What is a fair price for a subscription?

Blurry.Face

Assuming an MMORPG had no cash shop or box price, what do you think would be a fair price for a monthly subscription? This is, of course, assuming said MMORPG were a 'good game'.

agentsi1511

Server cost, uptime expenses, future upgrades, 24/7 support, future product development ( if given out without additional cost: a la no DLC ) etc. All of those should be factors. If I 'm really into a game, it's worth it to me to pay the monthly fee.

Sovrath

However much it costs to support the game based on how many players they think they can retain.

SomethingUnusual

Standing by the standard. $15 a month, it's worked for years. Tried and true.

Nanfoodle

Depends on the game. I would pay 5 to 20 bucks a month depending on the game and what the cash shop sells. 

Blurry.Face

Nanfoodle said:

Depends on the game. I would pay 5 to 20 bucks a month depending on the game and what the cash shop sells. 

The question was without cash shop existing in the game

filmoret

I vote zero.  Look at GW2 and ESO doing a fantastic job and only charging box fee.

Nanfoodle

Blurry.Face said:

Nanfoodle said:

Depends on the game. I would pay 5 to 20 bucks a month depending on the game and what the cash shop sells. 

The question was without cash shop existing in the game


That's not the norm we live in. 

filmoret

Nanfoodle said:

Blurry.Face said:

Nanfoodle said:

Depends on the game. I would pay 5 to 20 bucks a month depending on the game and what the cash shop sells. 

The question was without cash shop existing in the game


That's not the norm we live in. 

I found I could answer the OP after reading the context.  But yea every game has a cash shop now.

Quizzical

That depends.  How fun is the game?  If the game isn't fun, I wouldn't play for free.

Also, it depends on whether the subscription is all you pay to get everything you want, or whether it's mostly an item mall game that tries to tack on a subscription, too.

scorpex-x

The only mmo I can think of that has a sub and no cash shop is ff11 and that's around $15

k61977

I put 15 but on top of that I think there should always be around a $50 box price to recoup upfront cost in the development of a game.  But with that said there should also be free trial periods before purchase to let people see if they are really interested.

Kopogero

Sorry OP, the fair price for a sub is missing as an option in your poll, so I didn't vote cuz for me it's more than fair spending $50-60 a year for a single game since I've spent $0.00 for any new game in the last 5 years, 3 months and 22 days....So, $4.99 is the fair monthly sub. After all if many of the games applied this monetizing model they would had far better chance to take some over no money at all from me.

Regardless, you asked for what's fair and I'm willing to go beyond fair to get beyond what's out there, which has been lacking for a very long time. Many games have sold 2-5 million boxes over the years, so I can't think of any AAA company why it's not good enough receiving 60 mil annual revenue that would take only 1 mil players.

nariusseldon

"fair" is subjective. I say it is $0. Why pay a sub when 99.9% of games out there have no sub, and they are as much, if not more, fun. 

Hrimnir

I really wanted to get in with a "in b4 narius says free".  Unfortunately I was too late.

Quizzical

Kopogero said:

 I've spent $0.00 for any new game in the last 5 years, 3 months and 22 days..

Did those months have 30 or 31 days?  Or was there a February in there?  And if so, then how many leap years?

johndoep

Better be a pretty damn good game

Azoth

Fair price is relative to the game. I could pay 0-50$/month.

Thebeasttt

Until something truly next gen is released none of these games deserve to charge more than WoW. Most of them aren't good enough for a subscription at all, let alone $25 lol.

FrodoFragins

It depends on how good the game is and the quantity/quality of patches.

kikoodutroa8

Depends on what % of the sub goes into adding content/ingame gms/etc.

Cleffy

Depends on a lot of things. I would not pay more than $15 for a great mmo. Most mmos I would not want to spend more than $10 a month.
When I analyze what I am getting for my $10, most lack decent support and content updates. If we were to quantify the content, are they providing you with 1/10th a single player game every month? I think most don't

ceratop001

Granted if I really liked the game, and it had a very healthy population; I think 10$ is fine.

Loke666

As other say it  depends on the quality of the game but it also depends on what else you need to buy to play it.

I think that the perfect model would be 2 free weeks, no boxes you need to buy, no cashshop, 1 free servertransfer (assuming you don't use megaserver tech) and 20-25 bucks a month. 2 weeks is enough to judge if the game is worth playing and it also forces the devs to make the game fun or people wont pay.

Limited trials never works, people do remember AoCs Tortage trial at launch, the rest of the game was a buggy mess while all work had been done to make the start island relatively well running and almost totally voice acted.

Also, charging for the box and additional expansions will turn off many players. It is better to have a higher fee that will earn the company more if the game is fun enough to keep the players for a while.

And I do understand why most companies wouldn't like this idea since it only would earn them a lot money if they can keep the players, short time it is better to trick people paying for the box for a cheap crappy game or to force them to buy loads of stuff in the cashshop early before they get that the game isn't very good.

Slapshot1188

I'd pay $25 or even more for the "right" game.

TheAmazingDwarf

Loke666 said:

As other say it  depends on the quality of the game but it also depends on what else you need to buy to play it.

I think that the perfect model would be 2 free weeks, no boxes you need to buy, no cashshop, 1 free servertransfer (assuming you don't use megaserver tech) and 20-25 bucks a month. 2 weeks is enough to judge if the game is worth playing and it also forces the devs to make the game fun or people wont pay.

Limited trials never works, people do remember AoCs Tortage trial at launch, the rest of the game was a buggy mess while all work had been done to make the start island relatively well running and almost totally voice acted.

Also, charging for the box and additional expansions will turn off many players. It is better to have a higher fee that will earn the company more if the game is fun enough to keep the players for a while.

And I do understand why most companies wouldn't like this idea since it only would earn them a lot money if they can keep the players, short time it is better to trick people paying for the box for a cheap crappy game or to force them to buy loads of stuff in the cashshop early before they get that the game isn't very good.

Mark Jacobs talked about this the other day on the comment section of a random article on MassilvelyOP. He thinks sooner or later some company will try to do that: charge a higher subscription price, no cash shop, everything in game like in the good old days. The subscription price has been the same for more than a decade, it even makes sense to rise it, but not if the company tries to double or triple dip and nickels and dimes you.