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MMORPGs: The payment model of the future
MyDcmbr
PEWPEWPEW!!!America's WangRegistered User regular
PEWPEWPEW!!!America's WangRegistered User regular
So with the announcement of LotrO going with the Hybrid payment model I figured this would be a good time to start the discussion.
Currently there are 3 widely used payment types:
Pay to Play (p2p): You buy a box or download and pay a monthly sub. Some give you the box for free and just charge the sub. This group holds the biggest MMO currently. Examples: WoW, Aion, Eve, AoC, etc etc.
Free to Play (f2p): You download the game for free, all content within the game is free. There is a cash shop though that sells items that can greatly impact gameplay. Most of these games come from the East where they are much more common. Examples: Requiem, Aika, Perfect World, Rappelz
Hybrid: You download the game or buy a box, sometimes free, sometimes not. You can either subscribe to the game with a monthly fee or buy content in modules. Most also have a cash shop with item that do not greatly impact gameplay, but can depending on who you talk to and how they view the model. Examples: DDO, Runescape, (some say) STO.
Personally, I see the Hybrid model as having your cake and eating it too for the companies that go this route. I also think that more and more companies are going to change their payment models to this in order to make more $$ especially if LotrO does well. In the future I see the Hybrid model taking over most of the AAA MMORPGs that come out.
Thoughts?
Currently there are 3 widely used payment types:
Pay to Play (p2p): You buy a box or download and pay a monthly sub. Some give you the box for free and just charge the sub. This group holds the biggest MMO currently. Examples: WoW, Aion, Eve, AoC, etc etc.
Free to Play (f2p): You download the game for free, all content within the game is free. There is a cash shop though that sells items that can greatly impact gameplay. Most of these games come from the East where they are much more common. Examples: Requiem, Aika, Perfect World, Rappelz
Hybrid: You download the game or buy a box, sometimes free, sometimes not. You can either subscribe to the game with a monthly fee or buy content in modules. Most also have a cash shop with item that do not greatly impact gameplay, but can depending on who you talk to and how they view the model. Examples: DDO, Runescape, (some say) STO.
Personally, I see the Hybrid model as having your cake and eating it too for the companies that go this route. I also think that more and more companies are going to change their payment models to this in order to make more $$ especially if LotrO does well. In the future I see the Hybrid model taking over most of the AAA MMORPGs that come out.
Thoughts?
Steam
Humphrey Bogart wrote:So we get stiff once in a while. So we have a little fun. What’s wrong with that? This is a free country, isn’t it? I can take my panda any place I want to. And if I wanna buy it a drink, that’s my business.
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Here is the model that has the biggest potential to make alot of money.
F2P newbie levels, basically a limited try before you buy, basic services only, penalties in pvp to prevent griefing to subscribing customers, but unlimited access to midlevel pve enviroments. Yes there are limits in trading, channels, no UI modifications, probably a ninja set of nerfs preventing very rare to unique items from being farmed.
Subscription Access - access to what are considered basic features, such as housing, to enhanced UI features, channels, guild banks, fully playable pvp, unlimited access to open world zones, mounts, character progression upgrades available (move from being a knight to a paladin, or black knight)
Micro Transactions - graphic enhancements, reskins, character modifications (gender name class), server moves, keys to instances which might have to be farmed, guild halls, additional inventory/bank space, custom UI upgrades or rule work arounds (such a wow auto camping afk characters from game), personal stores, alt spaces, and access to GM lead ingame multi server events
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
citizen059 listed a few big titles that will have some free content:
-Battlefield Heroes
-NFS World Online
-FIFA Online
-Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online
We can add to that list Stronghold Worlds, DDO, LOTRO and Warhammer Online.
It's kind of a funny move in the gaming industry: on the one end of the spectrum we're getting more and more stuff for free and on the other end we're paying extra money on top of the normal costs of a game for some downloadable content
I have no idea what the future will bring to us, actually. Hell, when I took over the MMO Uberlist a few years ago I had no idea the F2P model would get so popular in the west in such a short period of time.
Is GW2 going to follow the same model, by the way?
Yes. No sub, buy the game and own the whole thing forever.
Awesome.
I read like a year ago it'll be with a complete world to discover and everything, so colour me interested.
You know, come to think of it. I'm surprised SW:TOR isn't going to follow this model, the whole epic story driven gameplay would be pretty sweet with this model.
This model is going nowhere.
And now practically all of our MMOs are going cashshop, F2P models.
Sure, if by all you mean a small fraction of.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
By the same publisher to boot.
Right. A small fraction of FFXI, WoW, EQ, EQ2, UO and DAoC are F2P.
But a large fraction of DDO, LOTRO,Battlefield Heroes, NFS World Online, FIFA Online
, Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online, Stronghold Worlds, and Warhammer Online are moving towards F2P models.
It's a pattern that I used some hyperbole on. Sue me!
Edit: Also, although I have not yet researched the ones you listed, I suspect that several of them are at best pseudo-massive in the same style as Guild Wars.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Ironically enough though, I'll never spend money on cosmetic only items and I'm completely fine with microtransactions for said items as long as they keep my item models innovative and fresh too. I also am okay with the Johnny works75hoursaweek buying xp pots so he can keep up with Joey Nojobwhosparentspayhissubscription.
I think the main problem with subscriptions though is where does all the money go. Most games charge $15 a month for their subscriptions, and most games put out content at a similar rate. Enter WoW with their millions of subscribers and I get the same amount of content eq2 gives me with their millions of less subscribers. I'm not arguing quality of the content but I'm assuming it costs Sony and Blizzard similar amounts of capital to produce a dungeon for example which makes me picture Blizz sleeping on beds made of money which is primarily the reason I stopped playing WoW.
