You Think MMOs Are Expensive Now? Just Wait
MMOs have historically been classified as either subscription or microtransaction games, but it’s time to acknowledge that MMOs will soon see a combination of both. Potentially some new payment system that will directly suck money from all of our orifices will be added on for good measure.
Blizzard, not satisfied to merely control the MMO world, also wants to dominate the pet world. Ok, so maybe they only launched an in-game pet store, but who can resist the pull of Lil’ KT, the littlest Lich?
Save your ‘That’s ridiculous! MMOs are already expensive enough, if Blizzard charges any more I’m canceling my subscription!’ comments. MMOs offer the best value for entertainment outside of a deck of cards, or your imagination. Adding micropayment opportunities to MMOs will allow customers to self identify into separate buckets and allow those more committed to a game to both pay more and get more.
Microtransactions are already here for subscription games, nobody cares
Microtransactions have existed in World of Warcraft for a while; they just don’t fit into the traditional definition. A characteristic of Asian free to play MMOs is that micropayments give you in-game benefits, such as items or experience. You’re essentially buying time in a system very similar to most social networking games such as Mafia Wars or Farmville.
In WoW, on the other hand, microtransactions are for services, not in-game items (until now). Server transfers, name changes and character customization are acceptable to players because they don’t advantage somebody in-game. It’s not like you can just buy the best items, you still have to earn them. These payments aren’t unique to WoW; AION is planning many of the same services.
While I don’t want to argue that vanity pets somehow confer an advantage in-game, it is the first time that you can get something that somebody else cannot have without paying. Changing your race, faction, or appearance are just modifications of decisions you’ve already made. Unless you spend $10 you will never have The Littlest Lich.
It is a small leap than people think from in-game pet to ‘collector’s item.’ While at first they won’t be quite as good as the best raiding items, this will only be to placate ‘the hardcore.’ Blizzard has started down a slippery slope that starts with vanity pets and ends with buying items and experience.
How much did those ears cost you?
World of Warcraft is extremely cheap
Everybody who owns a computer can afford World of Warcraft. You can purchase the game and expansions for $50 and monthly memberships can be as low as $12/month. Surveys show the average World of Warcraft player plays for 22.7 hours per week. This equates to 17c/hour (for the first, most expensive year) on average.
Films, on the other hand, are about 35 times that expensive per hour of entertainment. The only way World of Warcraft’s monthly fee is more expensive than a film is if you play for fewer than two hours per month, in which case I question whether an MMO is really the right game for you.
MMOs are cheap, and there are undoubtedly many players willing to pay far more than $12/month if it improved their experience, especially considering for most it’s their primary form of entertainment. Some people spend more than WoW’s monthly fee on individual Farmville items. Blizzard is leaving money on the table. What can they do about it?
For one small payment of $20, this game could be BETTER!
Identification, please
The Wii sells for $200. If a Wii is worth $500 to you, but you can purchase it for $200, you get a great deal; free $300! As a business, it’s tough to convince people to pay you that extra $300, especially as you don’t know exactly how much a product is worth to each consumer.
The solution that businesses have come up with is to offer differentiated services that cause you to self-identify which type of consumer you are. Take airline seats: the airplane is going to the same place, but if you are wealthy or have a business account and are willing to pay more, the airline offers you slightly more comfort so you don’t feel like you’re being arbitrarily ripped off by paying more. They do similar things with no change fees.
Unfortunately, the standard membership fee only gets you to the loading screen. You'll have to pay for our premium content (the rest of the game!) if you want to proceed
MMOs currently offer simple payment methods, as they are in their infancy as a revenue source. That can’t last, however, and it’s only a matter of time before developers realize they could be earning far more money while not excluding people who want to just pay $12/month for the basic experience.
The side effect of this for players is that sometime soon you will able to legally purchase items. Instead of going through Chinese gold farmers to trade money for time, you will be able to do it directly. For each person who finds this outrageous and unfair and who would cancel their subscription if Blizzard did such a thing, there is at least one replacement and they probably have more money than you do.
As MMOs become more mainstream and no longer have the same non-mainstream stigma, there will be many lonely adults who want to experience end game content and guild communities, but don’t have the free time required for the up front investment. Money talks, however, and as much as Blizzard is ‘looking out for their user base,’ they’re also looking out for themselves and their stockholders. The combined payment model is coming, and those who doubt it are fighting a losing battle.
GunBound has been doing this for years. Journalistic fail.
A worms ripoff with less than 1mm subscribers isn’t quite the same thing as the largest MMO in the world making a pricing change.
Oh, also, GunBound is free to play … making your comment entirely irrelevant.
To the point you make in the last paragraph, I think the Forza 3 racing game is taking advantage of that idea. You can race all the races to get the cars, or just go in and buy them. There are probably others, but it’s a reasonable guess that multiple other games will follow suit. I think part of the balancing act they’re going to have to deal with is when/if people feel that they aren’t getting the game they think they’re paying for when they plunk down the initial hard earned cash.
“World of Warcraft is extremely cheap”
It depends considerably on how much time you spend in the game per month, as any subscription game does. I can spend the $65 it would cost me to start up WoW and pick up Torchlight and a couple of used DS tactics games that will last me a whole lot longer than a month, and I can play them whenever I blasted well please. Even $15/month can go to other used games that all play for longer than a month (and don’t summarily amputate my access if I take a break).
The assumption that players will play WoW for 80 hours a month is at the root of the “cheap” argument, and it just doesn’t wash with every player. Most notably, in a saturated market, everyone for whom the model *is* cheap is already playing. It’s those that believe otherwise that you need to capture, not just find new ways to fleece those who have bought into the “it’s cheap” mindset.
It’s those people, customers with cash currently *not* buying (likely because they are time-constrained and a sub doesn’t make sense), that is likely the biggest population that will make the business of MMOs in the coming years.
Certainly – if you’re only playing a little a week the economics are worse – of course, since there is a huge margin before they actually get inline with even other games, not to mention other forms of entertainment, you don’t have to play that much to get the full benefit.
Also – I thought it was an interesting comment the other day by one of the WoW community managers that despite them ‘ruining the game’ multiple times with changes, the latest being the pet store, subscribers continue to grow. I personally think that they’ve tapped only a small fraction of potential players and there are plenty of people not even aware of that type of game.