Originally posted by saturn1234 And you are telling me that NCSoft is a larger and more profitable than Sony???!??!?!??! Blizzard is richer than NCSoft by a much larger margine, so you point about the "experiment" they are testing does not hold.
Not only is NCSoft bigger than Sony and Blizzard, they are bigger than both put together (*I'm speaking in terms of MMORPG's, as I don't know a whole lot about what else the companies do, or the #s on that)
All Sony mmo's put together have never even come CLOSE to the subscriber numbers for even one of NCSoft's Games (Lineage). WoW, although catching up(JUST to Lineage), isn't even quite there yet. And not even close to Lineage 1 + Lineage 2. Now, I back up my previous statement: NCSoft is the ONLY company that I know of that has the ability to run the experiment that I am talking about. Sony is on thin ice as far as MMO's go, and Blizzard JUST started their first MMO (not the time to experiment with other games). NCSoft on the other hand has the ability to, and actually DOES release multiple MMO's at the same time. That's unheard of in the industry (or at least was at the point that they started doing it). So yes, I stand by my statement that they would release a game like Guild Wars as an experiment.
Originally posted by saturn1234 And you are telling me that NCSoft is a larger and more profitable than Sony???!??!?!??! Blizzard is richer than NCSoft by a much larger margine, so you point about the "experiment" they are testing does not hold.
Actually yes, they are. Go look up what else is owned by NCSoft... like... the Telco Companies overseas.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title. "When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
Originally posted by saturn1234 And you are telling me that NCSoft is a larger and more profitable than Sony???!??!?!??! Blizzard is richer than NCSoft by a much larger margine, so you point about the "experiment" they are testing does not hold.
Not only is NCSoft bigger than Sony and Blizzard, they are bigger than both put together (*I'm speaking in terms of MMORPG's, as I don't know a whole lot about what else the companies do, or the #s on that)
All Sony mmo's put together have never even come CLOSE to the subscriber numbers for even one of NCSoft's Games (Lineage). WoW, although catching up(JUST to Lineage), isn't even quite there yet. And not even close to Lineage 1 + Lineage 2. Now, I back up my previous statement: NCSoft is the ONLY company that I know of that has the ability to run the experiment that I am talking about. Sony is on thin ice as far as MMO's go, and Blizzard JUST started their first MMO (not the time to experiment with other games). NCSoft on the other hand has the ability to, and actually DOES release multiple MMO's at the same time. That's unheard of in the industry (or at least was at the point that they started doing it). So yes, I stand by my statement that they would release a game like Guild Wars as an experiment.
LoL. That chart was posted in June. It is way out of date, as the front page mentions.
WoW, although catching up(JUST to Lineage), isn't even quite there yet.
LoL. Do your own reasearch. WoW has, or at least claims to have, 4.5 million subs to date. It looks set to exceed 5 million when the numbers in for it's latest release.
Even if the numbers are a few months out of date (and they are), that still doesn't change the fact that NCSoft has 2 games that are roughly equal, or maybe slightly behind WoW in subscription rates. Blizzard has 1 game. I don't see how this isn't conclusive to NCSoft having almost double the subscribers that WoW has...
Also of interest is that the chart showing information about Lineage is only taking Monthly subscriptions into account. Quick quote about it:
Some press reports will say Lineage has over 4 million subscribers. Lineage actually has a variety of different pricing schemes, and many players access the game via Internet cybercafes rather than a more traditional monthly subscription. The numbers I have chosen to use are the monthly access numbers, which I feel are the most directly comparable to other monthly subscription MMOGs.
I haven't seen any evidence that Blizzard is nearly as large as NCSoft in terms of subscribers.
Edit: I do thank you for pointing out those facts, however, it really doesn't change my argument, which is that I think NCSoft is the only company in position to launch a game as an experiment.
Originally posted by saturn1234 I have no problem with people making money, I am willing to pay for their service. I just hope people understand that it is, for the most part, greed. They could run servers if they charged each user like $1 a month, not $15.
I love how people use "greed" as though it is a bad thing. The food you have on the table, the computer you have, the doctor you see and the medicine you get is all because of greed. People do not do something for nothing. In cases where they so the product often sucks. Who get better medical care? Those at the free clinics or those who can pay for the best?
I am not saying these companies are the best, but the quality of games are certainly better by charging fees. They got into this to make money and not to make people happy.
Further, should a game cut its prices because it has more subscribers? If say WoW had budgeted the $15 on assuming 500,000 players and they now have 8 times that number should they cut the cost to $2 a month? No sane buisness would do that. If so then people would raise fees when they lost subcibers.
The fact is it costs a lot more money to run an mmo than people think. You need to get back you initial investment. You need to pay your employees, servers, power, bandwidth (which can get very expensive depending on if you buy it wholesale or not), etc. It may not be most of what you are paying for but it is a consierable amount for most games. Most not all. Obviously a game that has 4 million is paying less and earning more than a game with 250,000.
In any case the only reason you have a game in any case is because of greed.
I'm going to take this opportunity to rant about the state of the industry in general. My apologies to Greg Costikyan.....
The sad truth is that most of these games could remain operational and still turn a healthy profit with significantly lower fees. It's that whole Volume vs. cost thing that we don't like to talk about. They don't do this becuase the volume of users would force them to need more server space and bandwidth. They could afford that with the larger playerbase, but it's kind of a diminishing returns thing. Especially in the American market where most MMO players own their own computers and can spend 20+ hours a week logged on. At any rate, the price could probably be scaled back to $10 or even $5 and still be profitable. We also haven't taken alot of time to explore other business models for this genre. I like the Guild Wars model were you buy the game and then they release expansions periodically. The cool thing about this model is that you aren't obligated to buy the expansions and can hold off until you feel you can afford it while still playing the game. Let's face it, box prices are $50 dollars and with WoW selling 4 million boxes...... Well, you can do the math. I woudn't mind the monthly fees if I didn't have to buy the box. I'm kind of in this either or mood right now. I'll pay for the box, or I'll pay for the fee, but not both. Most of the retail MMOs out right now could operate on what they make off of the box sales alone. Throw in the fact that they also release their expansions in boxes and all those expansions are bought by people that already own the game and you understand exactly where I'm comming from.
