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.
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.
Blizzard seems to be doing okay.
Yeah that fact shuts down this entire thread for me.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
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 would pay a $15 sub monthly again if it meant no cash shops and full game access. Hell, I'd pay $21 if that was the fee for a great game.
Put in the year you played your first 15 and the year you played your first 15$ 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.
Blizzard seems to be doing okay.
So is FFXIV
A handful of titles which still survive on a mandatory sub model does not prove the argument.
I believe most of them still offer items and services outside of the monthly sub which would support the OP's points.
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
Cost of decent comps back in the day of first 15$a month sub roughly $700-800 cost of a comp today needed to code and run graphics/testing roughly $700-800, an that's better then they probably need, probably cheaper in bulk an with connections a game company has. Cost of a newb programmer is cheaper today then it was back then 45-50k, back then 80-100k everything else is just coding time and testing time which falls under the salary of employees so I could argue it's cheaper now to make a game then it was for the first 15$ a month sub game. Which is probably why there are so many crap games, and throw togethers,
Subs aren't working because companies refuse to reinvest the money they are getting when they have it. It's not the sub that isn't working. It's that people want their money's worth for the sub. Many games are stagnating content heavily while focusing quite heavily on a rather casual solo friendly experience and then hitting the same end game treadmill grind of dungeons and raiding... It is rather formulaic since it happened in WoW and has rather dulled down the overall MMORPG experience.
As it stands many people are able to finish and get to end game within the first month of a games release and with less and less people interested in the endless treadmill that is end game content you end up in a situation where those people lose complete and utter interest in the game potentially until there is more content happening and that content is often several months out if not longer. So while initial sales are good the player base can quickly tank and many mmorpg developers/producers end up swapping to f2p as an option instead of churning out content that actually takes awhile and holds people's attention.
This all sort of comes down to the "WoW syndrome" as I like to call it with development. Too many games have followed suite of WoW that it is sort of like "meh why bother when I can just play WoW". Look at the sub game that actually does well outside of WoW. The one that does the best outside of WoW currently is Final Fantasy 14 (A Realm Reborn and Heavensward) this is heavily because FFXIV doesn't have massive content droughts and they frequently release new content between expansions (so much so that the actual content of the patches are pretty much a full expansion unto themselves by most normal measurements) thus they tend to keep people's interest for a lot longer.
A sub game has to have new content rolled out on a regular enough basis, can't be too too easy that you steam roll the content within the first month (make it take at least 3 - 4 MINIMUM, and have content ready to go that lasts for a bit after that and keep snowballing that). Have focus and don't become complacent with content you have out. Many games fail because they lack content at this point and if content isn't there people aren't going to want to pay for jack shit.
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.
That is 100 percent not why they added cash shops. Cash shops came from people selling their accounts formillions every year, and the corporation not getting any money from it. They didn't realize when eq and up came out that people would spent 10000 plus a year on games. Then they added gambling into the mix, and made more than any sub could. They wouldn't go back to sub's even if it was 30 a month , cause they lose out on the gambling junkies who dump a grand or more a month into their addiction.
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.
What % of players do you think pay $252 a year to cash shops to play MMOs? Its well under 5% Im sure.... I always saw the monthly as a total waste of money...The day it went away was a good day.....I handed over hundreds of dollars to WoW and EQ1 and felt totally ripped off.
If you take all the MMOs with cash shops it would be a way higher percent that spend over 252 a year in the gambling shop. More like 50% 5 percent spend over 10 grand a yyear. Let's see arche age, bdo,swtor,uo,uncharted waters online, all have gambling shops designed to get u addicted to dumping way more than 252.
P2P worked best when there were only a few MMOs available and you had no other choice.......The market eventually got flooded with tons of free games that were just about as good as the $15 a month ones so many of us moved on......There is no reason to pay the $15 anymore.
The hard part here is that people willing you pay for a good MMO but it fail short of making any money with out very high amount people willing to buy it. The box cover + sub fee is not going to cover the cost of a MMO to make there money back in just a few years even after launch. Takes years to get a High cost MMO out from the red.
Your understanding of inflation is completely off. You are only looking at it from the pure dollar value angle.
For instance, Kraft Dinner Mac and Cheese launched in 1937, and it's price was $0.19. Today, it costs about $1.00. Going by your version of inflation that doesn't take ANYTHING else into account, the actual cost of one box should be $3.25. But its not, its still only about $1.00.
