SOE's Station Access Price Increase

[Venkman]

They are shorting themselves by making such a big price increase, but perhaps they wanted to prevent making a bunch of micro-increases. They may realize that any price increase is going to cause a furor, so rather than having that furor once every year to raise the price $1.00/mo, they just dump a $5.00/mo increase and not have to worry about a furor or another 2-3 years at least.

But I'd rather they focus on attracting new accounts to their games than trying to ply who they have because the latter group is not sustainable even without increases.

[Sky]

Still waiting to hear if EQ2 also bumped up the prices, not that it matters if they axe half my characters...

What really bums me out is that EQ2 has a great dev team. Folks like them will be the ones who take the hit for these bone-headed money grabs. Some suit will probably get an early retirement with a golden parachute for giving it a try.

[Hound]

I just wonder who the hell over there came up with this shit storm of a idea, whoever it was he or she is needs to be shown the door in a most unpleasant way. They could not have picked a worse time in my opinion. First Vanguard launches with maybe a quarter of expected sales and is bleeding subs like a severed carotid artery and  Turbine is launching LoTRO which is taking dead aim at the WoW/EQII crowd and giving a ten dollar a month plan for pre orders. What are they trying to do self immolate or fall on their fucking pixilated sword maybe?

[Woody]

I just wonder who the hell over there came up with this shit storm of a idea, whoever it was he or she is needs to be shown the door in a most unpleasant way. They could not have picked a worse time in my opinion. First Vanguard launches with maybe a quarter of expected sales and is bleeding subs like a severed carotid artery and  Turbine is launching LoTRO which is taking dead aim at the WoW/EQII crowd and giving a ten dollar a month plan for pre orders. What are they trying to do self immolate or fall on their fucking pixilated sword maybe?

IMHO, this just reeks of Smedley

[Alkiera]

Still waiting to hear if EQ2 also bumped up the prices, not that it matters if they axe half my characters...

What really bums me out is that EQ2 has a great dev team. Folks like them will be the ones who take the hit for these bone-headed money grabs. Some suit will probably get an early retirement with a golden parachute for giving it a try.

If this works as I suspect, your alts will just be 'hidden', and if you later re-sub to the all access pass, they'll still be there, not deleted.  Something like this happened to me when a server was down; I made a 5th character to play and after my server came up, it (the newest character)  got pushed off the bottom.

--
Alkiera

[Venkman]

I just got the PS email: $14.99 for a game who's sub should be decreasing?! I mean, sure they think if people are sticking with that beast now they'll obviously pay anything. But in this age of free MMOs with item-based rev models, the last thing anyone should do is raise flat-fees. That's a great way to show how dated you are and why people shouldn't be supporting you.

[Dundee]

I just got the PS email: $14.99 for a game who's sub should be decreasing?! I mean, sure they think if people are sticking with that beast now they'll obviously pay anything. But in this age of free MMOs with item-based rev models, the last thing anyone should do is raise flat-fees. That's a great way to show how dated you are and why people shouldn't be supporting you.

Maybe the $30 pass looks better with PS at $15...

[Hound]

I just wonder who the hell over there came up with this shit storm of a idea, whoever it was he or she is needs to be shown the door in a most unpleasant way. They could not have picked a worse time in my opinion. First Vanguard launches with maybe a quarter of expected sales and is bleeding subs like a severed carotid artery and  Turbine is launching LoTRO which is taking dead aim at the WoW/EQII crowd and giving a ten dollar a month plan for pre orders. What are they trying to do self immolate or fall on their fucking pixilated sword maybe?

IMHO, this just reeks of Smedley

probably had the idea just after he explained to the board of directors why giving McQuaid a few million and publishing Vanguard was such a great idea.

[Simond]

ETA on EQ/EQ2/etcl monthly sub going up to $17.50?

