Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Price of mmorpgs....not rant or complaint
patheos
Member Posts: 1,148
This is a question im curious about...the normal rate it seems is 13 to 15 a month. And thats not to bad of a price for most.
Now for the main point, do you think the price will raise with some new games? and if so, would you pay? Alot of mmorpgs are young kids with out jobs, so that would hurt them. But there young...so they dont really count do they?
www.greenblooded.com
Comments
They'll charge what the market will pay.
We'd still be paying $10 a month if they weren't greedy bastards, or people wouldn't pay $15.
Death is not to fear; for it is not the end, but rather the beginning on the road to eternity.
"Fear not death; for the sooner we die, the longer shall we be immortal."
Nemo sine vitio est
Nemo sine vitio est
soe and eq2 came up with the idea of adventure packs a small price for content on extra levels of dungons this is in addition to the expansions
so depending on how gulliable the player base is and how much they are willing to pay to play will be if it catches on with the rest of the mmorpg community
After all swg (soe) rasied the inital bar of 14.99 and folks paid it. After other games that came along raised their standard price as well. I am sure lots of folks will be willing to pay for the adventure packs too...........
The bottom line is when the consumers choose not to pay and or nickle and dime to the inth degree to companies have to lower the price and or add quirks to "wheel them back in".......
Really depends on the game if its the Absolute best out there and revelutionary I would pay more to play it but if its just another one of the same games we have been getting then I wouldnt pay more then basic market price.
But as is I would probly pay around $20 maybee 25 if it could weed all the little kids out (Nothing against kids but sometimes you get tired of the immaturity inside games you can only hear someone call another player stinkypoopoodoodoohead so many times).
BTW: That was an exageration but you all get what I mean.
Win XP Home
Athalon 64 3400+
1024 DDR 400MHz RAM
Duel 120 GiG HDs W/Raid 0
GeForce 6800 GT 256MB
Win XP Home
Athalon 64 3400+
1024 DDR 400MHz RAM
Duel 120 GiG HDs W/Raid 0
GeForce 6800 GT 256MB
I will not pay for any MMOs that have a subscription fee of $15 a month.. Only $10 or less.. Hay at least I'm not seeking a free mmorpg anymore.
Paying more than 15 dollars per month? man, this is like virtual money sellers, if you buy from them, in game economy will be screwed
If you pay more and more for a MMORPG, real life prices will arise
I think the general trend would be for prices to increase. Especially if you want the latest graphics, good content, regular expansions... The games will add more and more features and they will need to pay more license fees, keep more GM's around, etc.
Of course, the price for things like server traffic will go down, but the use will increase more rapidly. There may also be some programs that take some of the GM's work out, but they will always be working on something else in game.
So in the future you will have to pay more for the best games, but if you are fine with lower graphics/less content you can play for much less. At least, that's my opinion.
Been thinking about this some and here it goes.
IF you sell 200,000 subscribtions and charge 15 bucks a month that equals 3,000,000 or 3 million dollars a month. So like 36 million dollars a year, of course there is a cost to have the means to collect the payments, beyond just supporting the game, and there are taxes, but that is still a nice amount of change.
So in a way that are really taking a bite out of us.
But how many decent RPG games have been made recently, NWN, and Morrowind, I'm sure there are others but I can't think of them now.
The point is that RPG games aren't going to be made unless they are profitiable, and for those who remember they weren't made much for awhile there in the 90s, they seem to have been reborn here recently, but mostly as MMOGs so apparently the developers are loosing money on initial unit sales and hoping to recap the looses in Subscription fees.
Probably one reason that fees go up is that gamers are more spread out, each game probably has similar costs to keep going but now users are spread around several games.
Are the games worth 15 dollars a month, no, not to me, thats why I never seem to play one for more then a few months, I realize that even though I bought the crappy game, I now have to pay to keep playing the crappy game.
One thing that would help both gamers and developers would be a differnent option for paying, an hourly rate, for those of us who can only get a few hours a week to play. If I knew I wouldn't have to pay for time I won't use I would be more inclined to keep playing.
The higher the prices, the more competition(and different prices) you will see.
Dont you think we wont see $10 per month appear again, oh yes we will see them.
I am surprised to not see more Legends servers, there is the customer support for those.
I work on minimal wages, so I will certainly consider how much fun a game provide me every month before paying it or not. $10 or less get a a much more free card then $15. Even if I am not that happy with the game, heck, it only more then 1 hour of work...$15 is about 3 hours of work, which is half a day of work if you consider taxes, it better be very fun, otherwise I can go to other places and get the fun from there instead(or work less). Of course in absolute numbers it is barely 50% more, in my mind it pass from more then 1 hour to half a day because I start considering taxes on my income...LOL! Althought I get little tips where I work, I get occasional tips, they are far from $15, they are close to $10...all this matter a lot in my final decision to maintain or not my subscription(SoE teach me to never go beyond 1 month, we never know the nerfs and change they are going to make).
