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The thing about life-time subscriptions
ArcAngel3
Member Posts: 2,931
...is that they may not last very long these days. Sometimes I wonder if people know this refers to the life of the game. We've seen a lot of sloppy, rushed out, broken games over the past few years. This seems to make life-time subs a bad idea.
Also, you know how some people will defend their online funpark no matter what, even if their comments clearly defy reality? Well anyone who sinks a few hundred bucks into an MMO, pre-launch, will now have a few hundred reasons to defend their investment, come hell or high water. Either that, or they're gonna have a few hundred reasons to be extremely pissed off if it shuts down prematurely after a bad launch.
Comments
If you buy a lifetime sub before playing the game for at least 6 months then you get what you deserve, imo.
I laughed when they first started doing these.
I laughed hard.
Cease And Repent.
My problem with lifetime subscriptions is that a player gives up his or her most powerful form of self-advocacy: the ability to cancel his/ her subscription. People who buy these things seem to think they're buying the equivalent of a First Class ticket, entitled to be pampered in perpetuity. But they aren't. They're saying, "Hello game developer, you've already made as much money off of me as you ever will, so feel free to ignore me forever."
But you're right that there's the risk of a game going under before the lifetime sub balances out with the cost of paying month to month. If people knew what shaky grounds Atari was on financially, I think many fewer people would have bought lifetime subs to Champions and Star Trek Online.
Played beta in lotro and got the lifetime subscription when they offer it. One of best decision I ever made IMO.
Yeh i don't regret getting it at all and it is the only lifetime membership i would even recommend to anyone.
This.
And " I LOL'D hard" at those who didn't, daily.
Arg, I really wish I had bought a Lifetime Sub for LotRO. I was concerned because I didn't know for sure if I would play it that long, but after the first couple of updates, I was sure, but it was too late
If I could've gotten a llife time sub for WoW at the beginning, I'd have saved a lot of money over the years.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Life time sub is not a bad idea, it is just a bad idea when they only offer it before the game comes out as a special...I think people should be allowed to play the game for a number of months before getting a life time sub.
Making it limited before release is a clever marketing trick that gets allot of people sucked in before release.
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
Well I got the lifetime for LOTRO, as I thought the game would be around a long time.
The problem, is after 3 years of live and 1.5 years of open/closed betas I am done.
So did I save some money maybe, but I will never ever again go lifetime for any product., and the main reaons being is things change, and you loose your right to vote with your wallet.
yeah that is a good point actually, never saw it that way
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
Definitely true. I have a lifetime sub to LOTRO and I've been regretting it well, pretty much every moment after my 3rd month. I used to force myself to play a few hours every month, I can't even stand that any more.
Still, part of the trouble is, you don't always have the chance to get a lifetime sub, or a chance to get a lifetime sub at a certain price. Mine was $199.99, but if I had waited 6 months, it would have been $299.99 (plus 6 months at $10 each). So it's a gamble.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
14.99 x 12=178.99
178.99x2=357.98
178.99x 3=539.64
If remember correctly life time subs where between 200-300.All MMO has to do last 2 years and you come out ahead.I know this is shot Champions and STO but Cryptic will keep those game alive.
This was my arguement for going of r a life sub to STO - All the other MMO's I'd played in the past I had played them for over 2 years so I htought I was going to be quids in.
However.....
Now I'm not so sure - I enjoyed the beta and thought the game needed more work but htat it would get better. Now I can't be bothered to log on anymore (See pic of Stopship stuck at a magically Q-Net...)
I don't what drives life time subs - Are they ways to ensure continued funding for development either through the funds or hitting player targets to release more funds from investors (After all - Anyone could get 100,000 email registers but making people part with cold hard cash is a different matter.)
or
, to be more cynical, are they a way of dev companies thinking - Jeez we've made a real turkey here - lets get as much cash in the bank as we can before this bombs
I will think long and hard before I shell out for a life sub again.
I still remember the unfortunate people who took up Lifetime Subscriptions to Hellgate: London, only to see it go down the pan about 10 or 12 months later. I thought it was a pretty big risk at the time, and nothing has proved otherwise to me since.
Lifetime subs are like committing to marriage before you're born. It just doesn't make sense unless you have more information about what you're getting into.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Well, I played LOTRO for about 4-6 months, WoW for several years, Ryzom for several months, AOC for a couple months, etc, etc. etc. There are two points to this: 1) It would have only saved me money with one game if all the above mentioned games actually offered lifetime subs and all those subs had the same savings built in.
2) A few posters have said this already, but when you get a lifetime membership- you give up the right to vote with your wallet. You also create a new problem which is that, the more people who get lifetime subs, the less recurring money there is to be made which leads to things like item shops, paid expansions, paid content, etc. These companies need to genereate residual income. That is why they sell pets, that is why they create new content, that is why they fix bugs
A witty saying proves nothing.
-Voltaire
While I agree 100% about losing the right to vote with your wallet, I absolutely LOVE lifetime subscriptions!
