The bigger problem is not the price of a subscription but the price of a game and what has been called the "race to the bottom".
16 years ago if a game cost $5M then a company would in simple terms work out something like: $5M development cost or whatever + manufacturing + marketing + profit = N. We expect to sell 1M or whatever = $X per box + retailer mark up + tax. Basic pricing stuff.
What happened 16 years ago though is that when the hardware to run an online game came was added in the $X per box worked out way more than what people were used to paying for their games. The sub was born.
Today hardware etc. costs as @Nanfoodle said are a footnote. Most stuff is distributed online so ess marketing. With growing on-line distribution game companies are able to retain a far higher %. Worldwide markets mean games can sell far more than they used to. Oh and lots more people play games - of all ages. So they are actually in a better position. Except that they are not.
Global means more potential sales but there are also more games for us to choose from. And people search on price "low to high". Which is the race to the bottom.
In theory the publisher can calculate costs as before. Without the need to add in a sub. However $Y is increasingly more than the market average.
Can they afford not to though?
If your game costs $50 or $100M companies - if they plan on b2p - they have to aim to get $50M or $100M back in the first "weeks" after it is launched. Or allow for a cash shop. The stupid - some say dishonest - approach is to launch expecting to not cover costs and expect subs to make up any shaortfall. As some suspect the likes of AoC, WAR, SWTOR, TSW did. Hardly a surprise if subs came to be seen to not offer "value" - especially with Activision Blizzard releasing just 1 - one - content patch in the three years between 5.4 and the launch of Legion!
I think I'm beginning to understand why Trump got elected if the average wage in the US is still the same after 15 years...
The average wage has remained near the same levels in the US due to a larger amount of people on government programs who have discovered it is much easier to pump out kids rather than get a job. There are many good paying jobs for those willing to work and who have a skill that is a bit more in demand than asking people if they want fries with that, but I'm getting a bit off track.
How many of us would be willing to pay $25 to $30 a month for a good game with no cash shop?
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
I'd gladly pay $21 a month to have access to everything and not be nickel-and-dimed in a cash shop. Cash shops weren't introduced because game devs didn't think people would pay a higher monthly sub cost though, they were introduced because for the majority of games, a cash shop is more profitable for the company, even more so than it would be for them to offer an increased monthly sub rate.
We made cash shops a thing and I know when that happens. Many years ago Blizzard put what the community calls the "Sparkle Pony" mount. Over the weekend they sold 25 milling bucks from Friday night to Sunday. Blizzard is not hurting for cash but that moment made every game company stop and go hmmm. Was not long after that services we use to get for free became micro dings. Again not because companies were broke but because we were willing to pay for stupid things we used to earn by playing the game. Now you dont need to play at all. Like that guy the spent 25k in RL money to have a maxed out char in EVE.
Celestial Steed became available in 2010. Cash shops were a thing well before then.
They were never a focus till then for sub style games. That was the moment every subed game went "what just happened?"
That's an ArcheAge screenshot. Yes it's game graphics not a cinematic.
I never realised the game was that beautiful.
There are reasons that I literally have signature about how much I hate grinding and still play ArcheAge. Part of it is definitely how beautiful and immersive the world feels.
That picture looks gorgeous. Is that an in game shot? What game?
Yes, its an actual Archeage screenshot. However, due to the fact that developers allow players to run rampant designing anything they want for in-game use you also end up with completely immersion breaking screenshots like this:
You couldn't pay me to play Archeage, much less myself pay a sub, to play a game where they allow players to shit all over the genre with out of game crap like this.
Yeah the housing districts are cesspools. Some of them anyway. I don't really spend any time there anyway though so it doesn't hurt me much. The main thing I have to deal with is an occasional ship sail that looks dumb. Cannons can solve that problem. >:D
I've never bought my search engine. I don't know anyone who has.16 years ago I was in second year kinesiology. We were using hot bot back then.
Your right some things are cheaper. By and large your dollar is worth less today than it was in the past. It buys less groceries, less clothes, less food, less home, almost less of everything.
Certain products have greatly benefited from improvements in technology, so their costs have gone down dramatically.
More durable goods which technology improvements impact their cost less have gone up year over year.
Sometimes adding new tech drives up the cost of an item, automobiles and cell phones come to mind.