Heck, a more expensive server could leave the option for players to have pets controlled by players, players from any server could play a pet, and depending on the happiness of the pet owner, they may see a discount on their account. There would be a list of wanna be pet and a list of want a human pet...see for a company like SoE to charge those server let say triple the price, and give to the folks there the power to reduce 1 full time of monthlee fee is havinf 3 subscriptions instead of 2, throught a completely willing process, and folks could have records as good or bad pet, good or bad masters(lot of rewards for the time involved or long long long time for little reward?). You think nobody would pay for that? I wont pay for that, I wont play there either. However, I am sure many peoples with the ressources will be pretty happy to have a better pet, who they can talk to(and the pet cant chat maybe just answer with emotes, pets need to listen, not to talk)...and I am sure some poors folks will see this as an option to play a game they would normally not afford. Pets could earn XP much slower then a toon, but still progress your main toon slowly, may have pets levels as well(now that could interest me, if the pet system is cute and well developped, I may want to level it up, and earn side XP as well for another toon(more like a XP bonus for X next xp earned, so you dont log in and win a level by logging hehe)). See the mage may have an epic pet, but a player to control all the powers of the pet may need a fix level, otherwise the computer control some aspects.
In the same ways you may find a system to interest peoples in playing hireling on a ''rich server''. LOL, it could be fun no matter what folks say, it depend how it is done.
- "Solo is, will always be, the main market. A MMORPG that succeed with little or no solo appeal is doing great considering they are ignoring the main player base.''
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
/sign
I'd even go further... ATM the market is relatively small, compared to offline games. I'd bet, when MMORPG's move more into the interest of gamers, once they get a sufficient customer base, it's likely we'll even see lower prices than now.
Dont kid yourselves, the upkeep for these games can run into the millions per month, and if you want a first class game with the best possible devs and programmers then its gonna cost the maker. And they are in it to make money not loss it.
Godz of War I call Thee
Godz of War I call Thee
~Greatness~
Not playing any mmorpg.
~Greatness~
Currently Playing:
Nothing
Voted max 15 though
Playing: The Saga of Ryzom
Looking forward too: Matrix Online
scientology
I'm sure we'll see inflation here, as in all things. With newer games coming out, being run on better hardware, with better support, and better features....well, all that "better" adds up.
If I wasn't playing MMORPGs, and paying ~ $15 per month, I'd be buying 3 or 4 regular games per month to fill the space, at ~ $50 each. So I figure I'm saving some money here.
So, yeah, I'd go up to $20. And if the little Uber-l33t brats couldn't afford it....well, that's a good thing, IMO. Less griefing, exploiting, RP intrusion, etc.
In fact...how about a MMORPG that's rated "R" for older gamers? So we can cut out the majority of the kids, and have some more realistic scenarios and graphics? Some maturity in the gaming world.
I'd gladly pay $25 per month for a game with no snot-nosed little kids.
-----------------------------------------
ummmm.......
-----------------------------------------
Agreed. Besides driving up subscription prices/month, I imagine companies will look for solutions to drive down their operating costs. Stuff like butterfly.net come to mind. I'm sure customer support will also be offshored (if it isn't already). But no matter what they do I doubt the "first rate" titles will ever go below 10$ as that seems to the acctepted norm.
aboveGame, the Gamer's Photo Blog
Quote from an old post in mmorpg.com forum, informations maybe outdated (SOE stands for Sony Online Entertainment : Everquest, SWG, Planetside, EQlive, Everquest2).
"SOE has a roughly total of 700,000 total gamers paying monthly fees. EQ alone has generated to date roughly 200 million (conservative estimate) to 800 million (liberal estimate) - source : Buisness 2.0 Magazine. Article in it "The Sorcerer of Sony". With a 40% profit margin. Regular Fortune 50 companies have a profit margin of 10% to 20%. 40% is unheard of in the buisness world."
My point is that mmorpg is big money maker. I wonder if 5$/month would be sufficient to cover all the costs (bandwith salaries etc) + some margin for a game like EQ/DAOC/SWG. Why do you think allthose mmorpg are comin in ?! More mmorgp in development than already available !
My opinion is that i'll pay something reasonable. I would hate to be cheated. Maybe that's why I only play Neverwinter nights atm lol.
[url=http://p