To the OPBroke gamers are always complaining about game pricing instead of figuring out how to make more money... disgustingly lazy if you ask me. If you cant afford the 60 dollar box price then maybe you need to realign your priorities.
Stupid argument. I can definitely afford to spend way more than $60 for any game I want. Does that mean I actually want to or should? I have other, better things to spend money on as well as games.
It is like I used to see people charging $8 for a bottle of tap water in clubs. Is that not a rip off in your eyes because anyone who's going dancing at a club probably has $8 to spend?
Of course its a rip off! DUH! Did you just land on this planet? Thats the way things go...jesus the entitlement~
You are the dude who goes out and orders a round of drinks and tips a dollar if that.
Point is you want to play you pay.
Time to put the big boy pants on.
As a business owner, I must say I totally agree with you. You are exactly the kind of customer that I want and Hope that everyone takes your advice and learns from you. Because I just love it when people pay exactly what I charge and never complains and just take it as it is.
Thank You
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
$60 box cost is perfectly reasonable as its required for a business to operate. Pre-launch the costs are covered by investment and debt, post launch the running costs go UP, the staff numbers go UP, the infrastructure and logistics costs go up AND ON TOP OF THAT they need to start paying back the loans and investors.
No box cost would mean bankruptcy on day two. After the free month the subs maintain the running costs and allow about 20% to go back to profit margins to either repay debts/investors or start work on the next expansion.
People assume that all games are successful as WoW and make millions in profits every month, the truth is many games never even break even before they need to inject more money to repay the debts and go F2P to boost income for a short until they level out and cut staff and dev costs even further until they die a death. I would love to know what % of MMORPG games made actually ever turn a profit, if it was a huge number we would see more quality games being made.
Huge games like EQnext, ESO, GW2 are built as a calculated risk, and they use sites like this to reduce the risk by spending 2 years advertising and hyping to get enough box sales. You will notice the weekly news leaks about ESO, interviews, trailers and this is how sites like this survive, they feed each other.
Also consider the box cost for PC games has not gone up by inflationary rates over the last 15 years, the sub has stayed almost static.
As players we should be demanding low sub costs not lower box costs, that forces them to be more efficient in managing the game post release not cut corners pre-release. In effect we are getting a very good deal when you consider the price change on EVERY other commodity and service.
Perhaps $60 seems a lot of money to a student or someone struggling with a family, the answer is THIS IS A GAME AND NOTHING MORE, if you cant afford it you are not losing anything.
Well obviously it's an artifact of when most people still bought games in physical stores which companies convieniently never got rid of out of greed but in this era when a lot of games require no upfront iargue! ment I think demanding a box price and a sub is shooting themselves in the foot and driving away a lot of potential customers. Example I'm somewhat interested in playing ESO. If I just had to sub for a month and see if I liked it I wouldn't hesitate to do that but I probably will not be buying a $60 box on launch day just for a game which I will still have to keep paying for if I do like it. At least with Skyrim for example if I do plunk down the $60 on launch day and then am somewhat let down I can keep it on my hard drive and maybe it will grow on me. There's no additional value in the box that justifies the additional price. It's only value is the "free" month sub code which could easily be sold in a much smaller package much cheaper if people don't want to buy online. Boxes are a total ripoff for the consumer and probably drive a lot of business away from these games.
I take offence to ignorance, sorry, I do. You too cheap to buy a game, that's your problem. As someone who has worked in the industry, guys like you seriously make guys make me Upset. You have no idea what people make, how much money it takes to make a game, the hours involved, let me tell you something, do the employees make huge sums? Up no. Working in the games industry is not glamorous. Whining self entitled cheapskates , arghh!
To the OPBroke gamers are always complaining about game pricing instead of figuring out how to make more money... disgustingly lazy if you ask me. If you cant afford the 60 dollar box price then maybe you need to realign your priorities.
Stupid argument. I can definitely afford to spend way more than $60 for any game I want. Does that mean I actually want to or should? I have other, better things to spend money on as well as games.It is like I used to see people charging $8 for a bottle of tap water in clubs. Is that not a rip off in your eyes because anyone who's going dancing at a club probably has $8 to spend?