Most of those are Pseudo-massive. My original intent was to state there are more F2P model, cash shop games popping up everywhere. Whereas we're seeing a couple of Retail-Boxed Korean MMOs with a subscription plan attempting to capture the western market - something that hasn't happened before.
I used some hyperbole and didn't get the point across. My apologies.
It's a system used by dead/dying/old games and small games that don't really expect to ever get big.
And if you say "But WoW!" I would point out that WoW uses it only for purely cosmetic shit that can easily be substituted for free ingame shit.
WoW isn't a F2P game, so you don't have to shove that in my mouth. And I agree with your points, and would add 'niche' to your list of dead/dying/old.
Didn't want to shove it in your mouth, just heading it off cause I felt someone would bring it up eventually.
And yeah, "niche" == "don't really expect to ever get big" in my mind. It's a good set-up for those games actually.
But the big hitters are gonna stay at a monthly model imo because cash-shop models aren't popular with people for big games in the vein of WoW.
I have read before (and it's worth as much as any hearsay) that two thirds of the $15 subscription fee is pure profit, so if that's true it is not at all a necessary amount for MMOs to charge for the privilege of maintenance and regular updates. The ArenaNet team (behind Guild Wars) have maintained that their decision to remain free to play is in no way related to their heavily instanced game format, demonstrated by the fact that Guild Wars 2 is intended to be an open, persistent world while retaining its free-after-purchase business model. The fact that there is still a live team for Guild Wars would also indicate that being free to play does not preclude game maintenance and updates.
I'd call bullshit on your numbers. WoW's profit margin isn't anywhere near 2/3rds. (It's only like 50%)
"You can play all you want for fifty cents a day!"
sounds a hell of a lot better than
"The new __________ will cost you $10!"
I don't know about you guys, but I pay more for coffee every day, so monthly subs sound like a really good deal, especially if you play a lot.
My only hangup on sub/month games is when they dip into the micro-transaction market and still expect everyone to pay monthly fees like they don't exist. It even bugged me when I was playing WoW that they charged such a high fee for their biennial expansions. Every 2 years, WoW costs over $400 assuming you pay your sub monthly and buy the expansions. That is a lot of cash for one game.
Fair enough, if the profit margin is 17% less than what I read elsewhere, it in no way invalidates the rest of my comment.
That really depends. Is that profit before or after new development costs?
No idea. My hearsay doesn't tell me. Does your source tell you?
I don't really understand what you are arguing here. Are you saying that developers need to charge (at least) $15/mo or they're not making a profit and that ANet is lying/mistaken/delusional when they say that is not the case?
I hear this defense a lot and I guess I don't understand it as defenses go. Sure, if you play a lot $15/mo is a fairly good value (and if you don't, or if you like to play multiple subscription games, I guess you're subsidizing the players that do play one game a lot... lucky for you), but to defend it over paying less, or nothing is weird to me. Free is an even better value than $15/mo! There is this idea that the $15/mo is required for quality and content and the change in business models is coming to prove that that simply isn't the case, yet people are arguing for paying more, with sub+cash shop items, etc. as though we need to show our gratitude for the game's existence through monthly subs or something.
The reality is that an MMO with continuous and content and so on is always going to have to extract some sustainable number of dollars per month from the subscriber base. A flat monthly sub has the benefit of creating a level playing field among subscribers.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I suspect it has more to do with easily writing a budget.
Edit: Misread that. I thought you said level playing field between developers. Never mind me.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Right - what I am suggesting is that more developers take the Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2 route rather than the "second-class citizen in a microtransaction game" route. I am saying that it is possible, if ANet are not off their rockers, so there is no good reason not to even try it.
What I perceive is that people who play subscription games are resistant to even that much, and I am curious as to why that is, since the reasons usually given have been disputed by the ANet developers. Why is nobody else (among developers) even attempting this model? Is ANet crazy?
It's not that people who play subscription based games love giving someone fifteen bucks a month, it's that the kind of game that asks for a 15 dollar sub is pretty substantially different from something like the first guild wars (or tiger woods online or whatever other examples.)
My tentative answer would be "ANet is crazy, knows something no one else does, or has been less than honest in their promotional material."
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
A) Guild Wars 2 is purported to not be the kind of instanced gameplay that GW1 was, with only personal storyline and dungeons being instanced, and the rest of the world outside towns being open and persistent. We'll see, of course, but this is what the claim is.
2) re: that's precisely what ANet claims is not the case; that their decision to not charge subs has nothing to do with GW the first's instanced gameplay.
Where did we get the idea that it cost more to maintain an open world, anyway? Did anyone claim this, or is it one of those common sense things (I would come to that come to that conclusion too, fwiw, except that the developers of GW explicitly say that is not the case. Again, maybe they're crazy.)?
Post-release content like The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Mines of Moria, etc? Because that's all I recall paying for in Guild Wars, except in 3 out of the 4 purchases I made I actually bought an entirely new storyline full of content. Only one of those purchases was an "expansion."
I don't expect to get new content from GW or GW2 for free, just like any other game out there. But what ANet released for GW is considerably more than 1-2 quest chains of DLC, and I didn't have to pay a sub once I bought them.
I don't think it's a revolutionary model at all, just not sure why it isn't used by anyone else.
Because WoW does both. EVE however does the opposite, providing major content patches (quasi-expansions) for free.