Lower Monthly Sub Costs

[buddytonto]

Hello Champions of the MMO universe,

With the recent interview with SWTOR team stating they are looking into all financial avenues for the game including F2P, it got me thinking about the costs of the monthly charges.

Why is $15/month the holy grail of charges? It seems that games are either that or F2P with micro-transactions. Is it fiscally impossible for an MMO to be $5/month?

If WoW suddenly dropped its MRC's to $8.99 or even lower, do you think it would see an increase in subscribers or would it stay the same?

If a new game like The Secret World released with a $5-$10 MRC, do you think it would have a higher chance of retaining subs over the long term vs coming in at the current mmo standard?

Does changing a subscription price for a "dying" game like SWTOR help save it? Would you SWTOR players who have cancelled, play again if it was only $5/month?

I know there were a few questions in here, but I just don't understand why its a 15 or 0 model, and don't have enough business background to know if any other method would work.

[Badpaladin]

It works for WoW because that's the price they've determined is enough to fund development and pay employees. I think other games have adopted that price because it was such a good balance, even if their expenses are different.

[Edge-]

It works for WoW because that's the price they've determined is enough to fund development and pay employees. I think other games have adopted that price because it was such a good balance, even if their expenses are different.

WoW adopted the same pricing structure from older MMO's.

The 15 bucks a month is around more because of tradition than anything else. While it's good that they've added in lower prices for longer term subscriptions, I don't see why it still stays at that price seeing as a lot of the costs associated with maintaining a MMO have gone down over the years.

Honestly, I'm not sure why the pricing structure has remained so rigid for subscription based MMO's. With the number of additional monetization methods they have (character services, cash shop ect.) that provide additional revenue sources, there's no reason not to drop the price or add in different pricing structures.

[Structures]

if it was from 5-10 dollars a month alot more people would play

[Profyrion]

Habit, basically.

Could some games subsist on $5/month? Probably, but why handicap your income when everyone is already used to the idea of $15? If anything, I'm sure they'd like to charge more (not less). But no one has had the balls to try it yet. Subscription MMOs are already enough of a gamble for studios/publishers.

Somebody could come in with a $10/month subscription model and shake things up a little, but it wouldn't matter much without a strong IP behind it and the strength of content & gameplay to survive the first 6 months (the "Content Locusts" period).

[Jewster925]

As previously stated, $15/month has been the traditional cost (since UO as far as I can remember). Now it is just a money sink. Sure some of that $15 goes to maintaining the servers, overhead, and such, but take WoW for example. Does 10mil subscribers paying $15/mo really make sense? Blizz pulls in $15,000,000 from subscriptions alone (excluding its cash shop and other games).

The subscription cost has to be reduced, especially in today's economy. Eventually people will start cutting this sort of expense if it allows them to pay their necessary bills. $10 seems reasonable, if any subscription fee is to be implemented. But the whole micro-purchasing cash shop model has proven to be extremely successful.

[Edge-]

As previously stated, $15/month has been the traditional cost (since UO as far as I can remember). Now it is just a money sink. Sure some of that $15 goes to maintaining the servers, overhead, and such, but take WoW for example. Does 10mil subscribers paying $15/mo really make sense? Blizz pulls in $15,000,000 from subscriptions alone (excluding its cash shop and other games).

The subscription cost has to be reduced, especially in today's economy. Eventually people will start cutting this sort of expense if it allows them to pay their necessary bills. $10 seems reasonable, if any subscription fee is to be implemented. But the whole micro-purchasing cash shop model has proven to be extremely successful.

Get back to work and stop lurking on the forums.

[chazus]

Question though.

10 million subscribers @ ~$15
If wow dropped it to $10, do you think they'd get 5 million new subscribers, just to keep the SAME revenue they are now?
If they dropped it to $5. do you think they'd get 20 million new subscribers?

If they dropped it to 10, and got.. say.. 2 million new subscribers.. That would be a $30 million a month loss. That's pretty massive, and risky.

[Jewster925]

Get back to work and stop lurking on the forums.

How does this contribute to the conversation and progress to the thread? INFRACTION!

---------- Post added 2012-06-15 at 11:25 AM ----------

Question though.

10 million subscribers @ ~$15
If wow dropped it to $10, do you think they'd get 5 million new subscribers, just to keep the SAME revenue they are now?
If they dropped it to $5. do you think they'd get 20 million new subscribers?

If they dropped it to 10, and got.. say.. 2 million new subscribers.. That would be a $30 million a month loss. That's pretty massive, and risky.

True; however as I stated, there are other ways to make money. The micro-purchasing cash shops in various games have been proven time and time again to be incredibly successful. Want that new skin on your LoL champion? Sure, just pay $10. Want that little pet following you in WoW? $10. Want to change your toon's gender in WoW on a regular basis? $10. The list goes on, and those cash shops net the companies so much money that they could easily afford to drop the subscription fees a little bit.

[chazus]

But the whole micro-purchasing cash shop model has proven to be extremely successful.

Extremely successful... When your game has less than 10,000 subscribers because it blows, and you're bleeding money from every orifice... ANY sale of any kind is 'successful'

[buddytonto]

Question though.

10 million subscribers @ ~$15
If wow dropped it to $10, do you think they'd get 5 million new subscribers, just to keep the SAME revenue they are now?
If they dropped it to $5. do you think they'd get 20 million new subscribers?

If they dropped it to 10, and got.. say.. 2 million new subscribers.. That would be a $30 million a month loss. That's pretty massive, and risky.