They actually take the pressure off me to "have to play" to justify paying the monthly sub...because it's already paid for. If Ryzom or DDO or City of Villians did it, I'd have lifetime subs with them as well as LOTRO! The way I look at it, $200 = 2 years. I intend to play each of them more than that, but since I have the lifetime with LOTRO, I can play one of the others and then go back now & again to LOTRO.
<p align=center><a target=_blank href=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm><img border=0 src=http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/20.jpg></a></p>;
Which is why WoW never offered, and never will most likely, offer a lifetime subscription. They know they can make far, far more money from enticing people to pay the monthly subscription year after year than they would by charging them for one lump sum.
If Champions Online lasts seven years, then Cryptic will be losing money every month on those who bought lifetime subscriptions and are still playing the game. Of course, Cryptic is hoping to recoup those costs through micro-transactions, but considering the Vibora Pay fiasco who knows how much their player base will give into that?
I was a early beta tester for LOTRO, when they gave out the lifetime sub option I jumped all over it. Getting the lifetime sub was the best decision I ever made with that game. I played lotro 30hrs a week for nearly 2.5 years.
Even though I dont currently play lotro its nice to know that if I want I can go back anytime to play and talk to friends and not have to pay a dime
Oh Noes Its The Forum Police
For all of you who say buying lifetime makes you lose the ability to vote with your wallets there are a few things to keep in mind.
1. If we're a monthly subscriber our $10-15 vote doesn't mean jack to an mmo company unless monthly subscribers leave en masse in a huge group (like with SWG), so if we as an individual are upset about something our canceling "vote" won't likely change anything.
2. Lifetime subscribers still represent future money. When expansions are released lifetimers are virtually a guaranteed source of buyers, even if the lifetimer has left the game they're likely to come back, buy it, and "check it out for a month" when an expansion is released since they still have an active account. A monthly subscriber who has left has much less of a chance of returning and buying it. This means that making lifetimers upset is a guaranteed loss of sales on expansions (they can still vote with their wallets).
3. Lifetimers tend to be among the more active and loyal players of the game, coming back often even after long breaks, thus ensuring fuller servers and showing signs of a healthy population to new players and monthly subs. Making the Lifetimers leave, at least en masse, even though the company already has their money, removes some of their most loyal players who help keep the servers active meaning a less populated server. New players and current monthly subscribers have less people to play with and increase their chance of leaving themselves which in the end means lost revenue to the company.
4. Lifetimers, especially happy ones, are more likely to buy a second or more extra Lifetime accounts for family members, for themselves, or as gifts to friends. I know of many LotRO players who have purchased 3-6 Lifetime accounts, and many more who only have one but are considering buying a second or third. If the company angers players when there is a Lifetime option in the game, they are losing out on many chunks of future Lifetime purchases, each Lifetime purchase being a greater amount than the usual monthly subscription (average 6 month subscription before the typical player moves on to another game). Monthly subscribers are less likely to start extra accounts, especially to such an extreme as 5 or 6, when they have to ensure they have the money to pay all those monthly fees for more accounts.
Anyway, these are just things to keep in mind on how lifetimers still vote with their wallets.
I never bought a lifetime sub, but if Bethesda releases an Elder Scrolls MMO I would consider it.
Good point, and I agree that this is a marketting trick that doesn't do the gamer any favours.
A lot of people are pleased with their decision to life-sub for LOTR it seems. That tells me that its probably a good game, and one that treats players alright.
How many games offering a life-time sub can you say this about? Case in point: Hellgate London. An optional lifetime sub was selling for $149.99. A sub was optional, but this entitled you to a lot of additional content, character slots and other perks...for the life of the game, which wasn't very long.
As someone else pointed out, when you shell out the big check right out of the gate, you've just lost the ability to vote with your wallet. You're now at the mercy of the MMO executive class...scary thought.
Also, I want to respond to this comment you made, "I can go back anytime to play and talk to friends and not have to pay a dime." You don't have to pay a dime now because you already paid $199.00. You do realize that don't you?
This would make more sense to me if you were talking about a game like Guild Wars. This is extremely casual friendly because you can do exactly what you're saying, without having to pay the two hundred bucks upfront that you may or may not ever actually use.
Reasons you may not use it include the following: you might find the game boring or repetitive after a couple of months, it might get a nasty revamp (that you won't have anything to say about because you paid up front), your server might get closed, the business model may change (new content may become available only via RMT), or the game may close entirely. Tbh, I've seen each and every one of these things happen in major MMO titles.
Someone already said it this way: a lifetime sub is a real gamble.
If he played 30 hrs/wk for 2,5 years, he got his $199(or dime's) worth and then some.
He is technically playing on their dime now.
IMO for someone like that, which includes myself, the lifetime deal was a steal for LOTRO. At $9.99 a month, the cheapest monthly rate offered at release, it would only have taken you roughly 20 months to break even on that deal. Less if you count it against the $14.99 rate. Those of us who were in the beta for LOTRO knew it was a deal.
That being said, I would never jump on a lifetime sub if I wasn't involved in some stage of testing. Being in the beta of LOTRO gave me an idea of who and what I was dealing with when I considered the lifetime sub.
It works for some, not so well for others. I think it's a good thing but it really depends on a case by case basis.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!