It's like saying "We don't have confidence that our game will have high subscription retention". Every game I can think of that has a lifetime subscription has been a failure. (EG. WW2 Online) I thought about getting Champions since Cryptic made City of Heroes which was a decent game, but then I saw the lifetime subscription thing, coupled with the game being published by Atari of all companies....
Thats awesome. You shouldn't play. Stick with City of Heroes instead. You can be the only one online.
Your analogy is like saying "I don't have a clue about their motivation, but my speculation is a failure".
Guildwars is a one time investment.
LOTRO offered a one time investment, but they only did it initially. These games are not failures by my definition simply because they still exist.
If you are a numbers person and you think "The average time the NEW Adaptor of a game (across the industry) will play is 3 months" (on average) then offering to NEW ADAPTORS (people who sign up on day of launch) of the game to make it attractive for them to stick around and you get the equivilant of 15 months, thats 12 more months than you would have got.
= "Our business model on this one decision is a win"
Now, couple that with a series of other good decisions and a decent product and they will offer a good super hero MMO. It has to be at least 2nd best right out of the box.
I've already paid my 200 bucks, because I have been steady paying 5 years on the City of Heroes investment. The other good thing about paying once is that it changes the way I play. I dont' feel "Guilty" for having the sub but not using it.
Easy way to determine validity of this offer. Does the lifetime subscription come with at least a 1 year gaurantee of service? If it does then it's a great deal and everyone should jump on board. If they are not giving at least 1 year promise, there is no point in doing it, they have no confidence in their game.
Well, considering the game is being published by ATARI...
Who has been in severe financial trouble for the last year. They even had to sell their license to publish the Dragonball games to stay afloat....
It kind of reminds me of SEGA and The Matrix Online.
Atari is not making decisions about how this game is made. They gave Cryptic production money and in return they get a percentage of profits. The success of this game is squarely on Cryptic.
No, you are wrong. Atari doesn't get a percentage of the profits. They get ALL the profits. Atari owns Cryptic Studios. They also pay the bills. If Atari goes out of business or declares bankrupcy (which is a very real possibility), then Cryptic and Champions Online goes with them...
Unless a company like Sony Online Entertainment buys the studio and the property like they did with SEGA and The Matrix Online.
Easy way to determine validity of this offer. Does the lifetime subscription come with at least a 1 year gaurantee of service? If it does then it's a great deal and everyone should jump on board. If they are not giving at least 1 year promise, there is no point in doing it, they have no confidence in their game.
Well, considering the game is being published by ATARI...
Who has been in severe financial trouble for the last year. They even had to sell their license to publish the Dragonball games to stay afloat....
It kind of reminds me of SEGA and The Matrix Online.
They are making no guarantee at all - and there's an explicit disclaimer to that effect attached to the "lifetime" subscription offer.
Atari effectively no longer exist.
Last year their finances bottomed out and they had to sell off a lot of their assets. Infogrames purchased a controlling a share in Atari. Infogrames also purchased Cryptic and then gave them to Atari.
This year Infogrames and Atari "merged" - so Atari is really Infogrames.
That's probably a good thing for anyone wanting this game to succeed. The only mmo I recall Atari having published before was Horizons....
It's like saying "We don't have confidence that our game will have high subscription retention". Every game I can think of that has a lifetime subscription has been a failure. (EG. WW2 Online)
"failure" isn't the right word to use because as others have pointed out, LOTRO offered a lifetime subscription (and still do) and it's doing ok.
But the game is probably a failure by their own internal financial standards - which is why they offered the lifetime subscription. They publicly predicted that they'd get over 1 million subscribers and they had 1 million players in beta, i.e. they had server resources ready for 1 million players at launch. At best they got a quarter of that.
I think a lifetime subscription is appealing to players - but they really don't make good financial sense from the developer's point of view unless it looks like box sales will be low and they need a quick injection of cash.
Lord of the Rings Online is a failure.... Less than 200,000 subscriptions and less than 1% of the total market share = failure.
That includes free to play MMOs which are huge in Asia.
Take out those and take out WoW and it's up there.
Also that site (mmogchart.com), if you read it, is just a guesstimate. It also only goes up to Jan 08. It hasnt been updated in almost 20 months.
