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MMO subscription prices, outdated or worth it?
xKingdomx
Member UncommonPosts: 1,541
It would be nice to see at least some changes to the subscription model, that model was set like 10 to 15 years ago (I'm bad with dates ok>> :P) Technology advanced, prices for servers and maintenance had dropped, just like how a 512mb disc had dropped from $10 to 5c (Australian dollars)
But I understand a lot fo players will pay for good games that are worthwhile, so I'm not gonna jump out of the park and say a lot of games should turn to B2P. But I still think something is wrong when Blizzard can earn 1 mil per month from its subscriptions (or more?), without any major content update. Subscription is one of the reasons why WoW is the most successful computer game on earth, hard to pirate, require monthly fees, addictive. Imagine you have to pay monthly for CoD or Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (Online mode)
I think subscription prices should drop quite a bit, simply because hardware doesn't cost as much anymore, and players are paying for the internet usage as well. (Trust me this is worst in Australia, we have to pay for something call bandiwidth, where we have a top limit usage of the internet per month) So right now, players are actually paying for more than $15 a month to play the game, just that not all money will go to the game developers.......'directly'
Either way, I think each mmo should offer a lifetime subscription, lets say a life sub is $220, any amount of subscription money you have paid goes towards that total, excluding the box price. so a game sub is $15 a month, if you play for 15 months or more, accumulated, you will be granted lifetime subscription (15 X15 = 225). So this is like going on a plan for your smartphone these days, you pay certain amount per month (mmo equivinlant of subscriptions prices), you may have to pay something for your phone (box price), you get certain benefits for the period (play the game), after the 12 or 24 month, you get the phone unlocked (lifetime subscriptions). AFter this period, you will still have to pay for each epansion updates, so basically you transit into B2P model after 15 months.
You might say "life sub worth wayyyyy more than a smartphone =3", but I just cant imagine you should get anything else other than lifetime sub, since you still pay for xpacks, free cash shop items /mounts? They shouldn't even exist in a P2P game in the first place. so Lifetime Subscriptions seems like the way to go. Anyways, after paying for 15 months, you should have finished all the given content already........xpacks or not (since you paid xtra for the expansions, so it is lesser relevenant)
As a side note, I just discover Australian Players have to pay $20 a month for DCUO subscription fees if you pay with a credit/visa/whatever card, due to 'currency rate' even tho Australian Dollar is actually higher than USD at the moment = so f!ck SOE?
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As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
Comments
There are a whole lot of reasons why subs fees will remain as is
1. Apparently it is workiing. There isn´t any type of outrage from players and Blizzard seems more than happy to have steady, and predictable income. Just because something has been around for 15 years doesn´t mean it is bad, it means it works.
2. The cost per hour of a $15 subscription is absurdly low if you are an average players. Even if you only play 10 hours a week, that is like 40 cents an hour.. most play much more than that. Compare that to the movies where you are paying like $3 per hour or a single player game that costs $50 and might get you to 30 hours of gameplay
3. Predictability for devs. Again, the subscription model is good for companies because it allows them to plan projects in advance. I can´t stress this enough, if there is not predictable income, gaming companies will be MUCH more conservative about hiring people or getting involved in longterm upgrades to games.
4. It FORCES the devs to add content. I don´t know why anyone would want a game to require a lifetime subscription since that means the devs have no reason to incrementally make the game better. While a subscription fee adds a lot of predictability for the devs, it also requires them to add content frequently to maintain that predictability.
5. Cash shops are very iffy.. it is a very slippery slope to where you fall into pay2win... and again, is it predictable enough? Can the devs really budget the next six month not knowing exaclty what item will become ´hot´ in the cashshop.
I also sorely think you underestimate the cost of running these games. Yeah, bandwidth and data storage have probably decreased drastically since the early days of UO.. the amount of talent required has risen 20 fold. Just the salaries of graphic designers and artists used in todays games compared to the UO is huge... and back then, content was rarely added. People would get excited over recolored items.. heck in UO, there was probably a 6 month period where the only new item added to the game was a staff that was neon blue. Every 3 or 4 months, Blizzard adds hundreds of new items and new creatures. The amount of artist time required to get armor to fit right on all the sexes and races is huge. I think you are severly underestimating the art costs of modern games compared to EQ and UO
Regardless of price we're not gettin our moneys worth.