Movie theaters are an interesting case study, managing to thrive selling relatively inexpensive tickets and outrageously priced snacks in an era where some people's home theaters rival the commercial houses.
But they aren't just selling you a movie, more and more they sell an entertainment experience. Oversize, comfortable seating, better quality dining, 3D, 4K, Dolby surround sound.
Perhaps most important of all which most married/family men would attest to, it provides an almost priceless opportunity to go "out" when you are long past the time of hanging out in bars.
If MMORPGs would find a way to truly offer a premium experience there would be a solid audience for a higher sub price S
I know I definitely shell out the extra cost fit the large define chair reserved seating and food service. Much more enjoyable.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I don't agree with the math at all. A reason i could accept is to say there was little competition so you could easily ask for 15 because you were the only game in town.
However it is hit and miss,obviously Blizzard with 16 million subs and at 15 a pop,that is a boat load of money and yes it paid the bills and some and would still EASILY pay the bills.The math btw is 16 milx15=240 <<<<<<<TWO HUNDRED and 40 million,if that can't pay the bills,you had better quit the game development business and as quickly as possible. Now of course if paying attention,i did say that was then at 16 million.Obviously you are not the only game in town and there is a massive huge over crowded market.
It still should not matter,it is all about QUALITY.if you are selling a Lincoln Navigator you WILL get the asking price but if you are trying to get that same asking price selling a Smart Car,then you again should quit the business of game development because you have no clue about market value.
Long story short ,it most certainly does still work,even after so many complain Wow has changed for the worse ,it still has moire subs than any other game.If the market decides your game is of quality,they will pay.Otherwise it is a large market full of crappy developers trying to compete for a very small slice of the pie with an inferior product. One last point...15 bucks was way too much back then,we were getting outright ripped off,especially since we were also paying for expansions that our 15 bucks was already paying for,so devs were double dipping.A QUALITY game would or should still get a million or so customers and at 15 a pop that is 15 million a month,that is EASILY again enough to "pay the bills" AND fund the next expansion.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I don't know the exact date that 15$ subs became a thing. I believe it was around 2000. It definitely was by 2003. Check this out though:
That was hard to track down, but with some use of waybackmachine.org I found a some info on sub prices for everquest... july 2001: 9.89$ monthly sub july 2003: 12.95$ monthly sub
I didn't bother to try and find wow subs, but I remember wow and everquest switched to 15$ at the same time.
Take those number and add inflation etc 25$ is probably a good guess. I know I would pay a sub of 25$ or more if a mmorpg made today could match everquest anno 2002. I have ran a 6box @ 15$ sub before and paid without a second thought - If you put it in price per hour of entertainment it is still very cheap indeed.
There is no reason why mmorpg should have a subscription.
The old argument was network costs but that hasn't been true for a very long time. A newer argument is frequent content creation but developers never managed to do do frequent enough content patches to warrant $15 a month. The real reason for subscription is that they wish to earn more money and for a very long time mmorpg were a golden cow for publishers.
The reason customers paid $15 a month to access the game was that mmorpg back then had a unique experience you couldn't find elsewhere. That hasn't been true ever since we started to have wow-clones popping up everywhere and as mmorpg became more and more about solo gameplay people no longer want to pay $180 a year just to access a game.
If you want to charge people for extra content just sell it as dlc. It will be more than enough to keep things running.
Citation needed.
I believe it's a little more complicated than 'well, why turn off the money faucet'?
You can rent a cloud server from Google, but do you have any idea what sort of specs you would need to run a MMORPG? Do you know of anywhere you can get this for free (other than offloading the burden to the players themselves in a peer-to-peer network including all the pitfalls that entails)?
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
The problem that investors have with making new mmorpg has more to do with the initial cost of creating an mmorpg and little to do with how much they cost to run. These games went from costing $2M-$5M and now they are somewhere in the region of $100M-$200M. Instead of making it all back on box sales and a few months subscriptions it takes far more time to pay back the investment to make their original investment back. I have heard talk about half of all mmorpg project never make it to launch and that's a pretty tough gamble to make.
What made it worth the gamble was that if your gamble paid off you had a part of the golden cow and got huge money thanks to subscription. Nowadays the golden cow has moved on to other genres.
Please make sure to show a graph on how much of that $15 subscription goes to pay for network costs and tell me why I should keep paying for them.
No.
You made the claim that network costs are no longer a factor, you provide the graph.