Champions Online will be around for a couple years at least. City of Heroes has been around for over 5 years and it has had even lower numbers.
If you look at the companies' quarterly income & do the math the sub numbers really should be about double that for LoTRO & CoX. Expansions & new players retail purchases can make up part of it, but i highly doubt 1/2.
Easy way to determine validity of this offer. Does the lifetime subscription come with at least a 1 year gaurantee of service? If it does then it's a great deal and everyone should jump on board. If they are not giving at least 1 year promise, there is no point in doing it, they have no confidence in their game.
Well, considering the game is being published by ATARI...
Who has been in severe financial trouble for the last year. They even had to sell their license to publish the Dragonball games to stay afloat....
It kind of reminds me of SEGA and The Matrix Online.
Atari was bought by Infogrames. They are actually doing very well now. The Atari name is on it, but it's owned by Infogrames.
Champions Online will be around for a couple years at least. City of Heroes has been around for over 5 years and it has had even lower numbers.
I wouldn't be surprised if CO fails to match CoX subscription numbers.
Jack Emmert has said they don't need to to be profitable - over 100k subscribers and they're in the profit zone - but CO has higher system requirements than CoX and a more controversial payment model. And yes I know CoX has some MTs - but most of them are account service fees and the few real MTs are MTs-lite and are tolerated by many in the context that CoX has released years worth of major updates without asking players to cough up money for expansions.
I think the CO lifetime subscription offer is an indication that pre-order sales have been low and they don't expect to hit that 100k target. But they may also keep the game alive purely to keep it on their books. Their plan is to release an mmo every 18 to 24 months, so they want a collection of mmos and while their collection is small, even a badly performing mmo is good.
Lord of the Rings Online is a failure.... Less than 200,000 subscriptions and less than 1% of the total market share = failure.
That includes free to play MMOs which are huge in Asia.
Take out those and take out WoW and it's up there.
Also that site (mmogchart.com), if you read it, is just a guesstimate. It also only goes up to Jan 08. It hasnt been updated in almost 20 months.
Champions Online will be around for a couple years at least. City of Heroes has been around for over 5 years and it has had even lower numbers.
If you look at the companies' quarterly income & do the math the sub numbers really should be about double that for LoTRO & CoX. Expansions & new players retail purchases can make up part of it, but i highly doubt 1/2.
Don't listen to this guy he must be new to mmorpgs altogether. 100k was considered a great success pre-WoW. 400k was a wild success.
Never ever compare MMOs to titans like WoW. Additionally those charts are just estimates. It's not like NPD where we have hard, sure numbers
Champions Online will be around for a couple years at least. City of Heroes has been around for over 5 years and it has had even lower numbers.
I wouldn't be surprised if CO fails to match CoX subscription numbers.
Jack Emmert has said they don't need to to be profitable - over 100k subscribers and they're in the profit zone - but CO has higher system requirements than CoX and a more controversial payment model. And yes I know CoX has some MTs - but most of them are account service fees and the few real MTs are MTs-lite and are tolerated by many in the context that CoX has released years worth of major updates without asking players to cough up money for expansions.
I think the CO lifetime subscription offer is an indication that pre-order sales have been low and they don't expect to hit that 100k target. But they may also keep the game alive purely to keep it on their books. Their plan is to release an mmo every 18 to 24 months, so they want a collection of mmos and while their collection is small, even a badly performing mmo is good.
$200 upfront is nice capital that they can turn around and use to payoff debts and such. They are simply willing to bet due to natural churn most vets get burned out after bout 1.5 yrs. Game devs dont have crystal balls. They really have no idea if they will be wild success or fail. They simply have charts and predictions.
But going for $200 upfront isnt such a bad idea when you are also banking on Microtransactions. And this money they can use at the very least to collect interest and make clever investments into the company
Again, they are banking most players will simply leave for whatever reason same as the makers of guild wars gambled
On the flip[side I can be totally 100% wrong and you will get to rub it in my face 6 months from now. I'm not psychic
My opinion on the matter is simply this, I love the fact that a company will offer a lifetime subscription. I hate paying to play a game I've already bought. Fifty bucks for the box at launch and a years worth of monthly fees, you're paying a little over $200.00 for one game. Not to mention you have to own a PC capable of running said game, let's say at a minimum, $500.00 at least. So that's $700.00 to play one game for one year. Let's add another year. $900 bucks for two years. WoW has been going for, what 5 years now? So, $1,500.00 to play one game for 5 years. Expensive hobby we have, huh?
