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Thread: How much would you pay?

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    Baby Bowsers Soiled Diaper Reputation: 10
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    Default How much would you pay?

    I ve been following the game developer con out of Cali the pass couple of weeks. Its rather small, with mostly outsource projects and a crazy guy called Rast doing the interviews.

    There is alot of talk about across-the-board price hike, coming to MMORPGs and the debate of f2p games making a real impact.

    Ncsoft first coined 14.99 as the average price needed for a good mmorpg development back in 1999. In 2000ish, they made headlines by removing GMs from the game and making email the sole way to get ahold of staff.

    Back in those days , servers , net , and staff were expensive. EA , Ncsoft and Sony said the cost for CSR was about 12.00 an hour US.

    As has been pointed out over the last couple of years, prices have droped rapidly for servers , internet lines, and CSR has been moved to Outsourcing.

    So what would cause the price to rise? Development , and start? Currently games are being pushed out in a weak beta state in hopes of making development cost back.

    CSR has been changed to the point that the last internet outage, cause SOE's core CSR in India to come to standstill. (couldnt even send emails in some case.)

    Some developers arent even using funds from the mMORPG fee to update the game. Take Wow for example, they add content but most of it low budget , low stuff , they ve tons of money but only 2 expansion.

    it cost more for the MrT ad, then for them to make Burning Crusade, which was retailing for 49.99 and sold a record number. They even had enough money to send Burning Crusade to VIP members for free.

    So where does the money? I know its not a bad thing to make a huge profit on product.. But if you gonna pay for something shouldnt it be greatly and vastly improved rather than shoddy updates which break things?

    So if War cames out with a 50 to 70 box price and 20 to 30 per month fee , would you buy it? Remember the EA guy pointed out a Warhammer figure cost 70.00 unpainted, and people buy tons of these.

    he also goes on to point out that Warhammer books , comics , other items cost 30% more than other items from D&D series.

    Post your thoughts:

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    DonkeyKong, we are talking what ifs. in 1999 , Lineage 1 Korea , and US open the ball with 12.99 on the boards. Lord British and Mel talked about cost.

    People said it would never happen, the final price was set at 14.99 , if you bought 3 months , you got the 4 month free. More than 70% of the people playing Lineage 1 joined at 14.99 , with the idea that expansions would be free thus 14.99 was justified.

    EQ1 , and UO followed with 14.99, then Shadowbane , and the rest is history. There were alot of talk pre price hike about how much is needed and how much the market would withstand.

    Once again the debate is raging, this time its coming from a greedy evil empire , EA. They ve talked alot about profit and how much the market will bear.

    How many people do you think would pay over 15.00 a month? Look at LOTR, more people bought a lifetime membership for 200.00 than they did 9.99 setup.

    The market is what we want to debate. Ask yourself is a game worth 20.00 a month? How long before others follow the price hike?

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    Hell to the ****ing no i ain't paying $60 and also paying $25 a month for a game. WHO THE **** DOES THAT?

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    if servers are becoming cheaper, then its not ok that they become more expensive

    but this is how it goes

    costs=server+service

    then they ask for example 10$,

    the ppl ask for a raise to cover it up

    then raise is more paying to the worker

    and to cover that up the boss is going to ask more from the players


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    Quote Originally Posted by SnOwBunZz View Post
    if servers are becoming cheaper, then its not ok that they become more expensive

    but this is how it goes

    costs=server+service

    then they ask for example 10$,

    the ppl ask for a raise to cover it up

    then raise is more paying to the worker

    and to cover that up the boss is going to ask more from the players
    The way its working currently from the leaked documents at SOE.

    CSR is outsourced and accounts for less than .5% of fees. The CSR is housed in a certain location , India currently handles all the emails. The average CSR guy/girl handles 120 emails a daily , works 10 hours a day with next to no pay.

    Services , the server farms are handle by a single staff. This staff is outsourced as well , only called on a need basics. Currently the server farm is a mixture of leased and multi game servers.
    The cost of the outsources is low wage workers , often not American personal.


    Sony uses less than 8% of total sales for development of titles that require updates. Currently if a project tanks, SOE takes over with a in house development , who also may be working on other assigments. Titles dont get the same treatment , Vanguard , Planetside , matrix online get below par service and updates.

    Eq2 gets most and best treatment, with adventures , SOE exchange, and expansions covering the cost of the improvements. EQ2 ships all expansions in beta form , this is done because they expect no player to reach the content before they can finish it.

    Some things like end game armor and monster have place holder textures or models. Some of the next to impossible feats like God bosses have place holder drops or place holder xp gain.


    ---------------------
    Are all these things done to save us money? Or are the games just not profitable as 15.00 a month.

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