Of course its a rip off! DUH! Did you just land on this planet? Thats the way things go...jesus the entitlement~You are the dude who goes out and orders a round of drinks and tips a dollar if that.Point is you want to play you pay.Time to put the big boy pants on.
As a business owner, I must say I totally agree with you. You are exactly the kind of customer that I want and Hope that everyone takes your advice and learns from you. Because I just love it when people pay exactly what I charge and never complains and just take it as it is.
Thank You
Really dude, you are not saying anything new? If you REALLY are a business owner you know this behavior is pre-existing.
Yet if you really do own one I'd say you need to be more attentive to what is presented to you lest you misspeak.
I never said I would pay that, but having worked in several industries including entertainment, I can attest to you there are more dumbass that come out than not.
If you want customers like me personally you would go broke cause homie don't play that.
Broke gamers are always complaining about game pricing instead of figuring out how to make more money... disgustingly lazy if you ask me. If you cant afford the 60 dollar box price then maybe you need to realign your priorities.
Stupid argument. I can definitely afford to spend way more than $60 for any game I want. Does that mean I actually want to or should? I have other, better things to spend money on as well as games.
It is like I used to see people charging $8 for a bottle of tap water in clubs. Is that not a rip off in your eyes because anyone who's going dancing at a club probably has $8 to spend?
Exactly my point... there is a endless list of egregiously priced items in the world today.. why complain about video games?
Complaining about a box price and yet I wonder if he has ever bought a collectors edtion of a F2P......like the Neverwinter 200.00 sucker of the north package or EQNL's found pack or the many other F2P games that dont have an initial box sale but they do have a 60.00 ish package of short lived bonuses you can buy. But at least it isnt a box, so it's not a ripoff.....
Originally posted by DMKanoBox price has nothing to do with profits.Look at LoL, world of tanks or any game that has made 100s of millions and didn't have a box price (nor sub fee).LoL artists still get paid.IMO - OP makes a valid point, having a $60 entry fee just to try the game followed by $15 fee each following month - its a tough sell these days.Also having boxes sit on retail shelves at stores is very costly, if those boxes don't sell at the pre-agreed volume, Bethesda has to buy them back... I wonder how many folks don't realize this.Shelf space is not free.And since they are out on consoles too, can't avoid retail boxes as digital sales are still a tiny % on the consoles when it comes to full games with multi-GB clients.
Please, An artist for League of Legends wouldnt even get a fraction of what ESO shader gets paid...
To the OP
Broke gamers are always complaining about game pricing instead of figuring out how to make more money... disgustingly lazy if you ask me. If you cant afford the 60 dollar box price then maybe you need to realign your priorities.
Oh yeah, just "make more money". That is a perfect solution. I can't believe nobody has ever thought of that before. Somebody should tell the millions of homeless people and millions of people who are out of work that they just need to make more money. We'll save a ton of tax money in unemployment benefits.
Anyway, prices aren't set by the developers or publishers. They can suggest a price, but the price of something is really determined by the people willing to buy it. Unless gamers in general are unwilling to buy a "box" for an MMORPG, developers and publishers will keep selling them.
If you're going to complain about developers or publishers being greedy, you may as well complain about everyone being greedy. That's the whole basis of our economy and a large part of our society. The desire for profits drives development and progress and for the most part improves the standard of living for our society as a whole.
We arent talking about homeless people .. we are talking about computer owners who partake in the enjoyment of video games..
I still buy games from stores. No Steam for me. Those store employees make up almost a third of USA's work force. Screw your damn downloads. Uncle Ned needs a job.
Originally posted by General-Zod We arent talking about homeless people .. we are talking about computer owners who partake in the enjoyment of video games..
I know the amount of straw-man arguments is insane. They might as well just type " I don't know what I am talking about."