Computer + game + lifetime sub = about $800, nearly half. I'd say that's a good deal. If only all MMOs came with that offer.
A little about previous comments:
Turbine actually offered the lifetime subscription deal more than once. They offered it again at the anniversary point. I know that because that's when I joined the game.
Turbine doesn't release subscription numbers, as far as I know. They've always been pretty hush hush on that subject ever since Asheron's Call (I loved that game, btw). A success in their eyes is a profit, not 10 million copies sold. They're still running AC, which is believed to only have, at most, 10,000 paying players.
Originally posted by PatchDay $200 upfront is nice capital that they can turn around and use to payoff debts and such. They are simply willing to bet due to natural churn most vets get burned out after bout 1.5 yrs. Game devs dont have crystal balls. They really have no idea if they will be wild success or fail. They simply have charts and predictions. But going for $200 upfront isnt such a bad idea when you are also banking on Microtransactions. And this money they can use at the very least to collect interest and make clever investments into the company Again, they are banking most players will simply leave for whatever reason same as the makers of guild wars gambled On the flip[side I can be totally 100% wrong and you will get to rub it in my face 6 months from now. I'm not psychic
The game's been available for pre-order since early this year - so they don't need a crystal ball.
We also know from past experience that the only mmos to offer lifetime subscriptions have been ones which looked set to underperform.
I think you're right about the MTs too. Most players willing to pay this much up-front would normally have subscribed for a long time - so long-term they lose out by offering a lifetime sub..... unless they simply pump more items into the shopping mall.
But Guild Wars is a totally different creature. LOTRO and Hellgate London are more apt comparisons.
Originally posted by PatchDay $200 upfront is nice capital that they can turn around and use to payoff debts and such. They are simply willing to bet due to natural churn most vets get burned out after bout 1.5 yrs. Game devs dont have crystal balls. They really have no idea if they will be wild success or fail. They simply have charts and predictions. But going for $200 upfront isnt such a bad idea when you are also banking on Microtransactions. And this money they can use at the very least to collect interest and make clever investments into the company Again, they are banking most players will simply leave for whatever reason same as the makers of guild wars gambled On the flip[side I can be totally 100% wrong and you will get to rub it in my face 6 months from now. I'm not psychic
The game's been available for pre-order since early this year - so they don't need a crystal ball.
We also know from past experience that the only mmos to offer lifetime subscriptions have been ones which looked set to underperform.
I think you're right about the MTs too. Most players willing to pay this much up-front would normally have subscribed for a long time - so long-term they lose out by offering a lifetime sub..... unless they simply pump more items into the shopping mall.
But Guild Wars is a totally different creature. LOTRO and Hellgate London are more apt comparisons.
LOTRO is fine like I pointed out before. In a world that existed pre-WoW around 100k was pretty good and still is. EVE started out with wayyyyy less.
Well, Cryptic must thank Turbine for delivering a lifetime subscription worth taking. If it wasn't for Turbine, I very much doubt anyone would be interested in Cryptic's offering. The only precedence they would have to relate to would be HGL, and we all know how that turned out.
How come no one brought up the fact that LOTRO offered their lifetime subscriptions after the game launched? This gave people enough time to experience the full scope of the game and make a decision.
With CO you only get until the day before launch. If they had confidence people would be impressed by their product enough they would offer it for the first month of the game.
If they had enough confidence in their product, don't you think they wouldn't offer a lifetime sub at all? Then they could keep cashing in on people each month after it became profitable to the player to stay in the game.
It really just makes me think its a get money quick scheme, designed to bolster their profit numbers of the launch.
Actually i've very surpirsed that other companies havn't gone down this route before, it's just makes complete buisness sense.
If the company, either through research or past experience, can confidently predict the average lifespan of a typical player and price the lifelong sub at that number of months + 1 (2 or 3 if really greedy) they will make more money.
The money comes up front and no waiting for it to drip into the bank balance.
Plus a lifelong sub will always count as an active subscription when you make your 'state of the game' report to the shareholders and/or the press.