I agree with you regarding the initial cost of development along with risk. Given that creating a MMORPG is such a huge undertaking, it's great that some companies are willing to take the long view and earn back their initial outlay maybe even ten years down the road. It shows dedication.
I can't answer for you why you should pay a subscription, other than you like what's being offered. If I found the same type of experience for free, I probably would take it.
At a time when aion was at its peak with 2M-3M monthly subscribers the monthly network cost for the whole company was less than $1M per month. This means that network cost less than 50 cents if we say that aion only had 2M subscribers and ignore all other games that the company has.
Numbers taken from ncsoft back in q3 2009.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
A million customers (subs) was almost (not totally) unheard of in old games and today is still extremely rare.
If a developer is aiming for a million subs, great. If their budget for the game is contingent on a million subs, they are fools.
For a million subs they will need all the bells and whistles, meaning it will cost 100+ million and then they will absolutely need that much. Not much leeway there.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
A million customers (subs) was almost (not totally) unheard of in old games and today is still extremely rare.
If a developer is aiming for a million subs, great. If their budget for the game is contingent on a million subs, they are fools.
For a million subs they will need all the bells and whistles, meaning it will cost 100+ million and then they will absolutely need that much. Not much leeway there.
What do you think you're getting by paying a subscription fee that you wouldn't otherwise get? -It's not quality so what is it?
And thats what we used to ask ourselves all the time....We paid for the game already and they still ding us? and for what? SO Smedley can drive a fancier car?
Its business. They will ask what they think they can get away with, aiming at max profit. This is not evil or good, it is just commercial business.
WoW still asks the same, even though their needed back end technology has become way cheaper compared to 10 years ago (with inflation included). But Blizzard can get away with it. It has hordes of fans still and they are simply used to paying that sub price.
Newer MMO's will have to watch the market and just can't risk asking any price without checking what else is there.
The market also seems over saturated with online gaming compared to 10 years ago.
- There is the Steam platform, with its endless amount multiplayer games that you can pick up for a few bucks every sale. This is serious competition too.
- Online console games play a much larger role now too. So I think in general there is just less player budget to go around for MMO's. They have much fiercer competition now within online gaming. So I think its to be expected that they look at different business models.
- Online mobile games. This might not put a big dent in people's budget normally, but they take up their time, otherwise maybe used for MMO's.
There is no reason why mmorpg should have a subscription.
The old argument was network costs but that hasn't been true for a very long time. A newer argument is frequent content creation but developers never managed to do do frequent enough content patches to warrant $15 a month. The real reason for subscription is that they wish to earn more money and for a very long time mmorpg were a golden cow for publishers.
The reason customers paid $15 a month to access the game was that mmorpg back then had a unique experience you couldn't find elsewhere. That hasn't been true ever since we started to have wow-clones popping up everywhere and as mmorpg became more and more about solo gameplay people no longer want to pay $180 a year just to access a game.
If you want to charge people for extra content just sell it as dlc. It will be more than enough to keep things running.
Citation needed.
I believe it's a little more complicated than 'well, why turn off the money faucet'?
You can rent a cloud server from Google, but do you have any idea what sort of specs you would need to run a MMORPG? Do you know of anywhere you can get this for free (other than offloading the burden to the players themselves in a peer-to-peer network including all the pitfalls that entails)?
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
The problem that investors have with making new mmorpg has more to do with the initial cost of creating an mmorpg and little to do with how much they cost to run. These games went from costing $2M-$5M and now they are somewhere in the region of $100M-$200M. Instead of making it all back on box sales and a few months subscriptions it takes far more time to pay back the investment to make their original investment back. I have heard talk about half of all mmorpg project never make it to launch and that's a pretty tough gamble to make.
What made it worth the gamble was that if your gamble paid off you had a part of the golden cow and got huge money thanks to subscription. Nowadays the golden cow has moved on to other genres.
Please make sure to show a graph on how much of that $15 subscription goes to pay for network costs and tell me why I should keep paying for them.
No.
You made the claim that network costs are no longer a factor, you provide the graph.
I agree with you regarding the initial cost of development along with risk. Given that creating a MMORPG is such a huge undertaking, it's great that some companies are willing to take the long view and earn back their initial outlay maybe even ten years down the road. It shows dedication.
I can't answer for you why you should pay a subscription, other than you like what's being offered. If I found the same type of experience for free, I probably would take it.