[Venkman]

I just got the PS email: $14.99 for a game who's sub should be decreasing?! I mean, sure they think if people are sticking with that beast now they'll obviously pay anything. But in this age of free MMOs with item-based rev models, the last thing anyone should do is raise flat-fees. That's a great way to show how dated you are and why people shouldn't be supporting you.

Maybe the $30 pass looks better with PS at $15...

I gotta imagine that's their justification. Like I said earlier they seem to be happy with th number of All Access accounts they have or they'd not be raising the fee 20%. And figuring at this point whoever's playing legacy beasts like EQ1 and PS would pay just about anything to do so, there's no ample business justification to do anything but grab more money while they can.

It's just a shame they we're their greed on their sleeve. At least other companies make an attempt to not be such bankers about things.

Doesn't bother me personally of course. I've gone through their library and save EQ2, which I'd be playing except for WoW, TR (oops) and so on, there's nothing I find compelling. I've long said if they took their business acumen and applied it to hiring better developers they'd not need to continue hiring business managers to find new and creative ways to leech pennies off of who they've managed to keep.

[Nyght]

Maybe the $30 pass looks better with PS at $15...

I don't think so. I think the point was, it was a discount from two games. A discount from more then that kinda narrows the interest down considerably don't cha think?  Because the market with the time for three or more is lot smaller. They don't have the time for two mostly likely, they just think they do.

So fine, you bump all the games up so that is goes back to being a discount from two, you are still just begging people to consider the competition, which grows all the time.

Hitting a middle price point below the cost of two while still picking up some revenue would have been a better move in my view.

[Falconeer]

Maybe the $30 pass looks better with PS at $15...

So they could raise MxO subscription to 50$/month. No one is playing that anyway, and the station pass would look so valuable then.

[bhodi]

Planetside is about to start hemorrhaging customers. Their fodder program (free to BR6) is going to end on March 23rd, with no current plans to continue it. The worlds are already pretty quiet except for peak times during the evening, and that's bolstered by all of the free accounts logging in. I'm sure there are plans to merge the servers, some sort of merger/cross combat was hinted at, but that won't be until May-June timeframe (they want to do something special for their anniversary). You've got a decent gap there.

Some of those people will sub (I did, for a bit) but get this -- they pre-fucked themselves with the transition. It turns out that on the 23rd, all reserve characters will be wiped; you have to subscribe BEFORE that date to play your reserves character, they currently have no transition plan from reserves->subscribers. That will hurt them. A lot. Without that fresh influx of people, I think the game will quietly drop in numbers once the fodder program stops bringing fresh meat into the system.

[Strazos]

And to go along with that, the vast majority of the people who remain will be long-time vets, who know all the nice little exploits and hacks.

Could make the game extremely frustrating, without the fresher new players to balance things out.

[Numtini]

If this works as I suspect, your alts will just be 'hidden', and if you later re-sub to the all access pass, they'll still be there, not deleted.  Something like this happened to me when a server was down; I made a 5th character to play and after my server came up, it (the newest character)  got pushed off the bottom.

I asked about this at one point and from memory, the most recently logged in characters remain available and the rest go into hibernation.

Seriously, SOE is in the business of making money. Blizzard is in the business of making games.

Interesting who actually makes the most money.

[Ixxit]

Seriously, SOE is in the business of making money. Blizzard is in the business of making games.

Interesting who actually makes the most money.

Very nicely put, although I have wondered if the new beta 'armory'feature on the WoW site will eventually require a nominal charge like EQplayers.   Even for an extra 50 cents you'd have a liscense to print money.

[WindiaN]

Definitely an indication where a good chunk of their money is coming from then. No way they could raise it by so much while trying to entice more people to sign on. So they must be happy with how many people have signed on, maybe enough so knowing they'll lose a mere pittance.

