Entertainment generally doesn't follow inflation. Music and games cost about the same as they did in the 90s.
The one exception is going to the movies- which has been jacked up beyond belief.
I think the main problem with a sub model is there are just very few MMOs out right now that are worthy of paying for access to. It's a little bit of a catch 22, because much of why so many MMOs suck is they are designed from the ground up to be p2w and prod you into the shop.
Entertainment generally doesn't follow inflation. Music and games cost about the same as they did in the 90s.
The one exception is going to the movies- which has been jacked up beyond belief.
I think the main problem with a sub model is there are just very few MMOs out right now that are worthy of paying for access to. It's a little bit of a catch 22, because much of why so many MMOs suck is they are designed from the ground up to be p2w and prod you into the shop.
Paying to watch the movie really hasn't gone up that much. You can still get good deals if you go early....but the price of popcorn left over from the night before or the box of half empty m&ms has been jacked up.
Entertainment generally doesn't follow inflation. Music and games cost about the same as they did in the 90s.
The one exception is going to the movies- which has been jacked up beyond belief.
I think the main problem with a sub model is there are just very few MMOs out right now that are worthy of paying for access to. It's a little bit of a catch 22, because much of why so many MMOs suck is they are designed from the ground up to be p2w and prod you into the shop.
Totally inaccurate statement. Of the FEW games created as subscription-only games over the past few years, none had built-in P2W models. At all! Yet subscriptions fell off sharply after the 6-month mark. It's not really a matter of being a catch-22, it's a matter of people not willing to spend money on a subscription.
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.
They don't need a large percentage of players to pay that kind of money for the cash shop to be profitable. In reality, it's a small percentage of the playerbase that accounts for a large percentage of the overall spending in the game. The whales and big fish subsidize the game for free players and minnows.
I know its an unpopular opinion around here, but imo the sub+game box + paid expansion business model is a huge rip off. Even just a sub of $15 a month is too much for what you get. Something around $10/month seems reasonable if its a game I really like, but otherwise the GW2 model is ideal for me.
From my perspective these mmos are just essentially the same game no matter how many expansions or "content updates" they put out. Its like buying skyrim and then having to pay a monthly game tax to use it,- and they are usually no where near as good gameplay wise as a single player rpg anyway.
Clearly the subscription still works. WOW is still hauling in the money. The reason why games go no subscription is because of the shear number of games available to play. 15 years ago there was 7 or so games you could play. It was easy to buy the game AND pay the money for a subscription because there were only a few choices.
Now there are over 150 games that are either in release or going to release. There is not enough time for people to play or even trial that number of games. It would costs thousands to just purchase those games let alone a monthly subscription. It does not matter if they are good games or not, they are forced to go F2P because there are too many games to choose from.
It is just like the console era before the arrival of the Nintendo system. You had three major consoles, Atari Intellivision and CollecoVision, and each system had 200 plus games to choose from. Not enough people to play or even purchase the product. And games were about 30 dollars back then.
There is no reason why mmorpg should have a subscription.
The old argument was network costs but that hasn't been true for a very long time. A newer argument is frequent content creation but developers never managed to do do frequent enough content patches to warrant $15 a month. The real reason for subscription is that they wish to earn more money and for a very long time mmorpg were a golden cow for publishers.
The reason customers paid $15 a month to access the game was that mmorpg back then had a unique experience you couldn't find elsewhere. That hasn't been true ever since we started to have wow-clones popping up everywhere and as mmorpg became more and more about solo gameplay people no longer want to pay $180 a year just to access a game.
If you want to charge people for extra content just sell it as dlc. It will be more than enough to keep things running.
Citation needed.
I believe it's a little more complicated than 'well, why turn off the money faucet'?
You can rent a cloud server from Google, but do you have any idea what sort of specs you would need to run a MMORPG? Do you know of anywhere you can get this for free (other than offloading the burden to the players themselves in a peer-to-peer network including all the pitfalls that entails)?
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
The problem that investors have with making new mmorpg has more to do with the initial cost of creating an mmorpg and little to do with how much they cost to run. These games went from costing $2M-$5M and now they are somewhere in the region of $100M-$200M. Instead of making it all back on box sales and a few months subscriptions it takes far more time to pay back the investment to make their original investment back. I have heard talk about half of all mmorpg project never make it to launch and that's a pretty tough gamble to make.
