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Should older MMO's Charge Less?
DeaconX
Member UncommonPosts: 3,062
Before you guys go nuts, here's what I'm thinking. As MMO's age and new one's arise, their graphics begin to show that age. Not only do the graphics of a game no longer live up to par with new gen MMO's, but you'd figure less work is required for their updates and such than in the first few years. Games like Galaxies could probably benefit from offering a lower cost for pay to play mmo's. Cost vs. Demand, right?
I think it would also be a great nod to all the vet players who stuck with the game so long if after some years they dropped the monthly price. This would possibly help them 'stay in the game' while it could possibly keep the game in competative status with the newly developed, better looking but higher priced MMO's.
This is just a thought and I doubt it would ever really happen, I just figured an aged game shouldn't cost quite as much as a 'new gen game that puts the old ones to shame'. Plus it would broaden the market cost range to provide games for people who don't want to pay so much for a game online but are willing to pay more reasonable prices.
Remember this is a discussion not an invite for immature posts - thanks. So.... Thoughts? Open fire.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
Comments
They charge so much because:
1 - People will pay it.
2 - Greed. {just the nature of BUSINESS}
3 - Hugely popular so they know they can get away with it.
And a lot of other reasons - but yes, it would be VERY cool of a company to lower their price for the players once they know they're more than set. But, alas they want to make all the bucks they can before it's finally time to bow out. Look at Galaxies... everyone says 'Oh the game is dying' but the price will not budge to make every last cent it can until it DOES close.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
I think lower monthly costs for older MMO's would be ideal. I mean if you have game that is still generating a profit after 3-4+ years and a fan base consisting of veteran players who could easily switch to a new MMO on the market why not lower the costs of a subscription to keep them there? In all honesty though, if veteran players enjoy a game regardless of costs chances are they won't be doing backflips while singing the National Anthem if their monthly fees are lowerd by a couple bucks because if you love a game you pay and play.
---I'm not trying to hurt you, I'm simply saving you from that hideous costume you're wearing.
It would certainly be nice. But who knows. I'd love it if my favorite game of all time, Asherons Call would reduce their rates down to $7.95 a month or something to try and compete more. But will they do it? Probably not. They started their game 8 years ago at $9.95 per month and have only increased that rate over the years instead of reduced it.
Perhaps a question that will make you feel better about the costs of newer games is "Shouldn't newer, much more graphically appealing mmos charge much more then the standard $15 a month that was charged by older, clunker mmos 5 years ago?"
Regardless, in my opinion mmos are still pretty cheap by comparisons of other forms of entertainment. A movie ticket runs $9.00 for one person in my town. World of Warcraft runs $15.00 a month. And me and two other family members can all use that same account. We could easily put in 100 hours of game time in a month. If me and those two family members went to one movie, the cost would be $27.00. Almost double the cost. And it lasts only 2 hours. And we have no input or playability into how that movie comes out. We can't actually play that movie. It's just a movie with no user input and responsive feedback. So even $15.00 for an mmo you love, old or new, is still a pretty damn good deal the way I see it.
- Zaxx
GUILD WARS - ArenaNet has a very BRILLIANT and noble approach. You pay for the new chapters, but only if you want to. You only keep bying in, so long as the devs keep IMPRESSING YOU and WORKING HARD FOR YOU while keeping your interest. If they slack, they lose out. Meanwhile, the price of the new expansion box pretty much covers what a monthly fee would cover between the months when the next chapter comes out. While GW wasn't for me, I did play for a year and applaud ArenaNet.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
Agreed! AC was one of the first MMOs I played and loved the whole $9.95 a month deal but you would think it should be lower by now considering its age, graphics, and lack of full servers. Harvestgain FTW!
---I'm not trying to hurt you, I'm simply saving you from that hideous costume you're wearing.
As long as it is a hot title, they will get the top rate.
When it goes off the boil they should drop their prices.
I'd pay £2 a month to subscribe to Planetside, but not £10 and not the free pass for year with nerfed toons.
If FFXI was still £2.50 a month, I'd still be subbed to that one too, even if I never played it much.
The thing that I dont get is Everquest... Why do they still charge a monthly fee for the old version? Of course there are still people who playes it but I dont think any new players would buy the old version and pay every month (I wouldent). If they removed the monthly fee on EQ 1 I wouldent mind buying the game, but as long as its still P2P... The game might die out soon =/
DeaconX,
I would like to compare the monthly cost of an MMOG subscription to other entertainment expenditures that the majority of people that read this thread (whether they choose to admit it or not) dole out month after month.
A movie and dinner (hopefully with a date) - $40 (2 $8 ticks for flick and $24 for din-din)
A CD (for those that still buy them legally) or DvD - $10-$15
A ridiculously priced "cup-o-joe" at Starbucks - $5
CableTV - $50 (average)
A night at the bar with buddies - I don't remember, I was too drunk (probably $20-$50)
The latest hardcover bestseller that I couldn't wait for the paperback instead - $20
High-speed Internet - $30-$50
A concert or sporting event - $15-$100+
I guess what I'm trying to say is that $15/month is not unreasonable in today's world. I don't know why "greed" is even a factor in your reasoning, as I look at MMOG's as finally justification for game companies to finally recoop all the money they lost by people illegally pirating games as they did in the "old days".
Instead lets compare like with like.