At a time when aion was at its peak with 2M-3M monthly subscribers the monthly network cost for the whole company was less than $1M per month. This means that network cost less than 50 cents if we say that aion only had 2M subscribers and ignore all other games that the company has.
Numbers taken from ncsoft back in q3 2009.
Okay, now we're getting somewhere. I'd still like to see a link for where you pulled that number from.
What is "network cost" exactly? Is it just bandwidth or does it include hardware and database maintenance? How directly does it scale with the number of users?
I don't think 1M monthly is something to dismiss out of hand.
Say for example that your network cost includes some fixed overhead; charging a certain number of dollars per user might go toward ensuring that this overhead is met. If your game does really well and the number of users explodes you might end up hiring more developers or whatever, or turning a profit. There is nothing wrong with this.
As a consumer, I'm only concerned with the sub cost as a potential barrier to entry. There are any number of reasons to justify paying a subscription once I've found a game that I like.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
Put in the year you played your first 15 and the year you played your first 15$ sub game and hit "Calculate".
Based on my estimation of 2000, a 15$ sub should now cost people 21$. Yet subscription prices have not increased whatsoever. People just want to go back to the good old days of 15$ subs but it's a lot like people who want to go back to the good old days of five cent coffee. It's been 16 years. We went through a major recession during that time period. 15$ doesn't pay the bills anymore.
No consumers have ever shown any indication of being tolerant to them jacking up the prices though. Any MMO that did would be massacred by public opinion as "greedy money grabbers." So they gave us cash shops instead. That's on us.
I wouldn't mind paying $40 a month for a Tripple A MMORPG worth playing .
But fact is Gaming Industry in so called (FREE 2 Play) still loves to jack up prices, screw over people all the time they are killing off the industry....
Even World OF Warcraft the only MMO I know of in the U.S besides ESO I think that was made here was great at first slowly killed off by the developers, even the Default UI is awful, character models never renewed to anything worth playing its time for a new up to date version of World OF Warcraft.
A million customers (subs) was almost (not totally) unheard of in old games and today is still extremely rare.
If a developer is aiming for a million subs, great. If their budget for the game is contingent on a million subs, they are fools.
For a million subs they will need all the bells and whistles, meaning it will cost 100+ million and then they will absolutely need that much. Not much leeway there.
What "old" games had a million subs at one time?
Lineage 1
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
A million customers (subs) was almost (not totally) unheard of in old games and today is still extremely rare.
If a developer is aiming for a million subs, great. If their budget for the game is contingent on a million subs, they are fools.
For a million subs they will need all the bells and whistles, meaning it will cost 100+ million and then they will absolutely need that much. Not much leeway there.
What "old" games had a million subs at one time?
Lineage 1
Oh yeah I forgot about linage...but that number is a little misleading due to the ban they had on specifically Japan exports in Korea where they had most of their subs.
Take those number and add inflation etc 25$ is probably a good guess. I know I would pay a sub of 25$ or more if a mmorpg made today could match everquest anno 2002. I have ran a 6box @ 15$ sub before and paid without a second thought - If you put it in price per hour of entertainment it is still very cheap indeed.
The problem is you're looking at this in a vacuum. It seems like a good deal to you because you want it to be a good deal, but compared to other online digital entertainment $25 monthly is top end Premium for a single service.
The commitment to another monthly payment is a huge negative for most people. Yet another bill and what do you get out of it, just access to the service? There are still dlc/box fees and extras.
For me a sub of whatever is fair but I understand for others it may not be the best deal. I play many hours a month (still) and also the value of a the game experience (entertainment value) multiplies for me when I am on even terms (which you can never be with any f2p cash shop model) - not to mention the entire game design is deeply affected by the monetization model.
I know subs are not a great business model anymore, but there are options (and untried options) that does not mess with the game design and player experience (feeling of accomplishment, even terms, inspiration). Pay per hour is still untried, paid content additions (micro transactions) are fair to me because it does not mess with the game itself, even currency to play time models are ok as long as the currency can not be used for other ingame stuff. There are ways to avoid the problems f2p cash shop applies to a mmorpg, that are not subscription based... I say with conviction and hope
A million customers (subs) was almost (not totally) unheard of in old games and today is still extremely rare.
If a developer is aiming for a million subs, great. If their budget for the game is contingent on a million subs, they are fools.