What made it worth the gamble was that if your gamble paid off you had a part of the golden cow and got huge money thanks to subscription. Nowadays the golden cow has moved on to other genres.
Please make sure to show a graph on how much of that $15 subscription goes to pay for network costs and tell me why I should keep paying for them.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
Put in the year you played your first 15 and the year you played your first 15$ 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.
Bandwidth is one of the major cost-to-serve factors in running a mature MMO. It's hugely cheaper than it was back then.
There is no reason why mmorpg should have a subscription.
The old argument was network costs but that hasn't been true for a very long time. A newer argument is frequent content creation but developers never managed to do do frequent enough content patches to warrant $15 a month. The real reason for subscription is that they wish to earn more money and for a very long time mmorpg were a golden cow for publishers.
The reason customers paid $15 a month to access the game was that mmorpg back then had a unique experience you couldn't find elsewhere. That hasn't been true ever since we started to have wow-clones popping up everywhere and as mmorpg became more and more about solo gameplay people no longer want to pay $180 a year just to access a game.
If you want to charge people for extra content just sell it as dlc. It will be more than enough to keep things running.
Citation needed.
I believe it's a little more complicated than 'well, why turn off the money faucet'?
You can rent a cloud server from Google, but do you have any idea what sort of specs you would need to run a MMORPG? Do you know of anywhere you can get this for free (other than offloading the burden to the players themselves in a peer-to-peer network including all the pitfalls that entails)?
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
The problem that investors have with making new mmorpg has more to do with the initial cost of creating an mmorpg and little to do with how much they cost to run. These games went from costing $2M-$5M and now they are somewhere in the region of $100M-$200M. Instead of making it all back on box sales and a few months subscriptions it takes far more time to pay back the investment to make their original investment back. I have heard talk about half of all mmorpg project never make it to launch and that's a pretty tough gamble to make.
What made it worth the gamble was that if your gamble paid off you had a part of the golden cow and got huge money thanks to subscription. Nowadays the golden cow has moved on to other genres.
Please make sure to show a graph on how much of that $15 subscription goes to pay for network costs and tell me why I should keep paying for them.
No.
You made the claim that network costs are no longer a factor, you provide the graph.
I agree with you regarding the initial cost of development along with risk. Given that creating a MMORPG is such a huge undertaking, it's great that some companies are willing to take the long view and earn back their initial outlay maybe even ten years down the road. It shows dedication.
I can't answer for you why you should pay a subscription, other than you like what's being offered. If I found the same type of experience for free, I probably would take it.
Post edited by Phaserlight on
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
$15.00 per month is cheap entertainment. The price of one movie ticket in some situations so $15.00 for 2 hours of entertainment. How many of you played online when you had to pay $ per hour?
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?"
There is no reason why mmorpg should have a subscription.
The old argument was network costs but that hasn't been true for a very long time. A newer argument is frequent content creation but developers never managed to do do frequent enough content patches to warrant $15 a month. The real reason for subscription is that they wish to earn more money and for a very long time mmorpg were a golden cow for publishers.
The reason customers paid $15 a month to access the game was that mmorpg back then had a unique experience you couldn't find elsewhere. That hasn't been true ever since we started to have wow-clones popping up everywhere and as mmorpg became more and more about solo gameplay people no longer want to pay $180 a year just to access a game.
If you want to charge people for extra content just sell it as dlc. It will be more than enough to keep things running.
Selling DLC only works for themepark style MMOs.
I think the subscription I pay for EVE is well justified by CCP: the client is free, expansions are free, the game is free for as long as you want to stay in Alpha (ie: trial) mode, "hats" are in the cash shop, but they can be resold for in-game money, so there's nothing in the game that I can only get by paying real money for. And they actually reduced the subscription price for UK customers a few years ago. £8.33 p/m if I buy 12 months at a time is pretty damb cheap. That's how to justify a subscription IMO.
Entertainment generally doesn't follow inflation. Music and games cost about the same as they did in the 90s.
The one exception is going to the movies- which has been jacked up beyond belief.