Lets compare that same £10 spent on an old MMO, with the £1o spent on a new one.
£10 for something you have seen and done before with prehistoric graphics and gameplay.
Or £10 for something new and exciting and up to the minute with all the latest gameplay features.
Lets go on to add that a monthly subscription fee is not dinner for 2. It is not a CD. It doesn't have the same value at all.
I have a gaming budget. The amount of money I am willing to spend on gaming.
This is not my "going out budget" The price of Cinema, theatre, concert or dinner is not related to it.
Neither is it my music collecting Budget.
It might well be connected with my internet budget to some extent. Or even cale TV if I was into that.
For me gaming is a cheap hobby. Home entertainment. It's something to keep me occupied that doesn't cost the same as hanging out in the pub all night. If it did, I wouldn't do it. I would go down the pub and shag the barmaid instead.
It has a market value. I have x amount of money to spend on games, and whatever else I choose to spend my money has no relavence to this decision. Should games become too expensive, I will go back to cheaper more old fashioned pursuits.
When I look at the price of a game, I do not compare it to the price of a meal for two, I compare to the price of the other games available on the market.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
You know, we can all stand here like bafoons arguing old game/vets/honor/drunken monkeys or we can give a call to a knowledgeable source and ask them just how much it costs to run an MMORPG server.
As the game gets smaller, they probably have to lay alot of people off.
I think we should continue to support those people who are working for the mmorpg. If we get a discount, they get a paycut OR they get new unexperienced people to do the work.
Argue as you may but for the most part the costs will remain the same over the years. As server prices and bandwidth go down, they are also paying their staff more and more (with raises and cost of living adjustments to income).
Honestly, if I make $X a month I don't think there is any logical reason to want to earn less (and those involved in the game think the same I'm sure).
Now it might be a smart business practice to give people a deal on the monthly subscription to bring back old players and get new players.
yes, Older MMO's should charge less.
For my dollar anyway. Its a shame, theres so many older MMO's that I might be interested if they charged between $5-10 a month. Id actually keep subscriptions going without cancelling if even some of the newer ones dropped by a measely 3 bux.
so, whats become of my habit? I buy about every MMO that comes out. I play through their first month and park the game. I usually re-sub 3-6 months later for a few months, and cancel it and resub to another.
Rinse-repeat
some of these games, if made more affordable, I would leave subscribed and drift from game to game. As it is now, they loose my business for several months
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
The best example would be EQ1. EQ1 has upgraded the graphics several times and still releases expansions but the subs are way down and the expansions are fewer and farther between. SOE really should lower the fee to like $10 or maybe even $7. Or maybe make EQ1 free to download if you have the Station Pass.
WoW has like 1000 servers worldwide to run so even if it gets up to 10 million subs dont expect Blizzard/Vivendi to cut us a break.
The Guild Wars model works for Guild Wars and games like Guild Wars and games that have a pathetic amount of subs(like Archlord).
It's a combination between corporate greed and general stupidity on the consumers part.
Just as an example i will use phantasy star universe, as its perhaps the most extreme example you can find; In PSU on the PC, nearly all of the game is client side, which is why it was so easy for people to hack, the actually gameplay with combat is all instanced, allowing only 6 players in a particular instance at a time, and there are no features like PvP that are expected, even required, in newer mmo's. The customer service is extremely bad, as many people have had thier decorations in thier rooms stolen and thier crafting machines deleveled to zero, yet not once has Sega reimbursed them for the time lost and damage done to thier characters by cheaters/hackers. The servers themselves get quite laggy because of the heavy client side nature, and within the first 3 months there was irreversable damage to the economy because hackers were actually able to duplicate items and give themselves infinite money.
Yet some how, people still play it, and they still pay the monthly fee. Thats a testament to the fact that no matter how horrible a game is, people will still pay for it if you market it to a wide enough audience. They charge like an MMO, when games like guild wars provide the same instanced gameplay without a monthly fee, and on top of that, the security was so poorly coded that hackers were duping items by grabbing memory addresses (think game shark on a console), a method that hasn't worked for many, many years on pc games.
Not only do they still pay for it, but whats worse is that whenever someone used constructive criticism on thier forums, the community ostracized them, even player reporting hackers in an attempt to make the game better. The moral is, a company could literally defecate in a box and some people would still buy it and support them, and until that changes and things go back to the way they were in the early MMO years when companies were held accountable for thier mistakes, nothing is going to change. Consumers in general have gotten so ignorant that there is no reason for any company to ever back off thier prices, because the idiots will still keep paying.
Once the game is no longer popular, the company just lets it die and fade away.
I would imagine most of these companies have done the research to find out which method is the best way of keeping the money rolling in. If the subscriptions more than doubled by halving the price, they would all be reducing their monthly fees. You also have to factor in the advertising cost of getting this information on the price reduction out to potential subscribers, which could easily end up being just money thrown away.
Overall, if you have an older game with a fairly constant player base, it probably is the case reducing the monthly fee would just lose you money.
With well over 50% +(some say as much as 60-70%) of its customers based in china and paying well below the $15 i think its fair to say they have given a vast majority of its clients a break.
As for EU/america the $15 a month was the standard when the game came out 2 yrs ago.
WoW will not drop price. If anything, we should be lucky it doesnt go up. Supply and Demand.... They can (and will) supply to everyone willing to pay, and 8.5 million players says one HELL of a demand.