Actually i've very surpirsed that other companies havn't gone down this route before, it's just makes complete buisness sense. If the company, either through research or past experience, can confidently predict the average lifespan of a typical player and price the lifelong sub at that number of months + 1 (2 or 3 if really greedy) they will make more money. The money comes up front and no waiting for it to drip into the bank balance. Plus a lifelong sub will always count as an active subscription when you make your 'state of the game' report to the shareholders and/or the press.
Very true, and its not like they'll miss out much on monthly fees seeing as how the MTs will take care of that. I find it interesting how many people are interested in this 200 dollar model when a number of them haven't tested.
I think it's a matter of confidence. Most companies won't offer lifetime subscriptions, because the people who would pay them usually play longer than that (are long term subscribers anyway). So, while it's an infuse of cash early on, lifetime subscriptions is lost money in the long run.
I don't think Turbine was very confident with what they were offering when they launched. The game was very stable, but the content was lacking in the mid-to-end game (or so my friends that played at the time told me). Luckily for Turbine, they introduced content in a very fast manner, so they countered their initial bleeding subscription numbers.
In my opinion Cryptic is on the same boat as Turbine was at the beginning. They are not 100% sure about their product, so they are after the short to mid term benefits of having their initial investment covered as soon as possible and also any development costs for the first year. Beyond that, they will need regular subscribers to keep the game afloat, since lifetimers don't generate profit. Then again, they can go overboard with the RMT item mall, something Turbine decided not to do.
I believe the LotRO lifetime accounts that were offered at one point are now a drain on the game. They cost $199 I think and I still hear a lot of people using them. It is actually a bad business model to use and here's why.
The only people who will buy lifetime subs are those who plan on sticking with an MMO for a long period of time, someone that generally only plays for a few months will neve make that kind of purchase because he knows it won't pan out. So all the lifetime accounts sold go to those who will use them for the life of the game (or after they're done sell the accounts to someone else to use) and so those are all now accounts that the company isn't making money on. If you try to compensate by charging for 4 years of game time then even the hardcore players won't buy them.
Basically it will always end up in a way that the company loses out. Either they charge enough to make it interesting ($199) and then those accounts stay active well past their value so the company loses money. Or they charge so much to make sure they don't lose money that no one will buy them. Since $199 is slightly more then the cost of a year as soon as you are a year and 2 months in it's a drain on the company. But who is going to make an investment of $550 bucks or more not knowing how long the game will last.
Actually i've very surpirsed that other companies havn't gone down this route before, it's just makes complete buisness sense. If the company, either through research or past experience, can confidently predict the average lifespan of a typical player and price the lifelong sub at that number of months + 1 (2 or 3 if really greedy) they will make more money. The money comes up front and no waiting for it to drip into the bank balance. Plus a lifelong sub will always count as an active subscription when you make your 'state of the game' report to the shareholders and/or the press.
Very true, and its not like they'll miss out much on monthly fees seeing as how the MTs will take care of that. I find it interesting how many people are interested in this 200 dollar model when a number of them haven't tested.
I actually took the pre-order and 6 month sub before i got into the closed beta, but i'm not typical by any means. I only played CoH because i used to play the Champions PnP game, i only left CoH (after 2 years) because CO was annouced. I probably would have taken the lifetime model if i had the money to throw away. But that's me.
Personally i don't see anything sinister or shifty about offering the lifetime sub prior to open beta, in fact it makes good economic sense from the marketing team, lets convert exisiting Closed Beta players into lifetime, plus cross-pollinate the STO player base..... i just think they neglected to see the minor PR hit they took by doing so.
I believe the LotRO lifetime accounts that were offered at one point are now a drain on the game. They cost $199 I think and I still hear a lot of people using them. It is actually a bad business model to use and here's why.
The only people who will buy lifetime subs are those who plan on sticking with an MMO for a long period of time, someone that generally only plays for a few months will neve make that kind of purchase because he knows it won't pan out. So all the lifetime accounts sold go to those who will use them for the life of the game (or after they're done sell the accounts to someone else to use) and so those are all now accounts that the company isn't making money on. If you try to compensate by charging for 4 years of game time then even the hardcore players won't buy them.