I disagree, but only because I heard it from the mouth of an SOE employee which leaves me dumbfounded as to what they are trying to accomplish here.  If they increased the price on PS to make the station pass price look better then the rationale in that email is hliarious:

We know that rate increases are never popular but over the course of the past several years we have invested in technology and resources to expand the game's service and support infrastructure. We have also incurred increases in operational and bandwidth costs – all without a corresponding rate increase for PlanetSide. We are proud of the progress we have made for you, our customers, in the areas of game experience and customer support enhancements and efficiency. This change is driven by our sincere commitment to provide a consistently high quality entertainment experience in our game worlds.

[Venkman]

I don't consider that insight into corporate policy, but rather just a community-relation statement. It's rooted in fact of course, but you don't raise the fee for a game that has done nothing but lose customers since inception unless a) it's part of a larger plan; or, b) you don't care.

I don't buy the PS fee increase as trying to drive players to Station Pass either though. People in PS today are there because they love PS. And PS is significantly different from everyone other game covered under Station Pass. Anyone who was ever interested in diku or a virtual world in flux have long since gotten the Pass. The rest love their one game. Adding $2 to the fee is not going to compel them to pay more than double that just to try other titles they know they're not interested in (by virtue of not having done that when the Pass was double the old $12.99 PS fee).

Planetside is about to start hemorrhaging customers

Come on. Do they even have enough customers to hemorrage? Seriously, it's like post NGE SWG. The people you got are the most ardent fans you can get. Bumping a subscription fee that's already more than it should be is not going to matter to the majority of PS players. Yea, there's rumblings and discontent, a token resistance movement and maybe one or two will actually go through with their promised quit. But if PS has more than 3,000 active accounts, I'd be surprised. And this many years later through so many changes, they're there to stay.

Seriously, SOE is in the business of making money. Blizzard is in the business of making games.

You make games to make money. They're both in the same business. Blizzard is just better at it because they have both the talent and the business acumen of VUG backing them up.

I agree with ixxit that The Armory could be the precursor for a EQ2 Station Players type micro-payment system. But then, this also could be the result of copious profits too :)

[Nebu]

Seriously, SOE is in the business of making money. Blizzard is in the business of making games.

You make games to make money. They're both in the same business. Blizzard is just better at it because they have both the talent and the business acumen of VUG backing them up.

Fixed that for ya. 

[bhodi]

True, I'd be shocked if planetside has more than say 5k subs. It's fun, simply because there's nothing else out there, I like FPS, and we've got 5 or 6 steady people that play.. for a month or two at least. Until something better comes along. i'm honest with myself, monthy sub means absoloutely nothing to me at this point in my life. I'm not in college anymore and I don't even notice the debits.

They are clearing the accounts, your characters will be gone. I was pulling some of my info from here, which I idled on a few days ago and listened. Specifically:


Sprite - *NEWSKIS* Will the reserves program be brought back any time after the 24th?
EnricoPallazzo - Reserves... Currently there are no definite plans to extend the reserves. I would be more interested in seeing how we could get you to become more of a regular player. Obviously, the reserves are great to have more in the combat. They enrich the game even more but the business side of it does not make sense. So, join up on the *Good* side. We want your participation to last so make sure you convert that account over as soon as pos
EnricoPallazzo - So, join up on the *Good* side. We want your participation to last so make sure you convert that account over as soon as possible before the accounts are no longer available.

EnricoPallazzo - What is the future of Fodderside? Simply said, it ends on March 24th and that becomes the end of Fodderside. I answered a previous question on this but I'm happy to say it again.. We don't have a transition at this time for when Fodderside ends. So please get those accounts over to regular accounts before all of your hard work and characters are no longer.
EnricoPallazzo - I have a question for you Hamorad? I never got a response back on your name. Is it Ham Or Ad? as in In game PlanetSide Ads? or Hamor AD? as in view the ads more frequently? Either way, thanks for the promotion of the ads. It has paid off tremendously. :)

[Nebu]

I think SOE is going to be disappointed when they realize how many people were playing PS because it was free.  These changes will drop their PS subs and the initial drop in subs will cause a domino effect when current subscribers no longer have BR 6 people to feed off of and they move on to other things as well. 