Of course, most of the mainstream market is overpriced and bloated anyway. Games require 100+ people, 20 million dollars, and 5 years to develop before having a 6 month run and ending up on the used rack at Gamestop. I sometimes think that I'm the only person that sees a flaw with the way that games are developed nowadays. After all the time and money they spend making a game, most players just breeze through the finished product in a couple of weeks and the price starts to deprecate in about three months. Multiplayer games are in a much better spot in this regard. The original Half-Life enjoyed a shelf life of almost a decade and people played Unreal Tournament and Tribes for YEARS. Unfortunately, you can only make money off of box games once. So, while it's nice that people are still playing the original Starsiege: Tribes, no one is making money off of that game anymore. And this is the real reason we have monthly fees. It just doesn't make sense to create infinitely replayable games if you're only going to make money off them for a year or two. Yeah, we could always go to a model like the book publishing industry, where classics get reprinted and recirculated while giving money to the original creators. But that would be too much like right. Instead, we'd rather work developers 12 hours a day, seven days a week for five years straight and then move them straight on to the next project until they burn out completely. We'd rather keep feeding the gaming public the same games with flashier graphics and bigger budgets until we can't afford to produce enough games to meet the demand and feel the pain as the bubble bursts. We'd rather just turn everything into a monthly fee so that we can keep raking it in and then point to our overbloated project budgets as an excuse for gouging our customers.......
Originally posted by saturn1234 I have no problem with people making money, I am willing to pay for their service. I just hope people understand that it is, for the most part, greed. They could run servers if they charged each user like $1 a month, not $15.
I love how people use "greed" as though it is a bad thing. The food you have on the table, the computer you have, the doctor you see and the medicine you get is all because of greed. People do not do something for nothing. In cases where they so the product often sucks. Who get better medical care? Those at the free clinics or those who can pay for the best?
I am not saying these companies are the best, but the quality of games are certainly better by charging fees. They got into this to make money and not to make people happy.
Further, should a game cut its prices because it has more subscribers? If say WoW had budgeted the $15 on assuming 500,000 players and they now have 8 times that number should they cut the cost to $2 a month? No sane buisness would do that. If so then people would raise fees when they lost subcibers.
The fact is it costs a lot more money to run an mmo than people think. You need to get back you initial investment. You need to pay your employees, servers, power, bandwidth (which can get very expensive depending on if you buy it wholesale or not), etc. It may not be most of what you are paying for but it is a consierable amount for most games. Most not all. Obviously a game that has 4 million is paying less and earning more than a game with 250,000.
In any case the only reason you have a game in any case is because of greed.
yeah damnit! i'm gonna quit buying food because of those greedy supermarkets! i'm gonna quit going to a doctor because they are greedy and just want my money! i'm not gonna buy clothes because the clothing makers just want money! who needs food, clothing, and medical care? greedy bastages, all of them!!
sadly we do have to pay for medical care, its one of the few things i think should be totally free to everyone.
They made us all addicted and now they command the prices.
Blizzard could easily charge 1$ monthly - and still pay servers, expansions, support workers - and come with hefty profit still....
But it is the greed that drives the comercial world of today. It made some people richer than an average small country. And what are they doing with that money I ask ?
Nothing good.
And they are definetly not giving us nothing good in return.
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
Well 15$ a month (or whatever else some games charge) may seem a lot but there are a couple things to consider.
Making an MMORPG is A LOT more work than making an a single player console game. Most of the time they need to make a whole world thats a lot bigger than environment you would see in signle player games. They also need to code the whole server and client and a lot of effort goes into security wich you dont have to do with single player games (who cares if ppl cheat in a single player game anyways)
Then you also have the hardware cost, Running a game like WoW with millions of ppl playing need a BADASS server... and that cost a shit load of money at the start to buy it all.
They then also have to continu paying their devs because to keep ppl suscribing, you need to add new content. They also need to pay ppl to do the maintenances of the servers and the GMs.
They also have a huge ammount of bandwitch to pay for. MMORPGs take a shit load of bandwitch to operate and thats not free either.
AND, they want to make profits (obviously).
15$/month may seem like a lot but I believe that with all the effort and money it takes to make these games nowadays it is worth it. Maybe its a bit overpriced, ill admit, but I still believe they dont rip us off that much.
I think it's often forgotten that World of Warcraft was in development for years prior to release. It's not just current profit, it's all the upfront capital that is required to be paid off. Millions of dollars a year in production costs before they could even put it on the shelf.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title. "When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
for one, that 60 mil a month goes to server costs, employee costs, hardware costs, software costs, paying the bills at their office(s). so not just one person is getting all this money. and after all the aforementioned stuff they ahve to make a profit to stay afloat. we should fortunate that it is so cheap. they could charge alot more if they were greedy.
Lol Sony and Blizzard have more money than NCSoft as a company. BLizzard makes more hit games all across the spectrum that NCSoft, and Sony is just godly when it comes to technology.
I wasnt talking about just MMORPGs, because none of the companies I mentioned use MMORPGs as their sole revenue.......
Greed was not used as a negative term, just a fact..... But thanks for assuming ^_^, you know what they say!
I am not saying MMORPGs should cut their monthly fees if they are successful. I am saying more companies should look for alternatives to monthly fees, like Guild Wars, and the AWEFUL RYL (you could take online quizzes to gain game time). This is for the future of gaming in general. I read somewhere that the next Madden Football game is going to charge money for each game. Xbox live is already charging money. Pretty soon EVERY video will charge monthly fees. Its getting out of hand people. Companies are like, hey those people are basically giving us money if we fix some bugs and add some new costumes every few weeks, what a deal!!!
Monthly fees tie up a lot of other aspects of life. I really dont want to have to worry about my gaming bill coming along with my Heat and electricity.
They are going to keep pushing our cash! And it adds up, believe it or not.
Saturn1234 has a very valid point. Just recently I signed up for a free trial of Gametap and decided that I could buy compilations with most of those games on them for the same price that I'd pay for a year's subscription. The scary thing is that I can see all gaming going in this direction. I believe that the upcoming Phantom console will be doing the subsciption thing for mainstream retail games as well. This is a very big deal in the long run.