Don't mind paying a sub at all, 15 dollars a month is very cheap entertainment, I usually have 2 games going, would probably have more if the wife wouldnt raise hell over it.
Godz of War I call Thee
Lol, how so?
$15 for 30 days of a service is good. How far do you think $15 is gona get you on 1 night out drinking? or a night of rental movies?
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we used to pay per hour and people paid hundreds a month to play games. Eventually the monthly sub came along. IMO, mmorpgs are cheap for the amount of entertainment potential.
I don't know how old you are and what you life situation is but I would like to know what you do for a night on the town, how much it costs you and how much you get out of it? Going to the movies is more expensive per hour. Bring a date, get some popcorn and drinks, and you are looking at it paying for two months of subs. Go out for dinner and drinks, well is you are going to adult places (ie not mcdonalds) that is more than going to the movies. In LA, going to a club on the weekend: Parking $10 - $20, $10 - $50 at the door (FYI, I don't go anywhere that charges $50 at the door), drinks $6.00 to $18.00 each depending on the place.
If you are a student, I could see how you can see free being a good deal. For those who need cheap, there are plenty of free games out there for you. If you want a premium AAA game, you are going to pay for it. That's life.
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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?"
Uhh they are both outdated and worth it. They worth it because $15 a month is a very very cheap hobby if you have an MMO that is played like a hobby, if you do other other things then play that MMO it might not be worth it then. It's outdated because the $15 and the $50 to buy are abriatry and don't account for anything.
Personally I have no problem with paying for subs should the MMO be a real MMO and not one of these crappy solofest that have been coming out lately. I am also okay with the B2P + lots of exp model. Heck I would even be okay with a pay per hour model.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
I like for the way that a game gets money from its players to be obvious. With a subscription fee, it's obvious. Without a subscription fee, it's not obvious how a game will get money from more than a small fraction of its players, which can create pressure to put ever more important things into the item mall, and pushing a game further in the direction of, whoever pays the most wins.
If a game is getting a lot of money from subscriptions, then a company has something to lose if they put in item mall stuff that offends a bunch of subscribers so that they quit. If a game is only getting money from an item mall, then if a company loses half of its playerbase over an item mall dustup, but that half never paid anything, it's no big loss to the company--so they're far more likely to risk doing that.
Costs of manpower, are pretty much still comparable to back then.
Human time is where most of the expenses go.
edit: stupid typos
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"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
I can't say I see any logic in lowering the pricse for online games. If anything, they will most likely go up. Sure some of the tech has dropped dramatically in price, but the cost of personnel, amount of tech and bandwidth has increased.
As far as having to pay for bandwith as a customer, that is an issue seperate from the game service. Sure you have to have one for the other at times, but you also need electricity and must pay for it by usage. So should the game service drop their price if they game requires a more powerful computer which then costs more energy to run? Lastly, consider the fact internet bandwith isn't free for the service provider either.
Lastly, the idea of free service for a lifetime after a certain peroid would just equate to the service having to shut down after a while due to the lack of additional income to pay for the service provided. Lifetime subscriptions are offered because they are paid upfront, giving the companies a captial injection to apply to their product or profit. It is an investment which pays dividends, but also has risks. The value isn't known realized until after a long term of service has been provided. Sometimes the service may fold or game become terrible and thus you lose out, however, other times you wind up hitting the jackpot and investing in a great game.
I don't think these games are worth the monthly subscription. Yes, I've heard the arguments ad naseum concerning the cheapness of a subscription versus other forms of entertainment.
I'd rather see all MMORPG's go to a B2P method and charge for their content updates. That way developers are motivated to actually release content more often. But then we might get content of low quality so they can rack up the bucks faster. Needless to say, I hope GW2 is successful so that MMORPG game companies and consumers will take notice and stop charging a subscription for their game.
Like I said... you may not think it is much, but they are adding about 12 new boss fights, about 50 new gear items that have to be made to fit all the different classes along with new maps and a host of other features, and it has been 4 months since the last expansion.
