Smedley is the new playerauctions

[Viin]

The tiered by-hour price structure would work just fine as long as the game actually told the user: "Hey, you are approaching the 5 hour mark for this week, please click OK to let us know that you would like to move into the 10-hour-a-week Tier (and it's additional charges) or please log off within the next 30 minutes. Thank you!"

And it would reset every month (with options to have it upgrade you to a specific tier without prompting). At the end of the month it would charge you for whatever tier you were in.

That'd be fine with me.. especially since i haven't played WoW very much lately but wouldn't mind paying the lower 5/hr week fee to keep my account alive until I come back. But no, now I have to cancel it to keep from wasting money.

[Krakrok]

I would never pay hourly for an MMO again. Cell phone bills are rapeage. Notice how VoIP is a flat rate subscription? Most broadband bills are flat rate because paying per gigabyte of download is stupid (unless you're in Australia).

I'd prefer something similar to the Netflix pricing system. 1 movie at a time is $11, 3 at a time is $18, 5 at a time is $30, 8 at a time is $50 or whatever. FFXI basically uses that for characters right?

Charging catasses more makes sense in my book. On the other hand if a catass has to pay $50 to catass in game A and in game B he only has to pay $14.95 to catass which game is he going to play?

Look at movie prices. You pay $8-$10 for two hours and it's over. That's $4-$5 an hour. You don't get to take anything with you. You don't have anything physical to keep after the two hours. From a price standpoint movies are "virtual items".

[MaceVanHoffen]

the game was kept afloat by the small, 30-40k permanent base of subscribers who stayed because of the community that had formed.  It's not exactly true to say that its failure was due to the lack of a community, because a really good one was eventually established; it's a bit more complicated, I guess I'm trying to say.

You're quite right, I was oversimplifying.  And engaging in a little mental masturbation, since I don't really think time-tiered pricing models will work.

I loved AO.  I played it for close to a year and a half, but eventually couldn't stomach the lag and bugs even though I'd made friends there.  It is more complicated:  communities did form, but in the majority of cases the social glue that held them together wasn't strong enough to fight the replusive forces of absurd lag and jawdroppingly buggy gameplay.

[HaemishM]

Subscription fees are popular in business because they are a known quantity, a recurring revenue that can be counted on month to month. They are also easily understandable by the lowest common denominator. That doesn't make them the only profitable type of fee structure, and it sure doesn't mean they make sense for one game.

There is still a LOT of resistance among the casual majority of gamers against paying a monthly fee for one game. It's the reason WoW was the first million-sub MMOG in the U.S, not because WoW was better or the others were worse, but because only Blizzard's name recognition could pull in people who might otherwise never pay a subscription fee.

What is going to be more palatable to the average consumer is a pay-per-use (with a use being a complete gaming session type of experience, whether persistence of avatar is maintained or not), a time-tiered structure, or something more like a Netflix type of subscription fee, where your fee buys you access to multiple games that may or may not be similar in theme and play. Think SOE's Station Pass.

[Yegolev]

Make players a part of a tight-knit community, even if they're bound together by hatred of the game, and they won't leave no matter what your pricing plan is.

If you are talking about a subscription to a message board where haters can bitch, then I agree.

[tazelbain]

I freely admit that I was sugesting what I want, what would convince me to spend more money.  I may not be a profitable section of the market.  But I don't I think that far out of the mainstream.

I'd probably still be a subscriber to Shadowbane if they had a "let's just be friends" pricing option. Would it work out better financially for them? No one knows, but it may be something to look at as the market tightens.

[shiznitz]

If one wants to implement a tiered pricing plan, then it should be done in a customer friendly way. Let a customer's usage pattern determine what he pays automatically.

Base fee: $19.95/month (we all know it is headed there)

If a customer plays less than X hours in the month, he gets a credit of $Y against his next month's bill. 

One issue with this is that if playtime picks up again, the monthly bill will rise. In both cases, the customer should get email notifications explaining what is happening. Another problem is that the base price that everyone is going to see when they sign up for the game is going to be on the high side to account for the heaviest users.

A system like this would really be best if the game is distributed 100% digitally, i.e. no box purchase. Download the game and start playing for $24.95 a month, no free month. The price looks right and given how little developers get per box, one might even come out ahead on a two month comparison.

[AlteredOne]

You may recall that SoE is charging an extra monthly fee to display your stats online.  Stuff like "most monsters killed," highest single hit, most items discovered, etc. etc...

Now they can add stats for "most items sold for real money" and "most $$$ earned from sales."  And perhaps the top sellers could list their stats for free!

Way to bring out the achievers!

Wouldn't touch EQ2 with Vin Diesel's proboscus, at this point.

[Yegolev]

You may recall that SoE is charging an extra monthly fee to display your stats online.  Stuff like "most monsters killed," highest single hit, most items discovered, etc. etc...

Now they can add stats for "most items sold for real money" and "most $$$ earned from sales."  And perhaps the top sellers could list their stats for free!

Way to bring out the achievers!

Wouldn't touch EQ2 with Vin Diesel's proboscus, at this point.

You might have been joking, but I think the next step along those lines will be in-game advertising.  A nominal fee will get you wall-space in a capitol.  More cash might get your banner ad on the back of a raid boss.

[Bunk]

You're 18 and just out of high-school, no real skills or talents but you do have an EQ X account.  Sure, before you might of stuck some of your loot, that just would have gotten sold to vendors anyway, up for auction to net you a few extra bucks for the weekend, enough for a pizza maybe, but now your parents want you to get your own place and move out and they are harping on you to 'get a job'.