In the developement circles, the magic word is "casual". Everyone from Nintendo to Microsoft is trying like hell to cash in on the casual market and the only people that seem to know how to that are in asia. There's actually going to be a casual gaming roundtable at the next GDC so that western developers can figure out how to make money off of casual online games, not just MMORPGs. One interesting note about the asian game market is the variety of business models used. Some games get revenue from advertising, others sell ingame items or content, and still others license the server software to PC Bongs who then run the game in their establishments. At any rate, Casual gaming and continual fees will be the future of our hobby. The question is whether it'll be another bill to pay, or a choice for access more features and content. Both are valid, but only one will net the largest revinue. Anyone that's ever played Magic Online can tell you that the virtual item thing can work as a business model. And it doesn't lock you into choosing between rent and gaming.
Originally posted by Rattrap I am angry. People today sicken me. What happened to everyone ?Why are you saying YES to everything ? Where is the rebel in you ? Dont you realise that the ONLY reason why you pay 15$ a month is because you agree to do so!And to make things even more frustrating, some people are so lacking backbone, so subliminally brainwashed that they go and DEFEND big corporations.Hey they dont need defence man! For defence they have their 2 mil$ lawyers and 20 mil$ comercial campains.WHAT they DO need is somebody to stand up to them and say WE ARE NOT PAYING FOR THIS OVERPRICED CRAP !!!! Then you will see like magic , games will get both cheaper and better! So stop your damn defending, agreeing - you are not doing nobody a favor!
As long as there are people like me who don't object to other people getting rich, and consider the monthly fees to be a bargain, then your dreams of tearing down the system will remain dreams.
If you really are "PAYING FOR THIS OVERPRICED CRAP" then it is you who is the fool. If you feel the game your paying for is crap then why are you playing it ? If you feel it is overpriced then again - why keep on paying ?
I admire your anger and depth of emotion on this - I honestly do - but it isn't going to change man, not for a long time I would say
If those other people that were getting rich weren't doing everything in their power to make sure that no one else got rich, I wouldn't mind so much Nullpax. I believe in free enterprize as much as the next guy, but our current social contract with the corporate institution is ass backward. Taxing the hell out of the poor and giving sizable subsidies to the rich is pure insanity and eventually this system will become too top heavy and fall down. The sad part about that is that we'll all be along for the ride when it happens. It isn't going to be pretty.
In the meantime, we should try to promote ways that will allow these companies to make money without gouging the consumers. We've come a long way, but there is alot further to go. I think that alternative business models might just allow for greater profits for Pay to Play games. Just my 2 cents.
Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe If those other people that were getting rich weren't doing everything in their power to make sure that no one else got rich, I wouldn't mind so much Nullpax. I believe in free enterprize as much as the next guy, but our current social contract with the corporate institution is ass backward. Taxing the hell out of the poor and giving sizable subsidies to the rich is pure insanity and eventually this system will become too top heavy and fall down. The sad part about that is that we'll all be along for the ride when it happens. It isn't going to be pretty. In the meantime, we should try to promote ways that will allow these companies to make money without gouging the consumers. We've come a long way, but there is alot further to go. I think that alternative business models might just allow for greater profits for Pay to Play games. Just my 2 cents.
Um what country are you in? The "poor" in America, at any rate, are hardly taxed at all. It's the middle class and upper middle class who get the hell taxed out of them. The rich and the poor both get it pretty easy.
And, um.... what do taxes have to do with the price of MMORPG's there chief? Answer: Nothing
Try to stay on topic please.
The bottom line is that MMORPG's cost money to run. There are only so many ways for a company to make a profit on an MMORPG. The easiest being to charge a monthly fee for them. FREE MMORPG's are always operated at a loss. There's no way that a FREE MMORPG is making money for the owners. Which is why most FREE MMORPG's wind up closing shop in short order.
Add driven MMORPG's work ok, some of them, but usually the adds you have to deal with aren't worth the game because they don't generate enough revenue for much more than maintenance of the servers and paying for the bandwidth. Very little development or even debugging is done on those.
GuildWars is box-sale driven currently. Right now there's no subscription but if box sales decline and the revenue stream from that dries up the game will either cancel or go to a monthly fee or add based or ingame item sales for $$$. That or NCSOFT will come up with an "access pass" similar to SOE's and require you to have that to play GuildWars.
Monthly fee's are a necessary evil, unfortunately. Because MMORPG's take a lot of money to run. The bandwidth alone runs in the thousands (and in WOW's case it's possibly in the millions because the game is so big) each month.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
The value of anything is determined by how much value people place on something. Then take into account issues such as supply to modify that. That is how value works. As much as many of you wanna-be hippies would like there to be some magic wand that decides what things are worth and how much profit someone should make, there isn't. What decides value and prices are people.
So if there is a heavy demand for something and a short supply then prices go up. Could the company make money without doing it? Yes, but the idea if more people want it then it is worth more. It has more value. So you raise the price higher. If few people want something then it does not have much value.
If you decide you do not think something is worth paying $X for then you are saying that product does not have as much value to you as $X. It is as simple as that. It doesn't mean it is not worth the money, but that it is not worth it to you. There is a huge difference.
A value means of worth to someone for some purpose. Since this depends on people's wants then the market system is the most efficient system to satisfy our wants at the lowest prices. It still may be higher than some people want to pay, but that says nothing about the value of the product by itself. It says how much or how little you value something. The key word being you not everyone else.
Another thing to take into consideration is how much risk is involved. Game companies take a huge risk. If their game flops they loose a lot of money. So why not have a large reward for a large risk? Contrary to populat opinion, most movies that are released loose money. There are only a few that make money and they finance everything else. The same is true with games.
If you do not like the system then do not take part in it. It is as simple as that. Ravings about how bad companies are, greed is, and faulty economic models and theories of value will not change reality.
Originally posted by Rattrap Ok. WoW was mentioned. 4 million people are playing this game and they each pay 15$ monthly (not mentioning 50$ for initial purcase) That my friends comes to 60000000 $ (60 million monthly) or 720 million dollars a year.Let see what we get form this. 1. Overcrowded laggy servers 2. Horrible support and overbooked support 3. Mizerable joke of expansion ....this all cost Blizzard maximum 5 million dolar monthly , and this is overstatement. So what do we got company that cashes 55 million dolars a month. Well what can I tell - good for them..very good....Let them rot with their god damn money while whole countries in africa are dying of hunger. Your question : is monthly fee really justified.Answer is: No , not really - At least not 15$
Only 5million to run the 100+ WoW servers? You have no idea how wrong you are. Let me give you an example. In my area Verizon offers T1 based connections for roughly about 500 bucks a month. A T1 will roughly support about 50 to 100 people reliably (This is assuming they all use DSL or better connections). So lets assume for a moment that is what Blizzard is working with. 15 bucks a month times 100 people for a total of 1500 dollars a month. Well 500 of that is already gone to cover bandwidth cost. Want a big crew that can stay on top of bugs and develop new content? Ok lets be nice and say that's another 500 out of the window.