Why? Well there are MANY factors. Advertising costs, production costs, source material costs.
In the MMO hosting world it's the same thing. Servers are dramatically cheaper to run than they used to be 17 years ago. Technology in many areas is now cheaper and more reliable. Programming is even easier in many respects. The average sub used to be about $13.00. It shouldn't cost $21.00 when you consider that like Kraft Dinner, many things got cheaper and more reliable to produce/run/host.
So maybe $15.00. Either way, if it was a great game I would absolutely pay $20 a month to play.
Just remember, inflation isn't as simple as "A dollar was worth this back then, and is worth this much now".
I think people are forgetting that companies earn millions if not billions of dollars while the guy who fixes your toilet while swimming in shit gets just enough to fill his stomach. Idk man...
That guy is only fixing your toilet so he can pay for his MMO Sub
The reason why P2P MMO's are going by the dinosaur is, well, because ALL MMO's are on the decline.
I work in the game industry as a publisher of MMORPGs, and I can tell you that the product itself is horrible these days. Back in the day, an average paying user could easily drop 35-50 bucks ARPPU on a F2P mmo with an item shop. Today, we are lucky to drain out 20 bucks for the average paying user. This is on good titles too.
Economy lives and dies by supply and demand. The gaming industry is not immune to that. Inherently, the users are the primary reason why MMORPGs don't work in general. Users spend less on the game, the devs cut costs, advertising takes a hit, and the budget for the next MMO in development is half of what it was on the previous title.
Now we are in 2016, with less and less AAA MORPGs under development. By 2026 I think the entire genre will be dead, unless Devs come up with a way to reduce dev times and running costs.
Put in the year you played your first 15 and the year you played your first 15$ 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.
The reason why P2P MMO's are going by the dinosaur is, well, because ALL MMO's are on the decline.
I work in the game industry as a publisher of MMORPGs, and I can tell you that the product itself is horrible these days. Back in the day, an average paying user could easily drop 35-50 bucks ARPPU on a F2P mmo with an item shop. Today, we are lucky to drain out 20 bucks for the average paying user. This is on good titles too.
Economy lives and dies by supply and demand. The gaming industry is not immune to that. Inherently, the users are the primary reason why MMORPGs don't work in general. Users spend less on the game, the devs cut costs, advertising takes a hit, and the budget for the next MMO in development is half of what it was on the previous title.
Now we are in 2016, with less and less AAA MORPGs under development. By 2026 I think the entire genre will be dead, unless Devs come up with a way to reduce dev times and running costs.
I will agree with you on one point. The MMO "product" these days is pretty horrible.
Maybe if better games were made people would want to pay for them again.
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
The reason why P2P MMO's are going by the dinosaur is, well, because ALL MMO's are on the decline.
I work in the game industry as a publisher of MMORPGs, and I can tell you that the product itself is horrible these days. Back in the day, an average paying user could easily drop 35-50 bucks ARPPU on a F2P mmo with an item shop. Today, we are lucky to drain out 20 bucks for the average paying user. This is on good titles too.
Economy lives and dies by supply and demand. The gaming industry is not immune to that. Inherently, the users are the primary reason why MMORPGs don't work in general. Users spend less on the game, the devs cut costs, advertising takes a hit, and the budget for the next MMO in development is half of what it was on the previous title.
Now we are in 2016, with less and less AAA MORPGs under development. By 2026 I think the entire genre will be dead, unless Devs come up with a way to reduce dev times and running costs.
I will agree with you on one point. The MMO "product" these days is pretty horrible.
Maybe if better games were made people would want to pay for them again.
Unfortunately, "Better" is now an Objective term. A product derived from the 90s/early 2000s wont cut it anymore. That means you either need to go the route of PvP (like Camelot Unchained) or drop a few hundred million into a product to get it to the point where people would want to play it.
Its not worth the risk, and even if my company wanted to do something like that (and had the money for it), I would strongly campaign against it. Not when you can produce a trash FPS product like the CoD series, charge 60 for it, and just reskin it every other year.
Like I said, the genre is only saved once a more cost effective route can be discovered.
I am fine with paying 15$ a month for a month's worth of entertainment. I don't go out much, don't go to the movies and it's a good value for me. I pay 12.99$ a month for Ulitma Online and I would pay 15.00$ but not more. I have not been impressed with any new mmo that has come out since World Of Warcraft and I will go back and forth there.