I think the main problem with a sub model is there are just very few MMOs out right now that are worthy of paying for access to. It's a little bit of a catch 22, because much of why so many MMOs suck is they are designed from the ground up to be p2w and prod you into the shop.
actually, paying 30 DM in the 90s was normal, nowadays i pay 30 euro for a cd or dvd, if it's new at least. that actually is twice the ammount i payed earlier
and believe me, you didn't pay more than 30 bucks for a game either ^^ (actually... back then most of the time you didn't pay at all *G*)
just sayin
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
I think I'm beginning to understand why Trump got elected if the average wage in the US is still the same after 15 years...
Not to get political, but Trump is one of those against pay increases (raising the min wage) so that makes no sense :P.
Not to get political but raising the minimum wage hurts small businesses. The minimum wage is not meant to be a living wage. Trump is FOR raising the wages of middle class Americans not those flipping burgers at mcds...facts sometimes get lost in the "fake news" cycle.
$15 a month does not work for MMO companies because there is more out there. People are willing to pay more than $15/month in things like cash shops and paying $15/month+cash for extra stuff. So long as there is a market the companies will tap it.
I think I'm beginning to understand why Trump got elected if the average wage in the US is still the same after 15 years...
Not to get political, but Trump is one of those against pay increases (raising the min wage) so that makes no sense :P.
Not to get political but raising the minimum wage hurts small businesses. The minimum wage is not meant to be a living wage. Trump is FOR raising the wages of middle class Americans not those flipping burgers at mcds...facts sometimes get lost in the "fake news" cycle.
That makes even less sense, the Fed has no control over the wages of the middle class , unless you're implying trickle down economics will result in that.. If so LMAO... Anyway wrong forum for this discussion.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I think I'm beginning to understand why Trump got elected if the average wage in the US is still the same after 15 years...
Not to get political, but Trump is one of those against pay increases (raising the min wage) so that makes no sense :P.
Not to get political but raising the minimum wage hurts small businesses. The minimum wage is not meant to be a living wage. Trump is FOR raising the wages of middle class Americans not those flipping burgers at mcds...facts sometimes get lost in the "fake news" cycle.
That makes even less sense, the Fed has no control over the wages of the middle class , unless you're implying trickle down economics will result in that.. If so LMAO... Anyway wrong forum for this discussion.
Yeah wrong forum and you are clearly reading and listening to the wrong people.
Btw the 1,000 carrier jobs and the 50,000 jobs announced yesterday thanks to the "Feds" (Trump) would disagree with the Fake news outlets you read and watch.
Like i said you won't be getting actual facts if you keep reading and watching that garbage.
I think $15 a month is way too low because of economic reasons. However, I would gladly pay $20 or $25.
They could even promote the price structure in such a way that a person could pay $25 a month, or allow a person to load $10+ dollars to there account, then the game could charge them $1.00 each day for logging in from there balance.
For hardcores they would want the $25, but for weekend players, and those that have a busy life the $1 a day could actually be cheaper. Especially useful if a person needs to go on a 2 week vacation, is in the military, ect.
Even as a hardcore player, I would not mind paying by the hour like old BBS systems. I believe if they kept there price around 20 to 35 cents per hour this would be reasonable and work better for casual gamers. This would be more a deterrent for Bots, A plus for the casuals, give an option for the hardcore players, make everyone try to maximize there gameplay vs sitting idle, it may help the economy with auction house prices making people who just sit there all day actually need to consider the cost of there gameplay (they have to be efficient just like others maximizing there gametime). I am sure there would be a lot of haters, but it is a fair system of charging people to pay for running the servers for the amount of time they actually use them, instead of a flat fee.
Yeah wrong forum and you are clearly reading and listening to the wrong people.
Btw the 1,000 carrier jobs and the 50,000 jobs announced yesterday thanks to the "Feds" (Trump) would disagree with the Fake news outlets you read and watch.
Like i said you won't be getting actual facts if you keep reading and watching that garbage.
There they are... the typical assumptions, what may I ask sources do you believe I get my "news" from? I certainly don't prescribe to punditry, which is all most news is today, on both sides...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I think I'm beginning to understand why Trump got elected if the average wage in the US is still the same after 15 years...
Not to get political, but Trump is one of those against pay increases (raising the min wage) so that makes no sense :P.
Not to get political but raising the minimum wage hurts small businesses. The minimum wage is not meant to be a living wage. Trump is FOR raising the wages of middle class Americans not those flipping burgers at mcds...facts sometimes get lost in the "fake news" cycle.