Want a network team to cover server maintence and firmware/hardware updates? Well lets me nice just one more time. Another 500 bucks gone. So now you are pretty much down to just breaking even. Oops well you forgot you also need to maintain a billing system for your game, otherwise how do you collect your money right? Oh and what about those cost for developing the game to begin with? (WoW and EQ2 both ate up well over 18 million from start to going live) Oh and don't forget you actually want to have a box on shelves so that you can actually get paying customers. What about that time spent in concept/design, alpha, beta, open beta? Oh and what about those few gamers that don't have Credit Cards, plan to offer game cards for them? I suppose you'll probably want to advertise your game as well as maintain a forum and community site where people can get more info about your game.
In War - Victory. In Peace - Vigilance. In Death - Sacrifice.
Originally posted by Roin Originally posted by Rattrap Ok. WoW was mentioned. 4 million people are playing this game and they each pay 15$ monthly (not mentioning 50$ for initial purcase) That my friends comes to 60000000 $ (60 million monthly) or 720 million dollars a year.Let see what we get form this. 1. Overcrowded laggy servers 2. Horrible support and overbooked support 3. Mizerable joke of expansion ....this all cost Blizzard maximum 5 million dolar monthly , and this is overstatement. So what do we got company that cashes 55 million dolars a month. Well what can I tell - good for them..very good....Let them rot with their god damn money while whole countries in africa are dying of hunger. Your question : is monthly fee really justified.Answer is: No , not really - At least not 15$
Only 5million to run the 100+ WoW servers? You have no idea how wrong you are. Let me give you an example. In my area Verizon offers T1 based connections for roughly about 500 bucks a month. A T1 will roughly support about 50 to 100 people reliably (This is assuming they all use DSL or better connections). So lets assume for a moment that is what Blizzard is working with. 15 bucks a month times 100 people for a total of 1500 dollars a month. Well 500 of that is already gone to cover bandwidth cost. Want a big crew that can stay on top of bugs and develop new content? Ok lets be nice and say that's another 500 out of the window.
Want a network team to cover server maintence and firmware/hardware updates? Well lets me nice just one more time. Another 500 bucks gone. So now you are pretty much down to just breaking even. Oops well you forgot you also need to maintain a billing system for your game, otherwise how do you collect your money right? Oh and what about those cost for developing the game to begin with? (WoW and EQ2 both ate up well over 18 million from start to going live) Oh and don't forget you actually want to have a box on shelves so that you can actually get paying customers. What about that time spent in concept/design, alpha, beta, open beta? Oh and what about those few gamers that don't have Credit Cards, plan to offer game cards for them? I suppose you'll probably want to advertise your game as well as maintain a forum and community site where people can get more info about your game.
Actually for costs just to run the game 5 million a month sounds about right. I did some quick figuring and based on the numbers you figured it comes to about 3 million a month in recurring costs (not counting advertising, benefits for employees, etc). So 5 million isn't necessarily wrong. I think it's probably more in line with 10 million a month but he DOES have a point:
even if it's costing Blizzard $10mil a month to support the game they're still cashing in 50 million a month in profit.
Mind you: There's nothing wrong with that.
But charging for expansions when you're netting more in a single month than TWICE the cost of development (I belive WoW cost $25m to develop including beta, I recall seeing that figure bandied about in an interview somewhere) for the entire game seems a bit over the top
But, again, the MARKET drives what companies do. They KNOW the sheep will buy the expansion as soon as it hits the shelves. So why WOULDN'T they charge for it?
Bottom line: As long as people are willing to PAY for expansions they will cost money. Period.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
Monthly fees are here because people pay for them. There is the blablabla about costs of making an mmo run but that's could easily be covered with different business models. Some of the early mmorpg's weren't boxed at all, that's something many tend to forget. The monthly fee was the only form of income for that type of game. Talk about taking a risk, those are the game developpers that took a real risk.
There's no need to defend pricing policies using the companies arguments. There's no need to use flawed logic either (when you ask a price for a big volume of a same service it won't be the same price a consumer pays). The only thing that comes into account is how much you are willing to pay for something in a consumer sided argument. The key words being : you pay. It's not worth complaining about, people don't listen to an individual consumer, they listen to the silent majority that comes out of their market surveys. They listen to the fact that the population of the service they are offering is growing or declining and that is something only the company offering the service knows.
Fact remains that as it has been pointed out, the monthly fee is just how much you as a gamer value the game you are playing. I gladly pay my monthly subscription. It's under 1% of my monthly income and it provides me with over 40% of my monthly entertainment. I don't care if a game costs me 5$ or 25$ a month, if I didn't like the price, I wouldn't be playing it. The fact of how much a service costs to run and how much profit the company I buy a service from makes is besides the point. To go back to my percentages above, all other forms of entertainment I buy every month cost more then the average mmo subscription put against the number of hours of enjoyment. Those other 60% of entertainment take about 40% of my monthly budget. (mmo value = 40, other average value = 1.5)
If you don't like the price, don't pay it. Or maybe : grow up, get a job and play things you can pay for.
Anyhow, enough rambling, enjoy your time being entertained.
Originally posted by Rattrap There is unvritten law in comercialisam not to drop prices to general buisness model.
Odd ... I paid $2.23/gallon this morning, when I coud've sworn I paid close to $3.00/gallon last week. ^_^
Please, it's about choice and I'm sorry if you don't have the ability to make such decisions. No one stands behinds you and forces to pay for an mmo's service. If you want something you can't afford, work harder.
Companies lower price points all the time to meet market demand. Go back to HS Economics, and this time please pay attention.
Ico Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
Originally posted by IcoGames Originally posted by Rattrap There is unvritten law in comercialisam not to drop prices to general buisness model.
Odd ... I paid $2.23/gallon this morning, when I coud've sworn I paid close to $3.00/gallon last week. ^_^
Please, it's about choice and I'm sorry if you don't have the ability to make such decisions. No one stands behinds you and forces to pay for an mmo's service. If you want something you can't afford, work harder.
