Originally posted by Silok

Originally posted by Gruug

Originally posted by Roxtarr

This is not a Sub fee vs F2P discussion (there is another thread for that)

How would you feel if your MMO announced that the sub fee was going up $1 per month?

Why would this happen?  Well - tell me what's getting cheaper in this world? Utilities, staffing, health care, gas, office supplies - not to mention the changing value of currency.  

If your studio launched a game in 2008 with a $15.00 sub, and you maintain the same 500k subscribers - you are making less money! Why? Because that $15 isn't worth the same in 2012.  

You must make up for that lost revenue somehow?  Why not raise the sub fee to $16.00 per month?

Obviously, sudios won't do that because of the crap-storm that would follow.  Or would players understand?

Just some thoughts I was having and was curious about what people thought about it.

You know, that is a good question. However, I do not think you just because something can happen that everyone should just complacently accept it. Yes, inflation is a BAD THING. However, thing that you pay for that you DO NOT NEED are optional. So, if entertainment goes up to a price that I think it is too high, I will not pay for it. Frankly, I think most MMO's today are if anything today overpriced. Not saying (or wishing to start) that they should be "free". However, I think that people must realise that they are only paying for PIXELS and not anything of value.

 

You are paying for entertainment.. do a movie at the theater has more value?

Movies are way over priced, you want to go see a movie in the UK, then expect to pay a lots, last time took the wife and 2 children, 7 and 8, to the cinema, it cost us nearly £70...  its not something i'd repeat tbh..

and the film was rubbish too, daft cats vs dogs thing revenge of PG.. or whatever..  kids, they do watch some rubbish these days

Originally posted by Roxtarr

This is not a Sub fee vs F2P discussion (there is another thread for that)

How would you feel if your MMO announced that the sub fee was going up $1 per month?

Why would this happen?  Well - tell me what's getting cheaper in this world? Utilities, staffing, health care, gas, office supplies - not to mention the changing value of currency.  

If your studio launched a game in 2008 with a $15.00 sub, and you maintain the same 500k subscribers - you are making less money! Why? Because that $15 isn't worth the same in 2012.  

You must make up for that lost revenue somehow?  Why not raise the sub fee to $16.00 per month?

Obviously, sudios won't do that because of the crap-storm that would follow.  Or would players understand?

Just some thoughts I was having and was curious about what people thought about it.

Sub fees were originaly to cover the bandwidth charges and was not a profiteering angle, bandwidth costs are next to nothing now and companies are still using this to profiteer.  There really is no reason for any company to charge you a subscription for any online game, they do it because they know they can get away with it, so in effect they are not losing money due to any down turn or any increased costs that have happened the past 12 months or so.

Originally posted by Phry

Originally posted by Silok

Originally posted by Gruug

Originally posted by Roxtarr

This is not a Sub fee vs F2P discussion (there is another thread for that)

How would you feel if your MMO announced that the sub fee was going up $1 per month?

Why would this happen?  Well - tell me what's getting cheaper in this world? Utilities, staffing, health care, gas, office supplies - not to mention the changing value of currency.  

If your studio launched a game in 2008 with a $15.00 sub, and you maintain the same 500k subscribers - you are making less money! Why? Because that $15 isn't worth the same in 2012.  

You must make up for that lost revenue somehow?  Why not raise the sub fee to $16.00 per month?

Obviously, sudios won't do that because of the crap-storm that would follow.  Or would players understand?

Just some thoughts I was having and was curious about what people thought about it.

You know, that is a good question. However, I do not think you just because something can happen that everyone should just complacently accept it. Yes, inflation is a BAD THING. However, thing that you pay for that you DO NOT NEED are optional. So, if entertainment goes up to a price that I think it is too high, I will not pay for it. Frankly, I think most MMO's today are if anything today overpriced. Not saying (or wishing to start) that they should be "free". However, I think that people must realise that they are only paying for PIXELS and not anything of value.

 

You are paying for entertainment.. do a movie at the theater has more value?

Movies are way over priced, you want to go see a movie in the UK, then expect to pay a lots, last time took the wife and 2 children, 7 and 8, to the cinema, it cost us nearly £70...  its not something i'd repeat tbh..

and the film was rubbish too, daft cats vs dogs thing revenge of PG.. or whatever..  kids, they do watch some rubbish these days

lol you reminded of a news item I was looking at this morning

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19980523

I'de be kind of pissed. 

But I'm still scratching my head as to why 15.00$/month became the industry standard...

Basically if the game is worth it then it's worth paying a little extra, to me at least.  I didn't mind paying 15 a month for WoW when I actually enjoyed playing it and I wouldn't have minded paying 20 bucks as it would have been worth it to me.  I don't pay for it now because it's not something I enjoy playing any longer.

As of right now there is nothing i consider worth paying for, although Eve keeps impinging upon my mind.  Rift pops up inside my noggin now and then as well but I have been there, done that.  If the new Darkfall version turns out to be as good as I hope I would be willing to pay above the standard fee.

For something like that I feel they'd need to make their expansion(s) and content added free, add content very regularly and show they put the money paid to good use. I was wondering about this a while back and with upkeep costs becoming lower and lower (of the servers that is) there's really no need for subs this high. I would be more content with a €7 or €8 sub, so I could play 2 sub games (or try 2) a month if I wanted to. I bought the year sub for RIFT, which (after deducing expansion costs) nets me on 6,33 per month. Pretty neat if you ask me and more the price I want it at.

Originally posted by AG-Vuk

Originally posted by itgrowls

Originally posted by Torvaldr

Burntvet and itgrowls both described how I see the situation.  Hardware is much cheaper as is bandwidth.

