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lifetime subscription
Gaborik
Member Posts: 251
I have played LOTRO since Beta and one thing I would have done different is purchase the Lifetime Subscription at lauch. Will TOR have this option? I would do this option if it was available.
At $299.99 (lotro price at lauch) it would take 19 months before you playing for free (14.99/month).
Comments
TOR will never have a lifetime sub.
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most people wouldnt want it, due to past mmo's going with lifetime subs have gone the f2p route or as some people say failed.
ToR will not have a life time sub option, and honestly most people cannot afford it or dont want to spend 350$+ on a life time sub for a game they are not sure how long they will be playing or how long it will be kept on the same revnue model. These days it's quite common for games to switch to alternative revenue models alltough i do not belive that ToR will ever will, it might how ever will have to lower it's monthly sub costs especially when blizzard will start to do the same and they allready have to a point with their yearly sub + diablo 3 combo.
I've also think that life time subs are counter productive from the player pov since they give up any leverge they have against the developer and publisher due to the fact that they give up all the money upfront. And also from the dev/publisher pov to me life time subs show that they do not belive in the longevity of the game adn want to capitlize as much as possible on the initial hype.
Life time subs, especially if they are dominant with in a game just ruin it, the dev have no reason to adhere to the current player base and have to adhere only to the people who are still not playing the game which usualy turns into a dumb down / cas friendly fest.
It's very unlikely. Anyone who says 'never' is just guessing same as everyone else.
Think of it as EA protecting you from future disappointment.
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Lifetime subs are horrible...
http://www.gamesradar.com/ea-predicts-10-year-lifespan-for-star-wars-the-old-republic/
Assuming someone subscribes for 10 years (and the game hasn't gone F2P or shut down by then), that would be what . . . about $1800?
I'm sure they wouldn't mind offering a lifetime sub for $1800. They'd LOSE money at a $300 lifetime sub past 19 months, to use your example.
Don't see why a company would want to lose money over the course of a game's life if they think it's gonna be popular.
Life time subs are a gamble for players and a cash injection for developers. The reason they dont cost $1800 (LOL btw) is because the player takes a gamble on the sub and the Developer gets a boost of up-front capital.
SWtoR wont offer a lifetime not because they are a *bad idea* but because the amount of pre-orders they have already made is netting them a massive cash injection. WIll it make back thier initial outlay? Nope, but they have the backing of EA to soak that and time to recoup over the next year or so.
Turbine offered lifetimes with LotRO to get back a chunk of thier outlay, and it worked out pretty well for them. Bioware just does not need to do that so no, they wont because they dont want you playing for free after 2 years or so. (Obviously Bioware feels thier game will last past this point, which is good news for us players! )
" . . . they don't want you playing for free after 2 years or so."
Pretty much says it all right there, dem.
How are lifetime subscribers reacting when their game goes F2P?
I would imagine it causes some resentment.
Don't listen to the haters here OP.
There was a thread on the official forums with yellow names responding stating they have NOT ruled out lifetime subs yet.
So it still remains to be seen.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
Yeah, pretty ticked off. I haven't got screwed like that personally because I know better, but I could imagine it would suck more than a little bit. I'm sure they throw in garbage like "auto upgrade to premium account" or something. Free credits?
You guys realize the average length of time a player subscribes to an MMO is 7 months?
Also, see my post above. As much as you want to guesstimate they won't offer them, on the official forums they have not ruled them out yet which means as of about a week ago they were still considering it.
So basically you guys have no idea what you're talking about...
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
The only reason a developer would offer a lifetime sub is because they don't have enough faith in their game that they would expect people to play longer bring in more revenue.
So then basically you're commenting on something you know nothing about?
I have a lifetime sub to LOTRO. You know what happened to us when the game went freemium? Nothing. That's right nothing. The game carried on the same as it had before it went freemium with the exception that we could buy stuff in the item shop.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
Again, the average gamer only subs for 7 months so any developer offering a lifetime sub will come out ahead on average...assuming their offering lasts more than 7 months of course which SWTOR most definitely will.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
Couple of games did it like LOTRO and STO, some others too i belive(dont remeber if AOC had it). Having a large amount of lifetime subs might even cause the game to go the (Not-So)Free 2 Play way in order to gain additional revenue, Blizzard is hoping to do it with the year subs + their new vanity *cough* cash * cough* shop service. Heck the new battle.net ballance that they are intreducing will create a unified digital currency which will be cross game and will allow you to pay for real stuff like WoW play time. There are allot of things happening in the MMO market today beyond the F2P lie.