Basically it will always end up in a way that the company loses out. Either they charge enough to make it interesting ($199) and then those accounts stay active well past their value so the company loses money. Or they charge so much to make sure they don't lose money that no one will buy them. Since $199 is slightly more then the cost of a year as soon as you are a year and 2 months in it's a drain on the company. But who is going to make an investment of $550 bucks or more not knowing how long the game will last.
I don't really see it ever as being a bad model. Guild wars basically did the same thing for 50 bucks, and my account is still active. Bought expansions... so on.
They're charing 4 times that price plus the box for the game in LOTRO and CO. Plus CO will have MTs and LOTRO has had expansions, so they are still making money.... plus as someone said before the lifetime sub will always count as a subscriber.. so even if the servers are dead you still can say "WE HAVE XXXX AMOUNT OF SUBSCRIBERS" to draw a larger community hoping to find a player base that turned out to be waning.
I think thats COs focus, its trying to bolster the population as much as they can as early as possible. Eventually when they get into the swing of the MTs and their already PLANNED expansions, it won't matter how many people are still playing in game, the current playerbase will probably have paid or will be paying twice their worth.
Originally posted by SnarlingWolf I believe the LotRO lifetime accounts that were offered at one point are now a drain on the game. They cost $199 I think and I still hear a lot of people using them. It is actually a bad business model to use and here's why.
The only people who will buy lifetime subs are those who plan on sticking with an MMO for a long period of time, someone that generally only plays for a few months will neve make that kind of purchase because he knows it won't pan out. So all the lifetime accounts sold go to those who will use them for the life of the game (or after they're done sell the accounts to someone else to use) and so those are all now accounts that the company isn't making money on. If you try to compensate by charging for 4 years of game time then even the hardcore players won't buy them.
Basically it will always end up in a way that the company loses out. Either they charge enough to make it interesting ($199) and then those accounts stay active well past their value so the company loses money. Or they charge so much to make sure they don't lose money that no one will buy them. Since $199 is slightly more then the cost of a year as soon as you are a year and 2 months in it's a drain on the company. But who is going to make an investment of $550 bucks or more not knowing how long the game will last.
Yes, but they have their cash shop to make up for that. Business wise it's a smart choice.
Game wise I see people who bought the lifetime sub being disappointed in a couple months, but Cryptic is offering STO beta access which counteracts that by being 'something to look forward to'. It's really a brilliant strategy on their part, especially since CO is such a weak game.
It makes me very trepidacious about what STO will be like.
How come no one brought up the fact that LOTRO offered their lifetime subscriptions after the game launched? This gave people enough time to experience the full scope of the game and make a decision. With CO you only get until the day before launch. If they had confidence people would be impressed by their product enough they would offer it for the first month of the game. If they had enough confidence in their product, don't you think they wouldn't offer a lifetime sub at all? Then they could keep cashing in on people each month after it became profitable to the player to stay in the game.
It really just makes me think its a get money quick scheme, designed to bolster their profit numbers of the launch.
Comments
Thats awesome. You shouldn't play. Stick with City of Heroes instead. You can be the only one online.
Your analogy is like saying "I don't have a clue about their motivation, but my speculation is a failure".
Guildwars is a one time investment.
LOTRO offered a one time investment, but they only did it initially. These games are not failures by my definition simply because they still exist.
If you are a numbers person and you think "The average time the NEW Adaptor of a game (across the industry) will play is 3 months" (on average) then offering to NEW ADAPTORS (people who sign up on day of launch) of the game to make it attractive for them to stick around and you get the equivilant of 15 months, thats 12 more months than you would have got.
= "Our business model on this one decision is a win"
Now, couple that with a series of other good decisions and a decent product and they will offer a good super hero MMO. It has to be at least 2nd best right out of the box.
I've already paid my 200 bucks, because I have been steady paying 5 years on the City of Heroes investment. The other good thing about paying once is that it changes the way I play. I dont' feel "Guilty" for having the sub but not using it.
Well, considering the game is being published by ATARI...
Who has been in severe financial trouble for the last year. They even had to sell their license to publish the Dragonball games to stay afloat....
It kind of reminds me of SEGA and The Matrix Online.
Atari is not making decisions about how this game is made. They gave Cryptic production money and in return they get a percentage of profits. The success of this game is squarely on Cryptic.