That makes even less sense, the Fed has no control over the wages of the middle class , unless you're implying trickle down economics will result in that.. If so LMAO... Anyway wrong forum for this discussion.
Yeah wrong forum and you are clearly reading and listening to the wrong people.
Btw the 1,000 carrier jobs and the 50,000 jobs announced yesterday thanks to the "Feds" (Trump) would disagree with the Fake news outlets you read and watch.
Like i said you won't be getting actual facts if you keep reading and watching that garbage.
There they are... the typical assumptions, what may I ask sources do you believe I get my "news" from? I certainly don't prescribe to punditry, which is all most news is today, on both sides...
agreed both sides are bad to a point...I have my guesses where you get some of your info...but like we both have said this isn't the correct forum for this chat...I just wanted to pass along some facts you obviously were not up to speed on.
Yeah wrong forum and you are clearly reading and listening to the wrong people.
Btw the 1,000 carrier jobs and the 50,000 jobs announced yesterday thanks to the "Feds" (Trump) would disagree with the Fake news outlets you read and watch.
Like i said you won't be getting actual facts if you keep reading and watching that garbage.
There they are... the typical assumptions, what may I ask sources do you believe I get my "news" from? I certainly don't prescribe to punditry, which is all most news is today, on both sides...
agreed both sides are bad to a point...I have my guesses where you get some of your info...but like we both have said this isn't the correct forum for this chat...I just wanted to pass along some facts you obviously were not up to speed on.
I like to judge this in comparison to my other hobbies.
One of my other hobbies is tabletop wargaming. I play Warhammer 40k, Warmachine, X-wing Miniatures a little Flames of War and some other assorted games. This hobby far outpaces the amount I've spent on video gaming. For example, by pure math I have spent about $4,400 USD on EVE Online subscription fees since I started playing in 2005. In that same 11 year period of time I have spent a good $7,000-$10,000 on Tabletop Wargaming. Starting a new 2000 point army will cost anywhere from $500-$900 USD and I have purchased 13 different Warhammer Fantasy/40k armies. Not to mention the several thousand I've spent on non-Games Workshop miniatures.
Another hobby of mine is modding my 370z. I installed two parts last year, A Stillen Gen 3 Cold Air Intake System which cost me $500 USD + $100 shipping and a 34 Row Oil Cooler Radiator that cost me $620 USD + $50 shipping. This year I will be upgrading my exhaust, rear spoiler and installing sway bars for another $2k USD total.
Another hobby is collecting and shooting firearms. Last year I bought a Walther PPQ M2 for $600, a Springfield Arms XDS 9mm for $430, and a Maverick 88 Shotgun for $200. Plus ammo, cases, extra magazines, IWB Holsters, OWB Holsters, range fees for shooting.... ect.
So essentially, playing MMORPG's is one of the cheapest hobbies that I have. In fact, if I paid $20 a month for EVE or another really good game, then that still wouldn't be too much for the amount of time I spend in them. Especially considering that I only play 40k on the weekends, only take my 370z to the race track 2-3 times a year and only go to the shooting range once every 1-2 months. I'm getting far more bang for my buck gaming, than shooting.
Comments
The one exception is going to the movies- which has been jacked up beyond belief.
I think the main problem with a sub model is there are just very few MMOs out right now that are worthy of paying for access to. It's a little bit of a catch 22, because much of why so many MMOs suck is they are designed from the ground up to be p2w and prod you into the shop.
Totally inaccurate statement. Of the FEW games created as subscription-only games over the past few years, none had built-in P2W models. At all! Yet subscriptions fell off sharply after the 6-month mark. It's not really a matter of being a catch-22, it's a matter of people not willing to spend money on a subscription.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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From my perspective these mmos are just essentially the same game no matter how many expansions or "content updates" they put out. Its like buying skyrim and then having to pay a monthly game tax to use it,- and they are usually no where near as good gameplay wise as a single player rpg anyway.
Now there are over 150 games that are either in release or going to release. There is not enough time for people to play or even trial that number of games. It would costs thousands to just purchase those games let alone a monthly subscription. It does not matter if they are good games or not, they are forced to go F2P because there are too many games to choose from.
It is just like the console era before the arrival of the Nintendo system. You had three major consoles, Atari Intellivision and CollecoVision, and each system had 200 plus games to choose from. Not enough people to play or even purchase the product. And games were about 30 dollars back then.