Companies lower price points all the time to meet market demand. Go back to HS Economics, and this time please pay attention.
Well said.
It all started when DAOC came out and started charging $12.95 instead of the 9.95 that EQ and UO were charging. Then EQ shortly raised their fee to match and people didn't leave.... If players had refused to pay $12.95 for DAOC they'd have lowered the price. If players had cancelled when EQ went to $12.95 they'd have lowered the price back down as well. Then, I think it was FFXI who raised it to $14.95 or so. And everyone followed suit.
Bottom line: As long as you keep paying inflated prices the prices will climb. If a game comes out and charges $20 a month for you to play and people pay it willingly every other MMO on the market will raise their prices to match.
It's called supply and demand. They have the supply. As long as we have enough 'demand' to support higher prices the prices will stay up, and even climb.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
Originally posted by Rattrap There is unvritten law in comercialisam not to drop prices to general buisness model.
Odd ... I paid $2.23/gallon this morning, when I coud've sworn I paid close to $3.00/gallon last week. ^_^
Please, it's about choice and I'm sorry if you don't have the ability to make such decisions. No one stands behinds you and forces to pay for an mmo's service. If you want something you can't afford, work harder.
Companies lower price points all the time to meet market demand. Go back to HS Economics, and this time please pay attention.
bad example - all places are dropping their prices. its not like shell dropped their prices to 2.23 and citgo is still at 3.00. sure some places are a little more expensive, but only by a few cents.
Comments
Not only is NCSoft bigger than Sony and Blizzard, they are bigger than both put together
(*I'm speaking in terms of MMORPG's, as I don't know a whole lot about what else the companies do, or the #s on that)
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html
All Sony mmo's put together have never even come CLOSE to the subscriber numbers for even one of NCSoft's Games (Lineage). WoW, although catching up(JUST to Lineage), isn't even quite there yet. And not even close to Lineage 1 + Lineage 2. Now, I back up my previous statement: NCSoft is the ONLY company that I know of that has the ability to run the experiment that I am talking about. Sony is on thin ice as far as MMO's go, and Blizzard JUST started their first MMO (not the time to experiment with other games). NCSoft on the other hand has the ability to, and actually DOES release multiple MMO's at the same time. That's unheard of in the industry (or at least was at the point that they started doing it). So yes, I stand by my statement that they would release a game like Guild Wars as an experiment.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
Not only is NCSoft bigger than Sony and Blizzard, they are bigger than both put together
(*I'm speaking in terms of MMORPG's, as I don't know a whole lot about what else the companies do, or the #s on that)
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html
All Sony mmo's put together have never even come CLOSE to the subscriber numbers for even one of NCSoft's Games (Lineage). WoW, although catching up(JUST to Lineage), isn't even quite there yet. And not even close to Lineage 1 + Lineage 2. Now, I back up my previous statement: NCSoft is the ONLY company that I know of that has the ability to run the experiment that I am talking about. Sony is on thin ice as far as MMO's go, and Blizzard JUST started their first MMO (not the time to experiment with other games). NCSoft on the other hand has the ability to, and actually DOES release multiple MMO's at the same time. That's unheard of in the industry (or at least was at the point that they started doing it). So yes, I stand by my statement that they would release a game like Guild Wars as an experiment.
LoL. That chart was posted in June. It is way out of date, as the front page mentions.
WoW, although catching up(JUST to Lineage), isn't even quite there yet.
LoL. Do your own reasearch. WoW has, or at least claims to have, 4.5 million subs to date. It looks set to exceed 5 million when the numbers in for it's latest release.
From: http://www.blizzard.co.uk/press/051108.shtml
Worldwide, the game has a total of more than 4.5 million customers, which is expected to grow with the rollout in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.
As for which company is bigger, I make no statement either way, just pointing out the error in your above numbers.
Even if the numbers are a few months out of date (and they are), that still doesn't change the fact that NCSoft has 2 games that are roughly equal, or maybe slightly behind WoW in subscription rates. Blizzard has 1 game. I don't see how this isn't conclusive to NCSoft having almost double the subscribers that WoW has...
Also of interest is that the chart showing information about Lineage is only taking Monthly subscriptions into account. Quick quote about it:
Some press reports will say Lineage has over 4 million subscribers. Lineage actually has a variety of different pricing schemes, and many players access the game via Internet cybercafes rather than a more traditional monthly subscription. The numbers I have chosen to use are the monthly access numbers, which I feel are the most directly comparable to other monthly subscription MMOGs.
I haven't seen any evidence that Blizzard is nearly as large as NCSoft in terms of subscribers.
Edit: I do thank you for pointing out those facts, however, it really doesn't change my argument, which is that I think NCSoft is the only company in position to launch a game as an experiment.
I love how people use "greed" as though it is a bad thing. The food you have on the table, the computer you have, the doctor you see and the medicine you get is all because of greed. People do not do something for nothing. In cases where they so the product often sucks. Who get better medical care? Those at the free clinics or those who can pay for the best?
I am not saying these companies are the best, but the quality of games are certainly better by charging fees. They got into this to make money and not to make people happy.
Further, should a game cut its prices because it has more subscribers? If say WoW had budgeted the $15 on assuming 500,000 players and they now have 8 times that number should they cut the cost to $2 a month? No sane buisness would do that. If so then people would raise fees when they lost subcibers.
The fact is it costs a lot more money to run an mmo than people think. You need to get back you initial investment. You need to pay your employees, servers, power, bandwidth (which can get very expensive depending on if you buy it wholesale or not), etc. It may not be most of what you are paying for but it is a consierable amount for most games. Most not all. Obviously a game that has 4 million is paying less and earning more than a game with 250,000.
In any case the only reason you have a game in any case is because of greed.
I'm going to take this opportunity to rant about the state of the industry in general. My apologies to Greg Costikyan.....
The sad truth is that most of these games could remain operational and still turn a healthy profit with significantly lower fees. It's that whole Volume vs. cost thing that we don't like to talk about. They don't do this becuase the volume of users would force them to need more server space and bandwidth. They could afford that with the larger playerbase, but it's kind of a diminishing returns thing. Especially in the American market where most MMO players own their own computers and can spend 20+ hours a week logged on. At any rate, the price could probably be scaled back to $10 or even $5 and still be profitable. We also haven't taken alot of time to explore other business models for this genre. I like the Guild Wars model were you buy the game and then they release expansions periodically. The cool thing about this model is that you aren't obligated to buy the expansions and can hold off until you feel you can afford it while still playing the game. Let's face it, box prices are $50 dollars and with WoW selling 4 million boxes...... Well, you can do the math. I woudn't mind the monthly fees if I didn't have to buy the box. I'm kind of in this either or mood right now. I'll pay for the box, or I'll pay for the fee, but not both. Most of the retail MMOs out right now could operate on what they make off of the box sales alone. Throw in the fact that they also release their expansions in boxes and all those expansions are bought by people that already own the game and you understand exactly where I'm comming from.