No, you are wrong. Atari doesn't get a percentage of the profits. They get ALL the profits. Atari owns Cryptic Studios. They also pay the bills. If Atari goes out of business or declares bankrupcy (which is a very real possibility), then Cryptic and Champions Online goes with them...
Unless a company like Sony Online Entertainment buys the studio and the property like they did with SEGA and The Matrix Online.
Anyone else find the OPs username to be entirely appropriate?
Emo? Very.
Alltern8 Blog | Star Wars Space Combat and The Old Republic | Cryptic Studios - A Pre Post-Mortem | Klingon Preview, STO's Monster Play
Well, considering the game is being published by ATARI...
Who has been in severe financial trouble for the last year. They even had to sell their license to publish the Dragonball games to stay afloat....
It kind of reminds me of SEGA and The Matrix Online.
They are making no guarantee at all - and there's an explicit disclaimer to that effect attached to the "lifetime" subscription offer.
Atari effectively no longer exist.
Last year their finances bottomed out and they had to sell off a lot of their assets. Infogrames purchased a controlling a share in Atari. Infogrames also purchased Cryptic and then gave them to Atari.
This year Infogrames and Atari "merged" - so Atari is really Infogrames.
That's probably a good thing for anyone wanting this game to succeed. The only mmo I recall Atari having published before was Horizons....
"failure" isn't the right word to use because as others have pointed out, LOTRO offered a lifetime subscription (and still do) and it's doing ok.
But the game is probably a failure by their own internal financial standards - which is why they offered the lifetime subscription. They publicly predicted that they'd get over 1 million subscribers and they had 1 million players in beta, i.e. they had server resources ready for 1 million players at launch. At best they got a quarter of that.
I think a lifetime subscription is appealing to players - but they really don't make good financial sense from the developer's point of view unless it looks like box sales will be low and they need a quick injection of cash.
That includes free to play MMOs which are huge in Asia.
Take out those and take out WoW and it's up there.
Also that site (mmogchart.com), if you read it, is just a guesstimate. It also only goes up to Jan 08. It hasnt been updated in almost 20 months.
Champions Online will be around for a couple years at least. City of Heroes has been around for over 5 years and it has had even lower numbers.
If you look at the companies' quarterly income & do the math the sub numbers really should be about double that for LoTRO & CoX. Expansions & new players retail purchases can make up part of it, but i highly doubt 1/2.
Well, considering the game is being published by ATARI...
Who has been in severe financial trouble for the last year. They even had to sell their license to publish the Dragonball games to stay afloat....
It kind of reminds me of SEGA and The Matrix Online.
Atari was bought by Infogrames. They are actually doing very well now. The Atari name is on it, but it's owned by Infogrames.
www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/infogrames-stock-continues-to-skyrocket
I wouldn't be surprised if CO fails to match CoX subscription numbers.
Jack Emmert has said they don't need to to be profitable - over 100k subscribers and they're in the profit zone - but CO has higher system requirements than CoX and a more controversial payment model. And yes I know CoX has some MTs - but most of them are account service fees and the few real MTs are MTs-lite and are tolerated by many in the context that CoX has released years worth of major updates without asking players to cough up money for expansions.
I think the CO lifetime subscription offer is an indication that pre-order sales have been low and they don't expect to hit that 100k target. But they may also keep the game alive purely to keep it on their books. Their plan is to release an mmo every 18 to 24 months, so they want a collection of mmos and while their collection is small, even a badly performing mmo is good.
That includes free to play MMOs which are huge in Asia.
Take out those and take out WoW and it's up there.
Also that site (mmogchart.com), if you read it, is just a guesstimate. It also only goes up to Jan 08. It hasnt been updated in almost 20 months.
Champions Online will be around for a couple years at least. City of Heroes has been around for over 5 years and it has had even lower numbers.
If you look at the companies' quarterly income & do the math the sub numbers really should be about double that for LoTRO & CoX. Expansions & new players retail purchases can make up part of it, but i highly doubt 1/2.
Don't listen to this guy he must be new to mmorpgs altogether. 100k was considered a great success pre-WoW. 400k was a wild success.
Never ever compare MMOs to titans like WoW. Additionally those charts are just estimates. It's not like NPD where we have hard, sure numbers
I wouldn't be surprised if CO fails to match CoX subscription numbers.