I am find with paying $15 or $25 for a good MMO. Problem is there is few good MMOs out there. P2P will always be a superior model to customers than any other model because Players either pay or they do not. This Free Loading shit is just BS and it causes companies to nickle and dime people in the cash shop for Free Loading.
The problem with $15 sub has nothing to do with inflation.
The problem with $15 sub is these days there are a lot of other different type of digital entertainment products that is also occupying your time/money for same price or less.
Nowadays there are Netflix, music streaming services, mobile app games etc that is also $15 or less per month, it makes it hard for people to justify paying $15 a month just for 1 game.
To compete against other entertainment products if an MMO is planning pure sub-based these days their price point needs to be much lower - nothing to do with inflation, just the natural evolution of the amount of distractions/cheap thrills that we are getting these days.
The reason why P2P MMO's are going by the dinosaur is, well, because ALL MMO's are on the decline.
I work in the game industry as a publisher of MMORPGs, and I can tell you that the product itself is horrible these days. Back in the day, an average paying user could easily drop 35-50 bucks ARPPU on a F2P mmo with an item shop. Today, we are lucky to drain out 20 bucks for the average paying user. This is on good titles too.
Economy lives and dies by supply and demand. The gaming industry is not immune to that. Inherently, the users are the primary reason why MMORPGs don't work in general. Users spend less on the game, the devs cut costs, advertising takes a hit, and the budget for the next MMO in development is half of what it was on the previous title.
Now we are in 2016, with less and less AAA MORPGs under development. By 2026 I think the entire genre will be dead, unless Devs come up with a way to reduce dev times and running costs.
The reason why MMOs are in decline is because Every game in the last 10 years has done a Copy and Paste of WOW. Now if that was only 2 to 5 games total not a big deal, but you have LOTRO, Rift, SWTOR, DDO, and the list goes on and on. You have AAA titles that did this and Bullshit browser based MMOs. There is little difference in MMOs today between games.
Let's add to that, that every MMO since 2008 as become more and more single player based, or lobby based game, added in tools like LFD or LFR and got away from the Social aspect of MMOs which the Genera was built on. So Today Who the hell is going to keep playing a game when they have no friends in the game. They dont these people cancel their account and leave the game then come back for 2 or 3 months and repeat.
Let's also add in the fact that MMOs are like a fast food joint now. How long does it take for a new WOW expansion or any MMO for that matter to clear all the content? 3 months if that for hardcore players, and if you are a casual player 2 months because you just Queue your ass until you seen everything then you are board. MMOs need to be time sink from meeting people and making friends to leveling to gearing. Now there is a Balance, if all your game is, is like FFXIV where the end game is 4 or 5 bosses in an instance then yes leveling should be fast. Why? Because the people who want to raid like that want to get to end game as fast as possible. I know because I get tired of leveling today in a game which puts the most focus on end game. Now if you are a game like SWG Leveling as fast as possible didnt mean shit outside of grinding for your Jedi. (Pre-CU) So It didnt matter if you were a master bounty hunter or not because skill did play a large role in both PVE and PVP. Also who your friends are played a role.
Now you can turn Themepark MMOs into a time sink as well and have a longer leveling curve. However your Raiding will suffer as it should. You would get a Higher quality of Group play game play if you focused on small groups 4 to 8 man content. These are easy for Casual schedule players to get into and if done right where you sync everyone to the Level Cap and give them all their abilities for the instance run they could start on 1 Tier of End Game content. Even give them gear for end game plus give larger XP bonuses for clearing Instances. But here is the key to that. No Automated LF Group tools and Require CC and teamwork. Think Vanilla WOW/TBC Dungeons. You do that and you make this content require Social Skills and give out larger XP rewards and you will see a better overall community. You will also see players saying HEY I found a group I love running with and keeping their subs.
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 mills worth 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.
Eh, they already knew the sale of items and conviences could be really profitable.. they'd watched the RMT scene for years - people spending $15 on a subscription, then several times that on a single weapon, character, leveling service, currency, etc.
Thing was, RMT had an extreme stigma attached to it - back when most players actually cared more about the experience of playing the game, than simply "getting to the end ASAP", and demanding to have all their loot "now!". Engaging in RMT was highly frowned upon and one would be considered a pariah if they were known to do it. Being a legit player, who earned everything through gameplay was respected in a MMORPG's community. Also, devs cared more and were more interested in maintaining the integrity of the worlds they'd created. They saw the damage unmitigated RMT could do, and so they fought to prevent it.
