k-2 million. That doesn't include any of the other multiple products you may license to support and construct your game. BioWare has purchased 2 that we know of. The license cost of these technologies is relatively the same or has gone down as they become easier to make and more common.
Couple this with digital distribution and the margin for profit has increased in favor of the publisher and not the consumer. This is what I think as consumers we should be questioning.
On to the subscription fee. They may have a justification for the higher subscription fee. Maybe they plan on having a larger post-launch development team of high skill quality but they don't plan on making you ever pay for another box of content (such as an expansion). If that is the case I'd believe a higher subscription rate is justified.
My argument is that the cost of the game's development should NOT control the subscription fee and if the subscription fee goes up (which may be justified), I think it is the responsibility of the publisher who set that price to justify why. It is also the responsibility of the consumer to ensure the publisher fulfills their responsiblity.
8 pounds ( $14.99 or there abouts most likely it is more since its $2 per 1 pound last time I checked) is the average fee for a MMO monthly which is not that much. Currently the market leader WoW only charges that, so it is the current standard for what is the acceptable monthly price for an mmo is.
Mythic are not going to charge more than that unless it was a very very small amount more. It is common business sense, you do not charge higher than the market leader it will give a lot less incentive to go to you for a product.
Mythic has even less chance to do something like this as well, they are making an mmo that anyone could mistake for a common WoW clone if they did not look into the game. Therefore charging a monthly fee that is higher than WoW would be a mistake.
They are basically selling a very similer product to the market leader, therefore it would be in their best interest to charge the same, or less for their product not more to incourage people to give it a go.
I can however see Age of Conan putting their subscription fee up higher and getting away with it. Because it does look different, it looks like a vastly superior product from a presentation standpoint. (Notice I am saying looks, personally I am not interested in the game at all) Most charge higher for products that appear vastly superior, so consumers are more willing to pay a higher price.
Therefore I think if any one was to charge higher it would be Funcom, or Blizzard but most likely that would be for whatever mmo they are making, rather than Mythic due to the reasons above.