01-13-2004, 03:13 AM
Talking about the death of MMORPGs makes me think that the upfront price and the monthly price really need to be seperated more. What I mean is that if there is going to be a monthly price then it needs to be for a service, not for a game. So like if blizzard had three MMORPGs (starcraft, warcraft, and diablo) then you would pay one monthly fee for access to their MMORPG service and be able to play whichever game you wanted. You would only ever be playing one game at a time so its not like you are adding more stress on the servers really, you are just getting more flexibility. How then do you justify the initial purchase price for the games? I guess it would have to be a price for the initial content plus some service time (since they all give a few months free). So you buy one of the games and you get the actual game content, then when you sign on with it your service plan gets a few months more free for your purchase of the game. Something along those lines anyway. My point though is that the monthly fee needs to be associated more with an overall service that people find worth the fee instead of being associated with one individual game.
It actually works out pretty similiar to how things are now if you think about it. I mean say for instance with the blizzard MMORPGs I meantioned above (which I know are fictional). Say you buy the starcraft one for $50. Right now you then have to pay $10 a month to play it. So you play it for a year making you have spent $50+$10*12=$170. You then buy the Diablo one for $50 and decide to play it instead. So you cancel your starcraft payments and start paying for diablo. So then you may play that for a year making another $170. So thats $340 over two years for two games played.
Now you look at the way I was talking about above. You would buy starcraft for $50 and sign up for the service at $10 a month. So you play it for a year then decide to play diablo. So you buy diablo for $50 and then play it using the same service you were already using. So if you play them for a year each then it still works out to $120 each year for the service and $50 for each game. So still $340 total.
The difference of course is that in the second option you don't have to end your play of starcraft. If you felt like playing it one night instead of diablo you could do so with no problem. In the current way of doing things the starcraft game would be pretty useless cause you would have to sign up for it again in order to play it. So associating the monthly fee with the service instead of the game clears that up a little. Of course since no company really puts out more than one MMORPG, it becomes a little pointless. I still think that its a better way of looking at things.
Of course this would cost blizzard a little cause in the current system some people might jus tpay for both games monthly if they wanted to play them both off and on. So then the ywould be getting $20 a month instead of $10. I think this is just being greedy though. Paying $10 a month to play any of the games that you have purchased from a company seems reasonable. The company is still getting money for your server use and your progess in both games will be slowed because you are playing two at once, so you are using the content slower. Thus the $10 still pays for the content you are using since you are using half as much content (theoretically) from each game. Of course blizzard would still have to put out new content quickly cause many people would only be playing one game, but I'm sure htat all can be balanced out.
This may also help keep older games up and running longer. After a certain point a game would probably stop being supported, but you could still log in and play it in its last state (kind of like how diablo is getting now). Since the number of players would be getting low at that point it becomes like how the battle.net servers are now. The $10 fee you are paying for the service shold easily cover the cost for them to keep the game server running if they don't really do any more updates to it. Actually most of that $10 would be profit for them at that point that they could use to pay for newer games.
Anyway I'm not sure exactly how it all would work out really, but it seems like a better way of thinking about things than it is to think about the monthly fee being associated with one game only.
It actually works out pretty similiar to how things are now if you think about it. I mean say for instance with the blizzard MMORPGs I meantioned above (which I know are fictional). Say you buy the starcraft one for $50. Right now you then have to pay $10 a month to play it. So you play it for a year making you have spent $50+$10*12=$170. You then buy the Diablo one for $50 and decide to play it instead. So you cancel your starcraft payments and start paying for diablo. So then you may play that for a year making another $170. So thats $340 over two years for two games played.
Now you look at the way I was talking about above. You would buy starcraft for $50 and sign up for the service at $10 a month. So you play it for a year then decide to play diablo. So you buy diablo for $50 and then play it using the same service you were already using. So if you play them for a year each then it still works out to $120 each year for the service and $50 for each game. So still $340 total.
The difference of course is that in the second option you don't have to end your play of starcraft. If you felt like playing it one night instead of diablo you could do so with no problem. In the current way of doing things the starcraft game would be pretty useless cause you would have to sign up for it again in order to play it. So associating the monthly fee with the service instead of the game clears that up a little. Of course since no company really puts out more than one MMORPG, it becomes a little pointless. I still think that its a better way of looking at things.
Of course this would cost blizzard a little cause in the current system some people might jus tpay for both games monthly if they wanted to play them both off and on. So then the ywould be getting $20 a month instead of $10. I think this is just being greedy though. Paying $10 a month to play any of the games that you have purchased from a company seems reasonable. The company is still getting money for your server use and your progess in both games will be slowed because you are playing two at once, so you are using the content slower. Thus the $10 still pays for the content you are using since you are using half as much content (theoretically) from each game. Of course blizzard would still have to put out new content quickly cause many people would only be playing one game, but I'm sure htat all can be balanced out.
This may also help keep older games up and running longer. After a certain point a game would probably stop being supported, but you could still log in and play it in its last state (kind of like how diablo is getting now). Since the number of players would be getting low at that point it becomes like how the battle.net servers are now. The $10 fee you are paying for the service shold easily cover the cost for them to keep the game server running if they don't really do any more updates to it. Actually most of that $10 would be profit for them at that point that they could use to pay for newer games.
Anyway I'm not sure exactly how it all would work out really, but it seems like a better way of thinking about things than it is to think about the monthly fee being associated with one game only.