Originally posted by lizardbones Originally posted by General-Zod Originally posted by DMKanoBox price has nothing to do with profits.Look at LoL, world of tanks or any game that has made 100s of millions and didn't have a box price (nor sub fee).LoL artists still get paid.IMO - OP makes a valid point, having a $60 entry fee just to try the game followed by $15 fee each following month - its a tough sell these days.Also having boxes sit on retail shelves at stores is very costly, if those boxes don't sell at the pre-agreed volume, Bethesda has to buy them back... I wonder how many folks don't realize this.Shelf space is not free.And since they are out on consoles too, can't avoid retail boxes as digital sales are still a tiny % on the consoles when it comes to full games with multi-GB clients.
Please, An artist for League of Legends wouldnt even get a fraction of what ESO shader gets paid...
To the OP
Broke gamers are always complaining about game pricing instead of figuring out how to make more money... disgustingly lazy if you ask me. If you cant afford the 60 dollar box price then maybe you need to realign your priorities.
Oh yeah, just "make more money". That is a perfect solution. I can't believe nobody has ever thought of that before. Somebody should tell the millions of homeless people and millions of people who are out of work that they just need to make more money. We'll save a ton of tax money in unemployment benefits.
Anyway, prices aren't set by the developers or publishers. They can suggest a price, but the price of something is really determined by the people willing to buy it. Unless gamers in general are unwilling to buy a "box" for an MMORPG, developers and publishers will keep selling them.
If you're going to complain about developers or publishers being greedy, you may as well complain about everyone being greedy. That's the whole basis of our economy and a large part of our society. The desire for profits drives development and progress and for the most part improves the standard of living for our society as a whole.
We arent talking about homeless people .. we are talking about computer owners who partake in the enjoyment of video games..
Yep, guy that spend huge getting the best rig they can afford, then whining about how much the game costs. /sarcasm
Of course its a rip off! DUH! Did you just land on this planet? Thats the way things go...jesus the entitlement~
You are the dude who goes out and orders a round of drinks and tips a dollar if that.
Point is you want to play you pay.
Time to put the big boy pants on.
Entitlement would be me demanding they lower the price just so I can play. I'm not doing that. They can charge $500 box price with a $200 sub for all I care but only morons will actually be playing the game if they do that.
The fact is I have many games I can play. If I consider a game too expensive or a rip-off by my personal standards I won't play it and most people are like me. Only a few people really believe the "If something is more expensive it must be better." "I'm such a fanboy I must give the company whatever they ask for to play their precious games" way of thinking.
Look at Steam sales, do you think companies let their games go for $7 or so because they're just feeling generous around Christmas? Of course not, they make way more money doing that than keeping the prices at $60 all the time. That is the point I'm making. High box prices are bad not because they stop me personally from playing but because they cut down on a game's audience substantially possibly ofsetting the increased profit per box.
We'd all like to see everything being cheaper, unless we sell it.
That said, when has anything ever worked this way? When costs continually inflate, you can't expect the product to become cheaper. TBH us gamers are lucky these things aren't more expensive today than they were five years ago. Gaming is one of the few industries that have remained roughly the same price since the 80's, the average PC game still costs around 50 bucks (what we were paying for nintendo games back then), there are AAA exceptions that shot up to 60, but not all. Instead of raising costs they opted for monetized extras.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Why...because of business, something the entitled people no nothing of. Sub equals long term return with gradual rise...box sale is instant return. Investors, producers, distributors all want their money the faster the better. Tell you grocery store instead of paying 20 now you will pay 1.50 over 20 months....they will take the 10 loss for 20 now.
The easy answer is because you pay it. The box prices tend to be heavily discounted later, but early adopters pay the full price. And the majority of players rarely go beyond the month of playtime included in the box price. Box price tends to pay for development whereas subs pay for sustainment and future content.
I prefer p2p myself, I don't like the open ended p2w money grab that is often 'free to play'.
So if it is a good company that is taking the money and putting a good amount back into their game, to make new content and fix things, then I don't mind.
If they are just taking the money (putting little back), and their product is horrible, then they are not giving you what you paid for.