Shame really.  I'd play PS for $5-$10 a month.  $15?  Not enough there to be worth it. 

[Trippy]

It's stupid of SOE to say that they are going to delete reserve characters considering how quickly you can get up to BR 6 (you used to be able to get up to BR 4 just doing the VR training including entering and exiting all the vehicles). It's basically just a pointless scare tactic to try and get people to subscribe. Yet another sign of how desperate they are for money these days.

[Strazos]

Well, I'm still in my free month, so I'm not sure I'm gonna let them tap my account when the time comes.

[Hoax]

Seriously, SOE is in the business of making money. Blizzard is in the business of making games.

You make games to make money. They're both in the same business. Blizzard is just better at it because they have both the talent and the business acumen of VUG backing them up.

Fixed that for ya. 

Yeah seriously, have you seen how much "content" was in TBC?  LoL but it was a paid xpack and you still need to buy the original WoW if you are a new player which cracks me up.  Blizzard makes money but they do it with a smile and a wink.  SOE tries to make money but they do it while grunting and drooling all over you while groping around in your pockets.

Big surprise which one people prefer.

[Venkman]

Seriously, SOE is in the business of making money. Blizzard is in the business of making games.

You make games to make money. They're both in the same business. Blizzard is just better at it because they have both the talent and the business acumen of VUG backing them up.

Fixed that for ya. 

Normally I see green text or some emotes. But I'm missing something here. What did you fix? I'm sure it was more appropriate, I just can't see the difference between what I wrote and what you changed :)

Shame really.  I'd play PS for $5-$10 a month.  $15?  Not enough there to be worth it. 

Yea, I'm at the $5 range. And not "$5 because that's part of the $30 range either". MMOs are one-at-a-time games for me. Packaging them altogether is either for folks with enough time to manage multiple games (can't imagine that numbers in the millions) or leaching from folks who fool themselves into thinking they do.

[SnakeCharmer]

Seriously, SOE is in the business of making money. Blizzard is in the business of making games.

You make games to make money. They're both in the same business. Blizzard is just better at it because they have both the talent and the business acumen of VUG backing them up.

Fixed that for ya. 

Normally I see green text or some emotes. But I'm missing something here. What did you fix? I'm sure it was more appropriate, I just can't see the difference between what I wrote and what you changed :)

Beeecause Numtini said it ;) not Nebu.  Scroll up a bit.

Anyways, on the subject at hand:  Maybe part of the school of thought behind it is "Raise the price, we know we'll lose some subs,  but the number of subs that we keep will balance it out (making roughly the same money as before), and we don't have to have quite as large of support staff for less subscribers.  So, overall our profit remains about the same, maybe a bit more, with less liability."

[Afropuff]

I find it hard to believe they're doing this in anticipation of it coming out the same in terms of dollars raked in. You'e suggesting they're planing to shrink their subscription numbers  on purpose. And if you're support heavy, why not just move people out of support?  It's not like they've got a great reputation for product service they're trying to protect.

[Nebu]

Beeecause Numtini said it ;) not Nebu.  Scroll up a bit.

What he said  :-D

I should have been clearer D, my apologies.  I was running off to give a lecture when I typed it.

[Murgos]

The obvious answer is that they are making the change in rates because they anticipate that it will make them more money.  Regardless of what ever confluence of predictions is driving this decision, the goal is increased profits.

I guarantee you that they do not expect to lose money from this change.

[Ixxit]

I guarantee you that they do not expect to lose money from this change.

By raising prices they want to be 'more profitsy' kinda  like when they wanted to make Galaxies  'more Star Warsy' 

[SnakeCharmer]

I find it hard to believe they're doing this in anticipation of it coming out the same in terms of dollars raked in. You'e suggesting they're planing to shrink their subscription numbers  on purpose. And if you're support heavy, why not just move people out of support?  It's not like they've got a great reputation for product service they're trying to protect.