Jack Emmert has said they don't need to to be profitable - over 100k subscribers and they're in the profit zone - but CO has higher system requirements than CoX and a more controversial payment model. And yes I know CoX has some MTs - but most of them are account service fees and the few real MTs are MTs-lite and are tolerated by many in the context that CoX has released years worth of major updates without asking players to cough up money for expansions.
I think the CO lifetime subscription offer is an indication that pre-order sales have been low and they don't expect to hit that 100k target. But they may also keep the game alive purely to keep it on their books. Their plan is to release an mmo every 18 to 24 months, so they want a collection of mmos and while their collection is small, even a badly performing mmo is good.
$200 upfront is nice capital that they can turn around and use to payoff debts and such. They are simply willing to bet due to natural churn most vets get burned out after bout 1.5 yrs. Game devs dont have crystal balls. They really have no idea if they will be wild success or fail. They simply have charts and predictions.
But going for $200 upfront isnt such a bad idea when you are also banking on Microtransactions. And this money they can use at the very least to collect interest and make clever investments into the company
Again, they are banking most players will simply leave for whatever reason same as the makers of guild wars gambled
On the flip[side I can be totally 100% wrong and you will get to rub it in my face 6 months from now. I'm not psychic
My opinion on the matter is simply this, I love the fact that a company will offer a lifetime subscription. I hate paying to play a game I've already bought. Fifty bucks for the box at launch and a years worth of monthly fees, you're paying a little over $200.00 for one game. Not to mention you have to own a PC capable of running said game, let's say at a minimum, $500.00 at least. So that's $700.00 to play one game for one year. Let's add another year. $900 bucks for two years. WoW has been going for, what 5 years now? So, $1,500.00 to play one game for 5 years. Expensive hobby we have, huh?
Computer + game + lifetime sub = about $800, nearly half. I'd say that's a good deal. If only all MMOs came with that offer.
A little about previous comments:
Turbine actually offered the lifetime subscription deal more than once. They offered it again at the anniversary point. I know that because that's when I joined the game.
Turbine doesn't release subscription numbers, as far as I know. They've always been pretty hush hush on that subject ever since Asheron's Call (I loved that game, btw). A success in their eyes is a profit, not 10 million copies sold. They're still running AC, which is believed to only have, at most, 10,000 paying players.
The game's been available for pre-order since early this year - so they don't need a crystal ball.
We also know from past experience that the only mmos to offer lifetime subscriptions have been ones which looked set to underperform.
I think you're right about the MTs too. Most players willing to pay this much up-front would normally have subscribed for a long time - so long-term they lose out by offering a lifetime sub..... unless they simply pump more items into the shopping mall.
But Guild Wars is a totally different creature. LOTRO and Hellgate London are more apt comparisons.
Is this troll thread still going?
The game's been available for pre-order since early this year - so they don't need a crystal ball.
We also know from past experience that the only mmos to offer lifetime subscriptions have been ones which looked set to underperform.
I think you're right about the MTs too. Most players willing to pay this much up-front would normally have subscribed for a long time - so long-term they lose out by offering a lifetime sub..... unless they simply pump more items into the shopping mall.
But Guild Wars is a totally different creature. LOTRO and Hellgate London are more apt comparisons.
LOTRO is fine like I pointed out before. In a world that existed pre-WoW around 100k was pretty good and still is. EVE started out with wayyyyy less.
Well, Cryptic must thank Turbine for delivering a lifetime subscription worth taking. If it wasn't for Turbine, I very much doubt anyone would be interested in Cryptic's offering. The only precedence they would have to relate to would be HGL, and we all know how that turned out.
How come no one brought up the fact that LOTRO offered their lifetime subscriptions after the game launched? This gave people enough time to experience the full scope of the game and make a decision.
With CO you only get until the day before launch. If they had confidence people would be impressed by their product enough they would offer it for the first month of the game.
If they had enough confidence in their product, don't you think they wouldn't offer a lifetime sub at all? Then they could keep cashing in on people each month after it became profitable to the player to stay in the game.
It really just makes me think its a get money quick scheme, designed to bolster their profit numbers of the launch.
Actually i've very surpirsed that other companies havn't gone down this route before, it's just makes complete buisness sense.
If the company, either through research or past experience, can confidently predict the average lifespan of a typical player and price the lifelong sub at that number of months + 1 (2 or 3 if really greedy) they will make more money.