(snip)

Time passes and here you are a year later, you haven't hardly been out of your room in months but your paying your parents rent and helping with the bills, sure your lucky to make $600 a month even putting in 95 or a 100 hours a week, but it's easy money right?  You still have no marketable skills and the time that you could have spent learning the retail ropes at minimum wage so you could look for a job with a big chain with benifits and a small chance at maybe even being assistant manager someday has been flushed into EQ hell.

Crap job, no life, no prospects, no incentive to change.

----

How much you want to bet the scenario above plays out with rather disturbing frequency once this goes live?  I'm sure it's happened a few times already but if the stigma of buying and selling your 'phat lewts' goes away I am positive that this sort of thing will become all too common.

You just described a former roomate of mine. After I moved out, about five years ago, the guy spent at least a year doing nothing for work but farming UO. He of course was also collecting welfare at the same time.

[sarius]

4) SOE goes after first corrupt GM and tries to have what he does be considered imbezzlement

And probably a shitton of other issues I can't even imagine. Now, I'm not saying any or all of even one of those cases is winnable. But that's just a few of the worms in the can o' worms this opens up. There are going to be some hefty retainers paid and some happy lawyers made out of this decision.

Dollars to donuts, this decision would NEVER have been made had EQ2 held its own against WoW. SOE doesn't do this kind of expensive proposition unless pushed. EQ2 cannot be doing well if they chose to do it in this game and not EQ1.

True and truer.  My understanding is that SOE's actions in the operation of this venture are what will primarily be used as the basis from previous case law.  Considering that transactions will be based in a large part through California, someone has bigger balls than I ever will.

Number 4 will directly place value external to any possible bullshit EULA "contract law dreams" their crack whore lawyers ever want to invent.

[Trippy]

Some more news from GameSpot: Spot On: Virtual economies break out of cyberspace

This is the part I find interesting:

Critics have charged that Station Exchange lets players buy their way to the top and may open a legal can of worms. Though Kramer admits that the idea behind Station Exchange was controversial, even within SOE, with 20 to 25 percent of players buying and selling, the company says it's just giving players what they want. According to the results of an in-game poll conducted by Sony, players are almost evenly split in their feelings--for, against, or neutral--toward the service.

20% - 25% is a lot more people than I would've guessed.

[Surlyboi]

You may recall that SoE is charging an extra monthly fee to display your stats online.  Stuff like "most monsters killed," highest single hit, most items discovered, etc. etc...

Now they can add stats for "most items sold for real money" and "most $$$ earned from sales."  And perhaps the top sellers could list their stats for free!

Way to bring out the achievers!

Wouldn't touch EQ2 with Vin Diesel's proboscus, at this point.

You might have been joking, but I think the next step along those lines will be in-game advertising.  A nominal fee will get you wall-space in a capitol.  More cash might get your banner ad on the back of a raid boss.

Nah, the real money will be spent getting a dungeon or some high-end phat lewt named after the schmuck with more cash than brains. I can see it now; Tolan's longsword of the Catass, found in the Caverns of Goober.

It's a brave new world, boys. Be afraid, be very afraid...

[Murgos]

Put a Diet Coke banner up in Qeynos and then charge for 'ad impressions'.  Each time some player runs past it there's 1/2 a penny.  It would probably bring in an easy hundred grand a day, there is no way that Smed, as money grubbing as he is,  isn't eventually going to try this.

[schmoo]

Put a Diet Coke banner up in Qeynos and then charge for 'ad impressions'.  Each time some player runs past it there's 1/2 a penny.  It would probably bring in an easy hundred grand a day, there is no way that Smed, as money grubbing as he is,  isn't eventually going to try this.

Put up a clickable Diet Coke banner in Qeynos (click this for a chance to win a foozle and watch our cool ad) and charge for clickthroughs. Hell, put up a hundred of them, hide them, and make a game out of finding and clicking on them. If the foozle is good enough, Coke gets lots of clickies, Smed has multiple orgasms, and Joe Catass has 'fun' finding every fucking clickable ad in the game.

[schild]

Ya know what amazes me?

Smed still has a job.

[Soln]

Ya know what amazes me?

Smed still has a job.

there must be people above him looking at SOE #'s and in the other hand hold the Blizzard estimates or Lineage sub count and wondering "WTF?".  Or maybe I'm naive.  I work for a very large consumer (non-game) sw company and increasingly I see that "rationality" (read: "make money, retain customers") doesn't seem to hold in US sw companies a lot these days. I expect Smed will be with us for awhile longer...

[HaemishM]

The biggest problem is that SOE started strong as a company (after buying out Verant). They had the biggest game on the block, making beaucoup bucks every month. Then they got the biggest license in the geek world, Star Wars, and all was peachy.

Unfortunately for them, instead of really expanding their share of the market (which used to be most of the market), they've tried to expand their product line and haven't hit a home run or even a triple with any of them. Planetside was to get some FPS market, and they've been so embarrassed by its numbers, they've never released them. Star Wars Galaxies, which many thought would be the first million-sub MMOG, never got above 300,000 by all accounts, which wasn't even 75% of the numbers EQ1 was pulling in. And by what little accurate numbers they've released to date, EQ2 with a higher development budget than SWG, has had trouble even getting as many subs as SWG. In the meantime, they've failed to release Sovereign. And all of this under Smed and partly Flock's rule.

Apparently, SOE measures executive job performance on the same scale Bush measures Condi Rice.

[sarius]

Apparently, SOE measures executive job performance on the same scale Bush measures Condi Rice.

Hehe, I found it easier to fathom calling SWG the Mary Jo Kopechne of MMORPGs. :)