What made it worth the gamble was that if your gamble paid off you had a part of the golden cow and got huge money thanks to subscription. Nowadays the golden cow has moved on to other genres.
Please make sure to show a graph on how much of that $15 subscription goes to pay for network costs and tell me why I should keep paying for them.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
You made the claim that network costs are no longer a factor, you provide the graph.
I agree with you regarding the initial cost of development along with risk. Given that creating a MMORPG is such a huge undertaking, it's great that some companies are willing to take the long view and earn back their initial outlay maybe even ten years down the road. It shows dedication.
I can't answer for you why you should pay a subscription, other than you like what's being offered. If I found the same type of experience for free, I probably would take it.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Meanwhile in reality MMORPGs have gone hybrid with both sub options and cash shops. They are still completely viable.
"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/Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
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?"
I think the subscription I pay for EVE is well justified by CCP: the client is free, expansions are free, the game is free for as long as you want to stay in Alpha (ie: trial) mode, "hats" are in the cash shop, but they can be resold for in-game money, so there's nothing in the game that I can only get by paying real money for. And they actually reduced the subscription price for UK customers a few years ago. £8.33 p/m if I buy 12 months at a time is pretty damb cheap. That's how to justify a subscription IMO.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
that actually is twice the ammount i payed earlier
and believe me, you didn't pay more than 30 bucks for a game either ^^
(actually... back then most of the time you didn't pay at all *G*)
just sayin
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Btw the 1,000 carrier jobs and the 50,000 jobs announced yesterday thanks to the "Feds" (Trump) would disagree with the Fake news outlets you read and watch.
Like i said you won't be getting actual facts if you keep reading and watching that garbage.
They could even promote the price structure in such a way that a person could pay $25 a month, or allow a person to load $10+ dollars to there account, then the game could charge them $1.00 each day for logging in from there balance.
For hardcores they would want the $25, but for weekend players, and those that have a busy life the $1 a day could actually be cheaper. Especially useful if a person needs to go on a 2 week vacation, is in the military, ect.
Even as a hardcore player, I would not mind paying by the hour like old BBS systems. I believe if they kept there price around 20 to 35 cents per hour this would be reasonable and work better for casual gamers. This would be more a deterrent for Bots, A plus for the casuals, give an option for the hardcore players, make everyone try to maximize there gameplay vs sitting idle, it may help the economy with auction house prices making people who just sit there all day actually need to consider the cost of there gameplay (they have to be efficient just like others maximizing there gametime). I am sure there would be a lot of haters, but it is a fair system of charging people to pay for running the servers for the amount of time they actually use them, instead of a flat fee.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
One of my other hobbies is tabletop wargaming. I play Warhammer 40k, Warmachine, X-wing Miniatures a little Flames of War and some other assorted games. This hobby far outpaces the amount I've spent on video gaming. For example, by pure math I have spent about $4,400 USD on EVE Online subscription fees since I started playing in 2005. In that same 11 year period of time I have spent a good $7,000-$10,000 on Tabletop Wargaming. Starting a new 2000 point army will cost anywhere from $500-$900 USD and I have purchased 13 different Warhammer Fantasy/40k armies. Not to mention the several thousand I've spent on non-Games Workshop miniatures.
Another hobby of mine is modding my 370z. I installed two parts last year, A Stillen Gen 3 Cold Air Intake System which cost me $500 USD + $100 shipping and a 34 Row Oil Cooler Radiator that cost me $620 USD + $50 shipping. This year I will be upgrading my exhaust, rear spoiler and installing sway bars for another $2k USD total.
Another hobby is collecting and shooting firearms. Last year I bought a Walther PPQ M2 for $600, a Springfield Arms XDS 9mm for $430, and a Maverick 88 Shotgun for $200. Plus ammo, cases, extra magazines, IWB Holsters, OWB Holsters, range fees for shooting.... ect.
So essentially, playing MMORPG's is one of the cheapest hobbies that I have. In fact, if I paid $20 a month for EVE or another really good game, then that still wouldn't be too much for the amount of time I spend in them. Especially considering that I only play 40k on the weekends, only take my 370z to the race track 2-3 times a year and only go to the shooting range once every 1-2 months. I'm getting far more bang for my buck gaming, than shooting.