Of course, most of the mainstream market is overpriced and bloated anyway. Games require 100+ people, 20 million dollars, and 5 years to develop before having a 6 month run and ending up on the used rack at Gamestop. I sometimes think that I'm the only person that sees a flaw with the way that games are developed nowadays. After all the time and money they spend making a game, most players just breeze through the finished product in a couple of weeks and the price starts to deprecate in about three months. Multiplayer games are in a much better spot in this regard. The original Half-Life enjoyed a shelf life of almost a decade and people played Unreal Tournament and Tribes for YEARS. Unfortunately, you can only make money off of box games once. So, while it's nice that people are still playing the original Starsiege: Tribes, no one is making money off of that game anymore. And this is the real reason we have monthly fees. It just doesn't make sense to create infinitely replayable games if you're only going to make money off them for a year or two. Yeah, we could always go to a model like the book publishing industry, where classics get reprinted and recirculated while giving money to the original creators. But that would be too much like right. Instead, we'd rather work developers 12 hours a day, seven days a week for five years straight and then move them straight on to the next project until they burn out completely. We'd rather keep feeding the gaming public the same games with flashier graphics and bigger budgets until we can't afford to produce enough games to meet the demand and feel the pain as the bubble bursts. We'd rather just turn everything into a monthly fee so that we can keep raking it in and then point to our overbloated project budgets as an excuse for gouging our customers.......
I love how people use "greed" as though it is a bad thing. The food you have on the table, the computer you have, the doctor you see and the medicine you get is all because of greed. People do not do something for nothing. In cases where they so the product often sucks. Who get better medical care? Those at the free clinics or those who can pay for the best?
I am not saying these companies are the best, but the quality of games are certainly better by charging fees. They got into this to make money and not to make people happy.
Further, should a game cut its prices because it has more subscribers? If say WoW had budgeted the $15 on assuming 500,000 players and they now have 8 times that number should they cut the cost to $2 a month? No sane buisness would do that. If so then people would raise fees when they lost subcibers.
The fact is it costs a lot more money to run an mmo than people think. You need to get back you initial investment. You need to pay your employees, servers, power, bandwidth (which can get very expensive depending on if you buy it wholesale or not), etc. It may not be most of what you are paying for but it is a consierable amount for most games. Most not all. Obviously a game that has 4 million is paying less and earning more than a game with 250,000.
In any case the only reason you have a game in any case is because of greed.
yeah damnit! i'm gonna quit buying food because of those greedy supermarkets! i'm gonna quit going to a doctor because they are greedy and just want my money! i'm not gonna buy clothes because the clothing makers just want money! who needs food, clothing, and medical care? greedy bastages, all of them!!
sadly we do have to pay for medical care, its one of the few things i think should be totally free to everyone.
Greed , greed and just greed.
They made us all addicted and now they command the prices.
Blizzard could easily charge 1$ monthly - and still pay servers, expansions, support workers - and come with hefty profit still....
But it is the greed that drives the comercial world of today. It made some people richer than an average small country. And what are they doing with that money I ask ?
Nothing good.
And they are definetly not giving us nothing good in return.
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
Well 15$ a month (or whatever else some games charge) may seem a lot but there are a couple things to consider.
Making an MMORPG is A LOT more work than making an a single player console game. Most of the time they need to make a whole world thats a lot bigger than environment you would see in signle player games.
They also need to code the whole server and client and a lot of effort goes into security wich you dont have to do with single player games (who cares if ppl cheat in a single player game anyways)
Then you also have the hardware cost, Running a game like WoW with millions of ppl playing need a BADASS server... and that cost a shit load of money at the start to buy it all.
They then also have to continu paying their devs because to keep ppl suscribing, you need to add new content. They also need to pay ppl to do the maintenances of the servers and the GMs.
They also have a huge ammount of bandwitch to pay for. MMORPGs take a shit load of bandwitch to operate and thats not free either.
AND, they want to make profits (obviously).
15$/month may seem like a lot but I believe that with all the effort and money it takes to make these games nowadays it is worth it. Maybe its a bit overpriced, ill admit, but I still believe they dont rip us off that much.
I think it's often forgotten that World of Warcraft was in development for years prior to release. It's not just current profit, it's all the upfront capital that is required to be paid off. Millions of dollars a year in production costs before they could even put it on the shelf.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
for one, that 60 mil a month goes to server costs, employee costs, hardware costs, software costs, paying the bills at their office(s). so not just one person is getting all this money. and after all the aforementioned stuff they ahve to make a profit to stay afloat. we should fortunate that it is so cheap. they could charge alot more if they were greedy.
Lol Sony and Blizzard have more money than NCSoft as a company. BLizzard makes more hit games all across the spectrum that NCSoft, and Sony is just godly when it comes to technology.
I wasnt talking about just MMORPGs, because none of the companies I mentioned use MMORPGs as their sole revenue.......
Greed was not used as a negative term, just a fact.....
But thanks for assuming ^_^, you know what they say!
I am not saying MMORPGs should cut their monthly fees if they are successful.
I am saying more companies should look for alternatives to monthly fees, like Guild Wars, and the AWEFUL
RYL (you could take online quizzes to gain game time).
This is for the future of gaming in general. I read somewhere that the next Madden Football game is going to charge money for each game. Xbox live is already charging money. Pretty soon EVERY video will charge monthly fees.
Its getting out of hand people. Companies are like, hey those people are basically giving us money if we fix some bugs and add some new costumes every few weeks, what a deal!!!
Monthly fees tie up a lot of other aspects of life. I really dont want to have to worry about my gaming bill coming along with my Heat and electricity.
They are going to keep pushing our cash! And it adds up, believe it or not.
