Subscription Idea

[Deleted]

The monthly fee is based on the fact that non-one or at least very few people will ever play for every minute the server is up of the month subscribed. The amount charged would be too low to be a reasonable charge in this instance.

The charge you pay is a reasonable balance of the average hours the mmo owner expects you to play for. If you start pushing to get your monies worth the MMO owner will increase your monthly sub to be more reasonable, although in your eyes you will no doubt consider it unreasonable.

See if you can find the sub costs for APB. They were doing both giving the player the option of which method they wanted. At the time I calculated that I personally would be cheaper going for the monthly sub option.

As for the lifetime subscription, no company will ever admit why, but why do you think companies like this give a "lifetime" sub option for just over a year's subscription?

WoW is way too popular with the current subscription model for Blizzard to consider the alternatives. If the alternatives have the potential to make Blizzard more money then it is highly likely only then will they consider adding those options.

[Deleted]

But its not paying by hour, the idea is to simply give the user a chance to chose when he uses his gametime rather than by calendar

---------- Post added 2011-02-24 at 10:13 AM ----------

Perhaps I should add an alternative to my poll,

A lifetime subscription. 1 flat fee that allows you to pay once, play forever.

How do I add a new option to the poll?
Maby a moderator has to do it, if so, please reset the poll and add the new option

[Swargle]

No one is paying more really. we all get the same potential time for our money. Some people may get less value from their money due to time constraints. the flip side to it of course is that people with that precious little time to play, value that time more than someone who can grind 8-12 hours a day does their time.

[Pool of the Dead]

most games theses day you pay anywhere from £50-60+ for brand new, and most have very short shitty single-player stories which last maybe 10 hours max, and have no replay value, which comes to around £5-6/hr, where as someone pointed out, if you play for 28hrs a month and pay £9 which was around £0.33 then it would show that blizzard would be making 1/20th the profit of other games, and when you add costs of maintaining servers and such, as opposed to other companies releasing a game, and forgeting about it, then £9 is a very very reasonable price to pay, they could charge alot more for the time you play.

[Deleted]

No one is paying more really. we all get the same potential time for our money. Some people may get less value from their money due to time constraints. the flip side to it of course is that people with that precious little time to play, value that time more than someone who can grind 8-12 hours a day does their time.

This is very true, I used to be able to do that "grind 8-12 hours a day" and I would start to feel as though my soul was being ripped out of me.
But now the little time I do play I thoroughly enjoy

Perhaps my original idea isnt financially good for Blizzard, I knew it wouldnt be. So perhaps the lifetime subscription idea is a better one.

[Deleted]

This is very true, I used to be able to do that "grind 8-12 hours a day" and I would start to feel as though my soul was being ripped out of me.
But now the little time I do play I thoroughly enjoy

Same here. I still have the same wants, the same achievements in all games I play but if it isn't fun, I play something else.

Unfortunately the downside is I have a ton of uncompleted games on my 360 to play and 2-3 MMOs on the go at any one time.

[dubbelbasse]

If I understand you correctly it has been like this for China with Aion since release. It's a pretty cool idea, but unfo I don't see it happening.

[Mammoth]

If they charged by PlayTime tomorrow, what they would do is look at the average play time per player per week, and then make that value be the same cost in their new system. They'll be able to say that they're not making any more money. People who just pop on to socialise will save money. But the raiding community will find their costs doubled or tripled.

Let me ask you this. Is the internet better now that it is a monthly fee for broardband? Or was it better paying per minute on dial-up? Personally I prefer the monthly fee, because it means I don't have to panic about connecting and disconnecting every time I'm away from the PC.

[Koen]

It sure as hell shouldn't be /1 month played ingame time if this would ever occur, which it won't anyway.

A better system would be that you pay for every hour you play up to a maximum.
For example: You've to pay €0.108 for each hour played up to a maximum of 12.99 in total. That would equal 120 hours of play time, meaning you've to play at least 4.2 hours EACH day of the month to get 120 hours and pay the maximum.
Obviously if you exceed those 120 hours a month you won't have to pay extra. You actually will play for "free" if you play more.

My guess would be that most casual players play around give or take 12 hours a week which would be 48 hours a month.
48 * €0.108 = €5.18
This means you've to pay far less each month.

Obviously these numbers are fictional and can or should be changed, but you get the point!

[Calibar]

players who are active for many hours a week ( i.e people who do not work and have more time on their hands) and they can have the /played time subsciption for people who many get around 7 hours a week to play.

I was going to take this thread seriously but not anymore. Anyone can have a job and still log tonns of play time, most of my friends do, I go to school from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm everyday and I need to be up at quater to 6 everymorning to catch the bus and I still log lots of play time. So don't think that everyone who plays a lot doesn't work because you are sorely mistaken

[anywherenotes]

Paying for playing discourages logging in. Once you already paid for the month, it actually encourages you to log in.

I haven't played wow for about a month and a half (and canceled my subscription), yet if I want to start some other game, I keep clicking on WoW icon. It's a habit now, a pretty powerful habit. WoW needs people to click on their icon out of habit.

So for the sake of blizzard, they shouldn't discourage playing, or customers will go elsewhere.