Of course there is risk by lowering price, and it may lead to a loss in revenue from subscriptions. But with Blizzard now getting into the micro-transaction game; maybe they offer specific outfits for transmog through the store, skins for mounts, etc. With $5/month in all the players pockets for only paying $10 now, would they be more apt to maybe spend money on the items from the Blizzard Store?

And Blizzard has no reason to drop price for WoW currently, they have the majority of market share in this business and have no real worries. Dropping the price would only be to appease their gamers saying it is now cheaper because we love you. They did also recently cut many jobs and merged servers in Asia. That is a huge drop in carrying costs on the business side, but we went unaffected in supportive costs.

Anyway, this thread is not asking for WoW to drop its price. Just a discussion on how it would affect MMO's if they were cheaper and why the $15 seems to be the golden price. I see on a lot of other gaming sites (destructoid, IGN, etc)with many people commenting "Meh, I'll wait til F2P." Would they be enticed to play if it was a lower cost?

[Profyrion]

Extremely successful... When your game has less than 10,000 subscribers because it blows, and you're bleeding money from every orifice... ANY sale of any kind is 'successful'

There's this place called Asia...

[Edge-]

Extremely successful... When your game has less than 10,000 subscribers because it blows, and you're bleeding money from every orifice... ANY sale of any kind is 'successful'

So WoW has less than 10k subscribers and is bleeding money? Because it sells pets and mounts from a cash shop...

And that's not at all why it's proven successful. If you'd be interested in hearing more about it let me know and I'll be happy to share.

[Lyctam]

if it was from 5-10 dollars a month alot more people would play

But then customer service would be terrible (1-2 day wait time already as it is). On a more serious note...

The $15 isn't as simple as "hurr tradition". They have been working on this income from 10 million people for years and they have adapted to a higher cost of maintaining the corporation.

Take this as an analogy: You started getting a crazy income so you bought a huge, huge, mansion with lots and lots of maids to maintain it. You also have lots and lots of friends so you asked all of them to live there. With the amount of money you're getting now, you probably won't finish paying off the mansion any time soon. You also have to pay the maids. Don't forget you have to pay for your friends' gucci bags, breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. Now, imagine another mansion in Europe, not as big, but still costly.

You want your income to drop by 2/3s? Okay, say bye to 2/3s of your maids and friends, and good luck paying mortgage for your mansion.

[Jewster925]

But then customer service would be terrible (1-2 day wait time already as it is). On a more serious note...

The $15 isn't as simple as "hurr tradition". They have been working on this income from 10 million people for years and they have adapted to a higher cost of maintaining the corporation.

Firstly, there is no direct correlation between monthly subscription cost and customer service. Blizz has a $15/month fee and takes a while to address customer tickets, while Trion has the same fee but addresses tickets much faster. SOE in its peak days of EQ (same $15/month), would have in game GMs come and talk to you and made a presence of themselves at the site of the issue to evaluate it themselves (and they did this quickly too).

And for your second point: They have not adapted to a higher cost of maintaining the corporation. That's just silly. They have upgraded their servers only a handful of times (once I can remember back in late vanilla/bc). Have they updated graphics? Nope. Have they really done much other than fatten their wallets to obscene amounts? Yup. Blizz also has a reputation of treating its employees pretty poorly. With this massive amount of money flowing in, they could easily take care of that reputation as well.

[Edge-]

But then customer service would be terrible (1-2 day wait time already as it is). On a more serious note...

A companies profitability has little to do with the quality of their customer service. Yes budgets affect it, but I've seen mildly successful companies with great CS departments, and very profitable companies with horrible CS departments. Subscriptions (or more expensive subscriptions) don't mean that a game automatically has better customer service.

[Deleted]

if it was from 5-10 dollars a month alot more people would play

But if it was 10 dollars, 50% more people wouldn't start playing to manage the losses. Business wise its better at this price, currently.

[Uriel]

I doubt that a drop in monthly costs will attract more Subscribers. However i and a lot more poeple would appreciate it. As many discussions already showed Subfees arnt necessary anymore. Back in the beginning Severscosts were much much higher but now dey do not cost very much.

However if a new Game would charge a much smaler amount many would try it out. I didnt play SWtor cause I couldnt afford another subfee each month. Also you feel like wasting less money if you take a break from play the game.

[DeadmanWalking]

FFXI was 12.99 for your account main character and $1.00 for every extra character you had. Everyone had at least 2 alts for mules (which means since inventory space was limited on each character in order to comfortably store items you created an extra character dubbed a MULE for the purpose of having space to store things.). Now mind you that your main could switch its class at any time to another class so you didn't need alts to play another class like you do in wow but you -had- to have at least 2 classes (main class and sub class) and every class you leveled meant you had to keep gear specifically for that class and that would mean you needed lots of inventory space.

I personally saw a market for making mad money growing carrots for Chocobo raising but to meet demand I created 4 alts to just grow carrots and I made mad money and drove others out of the business because I could out produce them cheaply and then I pretty much set the price for carrots on the WHOLE server. I was however paying 17.99 a month to do it.

So I think 15 bucks for unlimited alts on unlimited servers is not asking too much.

[Deleted]

But then customer service would be terrible (1-2 day wait time already as it is). On a more serious note...

The $15 isn't as simple as "hurr tradition". They have been working on this income from 10 million people for years and they have adapted to a higher cost of maintaining the corporation.

You mean maintaining the stockholders..

...imagine another mansion in Europe...

But, I already live in Europe..

I don't think they would get much more customers from dropping the price, what I've seen those that are willing to pay a monthly fee (or at all) for a game won't get
more inclined to pay for a game they have no interest in (or stopped playing because the price wasn't worth it)
and I don't see those that refuse to pay a monthly fee (or at all) for a game to get swayed by a lower subscription fee.