For a million subs they will need all the bells and whistles, meaning it will cost 100+ million and then they will absolutely need that much. Not much leeway there.
What "old" games had a million subs at one time?
Lineage 1
Oh yeah I forgot about linage...but that number is a little misleading due to the ban they had on specifically Japan exports in Korea where they had most of their subs.
That is the first time I've ever heard that story so I looked it up, very interesting.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
now we have more options , i remember playing 1 and just 1 mmorpg for years to no end....and i remember never getting bored (or little) ...hell i remmeber maining 1 class for 3 years and maybe leveling another 1...just a bit ...u had so many things to do... and i 16-18 y.o with plenty of time to play.
Nowadays...u have 1000 mmorpgs 90% are crap , and i get bored fast , plus i suffer alt-coholism....and cant find to main anything...ugh...
Money? meh , now i have plenty , but outside some gems in gw2 (to buy a char slot) some cash shop currency in MH to buy my favorite heroe....little to no money spent....outside subs....
if the game is worth i dont mind tossing some $ ...but still to find a game worth that...hell i even stopped playing FFXIV (that i never stop since 2.0 until 2 months ago ~) was worth it? hell yeah , but got tired of it , raiding wasnt fun , had to farm a lot on consumables , and was getting bored because if u are a raider there everything that isnt raid isnt worth , not even for alts...
tried wow legion , meh raided a bit , and while not bored , the community sucked....badly...so byebye
. There are ways to avoid the problems f2p cash shop applies to a mmorpg, that are not subscription based... I say with conviction and hope
And ways to get around subscription models as well - multiple accounts - especially in any game with pvp, paying people in some way for power levelling.
Bottomline: whatever the payment model people - if they want - will find a way of getting what they want.
Comments
16 years ago if a game cost $5M then a company would in simple terms work out something like: $5M development cost or whatever + manufacturing + marketing + profit = N. We expect to sell 1M or whatever = $X per box + retailer mark up + tax. Basic pricing stuff.
What happened 16 years ago though is that when the hardware to run an online game came was added in the $X per box worked out way more than what people were used to paying for their games. The sub was born.
Today hardware etc. costs as @Nanfoodle said are a footnote. Most stuff is distributed online so ess marketing. With growing on-line distribution game companies are able to retain a far higher %. Worldwide markets mean games can sell far more than they used to. Oh and lots more people play games - of all ages. So they are actually in a better position. Except that they are not.
Global means more potential sales but there are also more games for us to choose from. And people search on price "low to high". Which is the race to the bottom.
In theory the publisher can calculate costs as before. Without the need to add in a sub. However $Y is increasingly more than the market average.
Can they afford not to though?
If your game costs $50 or $100M companies - if they plan on b2p - they have to aim to get $50M or $100M back in the first "weeks" after it is launched. Or allow for a cash shop. The stupid - some say dishonest - approach is to launch expecting to not cover costs and expect subs to make up any shaortfall. As some suspect the likes of AoC, WAR, SWTOR, TSW did. Hardly a surprise if subs came to be seen to not offer "value" - especially with Activision Blizzard releasing just 1 - one - content patch in the three years between 5.4 and the launch of Legion!
Is there hope? Well not everyone sees it as a "race to the bottom" but is is an issue. And it impacts engine developers as well as game companies as discussed here: https://www.develop-online.net/analysis/how-low-can-the-big-three-game-engines-go/0205400
And going forward things may change again depending on what Amazon does.
How many of us would be willing to pay $25 to $30 a month for a good game with no cash shop?
A reason i could accept is to say there was little competition so you could easily ask for 15 because you were the only game in town.
However it is hit and miss,obviously Blizzard with 16 million subs and at 15 a pop,that is a boat load of money and yes it paid the bills and some and would still EASILY pay the bills.The math btw is 16 milx15=240 <<<<<<<TWO HUNDRED and 40 million,if that can't pay the bills,you had better quit the game development business and as quickly as possible.
Now of course if paying attention,i did say that was then at 16 million.Obviously you are not the only game in town and there is a massive huge over crowded market.
It still should not matter,it is all about QUALITY.if you are selling a Lincoln Navigator you WILL get the asking price but if you are trying to get that same asking price selling a Smart Car,then you again should quit the business of game development because you have no clue about market value.