For devs prior to WoW's success (including, even, Blizzard I would say), it was about creating a great MMORPG experience to keep players engaged and entertained for as long as possible - that was how they'd make their money. That $15 each month was basically the players saying "I enjoy the work you're doing, and find it worth the cost-of-entry, so I will pay for another month so I can continue to enjoy myself". For developers since, it's become all about making as much money as possible, for as little effort as possible - ergo cookie-cutter MMO design, simpler/dumbed-down gameplay, increased soloability (it's easier to develop and tune content for one person than it is for a group), instancing, cash shops/microtransactions, and so on.
The reason why P2P MMO's are going by the dinosaur is, well, because ALL MMO's are on the decline.
I work in the game industry as a publisher of MMORPGs, and I can tell you that the product itself is horrible these days. Back in the day, an average paying user could easily drop 35-50 bucks ARPPU on a F2P mmo with an item shop. Today, we are lucky to drain out 20 bucks for the average paying user. This is on good titles too.
Economy lives and dies by supply and demand. The gaming industry is not immune to that. Inherently, the users are the primary reason why MMORPGs don't work in general. Users spend less on the game, the devs cut costs, advertising takes a hit, and the budget for the next MMO in development is half of what it was on the previous title.
Now we are in 2016, with less and less AAA MORPGs under development. By 2026 I think the entire genre will be dead, unless Devs come up with a way to reduce dev times and running costs.
I will agree with you on one point. The MMO "product" these days is pretty horrible.
Maybe if better games were made people would want to pay for them again.
Unfortunately, "Better" is now an Objective term. A product derived from the 90s/early 2000s wont cut it anymore. That means you either need to go the route of PvP (like Camelot Unchained) or drop a few hundred million into a product to get it to the point where people would want to play it.
Its not worth the risk, and even if my company wanted to do something like that (and had the money for it), I would strongly campaign against it. Not when you can produce a trash FPS product like the CoD series, charge 60 for it, and just reskin it every other year.
Like I said, the genre is only saved once a more cost effective route can be discovered.
People like you are the problem. You only see what exists and have no vision for changing such. Perhaps you should look for another line of work because you are gumming up the works for more innovative people.
Didn't read this thread, just wanted to say that I would pay up to $50.00 a month for a quality game that DID NOT include a cash shop, marketplace, P2W model, F2P model etc. A quality game that let's me suspend my disbelief and not focus on in game shopping. If I want to shop, I can go to Amazon and buy sheit. I want a service/game that will take me to another place and 'entertain' me.
This is probably one of those industries that needs to undergo a mass exodus/culling to create incentive for developing MMO's to a better standard again. I really only played vanilla WoW back in that time of emerging MMO's. (never played LOTRO or anything else until many years later) After attempting a comeback many years later to try WoW again and a few other random MMO's, I wasn't impressed with the directions the mechanics went. LOTRO has that messaging that says "Hey, if you sub, you can turn in this quest right here instead of going back to the quest giver." Huh. Other than saving me some time, what is the point of that? To make the game less realistic? Oh look, now in WoW I can dungeon queue my way from lvl 14 - MAX without ever questing again. Fun, but I guess I'll not be making friends in game any more.
Which brings me to the point of all this. I think for people who like the idea of a sub (myself included) are people who want to go on a grand story epic adventure and meet people along the way, like the old fantasy books describe. The MMO part is heavy on the group experience for us. Otherwise, I can play through a grand story by myself in a RPG, or if I want instant intensity I can play Overwatch for an hour. People that probably enjoy the cash shop or other models are likely less into the realism of the fantasy world they play in and more just want to get to whatever part of the game it is (pvp, raiding, whatever) that they enjoy doing over and over. Plus many people that were into the old models of gameplay are aging, have spouses, kids, obligations that don't give them time to play 3 hours every night and 8 every weekend.
I loved WoW because it was rewarding to put in the time. Seeing awesome gear and getting awesome gear was a badge of honor. Running everywhere was what an adventurer would have to do if they didn't want to pony up cash for a windstrider. Getting a mount proved you knew how to earn and save up money. 3-manning a dungeon successfully brought personal pride. I would pay a sub for that sort of thing again provided I had the time to invest again. That's why Nost was so popular with people like me. We had to earn it again, in a way that nobody had an advantage over others. Same reason I love Overwatch. Everyone is always equal.