EDIT:  The following numbers are completely arbitrary.

It's not so much 'planning to shrink their numbers on purpose', in as much as they MAYBE are looking to:
increase profit margin whilst retaining total revenue (100,000 subs at 10 dollars each = 1,000,000 dollars total revenue; 50,000 subs at 20 dollars each = 1,000,000 dollars total revenue)
decrease overhead by reduction in staff.  

Taken further:
Lets say you have 1,000,000.00 USD in 'sales' that is being supported by 50 staff, at an average of 10,000.00 per year salary (includes medical, 401K, etc etc etc). you'll NEED 50 people to support 100,000 subs at 10 dollars each, so you're spending 500,000.00 USD per year in staff.  This gives you a profit (ignoring incidentals such as rent, utilities, etc) of 500,000 USD.  

Then, you double your sub fees.  You do this knowing you'll lose some business, but you'll also not need the same overhead that you had before.  So, lets say you double your fees.  To hit that 1,000.000.00 USD barrier, you need to keep 50,000 subs (which you probably will).  BUT, you can can cut your staff in half.  You have half the subscribers you used to, and now you don't need as big as staff to support them.  Your payroll is now 250,000 per year, but your revenue has stayed the same.  HOWEVER, your profit is now 750,000 USD.

See what I am getting at?  You can increase profits (and profit margin) without making more sales.

[Etro]

It's stupid of SOE to say that they are going to delete reserve characters considering how quickly you can get up to BR 6 (you used to be able to get up to BR 4 just doing the VR training including entering and exiting all the vehicles). It's basically just a pointless scare tactic to try and get people to subscribe. Yet another sign of how desperate they are for money these days.

you still can ;)

[HaemishM]

Some of those people will sub (I did, for a bit) but get this -- they pre-fucked themselves with the transition. It turns out that on the 23rd, all reserve characters will be wiped; you have to subscribe BEFORE that date to play your reserves character, they currently have no transition plan from reserves->subscribers. That will hurt them. A lot. Without that fresh influx of people, I think the game will quietly drop in numbers once the fodder program stops bringing fresh meat into the system.

Are you shitting me? That seems like the height of stupidity. You don't want any barriers trying to convert those free accounts to paid ones, even if it's after some mythical cutoff date. Not having my free characters would just solidify my position never to pay for Planetside. It was an ok free game, but a terrible subscription game. And it sure as fuck isn't worth $15 a month.

The Station Pass is now officially not a bargain anymore, and I see no reason to get it. Once you pass the $25/month price point, it's too expensive to be considered a forgettable expense. But from Pigfucker Smedley's vantage, it's probably golden. It props up unprofitable failures like MxO, disappointments like Vanguard, and complete clusterfucks like SWG, keeping SOE from ever having to give accurate subscription numbers again.

[Furiously]

Step one: raise price.
Step two: lower number of users.
Step three: pay less to LA for SWG.
Step four: renegotiate/cancel SWG deal with LA
Step five: redo station price...NOW with even more games...Only $21.99
Step six: profit

Might be too conspiracy theory. I'm just not seeing the value of any game from SOE other then EQII right now. I'd maybe give Matrix another try, but everything else is.... rapidly aging. SWG included.

[Hound]

Step one: raise price.
Step two: lower number of users.
Step three: pay less to LA for SWG.
Step four: renegotiate/cancel SWG deal with LA
Step five: redo station price...NOW with even more games...Only $21.99
Step six: profit

Might be too conspiracy theory. I'm just not seeing the value of any game from SOE other then EQII right now. I'd maybe give Matrix another try, but everything else is.... rapidly aging. SWG included.

As long as you have the tin foil beanie on, what about Vanguard? Like you said the only game really worth paying for right now is EQII <insert Twilight Zone music> VSoH seems to be walking a very thin line right now as far as profitability goes, and I doubt it is even close to being in the black. If I was getting rid of my Station Pass and could only play one game, it sure as heck would not be Vanguard.