Saturn1234 has a very valid point. Just recently I signed up for a free trial of Gametap and decided that I could buy compilations with most of those games on them for the same price that I'd pay for a year's subscription. The scary thing is that I can see all gaming going in this direction. I believe that the upcoming Phantom console will be doing the subsciption thing for mainstream retail games as well. This is a very big deal in the long run.
In the developement circles, the magic word is "casual". Everyone from Nintendo to Microsoft is trying like hell to cash in on the casual market and the only people that seem to know how to that are in asia. There's actually going to be a casual gaming roundtable at the next GDC so that western developers can figure out how to make money off of casual online games, not just MMORPGs. One interesting note about the asian game market is the variety of business models used. Some games get revenue from advertising, others sell ingame items or content, and still others license the server software to PC Bongs who then run the game in their establishments. At any rate, Casual gaming and continual fees will be the future of our hobby. The question is whether it'll be another bill to pay, or a choice for access more features and content. Both are valid, but only one will net the largest revinue. Anyone that's ever played Magic Online can tell you that the virtual item thing can work as a business model. And it doesn't lock you into choosing between rent and gaming.
I am angry. People today sicken me. What happened to everyone ?
Why are you saying YES to everything ? Where is the rebel in you ?
Dont you realise that the ONLY reason why you pay 15$ a month is because you agree to do so!
And to make things even more frustrating, some people are so lacking backbone, so subliminally brainwashed that they go and DEFEND
big corporations.
Hey they dont need defence man! For defence they have their 2 mil$ lawyers and 20 mil$ comercial campains.
WHAT they DO need is somebody to stand up to them and say
WE ARE NOT PAYING FOR THIS OVERPRICED CRAP !!!!
Then you will see like magic , games will get both cheaper and better!
So stop your damn defending, agreeing - you are not doing nobody a favor!
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
As long as there are people like me who don't object to other people getting rich, and consider the monthly fees to be a bargain, then your dreams of tearing down the system will remain dreams.
If you really are "PAYING FOR THIS OVERPRICED CRAP" then it is you who is the fool.
If you feel the game your paying for is crap then why are you playing it ?
If you feel it is overpriced then again - why keep on paying ?
I admire your anger and depth of emotion on this - I honestly do - but it isn't going to change man, not for a long time I would say
If those other people that were getting rich weren't doing everything in their power to make sure that no one else got rich, I wouldn't mind so much Nullpax. I believe in free enterprize as much as the next guy, but our current social contract with the corporate institution is ass backward. Taxing the hell out of the poor and giving sizable subsidies to the rich is pure insanity and eventually this system will become too top heavy and fall down. The sad part about that is that we'll all be along for the ride when it happens. It isn't going to be pretty.
In the meantime, we should try to promote ways that will allow these companies to make money without gouging the consumers. We've come a long way, but there is alot further to go. I think that alternative business models might just allow for greater profits for Pay to Play games. Just my 2 cents.
Um what country are you in? The "poor" in America, at any rate, are hardly taxed at all. It's the middle class and upper middle class who get the hell taxed out of them. The rich and the poor both get it pretty easy.
And, um.... what do taxes have to do with the price of MMORPG's there chief? Answer: Nothing
Try to stay on topic please.
The bottom line is that MMORPG's cost money to run. There are only so many ways for a company to make a profit on an MMORPG. The easiest being to charge a monthly fee for them. FREE MMORPG's are always operated at a loss. There's no way that a FREE MMORPG is making money for the owners. Which is why most FREE MMORPG's wind up closing shop in short order.
Add driven MMORPG's work ok, some of them, but usually the adds you have to deal with aren't worth the game because they don't generate enough revenue for much more than maintenance of the servers and paying for the bandwidth. Very little development or even debugging is done on those.
GuildWars is box-sale driven currently. Right now there's no subscription but if box sales decline and the revenue stream from that dries up the game will either cancel or go to a monthly fee or add based or ingame item sales for $$$. That or NCSOFT will come up with an "access pass" similar to SOE's and require you to have that to play GuildWars.
Monthly fee's are a necessary evil, unfortunately. Because MMORPG's take a lot of money to run. The bandwidth alone runs in the thousands (and in WOW's case it's possibly in the millions because the game is so big) each month.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
The value of anything is determined by how much value people place on something. Then take into account issues such as supply to modify that. That is how value works. As much as many of you wanna-be hippies would like there to be some magic wand that decides what things are worth and how much profit someone should make, there isn't. What decides value and prices are people.
So if there is a heavy demand for something and a short supply then prices go up. Could the company make money without doing it? Yes, but the idea if more people want it then it is worth more. It has more value. So you raise the price higher. If few people want something then it does not have much value.
If you decide you do not think something is worth paying $X for then you are saying that product does not have as much value to you as $X. It is as simple as that. It doesn't mean it is not worth the money, but that it is not worth it to you. There is a huge difference.
A value means of worth to someone for some purpose. Since this depends on people's wants then the market system is the most efficient system to satisfy our wants at the lowest prices. It still may be higher than some people want to pay, but that says nothing about the value of the product by itself. It says how much or how little you value something. The key word being you not everyone else.
Another thing to take into consideration is how much risk is involved. Game companies take a huge risk. If their game flops they loose a lot of money. So why not have a large reward for a large risk? Contrary to populat opinion, most movies that are released loose money. There are only a few that make money and they finance everything else. The same is true with games.
If you do not like the system then do not take part in it. It is as simple as that. Ravings about how bad companies are, greed is, and faulty economic models and theories of value will not change reality.
Only 5million to run the 100+ WoW servers? You have no idea how wrong you are. Let me give you an example. In my area Verizon offers T1 based connections for roughly about 500 bucks a month. A T1 will roughly support about 50 to 100 people reliably (This is assuming they all use DSL or better connections). So lets assume for a moment that is what Blizzard is working with. 15 bucks a month times 100 people for a total of 1500 dollars a month. Well 500 of that is already gone to cover bandwidth cost. Want a big crew that can stay on top of bugs and develop new content? Ok lets be nice and say that's another 500 out of the window.
Want a network team to cover server maintence and firmware/hardware updates? Well lets me nice just one more time. Another 500 bucks gone. So now you are pretty much down to just breaking even. Oops well you forgot you also need to maintain a billing system for your game, otherwise how do you collect your money right? Oh and what about those cost for developing the game to begin with? (WoW and EQ2 both ate up well over 18 million from start to going live) Oh and don't forget you actually want to have a box on shelves so that you can actually get paying customers. What about that time spent in concept/design, alpha, beta, open beta? Oh and what about those few gamers that don't have Credit Cards, plan to offer game cards for them? I suppose you'll probably want to advertise your game as well as maintain a forum and community site where people can get more info about your game.
