Poll: Payment Models

July 12, 2009 by Syp

First, read through this quick article over at Fires of WAR.

Then, I’d love to get your reaction: what payment model for MMORPGs are you most attracted to?

Posted in General | 11 Comments

11 Responses

on July 12, 2009 at 4:54 pm Rog

Product + Expansion = ideal, but probably not a realistic expectation. I voted for it, but would fall back on monthly subscription.

F2P / Microtransactions impacts the game too much, segregating the game’s population into what you’ve paid for. Plus IMHO it’s inherently more expensive for anyone that actually plays.

Lifetime subscription, the way Turbine presented it with LOTRO was sorta appealing, but in absence of monthly subscriptions how would it differ from single purchase products? Aside from being more expensive.

Hourly rates I did back in the GEnie days for Air Warrior, etc. and I can tell you it gets expensive quickly.

As for ads, ugh no thanks. Kinda contrary to the RPG genre if you ask me. Tolerable to try-before-buy in Anarchy Online, but that’s about it.
on July 12, 2009 at 5:16 pm Armagon

Please don’t forget the link
http://firesofwar.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/weighing-out-payment-models/
on July 12, 2009 at 9:34 pm Andrew

Of your list I prefer FTP w/ micro.

But my favorite model by far is the Hybrid payment models like those found in DDO or Wizard101: basically the player is allowed to pick FTP + Micro *OR* a subscription. This allows a player to choose the method of payment that best support their personal approach to a game.
on July 13, 2009 at 2:50 am We Fly Spitfires

I went for monthly subscriptions.

I mean, I like everything being free For instance it’s great to be able to try out AoC again without having to pay for it. Yet, I think at the end of the day I still prefer monthly subs to microtransactions. I can’t help but feel we’d end up paying more for those.
on July 13, 2009 at 3:13 am Alamia

I really love Guild War’s model. I bought “Nightfall” and then didn’t really get into it until several months later. By now, I have all three campaigns and the addon and I play whenever I want to play. It’s nice to know that I can access the game whenever I feel like it.

I have a subscription for WAR until November and I really regret having paid for another 6 months. When I made that payment, I had a lot of fun and enjoyed playing. By now, I hardly ever log on. So it’s basically wasted money.

Free to play is nice per se. But I hate it when the game constantly shoves its item shop in your face and reminds you that actually, it’d be nicer if you paid something. I think it could be done really well. As long as those who pay won’t get an in-game advantage over those who don’t pay (especially seeing how those who don’t pay are usually in the majority).

I know that concept from a browser game where you can play for free or you pay (although in this case, it’s a monthly subscription and not an item shop). Those who pay get a few extras and the game as a whole gets an advantage. For example: You can play a healing class when you pay. Players need to group in that game. Not much can be done solo. So, you will need a tank and a healer. But you also need damage dealers. And the three classes that can be played for free are also about the best damage dealers and every group of players has at least two of those classes in their group. So, even if you don’t pay a cent for that game, you are wanted by those who pay!

For MMOs, that could mean that you need to pay in order to unlock certain classes (although it should probably be a damage dealing class and not necessarily a healer as those are rare anyway) or races. But paying in order to get better equipment and get much stronger isn’t a good solution in my opinion.

The hourly subscription would be nice if the maximum amount you can pay every month doesn’t exceed that of a monthly subscription.

And the lifetime subscription is both good and bad. What if the game shuts down after a year? Then I assume you probably didn’t get your money’s worth for it. So it’s always a risk.
on July 13, 2009 at 8:42 am pitrelli

Just add my two cents on it

I think the monthly subscription is the best and ‘fairest way’, any RMT for ingame items etc just causes unbalance and perhaps even community aggro.

Having said this I would love some games to offer the limited lifetime subscription that LoTRO did.

It may only be a matter of time before we see a ‘loyalty discount’ with perhaps games dropping the subscription charge for length of players subscribing ie knock off a couple of £ or $ after 6 months/year. This with the number of competitive MMO’s being released may prove to 1. keep hold of existing players and 2. bring in old and new

A quick note on adds…. I think this would work in some games like City of Heroes or Champions Online, they could use city billboards and would add a bit of realism to the game.
on July 13, 2009 at 9:16 am Ninetytwo

Monthly sub, but the industry needs to stop charging for the client box.

It’s absurd for companies to be double-dipping with a box fee and monthly sub payments. Especially for expansion content. The whole reason we pay the $15 bucks is for them to keep the servers running and keep shoveling new content down our gullets.
on July 13, 2009 at 12:23 pm Misanthrope

Optimally, I want a combination of F2P+Microtransactions and Monthly Fee.

I’ve always been a proponent of the monthly fee, but it seems more and more games are using microtransactions, so they’re unavoidable. As such, you need to compromise.

The game itself should be free, but you miss out on a lot of content. You can either buy that content a la carte (microtransactions) or pay $15 a month to get everything. In effect, the free game is a trial. I think Free Realms uses this to an effect- unlocks all the classes and weapons for you and gives you a monthly allowance of ingame currency equal to or more than $15 worth of it.
on July 13, 2009 at 12:57 pm Ryver

I voted for the box + expansion only.

I agree with Ninetytwo as well. If you want monthly fees, give me the client for free. Or at least give me 3-4 months access instead of just one everytime I buy a box/expansion.
on July 13, 2009 at 6:07 pm Raegn

I’ve heard people say that the hourly payment model gets expensive but I’m not sure how. Taking a payment model like Aion-China’s, you’d have to play for almost 11 hours a day, every day, to equal the standard $15 a month subscription.

I can see it being expensive if combined with an RMT option but not on it’s own, unless the rates were substantially more.
on July 13, 2009 at 8:31 pm Dblade

I prefer f2p i think. It’s not like subscriptions are this bastion of equality, usually the sub model rewards only those that can spend the most time over those that don’t log in. The sub games design for people to quickly reach a point where to progress they must spend months in the game, in order to maximize ROI.

At least with F2P you can shorten the negative aspects, in a sub MMO you are really stuck. They have absolutely zero incentive to shorten the “sticky content.” I mean the content you have to stick to for the long term. WoW and EQ can start you at later levels because the real long grind is raids.

We are all just used to the sub model so I don’t think we see how it affects gameplay as much. The whole concept of raiding is only because it maximizes profit but creating content that is only able to be done a limited amount of times per month, and rewarding only few attempts done, for example.

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