I play LoL, and yeah they make money and are f2p, but you cannot compare a mmo with a f2p moba, that has very limited maps and such. Most of their new content is the champions that they hope people spend money on to buy, and skins. They do not make a lot of new scenarios and boards. LoL imo does not have anywhere near the resource responsibility for content that a quality mmo does.
So not only do I not mind paying, but hypothetically, if a good company made a great game, and decided to up their sub from $15 to $25, but pledged that 100% of the $10 increase would go into making the game better, along with the percentage that was already being used from the $15 going unchanged....I would be willing to give it a go, if I liked the game and it gave results.
I do not mind paying if you have a quality product. I actually paid money to LoL, not because I needed something, but to show appreciation, because I play it a lot.
It's the biggest scam in the business atm. It's what allows them to make a 1 month throw away game. Hype the masses by constant advertising, then sell them the same reskinned garbage for 60$
Thank goodness for me 2013 had Wushu. No box fee, with a 9$ sub.
I hope somebody rallys to devalue the work you do... whatever it may be, so they can cut you out of the economic picture.
As a 3D artist I take offence, you are basically suggesting nobody deserves to profit from their hard work.
Spoiled and entitled millennials are the absolute worst, see my sig!
I believe the latter part of the subject title is better directed towards the OP...
Box price has nothing to do with profits.
Look at LoL, world of tanks or any game that has made 100s of millions and didn't have a box price (nor sub fee).
LoL artists still get paid.
IMO - OP makes a valid point, having a $60 entry fee just to try the game followed by $15 fee each following month - its a tough sell these days.
Also having boxes sit on retail shelves at stores is very costly, if those boxes don't sell at the pre-agreed volume, Bethesda has to buy them back... I wonder how many folks don't realize this.
Shelf space is not free.
And since they are out on consoles too, can't avoid retail boxes as digital sales are still a tiny % on the consoles when it comes to full games with multi-GB clients.
This is only because the initial cost of LoL and World of Tanks was most likely way less than the cost of ESO. (And BTW LoL did have a box at release that you could buy which I bought that gave you all the initial champions)
What ESO is banking on is brand name, meaning they throw it in the store, people will buy it not knowing that it is more than a single player game. This is the same thing that SWTOR had going for them, some thought it was basically KOTOR 3, brought it home and was then like "WTF?"
I want to know why you think a box + Sub is a tough sell? Games have no problem selling those, its retention that is the key issue still on everything but EVE and WOW.
Its a tough sell because it doesnt let a new player try before buying (assuming there is no trial, which most newly released p2p games don't have)
Obviously ESO is banking on established IP, otherwise box sale + sub fee would not stand a chance if this game was a brand new IP.
But you bring up the main problem - retentions are important in sub games, F2P games have players join, leave and come back all the time, sub games have *much more* difficulty bringing back players once they unsub, most never come back.
Once a game goes f2p, many players come back and even more new players try.
So the initial cost is a barrier for many, not because they can't afford it, but because many are not willing to pay any money before they play the game for a while and see if it worthy of their money.
To one of your earlier points, I do think new games should, in good faith have some kind of free trial. Often the open beta test will let people in that are interested anymore, but would be nice if they gave people a 3-7 day trial, and just make the account unable to trade anything or whatever you need to do so they cannot abuse the free trial and hurt your economic/game systems.
Initial code base ( the game engine, database, base zones, quests, models, items, dungeons,etc)
Game Support ( hopefully paid for by monthly subscription )
Things to keep the game alive:
Support Programmers ( Bug fixes, Game engine / game system support)
Development Programmers ( Game enhancements, incremental new content )
Artist / Game Designer ( New Art , Models, Items and fixes to existing content )
Customer Support ( Account problems, In Game problems)
Back office stuff ( billing, HR, rent, etc)
So up to this point if you are lucky you have a living MMO. The game runs, it has a decent population and with the limited staff you can keep it alive with some minor incremental enhancements.
Expansion !!!