I prefer a true subscription model but I dont' think any of those exist anymore.  Every place that charges a sub also either has some form of microtransaction (even if it's just expacs) or sells gold.  They all supplement their income.  If I'm going to pay a subscription going forward then it better cover everything.

So not only would I not be okay with a price increase, I'm not okay with the current fee schedule.   Most sub games are around $150 to $200 per year.  At $10/mo with an expac cost averaging about $40 per year you hit $160/year.  If the game cost $16/mo (up from $15) it would come in at a minimum of $232/year, if not more.  I mean if they're going to up the monthly fee why not the xpac fee too?  No game out at the moment is worth that per year.  From my perspective, none of them deliver the goods for that price.

 completely agree, the vast bulk of mmo companies who require a sub are severely lacking on the content updates and usually make the players wait a long time before releasing major updates and charge on top of the monthly fee for the xpacs. Just happened with WoW and they've been doing the exact same model for the past 7 years. The only one i can truly say that's been using the sub money wisely to improve content and gameplay for players is Trion. :)

While I agree the cost of running a game have gone down on the hardware end, you neglect the one cost that does have an impact. It the cost of running a business and employing those to design and create. Since 2000, inflation has run about 4% , and in the last four years even higher. Although gov stats and QE's have expressly devalued the currency to hide inflation it is nevertheless there. No amount of hardware saving is going to offset those costs. The current sub business model is unstainable as it currently is without price increases. MMO use to have time and money and manpower to dev content in the past. The current sub model makes it difficult unless you large pops.

Well, the math does not bear that out.

For many of those years, the "core rate" of inflation was only 1%-2%, so it was not 4% every year.

And ever if it was, server and bandwidth costs have gone down 90% or more. And it in the old days, that was more than half of the expense of keep the game running. Various Devs have talked about this, in different places at length. For example, for the servers they used to run DAOC on (I knew a guy that used to work for a contractor that did their hardware support) you can buy a server with 10X the capacity for 1/3 the price as for what they had to buy back then to get it to work. Heck, it is common these days to virtual several/many game servers onto a single physical one . Because you can. Back then, you couldn't. Or you had REALLY big servers.

And I don't think I have to talk about the difference in price on bandwidth between 2001 and now, not when you can get 30 meg/sec and up download speeds TO YOUR HOUSE.

If bandwidth and servers were not almost nothing, F2P and B2P games could not exist.

Bottom line is that when $6-$7 of that $15 was needed for upkeep, and then that expnse goes down to 35-40 cents, that opens the cashflow way up.

if the inflation goes up, i feel fine if my MMO increases the sub fee.

at least i don't want its service quality to drop.

If the game is really good, I'd be willing to pay it.

Right now, though, I want most subscriptions to go down to $10-12. While $15 a month is worth it for a game you spend a good amount of time on, $15 is still not an amount that is completely negligible and forgettable. If you aren't playing, you usually cancel your subscription--at least, if you are conscientious.

If it was $10-12, I'd probably keep the subscription just to support the game if I liked it. It's a stupid distinction, but that's how I work. $15 is, "I should get my money's worth." $10-12 is, "I'm fine with it, even if I only log in once for the month."

SOE raised the price of Evequest twice and people were still playing

in 1999, EQ launched w price of 9.89/mo   (underpricing UO at 9.95)

in 2002, the price went up to 12.99/mo

in 2005, the price went up to 14.99/mo

related editorial on the history of sub fees

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/75692

ive been looking at the station pass recently and i have to say its really not a bad deal. If you get the year subscription  for 14.95 a month, this year you will get access to alot of older mmo's such as eq/eq2/planetside/vanguard/pirates of the burning sea/DC online and they have a number of other offerings in the pipe such as PS2, dragon prophet, wizardry and one day everquest next i would imagine.

of course you can play most of the above for free to some extent, but really your getting alot of bang for your buck there.

Even if they lower the sub-fee price, I'm not playing any sub-fee MMO again. I'm done with it.

If Arenanet can do this with Guild Wars 2, so can others.

I would not like it myself if my current MMO's increased their monthly subscription fee.

Why

The game by this time would be old, getting on the boring side of things and also starting to look very dated graphically. Games do not tend to last (unless they have been well made) currently only WoW is still surviving this (i cannot think of any other game with more than a dozen servers running that is this old).

Ok, so prices do tend to change for running costs, I understand that, however the current games on the current market are not really delivering what they need to do to warrant a price increase. If a game was done well and also run well, the monthly subscription would not need to change anyways as there would be plenty of players to cover the costs and also bring in a profit.

Most tend to be greedy thesedays and show a profit of umpteen thousands or so and still it isnt enough for them, they want more. Todays world = greed greed and greed.

I would pay it if i found it worthy, but for the past 5 years i never get past my free time befor i drop the game. I dont return to those games as i won't pay 15$ to play a week then drop it again.

I think they need to introduce other payment options then monthly with reasonable prices. Some have done it befor but those prices was way out of sync.

I got plenty of cash so that aint the issue, its more that i cant justify paying for a month too only play a week.

Depends on the game mostly. $16 a month is a lot, I can't see it happening. I can see maybe those 'package' deals ending up losing their value and becoming more expensive (so instead of $10/m for a year it might be $12, still cheaper then $15/m) but I can't see the price raising that much.

If it DID, I'd really have no much problem paying for it. If I'm paying $15 already for a game a month I obviously like it and what they are doing so paying $1 more wouldn't bother me to much, though I'd not be exactly 'excited' for it.