The industry will never die, but I do hope it goes the way of the auto industry (this time with no bailouts) so that we can essentially start over again and get another few years of decent mechanics from the style of MMO's I like until the cash creep kills it once again. (Notice I said "I like" meaning it is what I like. Not what you or anyone else should like)
Comments
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/I believe most of them still offer items and services outside of the monthly sub which would support the OP's points.
"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
....Being Banned from MMORPG's forums since 2010, for Trolling the Trolls!!!
As it stands many people are able to finish and get to end game within the first month of a games release and with less and less people interested in the endless treadmill that is end game content you end up in a situation where those people lose complete and utter interest in the game potentially until there is more content happening and that content is often several months out if not longer. So while initial sales are good the player base can quickly tank and many mmorpg developers/producers end up swapping to f2p as an option instead of churning out content that actually takes awhile and holds people's attention.
This all sort of comes down to the "WoW syndrome" as I like to call it with development. Too many games have followed suite of WoW that it is sort of like "meh why bother when I can just play WoW". Look at the sub game that actually does well outside of WoW. The one that does the best outside of WoW currently is Final Fantasy 14 (A Realm Reborn and Heavensward) this is heavily because FFXIV doesn't have massive content droughts and they frequently release new content between expansions (so much so that the actual content of the patches are pretty much a full expansion unto themselves by most normal measurements) thus they tend to keep people's interest for a lot longer.
A sub game has to have new content rolled out on a regular enough basis, can't be too too easy that you steam roll the content within the first month (make it take at least 3 - 4 MINIMUM, and have content ready to go that lasts for a bit after that and keep snowballing that). Have focus and don't become complacent with content you have out. Many games fail because they lack content at this point and if content isn't there people aren't going to want to pay for jack shit.
If you take all the MMOs with cash shops it would be a way higher percent that spend over 252 a year in the gambling shop. More like 50% 5 percent spend over 10 grand a yyear. Let's see arche age, bdo,swtor,uo,uncharted waters online, all have gambling shops designed to get u addicted to dumping way more than 252.
For instance, Kraft Dinner Mac and Cheese launched in 1937, and it's price was $0.19. Today, it costs about $1.00. Going by your version of inflation that doesn't take ANYTHING else into account, the actual cost of one box should be $3.25. But its not, its still only about $1.00.
Why? Well there are MANY factors. Advertising costs, production costs, source material costs.
In the MMO hosting world it's the same thing. Servers are dramatically cheaper to run than they used to be 17 years ago. Technology in many areas is now cheaper and more reliable. Programming is even easier in many respects. The average sub used to be about $13.00. It shouldn't cost $21.00 when you consider that like Kraft Dinner, many things got cheaper and more reliable to produce/run/host.
So maybe $15.00. Either way, if it was a great game I would absolutely pay $20 a month to play.
Just remember, inflation isn't as simple as "A dollar was worth this back then, and is worth this much now".
That guy is only fixing your toilet so he can pay for his MMO Sub
http://baronsofthegalaxy.com/ An MMO game I created, solo. It's live now and absolutely free to play!
I work in the game industry as a publisher of MMORPGs, and I can tell you that the product itself is horrible these days. Back in the day, an average paying user could easily drop 35-50 bucks ARPPU on a F2P mmo with an item shop. Today, we are lucky to drain out 20 bucks for the average paying user. This is on good titles too.
Economy lives and dies by supply and demand. The gaming industry is not immune to that. Inherently, the users are the primary reason why MMORPGs don't work in general. Users spend less on the game, the devs cut costs, advertising takes a hit, and the budget for the next MMO in development is half of what it was on the previous title.
Now we are in 2016, with less and less AAA MORPGs under development. By 2026 I think the entire genre will be dead, unless Devs come up with a way to reduce dev times and running costs.
Maybe if better games were made people would want to pay for them again.
"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
Its not worth the risk, and even if my company wanted to do something like that (and had the money for it), I would strongly campaign against it. Not when you can produce a trash FPS product like the CoD series, charge 60 for it, and just reskin it every other year.
Like I said, the genre is only saved once a more cost effective route can be discovered.
The problem with $15 sub is these days there are a lot of other different type of digital entertainment products that is also occupying your time/money for same price or less.
Nowadays there are Netflix, music streaming services, mobile app games etc that is also $15 or less per month, it makes it hard for people to justify paying $15 a month just for 1 game.
To compete against other entertainment products if an MMO is planning pure sub-based these days their price point needs to be much lower - nothing to do with inflation, just the natural evolution of the amount of distractions/cheap thrills that we are getting these days.