Honestly i'm glad that ToR so far is sticking to the original model - too many companies these days are looking for way too many creative ways in how to milk much more than 15$ from their costumers, in-game shops which aimed and causing as much impluse buys as you can have, in-game "virtual" currencies which you have to buy for real money and other crap is just wrong. Many of the so call "f2p" players pay way over the 15$ a month, i've seen people spend 50$+ on games like LoL and you kinda have too especially if you play on the competetive scene since "draw" matches require you to have X amount of champions and allot of them are constantly being "banned" by the community, also with every new champ the meta game changes and many times it will be required of you to have the new champ. Yes i know that you can buy LoL champs for "IP" and not just riot points but the prices for those champs, especially the new ones combined with the fact that you have to buy new runes for them allot of the times make it pretty much impossible to keep up with IP alone.
Blizz's new scheme is the main reason why i never will go back to WoW why i've cancled my pre-order of Diablo 3 and why i am considering to stop playing SC2, i am not buying the next title or any additional game from Blizzard ever again. They've turned Battle.net into Paypal(and actually will be working with PP for the bnet ballance to real money conversion crap) for me this is just wrong on so many levels and i hope the community will speak out against it.
When i buy a game i want to know what am i paying for and how much upfront, i sure as hell dont want to see in game stores and other crap in it. I dont mind vanity off-game vanity stores for pets, mounts and other in game crap aslong as they are not directly tied into the game, they are not being abused by the publishers, they are not built to catch impulsive buyers and dont sell any advantage what so ever. Blizzard is breaking all of those rules, because once you allow people to buy gold, and buy and sell items directly for real money you enable people to buy in game advantages for hard earned cash just to get a % of the proffits. This allways was considered one of the big NO's in any MMO/Competetive Online Game the real world equivilent of this is for Visa to work directly with black market / illegal traders for a cut of the proffits.
Based upon projections of '900k Box sales in NA alone' there is no way SWTOR won't return the investment cost on day 1.
Unless EA is now falsifying their earnings report that is.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
I'm pretty sure when I read the lotro faq (as an example). Anyone that had paid for a lifetime sub was converted to the top tier of their model. Its the tier where you pretty much still pay a sub fee... people who had lifetime subscriptions get that at no cost.. so they really didn't get screwed over.
My issue with lifetime subs has nothing to do with a game going F2P. My issue is its a path to failure or at least that's my opinion. At the so far standard of around $200...
They target buyer is really someone that will play a month or a few months and then go away. Its the same mentality as F2P.. Sure you can go into a game for "free". Well guess what... the only way that works is if for every free person someone else is spending more than 2 normal subs. The entire idea is to get you to think "free" and spend more than a subscription per month on crap from a shop.
So when you offer a lifetime subscription if the retention rate of "lifers" was very high you would simply lose a lot of money. Imagine if 99% of people in all of these mmo's going f2p simply stop paying anything but kept playing...
As a customer tho if you intend to play long enough then a lifetime subscription is a great deal.
As a company outside of continued growth past the time you offered a lifetime sub.. I mean you either need those people to leave or a continuous stream of new people paying to make up for it.. if things don't work out right then you lose money.
That eventually comes back to bite the "llifer" in the dark side. There are 3 MMO's I can think of off the top of my head that offered this option... Of those 3 the only 1 I can think of that might be doing ok is lotro.. and I really have no idea how its doing. It certainly is low key enough that if I hadn't played it at launch I wouldn't even know it exists.
Oh if it got lost in there I don't like the lifetime subscription offer because its based on some very flawed logic on the business side. How that business does... actually will affect my game experience if I stuck around that long.
/end ramble
Exactly. If a developer thinks that their game is good enough that their subs will play longer than the 19 months or so it takes for the player to recoup their investment then there's no reason to offer a lifetime sub.
Agreed. Pretty much killed your own argument for having lifetime subs.
^This
forgetting mmorgs for a second, regardless of industry, why on earth would you pay a company for hte lifetime for their services, its foolhardy. Pay them as they go, pay them if and when they earn it.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D