Now you want to add alot of new stuff, the trouble is that your staff are all working 40+ hours to keep the game alive. You don't have the resources to build alot of new content so you decide to release an expansion. You need to get / borrow alot of money and hire staff ( Programmers, Artists, Level designers, Writers, Tester,etc) to focus on building the expansion over the next 1 -2 years.
When the expansion is ready you look around and try to figure out how to pay off the development costs, your monthly subscriptions are good but they barely covering the Game Support costs to keep the MMO alive. You need to find a away to earn more money....
You could increase the subscription costs to bring in the extra cash needed to cover the costs for expansions but charging more than the average $ 15.00 / month could scare away customers.
You could open a cash shop and then focus on ways to monetize your game, trying to tempt a minority of players to pay for everything and then let the majority play consume your entertainment for free.
Or the logical and fair approach is to sell the expansion box to cover the development costs and that way all the Players share the costs for the MMO equally.
there is much more to the box price than you can perceive if the price is too low some elitists automaticaly assume that the product is of bad quality and it wont sell
if it is too expensive the greed is reflected on it and it wont sell
its alot easier to lower the price than raise it since customers wont complain because of lowered price they complain if it gets higher all of the sudden for no good reason
price can reflect quality
price can reflect greed
price can be many things
and sometimes we are dissapointed because the developers see different things in their product compared to the customers
there is always some risk involved when buying something
how do you know there is no holes in the condoms you buy before you use them?
its not like some one test used the package before putting it on sale
There is a portion of gamers who do not touch free to play mmos even with a big stick because they believe the quality is low since it is free, that will never change.
there is much more to the box price than you can perceive if the price is too low some elitists automaticaly assume that the product is of bad quality and it wont sell
if it is too expensive the greed is reflected on it and it wont sell
its alot easier to lower the price than raise it since customers wont complain because of lowered price they complain if it gets higher all of the sudden for no good reason
price can reflect quality
price can reflect greed
price can be many things
and sometimes we are dissapointed because the developers see different things in their product compared to the customers
there is always some risk involved when buying something
how do you know there is no holes in the condoms you buy before you use them?
its not like some one test used the package before putting it on sale
There is a portion of gamers who do not touch free to play mmos even with a big stick because they believe the quality is low since it is free, that will never change.
Originally posted by Niburuyou pay for the game and the monthly fee is for future content and that you can use the servers.If you have a PS or Xbox do you complaim also about the Gold membership you have to buy there in order to play multiplayer games ?
There are MMO console games that don't require any gold membership fees.
Funny thing that, back when they increased the cost for gold while increasing the sheer volume of ads I left and never came back.
More fees should equal less ads but the converse was true. As PT Barnum said, a sucker is born every minute.
ESO's problem is not the box price... its the game lol.
Why will it sell? Because of the console release... its bound to be the next MMO COD and you know how refined COD fans are...
Wrong, there was a recent poll on Tamriel Foundry which showed 88% of the players will play on PC or Mac and over 84% on PC. So PC will definitely have more people than consoles.
Comments
As a business owner, I must say I totally agree with you. You are exactly the kind of customer that I want and Hope that everyone takes your advice and learns from you. Because I just love it when people pay exactly what I charge and never complains and just take it as it is.
Thank You
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Quiz gave you the best answer btw, think of it as a gating factor to earlier entry.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
$60 box cost is perfectly reasonable as its required for a business to operate. Pre-launch the costs are covered by investment and debt, post launch the running costs go UP, the staff numbers go UP, the infrastructure and logistics costs go up AND ON TOP OF THAT they need to start paying back the loans and investors.
No box cost would mean bankruptcy on day two. After the free month the subs maintain the running costs and allow about 20% to go back to profit margins to either repay debts/investors or start work on the next expansion.
People assume that all games are successful as WoW and make millions in profits every month, the truth is many games never even break even before they need to inject more money to repay the debts and go F2P to boost income for a short until they level out and cut staff and dev costs even further until they die a death. I would love to know what % of MMORPG games made actually ever turn a profit, if it was a huge number we would see more quality games being made.