Long story short ,it most certainly does still work,even after so many complain Wow has changed for the worse ,it still has moire subs than any other game.If the market decides your game is of quality,they will pay.Otherwise it is a large market full of crappy developers trying to compete for a very small slice of the pie with an inferior product.
One last point...15 bucks was way too much back then,we were getting outright ripped off,especially since we were also paying for expansions that our 15 bucks was already paying for,so devs were double dipping.A QUALITY game would or should still get a million or so customers and at 15 a pop that is 15 million a month,that is EASILY again enough to "pay the bills" AND fund the next expansion.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
july 2001: 9.89$ monthly sub
july 2003: 12.95$ monthly sub
I didn't bother to try and find wow subs, but I remember wow and everquest switched to 15$ at the same time.
Take those number and add inflation etc 25$ is probably a good guess. I know I would pay a sub of 25$ or more if a mmorpg made today could match everquest anno 2002. I have ran a 6box @ 15$ sub before and paid without a second thought - If you put it in price per hour of entertainment it is still very cheap indeed.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Numbers taken from ncsoft back in q3 2009.
If a developer is aiming for a million subs, great. If their budget for the game is contingent on a million subs, they are fools.
For a million subs they will need all the bells and whistles, meaning it will cost 100+ million and then they will absolutely need that much. Not much leeway there.
WoW still asks the same, even though their needed back end technology has become way cheaper compared to 10 years ago (with inflation included). But Blizzard can get away with it. It has hordes of fans still and they are simply used to paying that sub price.
Newer MMO's will have to watch the market and just can't risk asking any price without checking what else is there.
The market also seems over saturated with online gaming compared to 10 years ago.
- There is the Steam platform, with its endless amount multiplayer games that you can pick up for a few bucks every sale. This is serious competition too.
- Online console games play a much larger role now too. So I think in general there is just less player budget to go around for MMO's. They have much fiercer competition now within online gaming. So I think its to be expected that they look at different business models.
- Online mobile games. This might not put a big dent in people's budget normally, but they take up their time, otherwise maybe used for MMO's.
What is "network cost" exactly? Is it just bandwidth or does it include hardware and database maintenance? How directly does it scale with the number of users?
I don't think 1M monthly is something to dismiss out of hand.
Say for example that your network cost includes some fixed overhead; charging a certain number of dollars per user might go toward ensuring that this overhead is met. If your game does really well and the number of users explodes you might end up hiring more developers or whatever, or turning a profit. There is nothing wrong with this.
As a consumer, I'm only concerned with the sub cost as a potential barrier to entry. There are any number of reasons to justify paying a subscription once I've found a game that I like.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
But fact is Gaming Industry in so called (FREE 2 Play) still loves to jack up prices, screw over people all the time they are killing off the industry....
Even World OF Warcraft the only MMO I know of in the U.S besides ESO I think that was made here was great at first slowly killed off by the developers, even the Default UI is awful, character models never renewed to anything worth playing its time for a new up to date version of World OF Warcraft.
I know subs are not a great business model anymore, but there are options (and untried options) that does not mess with the game design and player experience (feeling of accomplishment, even terms, inspiration).
Pay per hour is still untried, paid content additions (micro transactions) are fair to me because it does not mess with the game itself, even currency to play time models are ok as long as the currency can not be used for other ingame stuff. There are ways to avoid the problems f2p cash shop applies to a mmorpg, that are not subscription based... I say with conviction and hope
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
And we paid it. Subscription service was the compromise for those who complained about the cost. How much would dinner and a movie cost someone?
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Nowadays...u have 1000 mmorpgs 90% are crap , and i get bored fast , plus i suffer alt-coholism....and cant find to main anything...ugh...
Money? meh , now i have plenty , but outside some gems in gw2 (to buy a char slot) some cash shop currency in MH to buy my favorite heroe....little to no money spent....outside subs....
if the game is worth i dont mind tossing some $ ...but still to find a game worth that...hell i even stopped playing FFXIV (that i never stop since 2.0 until 2 months ago ~) was worth it? hell yeah , but got tired of it , raiding wasnt fun , had to farm a lot on consumables , and was getting bored because if u are a raider there everything that isnt raid isnt worth , not even for alts...
tried wow legion , meh raided a bit , and while not bored , the community sucked....badly...so byebye
Bottomline: whatever the payment model people - if they want - will find a way of getting what they want.