I played UO.. and I kid you not, for 6 months there was a time when the only added content was one rehued item ( a blue staff) that dropped from ice snakes. I remember it well.
And they ARE obligated to add, or else players will stop paying. If you are not happy with the content they added the last 3 months, stop paying... it is that easy. Every month, the players have to determine if they want to pay $15. That forces the devs to add. You can say that the wow devs don´t add content fast enough, but there are millions of players every month who vote with thier wallets and disagree with you.
Subscrptions don't bother me. I think the cost for a month of play is minimal. I certainly welcome a good B2P game and hope GW2 will be fun. I think a lot of folks that don't like subs don't like to pay for anything. Pirate movies and music, they want games to be first rate with tons of content but be free. I'd venture to guess none of them that work do it for free though. Just my opinion of course.
Bandwidth costs 15 to 8 cents a GB for an amazon EC2 plan(in other words someone making a profit off it charges pennies a gigabyte).
An MMO can easily aim for something like 3 MbS for 1,000 players online(up+down, thats 3KbS something like a page of unoptimzed text per payer a second). only comes out to $1.60 or so: rather small compared to energy+cooling costs, microscopic compared to the manpower required to babysit the hardware, and pretty insignifigent if you have the pure odasity to use customer support time.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
devs are just following the $15/month epidemy while giving less and less for your money.... the games that launch with great graphics then those lack either content, immersion, innovation, are excesively linear, etc.... but then a game with all those features finally launches, and the graphics sux, server is unstable, limited races and classes, or lacks direction......
i think as of today no mmorpgs worth 15/month (they should have one cost only : the box) nothing else
i hope the upcoming mmos (swtor, TSW, Blade and Soul, some others) worth subs and are not just as crappy as what we have to play now....
And what alternate form of entertainment do you propose that provides as many hours entertainment per month for a similar price?
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Definitely not worth it unless they add in at least a 1/4 of a game of content per month. Anything less than that much and they are ripping you off.
a game that contains all features without exception (they make exceptions to have a reason to create a new game or a sequel)... tahts just lack of creativity....... put everything in a game and thats it, that pretty much worth 15/month... otherwise make it 10/month without having to buy 3 month packs
That's kind of like saying that it costs more than X to eat at a restaurant because you have to drive there and gas costs money so the restaurant should lower it's prices.
That said...
I have a huge problem with companies pawning off half functioning games on us... but I honestly have no problem with the value of the average sub. It's a damn great deal if you break it down. Even if you play 10 hours a week (and most will play many times that) it comes down to around 38 cents US per hour for a month. What the hell else can you do for a few cents an hour?
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$0.50 USD won't even get a soda anymore. I say it's a fair bargain, although I think Turbine did F2P right. I still just go premium when I play since I tend to log a lot of hours and burn through content failry fast but I think the pay as you go system is good for the more casual player.
The problem with the sub model is that in households with multiple subs, they really add up. 60 bucks a month for four of us to have a sub (me, the wife and two teens). We've migrated to some of the f2p games for that very reason. I certainly can't afford to have subs to multiple games, although I'd like to, for sure. I can't sub to WoW, RIFT, Aion and EVE all at the same time althought I enjoy each one of those. The sub model, as we know it, limits gaming too much.
I understand your point of needing predictability to create a vast, immersive, innovative game, and recruiting talents onto the project, thats why I proposed the whole pay 15 months of sub before that players before becoming b2p model (for that player only). Therefore they can all get the basics of the game done and polish, and lets face it, expansions are expanding the game, usually does not include anything that changes the core mechanics.
Shouldn't we be rewarded for being loyal to a game? Clubs and other social activities do this all the time, promotions,cheaper subscriptions, lifetime members, MMORPG, as a social activity, should be similar no?
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
When i first started playing online games it was pay as you go. It cost $X per hour to login. It was insanely expensive. I know you are refering to the Turbine "F2P" system, but just wanted to point out that the last thing I would ever want is a "metered" system to return!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
So many mmorpg struggle to even survive nowa day.
They released the game and in 1 month they start cutting staff already.
So more casual players should pay the price for not being able to play as much? Being a student makes that quite hard to do.
I play tennis for free
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.