Huge games like EQnext, ESO, GW2 are built as a calculated risk, and they use sites like this to reduce the risk by spending 2 years advertising and hyping to get enough box sales. You will notice the weekly news leaks about ESO, interviews, trailers and this is how sites like this survive, they feed each other.
Also consider the box cost for PC games has not gone up by inflationary rates over the last 15 years, the sub has stayed almost static.
As players we should be demanding low sub costs not lower box costs, that forces them to be more efficient in managing the game post release not cut corners pre-release. In effect we are getting a very good deal when you consider the price change on EVERY other commodity and service.
Perhaps $60 seems a lot of money to a student or someone struggling with a family, the answer is THIS IS A GAME AND NOTHING MORE, if you cant afford it you are not losing anything.
I take offence to ignorance, sorry, I do.You too cheap to buy a game, that's your problem. As someone who has worked in the industry, guys like you seriously make guys make me Upset. You have no idea what people make, how much money it takes to make a game, the hours involved, let me tell you something, do the employees make huge sums? Up no. Working in the games industry is not glamorous. Whining self entitled cheapskates , arghh!
over 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...
Really dude, you are not saying anything new? If you REALLY are a business owner you know this behavior is pre-existing.
Yet if you really do own one I'd say you need to be more attentive to what is presented to you lest you misspeak.
I never said I would pay that, but having worked in several industries including entertainment, I can attest to you there are more dumbass that come out than not.
If you want customers like me personally you would go broke cause homie don't play that.
Exactly my point... there is a endless list of egregiously priced items in the world today.. why complain about video games?
had a thought hit me suddenly.....
Complaining about a box price and yet I wonder if he has ever bought a collectors edtion of a F2P......like the Neverwinter 200.00 sucker of the north package or EQNL's found pack or the many other F2P games that dont have an initial box sale but they do have a 60.00 ish package of short lived bonuses you can buy. But at least it isnt a box, so it's not a ripoff.....
We arent talking about homeless people .. we are talking about computer owners who partake in the enjoyment of video games..
I know the amount of straw-man arguments is insane. They might as well just type " I don't know what I am talking about."
To the OP
Broke gamers are always complaining about game pricing instead of figuring out how to make more money... disgustingly lazy if you ask me. If you cant afford the 60 dollar box price then maybe you need to realign your priorities.
Oh yeah, just "make more money". That is a perfect solution. I can't believe nobody has ever thought of that before. Somebody should tell the millions of homeless people and millions of people who are out of work that they just need to make more money. We'll save a ton of tax money in unemployment benefits.
Anyway, prices aren't set by the developers or publishers. They can suggest a price, but the price of something is really determined by the people willing to buy it. Unless gamers in general are unwilling to buy a "box" for an MMORPG, developers and publishers will keep selling them.
If you're going to complain about developers or publishers being greedy, you may as well complain about everyone being greedy. That's the whole basis of our economy and a large part of our society. The desire for profits drives development and progress and for the most part improves the standard of living for our society as a whole.
We arent talking about homeless people .. we are talking about computer owners who partake in the enjoyment of video games..
Yep, guy that spend huge getting the best rig they can afford, then whining about how much the game costs. /sarcasmover 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...
Entitlement would be me demanding they lower the price just so I can play. I'm not doing that. They can charge $500 box price with a $200 sub for all I care but only morons will actually be playing the game if they do that.
The fact is I have many games I can play. If I consider a game too expensive or a rip-off by my personal standards I won't play it and most people are like me. Only a few people really believe the "If something is more expensive it must be better." "I'm such a fanboy I must give the company whatever they ask for to play their precious games" way of thinking.
Look at Steam sales, do you think companies let their games go for $7 or so because they're just feeling generous around Christmas? Of course not, they make way more money doing that than keeping the prices at $60 all the time. That is the point I'm making. High box prices are bad not because they stop me personally from playing but because they cut down on a game's audience substantially possibly ofsetting the increased profit per box.
We'd all like to see everything being cheaper, unless we sell it.