Let's add to that, that every MMO since 2008 as become more and more single player based, or lobby based game, added in tools like LFD or LFR and got away from the Social aspect of MMOs which the Genera was built on. So Today Who the hell is going to keep playing a game when they have no friends in the game. They dont these people cancel their account and leave the game then come back for 2 or 3 months and repeat.
Let's also add in the fact that MMOs are like a fast food joint now. How long does it take for a new WOW expansion or any MMO for that matter to clear all the content? 3 months if that for hardcore players, and if you are a casual player 2 months because you just Queue your ass until you seen everything then you are board. MMOs need to be time sink from meeting people and making friends to leveling to gearing. Now there is a Balance, if all your game is, is like FFXIV where the end game is 4 or 5 bosses in an instance then yes leveling should be fast. Why? Because the people who want to raid like that want to get to end game as fast as possible. I know because I get tired of leveling today in a game which puts the most focus on end game. Now if you are a game like SWG Leveling as fast as possible didnt mean shit outside of grinding for your Jedi. (Pre-CU) So It didnt matter if you were a master bounty hunter or not because skill did play a large role in both PVE and PVP. Also who your friends are played a role.
Now you can turn Themepark MMOs into a time sink as well and have a longer leveling curve. However your Raiding will suffer as it should. You would get a Higher quality of Group play game play if you focused on small groups 4 to 8 man content. These are easy for Casual schedule players to get into and if done right where you sync everyone to the Level Cap and give them all their abilities for the instance run they could start on 1 Tier of End Game content. Even give them gear for end game plus give larger XP bonuses for clearing Instances. But here is the key to that. No Automated LF Group tools and Require CC and teamwork. Think Vanilla WOW/TBC Dungeons. You do that and you make this content require Social Skills and give out larger XP rewards and you will see a better overall community. You will also see players saying HEY I found a group I love running with and keeping their subs.
Thing was, RMT had an extreme stigma attached to it - back when most players actually cared more about the experience of playing the game, than simply "getting to the end ASAP", and demanding to have all their loot "now!". Engaging in RMT was highly frowned upon and one would be considered a pariah if they were known to do it. Being a legit player, who earned everything through gameplay was respected in a MMORPG's community. Also, devs cared more and were more interested in maintaining the integrity of the worlds they'd created. They saw the damage unmitigated RMT could do, and so they fought to prevent it.
For devs prior to WoW's success (including, even, Blizzard I would say), it was about creating a great MMORPG experience to keep players engaged and entertained for as long as possible - that was how they'd make their money. That $15 each month was basically the players saying "I enjoy the work you're doing, and find it worth the cost-of-entry, so I will pay for another month so I can continue to enjoy myself". For developers since, it's become all about making as much money as possible, for as little effort as possible - ergo cookie-cutter MMO design, simpler/dumbed-down gameplay, increased soloability (it's easier to develop and tune content for one person than it is for a group), instancing, cash shops/microtransactions, and so on.
Which brings me to the point of all this. I think for people who like the idea of a sub (myself included) are people who want to go on a grand story epic adventure and meet people along the way, like the old fantasy books describe. The MMO part is heavy on the group experience for us. Otherwise, I can play through a grand story by myself in a RPG, or if I want instant intensity I can play Overwatch for an hour. People that probably enjoy the cash shop or other models are likely less into the realism of the fantasy world they play in and more just want to get to whatever part of the game it is (pvp, raiding, whatever) that they enjoy doing over and over. Plus many people that were into the old models of gameplay are aging, have spouses, kids, obligations that don't give them time to play 3 hours every night and 8 every weekend.
I loved WoW because it was rewarding to put in the time. Seeing awesome gear and getting awesome gear was a badge of honor. Running everywhere was what an adventurer would have to do if they didn't want to pony up cash for a windstrider. Getting a mount proved you knew how to earn and save up money. 3-manning a dungeon successfully brought personal pride. I would pay a sub for that sort of thing again provided I had the time to invest again. That's why Nost was so popular with people like me. We had to earn it again, in a way that nobody had an advantage over others. Same reason I love Overwatch. Everyone is always equal.
The industry will never die, but I do hope it goes the way of the auto industry (this time with no bailouts) so that we can essentially start over again and get another few years of decent mechanics from the style of MMO's I like until the cash creep kills it once again. (Notice I said "I like" meaning it is what I like. Not what you or anyone else should like)