The money comes up front and no waiting for it to drip into the bank balance.
Plus a lifelong sub will always count as an active subscription when you make your 'state of the game' report to the shareholders and/or the press.
Very true, and its not like they'll miss out much on monthly fees seeing as how the MTs will take care of that. I find it interesting how many people are interested in this 200 dollar model when a number of them haven't tested.
I think it's a matter of confidence. Most companies won't offer lifetime subscriptions, because the people who would pay them usually play longer than that (are long term subscribers anyway). So, while it's an infuse of cash early on, lifetime subscriptions is lost money in the long run.
I don't think Turbine was very confident with what they were offering when they launched. The game was very stable, but the content was lacking in the mid-to-end game (or so my friends that played at the time told me). Luckily for Turbine, they introduced content in a very fast manner, so they countered their initial bleeding subscription numbers.
In my opinion Cryptic is on the same boat as Turbine was at the beginning. They are not 100% sure about their product, so they are after the short to mid term benefits of having their initial investment covered as soon as possible and also any development costs for the first year. Beyond that, they will need regular subscribers to keep the game afloat, since lifetimers don't generate profit. Then again, they can go overboard with the RMT item mall, something Turbine decided not to do.
I paid for LoTRo lifetime and I do not feel "pressured" to play.
I based it on turbine's track record with releasing free content. I am happy I did, it's already paid itself back I am playing for "free" now.
I believe the LotRO lifetime accounts that were offered at one point are now a drain on the game. They cost $199 I think and I still hear a lot of people using them. It is actually a bad business model to use and here's why.
The only people who will buy lifetime subs are those who plan on sticking with an MMO for a long period of time, someone that generally only plays for a few months will neve make that kind of purchase because he knows it won't pan out. So all the lifetime accounts sold go to those who will use them for the life of the game (or after they're done sell the accounts to someone else to use) and so those are all now accounts that the company isn't making money on. If you try to compensate by charging for 4 years of game time then even the hardcore players won't buy them.
Basically it will always end up in a way that the company loses out. Either they charge enough to make it interesting ($199) and then those accounts stay active well past their value so the company loses money. Or they charge so much to make sure they don't lose money that no one will buy them. Since $199 is slightly more then the cost of a year as soon as you are a year and 2 months in it's a drain on the company. But who is going to make an investment of $550 bucks or more not knowing how long the game will last.
Very true, and its not like they'll miss out much on monthly fees seeing as how the MTs will take care of that. I find it interesting how many people are interested in this 200 dollar model when a number of them haven't tested.
I actually took the pre-order and 6 month sub before i got into the closed beta, but i'm not typical by any means. I only played CoH because i used to play the Champions PnP game, i only left CoH (after 2 years) because CO was annouced. I probably would have taken the lifetime model if i had the money to throw away. But that's me.
Personally i don't see anything sinister or shifty about offering the lifetime sub prior to open beta, in fact it makes good economic sense from the marketing team, lets convert exisiting Closed Beta players into lifetime, plus cross-pollinate the STO player base..... i just think they neglected to see the minor PR hit they took by doing so.
I don't really see it ever as being a bad model. Guild wars basically did the same thing for 50 bucks, and my account is still active. Bought expansions... so on.
They're charing 4 times that price plus the box for the game in LOTRO and CO. Plus CO will have MTs and LOTRO has had expansions, so they are still making money.... plus as someone said before the lifetime sub will always count as a subscriber.. so even if the servers are dead you still can say "WE HAVE XXXX AMOUNT OF SUBSCRIBERS" to draw a larger community hoping to find a player base that turned out to be waning.
I think thats COs focus, its trying to bolster the population as much as they can as early as possible. Eventually when they get into the swing of the MTs and their already PLANNED expansions, it won't matter how many people are still playing in game, the current playerbase will probably have paid or will be paying twice their worth.
Yes, but they have their cash shop to make up for that. Business wise it's a smart choice.
Game wise I see people who bought the lifetime sub being disappointed in a couple months, but Cryptic is offering STO beta access which counteracts that by being 'something to look forward to'. It's really a brilliant strategy on their part, especially since CO is such a weak game.
It makes me very trepidacious about what STO will be like.
Bill Roper....