That said, when has anything ever worked this way? When costs continually inflate, you can't expect the product to become cheaper. TBH us gamers are lucky these things aren't more expensive today than they were five years ago. Gaming is one of the few industries that have remained roughly the same price since the 80's, the average PC game still costs around 50 bucks (what we were paying for nintendo games back then), there are AAA exceptions that shot up to 60, but not all. Instead of raising costs they opted for monetized extras.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I prefer p2p myself, I don't like the open ended p2w money grab that is often 'free to play'.
So if it is a good company that is taking the money and putting a good amount back into their game, to make new content and fix things, then I don't mind.
If they are just taking the money (putting little back), and their product is horrible, then they are not giving you what you paid for.
I play LoL, and yeah they make money and are f2p, but you cannot compare a mmo with a f2p moba, that has very limited maps and such. Most of their new content is the champions that they hope people spend money on to buy, and skins. They do not make a lot of new scenarios and boards. LoL imo does not have anywhere near the resource responsibility for content that a quality mmo does.
So not only do I not mind paying, but hypothetically, if a good company made a great game, and decided to up their sub from $15 to $25, but pledged that 100% of the $10 increase would go into making the game better, along with the percentage that was already being used from the $15 going unchanged....I would be willing to give it a go, if I liked the game and it gave results.
I do not mind paying if you have a quality product. I actually paid money to LoL, not because I needed something, but to show appreciation, because I play it a lot.
It's the biggest scam in the business atm. It's what allows them to make a 1 month throw away game. Hype the masses by constant advertising, then sell them the same reskinned garbage for 60$
Thank goodness for me 2013 had Wushu. No box fee, with a 9$ sub.
over 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...
To one of your earlier points, I do think new games should, in good faith have some kind of free trial. Often the open beta test will let people in that are interested anymore, but would be nice if they gave people a 3-7 day trial, and just make the account unable to trade anything or whatever you need to do so they cannot abuse the free trial and hurt your economic/game systems.
MMO lifecycle...
Initial game launch infrastructure ( paid for by box sales at launch and invested monies )
Includes:
Hardware infrastructure ( Servers, Network, Backups, Monitoring,etc )
Initial code base ( the game engine, database, base zones, quests, models, items, dungeons,etc)
Game Support ( hopefully paid for by monthly subscription )
Things to keep the game alive:
Support Programmers ( Bug fixes, Game engine / game system support)
Development Programmers ( Game enhancements, incremental new content )
Artist / Game Designer ( New Art , Models, Items and fixes to existing content )
Customer Support ( Account problems, In Game problems)
Back office stuff ( billing, HR, rent, etc)
So up to this point if you are lucky you have a living MMO. The game runs, it has a decent population and with the limited staff you can keep it alive with some minor incremental enhancements.
Expansion !!!
Now you want to add alot of new stuff, the trouble is that your staff are all working 40+ hours to keep the game alive. You don't have the resources to build alot of new content so you decide to release an expansion. You need to get / borrow alot of money and hire staff ( Programmers, Artists, Level designers, Writers, Tester,etc) to focus on building the expansion over the next 1 -2 years.
When the expansion is ready you look around and try to figure out how to pay off the development costs, your monthly subscriptions are good but they barely covering the Game Support costs to keep the MMO alive. You need to find a away to earn more money....
oh man......
there is much more to the box price than you can perceive if the price is too low some elitists automaticaly assume that the product is of bad quality and it wont sell
if it is too expensive the greed is reflected on it and it wont sell
its alot easier to lower the price than raise it since customers wont complain because of lowered price they complain if it gets higher all of the sudden for no good reason
price can reflect quality
price can reflect greed
price can be many things
and sometimes we are dissapointed because the developers see different things in their product compared to the customers
there is always some risk involved when buying something
how do you know there is no holes in the condoms you buy before you use them?
its not like some one test used the package before putting it on sale
There is a portion of gamers who do not touch free to play mmos even with a big stick because they believe the quality is low since it is free, that will never change.
sir you are wrong, deal with it
Wrong, there was a recent poll on Tamriel Foundry which showed 88% of the players will play on PC or Mac and over 84% on PC. So PC will definitely have more people than consoles.