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
Only 5million to run the 100+ WoW servers? You have no idea how wrong you are. Let me give you an example. In my area Verizon offers T1 based connections for roughly about 500 bucks a month. A T1 will roughly support about 50 to 100 people reliably (This is assuming they all use DSL or better connections). So lets assume for a moment that is what Blizzard is working with. 15 bucks a month times 100 people for a total of 1500 dollars a month. Well 500 of that is already gone to cover bandwidth cost. Want a big crew that can stay on top of bugs and develop new content? Ok lets be nice and say that's another 500 out of the window.
Want a network team to cover server maintence and firmware/hardware updates? Well lets me nice just one more time. Another 500 bucks gone. So now you are pretty much down to just breaking even. Oops well you forgot you also need to maintain a billing system for your game, otherwise how do you collect your money right? Oh and what about those cost for developing the game to begin with? (WoW and EQ2 both ate up well over 18 million from start to going live) Oh and don't forget you actually want to have a box on shelves so that you can actually get paying customers. What about that time spent in concept/design, alpha, beta, open beta? Oh and what about those few gamers that don't have Credit Cards, plan to offer game cards for them? I suppose you'll probably want to advertise your game as well as maintain a forum and community site where people can get more info about your game.
Actually for costs just to run the game 5 million a month sounds about right. I did some quick figuring and based on the numbers you figured it comes to about 3 million a month in recurring costs (not counting advertising, benefits for employees, etc). So 5 million isn't necessarily wrong. I think it's probably more in line with 10 million a month but he DOES have a point:
even if it's costing Blizzard $10mil a month to support the game they're still cashing in 50 million a month in profit.
Mind you: There's nothing wrong with that.
But charging for expansions when you're netting more in a single month than TWICE the cost of development (I belive WoW cost $25m to develop including beta, I recall seeing that figure bandied about in an interview somewhere) for the entire game seems a bit over the top
But, again, the MARKET drives what companies do. They KNOW the sheep will buy the expansion as soon as it hits the shelves. So why WOULDN'T they charge for it?
Bottom line:
As long as people are willing to PAY for expansions they will cost money. Period.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Monthly fees are here because people pay for them. There is the blablabla about costs of making an mmo run but that's could easily be covered with different business models. Some of the early mmorpg's weren't boxed at all, that's something many tend to forget. The monthly fee was the only form of income for that type of game. Talk about taking a risk, those are the game developpers that took a real risk.
There's no need to defend pricing policies using the companies arguments. There's no need to use flawed logic either (when you ask a price for a big volume of a same service it won't be the same price a consumer pays). The only thing that comes into account is how much you are willing to pay for something in a consumer sided argument. The key words being : you pay. It's not worth complaining about, people don't listen to an individual consumer, they listen to the silent majority that comes out of their market surveys. They listen to the fact that the population of the service they are offering is growing or declining and that is something only the company offering the service knows.
Fact remains that as it has been pointed out, the monthly fee is just how much you as a gamer value the game you are playing. I gladly pay my monthly subscription. It's under 1% of my monthly income and it provides me with over 40% of my monthly entertainment. I don't care if a game costs me 5$ or 25$ a month, if I didn't like the price, I wouldn't be playing it. The fact of how much a service costs to run and how much profit the company I buy a service from makes is besides the point. To go back to my percentages above, all other forms of entertainment I buy every month cost more then the average mmo subscription put against the number of hours of enjoyment. Those other 60% of entertainment take about 40% of my monthly budget. (mmo value = 40, other average value = 1.5)
If you don't like the price, don't pay it. Or maybe : grow up, get a job and play things you can pay for.
Anyhow, enough rambling, enjoy your time being entertained.
-
All in all answer is clear
Is 15$ a month overpriced ?
Yes it is.
Why is it 15$ a month ?
Because we agree to pay that much.
Will it change by players initiative ?
No because we players are sheep. We lack power to organise and change this.
Is it going by some company scheme ?
Possible. It takes one good MMO droping prices to crush the whole pricing down.
Is it going to happen?
Probably not. There is unvritten law in comercialisam not to drop prices to general buisness model.
1968 it will come again 1968 !
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
Odd ... I paid $2.23/gallon this morning, when I coud've sworn I paid close to $3.00/gallon last week. ^_^
Please, it's about choice and I'm sorry if you don't have the ability to make such decisions. No one stands behinds you and forces to pay for an mmo's service. If you want something you can't afford, work harder.
Companies lower price points all the time to meet market demand. Go back to HS Economics, and this time please pay attention.
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
Odd ... I paid $2.23/gallon this morning, when I coud've sworn I paid close to $3.00/gallon last week. ^_^
Please, it's about choice and I'm sorry if you don't have the ability to make such decisions. No one stands behinds you and forces to pay for an mmo's service. If you want something you can't afford, work harder.
Companies lower price points all the time to meet market demand. Go back to HS Economics, and this time please pay attention.
Well said.
It all started when DAOC came out and started charging $12.95 instead of the 9.95 that EQ and UO were charging. Then EQ shortly raised their fee to match and people didn't leave.... If players had refused to pay $12.95 for DAOC they'd have lowered the price. If players had cancelled when EQ went to $12.95 they'd have lowered the price back down as well. Then, I think it was FFXI who raised it to $14.95 or so. And everyone followed suit.
Bottom line:
As long as you keep paying inflated prices the prices will climb. If a game comes out and charges $20 a month for you to play and people pay it willingly every other MMO on the market will raise their prices to match.
It's called supply and demand. They have the supply. As long as we have enough 'demand' to support higher prices the prices will stay up, and even climb.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Odd ... I paid $2.23/gallon this morning, when I coud've sworn I paid close to $3.00/gallon last week. ^_^
Please, it's about choice and I'm sorry if you don't have the ability to make such decisions. No one stands behinds you and forces to pay for an mmo's service. If you want something you can't afford, work harder.
Companies lower price points all the time to meet market demand. Go back to HS Economics, and this time please pay attention.
bad example - all places are dropping their prices. its not like shell dropped their prices to 2.23 and citgo is still at 3.00. sure some places are a little more expensive, but only by a few cents.