Monthly Fee

[mponciu]

Does anyone know how much it is going to be a month?

[Sol]

I'd expect between $10 and $15.

[Arshune]

If Sony thinks they're getting 15 bucks a month for an FPS they're dead wrong, heh. Sure the concept is new, but the core was laid out long ago and is accessible elsewhere. Also, 15 bucks wouldn't compete with the average price per month of other MMO games very well, which isn't good from business end. I'm guessing 12 or 13, hoping 10. More than 10 for an FPS is getting gouged, I don't care how good the MMO aspect is. :(

[MrVicchio]

By the end of the year, I expect ALL SOE MMO's to be 14.95. Why? Cause inflation rears its head.. I don't care, I will pay it lol.

[Arshune]

Inflation is currently below the level where it could be considered a problem, raising prices by that much would be vastly outpacing inflation.

[Sputty]

Yep, I was paying $15 for E&B..GOD..Waht a masive waste..But, that;s how all games are going to be. I expect 15 and I'll pay(The are US funds. I have to pay even more:( )

[Arshune]

I can't find 100% up-to-date information, and I know the American economy is on the lower end of the business cycle right now, but inflation was steady and even during the slumped holiday season it was well below 5%. If they raise their prices to 15 a month, they're outpacing inflation by about 30-40%. I'm too lazy to do the actual math for the exact numbers, but that'd be quite a rub. God, I can't wait for another democratic president, the one we have now is gonna end up forcing me to get a job to support my game habit. :(

[Bighoss]

bah who cares 15 bucks a month. less than cable, less than a night out.

and its hours of entertainment

[Zetre]

ahhh, that's not gonna happen for a while, bush has a 60% approval rating, and it's only climbing. The republicans speak the language of the ignorant undereducated people. They say taxcut, and poor people think it's helping them. I even saw a basho political commercial saying
"tom strickland thinks that tax cuts are the reason for the current economic problems, what he doesn't realize, is that those tax cuts helped a lot"
and of course you gotta love the president saying that we need to have more spending disciplin, and then saying that he's going to bomb iraq with money from his ass, and that he's going to start up all of these great programs for "the people"
argh, i'm with you dancing blob guy, but i don't think we're gonna see any goodness for a while
i even have gay friends who voted for the guy (haha, one of them is a gay catholic, who is extremely religious, despite the fact that according to her religion, she is going to hell because of the way she was born, hahahaha), and one of my friends lives in a trailer park and voted for the dude. You gotta love the ignorant people in our nation.

[Arshune]

A 60% approval rating isn't enough to get re-elected, and if he ends up invading Iraq and people die...well that's just gonna seal the deal. He doesn't have the charisma of some of the democratic hopefuls AND he stutters/mispronounces a lot of things.

Back to the price thing though, 15 bucks a month for a game is obscene. 10 dollars yeah, 11 dollars sure, 12 dollars stretching it, 13 dollars maybe if it's a REEEEAAAAALLY damn good game...but for 15 they'd have to have the game come with a port that injects you with a non-addictive form of morphine every so often.

[Sputty]

$15 for an MMOG is common now

[Arshune]

Nope. EQ is 12 or 13 last I checked, DAoC was 13, SB is supposed to be 12, I have no clue how much AO is, but I'd imagine they'd give their subscriptions away...only game I know of that charges 15 is E&B, and that game got horrible, horrible reviews. Oh yeah, Sims Online...but everyone hates that game too.

If Sims Online is 15 a month it'd make sense, cuz E&B and Sims Online are both from the same company, aren't they?

[Sputty]

Those are all old games...The ones at $15 are new

[Zetre]

well, if it has a really high user base, the price maaaaaay go down. That's a big maybe though, cause the gaming industry is really fu in a lot of ways, and tends to be greedy. I agree with you though dancing blob guy, it is ridiculous. Unfortunately, this sort of thing doesn't really follow the rules of capitalism. Since most people really don't like MMO games, and since the game market isn't that big, they wont lower the prices (haha, which is the reason why the game industry sucks so much) Whatever though, you could get discounts for paying for more months, and i'm sure that this game will rock (even though it seems rather generic FPS for me, i really like the MMO games, cause you can screw around, and there's a lot of fun to be had)
As for the bush thing, i'll make a bet that he'll get reelected nect term. If i'm wrong, then something will happen, you decide, and same for you losing.

[Bighoss]

Originally posted by Zetre
ahhh, that's not gonna happen for a while, bush has a 60% approval rating, and it's only climbing. The republicans speak the language of the ignorant undereducated people. They say taxcut, and poor people think it's helping them. I even saw a basho political commercial saying
"tom strickland thinks that tax cuts are the reason for the current economic problems, what he doesn't realize, is that those tax cuts helped a lot"
and of course you gotta love the president saying that we need to have more spending disciplin, and then saying that he's going to bomb iraq with money from his ass, and that he's going to start up all of these great programs for "the people"
argh, i'm with you dancing blob guy, but i don't think we're gonna see any goodness for a while
i even have gay friends who voted for the guy (haha, one of them is a gay catholic, who is extremely religious, despite the fact that according to her religion, she is going to hell because of the way she was born, hahahaha), and one of my friends lives in a trailer park and voted for the dude. You gotta love the ignorant people in our nation.

I LOVE IGNORANT PEOPLE:love: :love: :love:
they are fun and simple:D

[Diego]

I'm with MrVicchio with the $14.95, because they for some reason think when we see the $14 dollar part, we think its $14.00 and not 1-5 cents from $15.00

Business' like that are retarded and piss me off, but I honestly don't like paying $15.00 a month, I'd MUCH rather pay $10.00.. Thats my two cents. :)

[Arshune]

The only new MMO games out are by EA, and they're the ones that happen to be 15 dollars a month...so I'm guessing it's just that particular company's strategy.

As for the price structure of the video game industry in general...don't even give me an excuse to open that can of worms. I'll just say that it costs about 50 cents to make that DVD your new PS2 game is printed on, and developing the content for the average game is so far below enough to justify 50 dollars a pop that it makes me, a normally sane, sensitive, caring person angry to the point of wanting to break something.

<rant> Good games usually cost more to make, and therefore should cost the consumer more, but what about games like the 97,000 Army Men titles that 3DO tries to sell for full price? Unscrupulous money-grubbing like that is just far too prevalent in the industry.

That's not across the board though, some companies actually devote themselves to quality in their products...last of a dying breed though. </rant>

[BeckIsAwesome]

Well, I'm new to MMOG, but I find 13 to be reasonable. 15?, No, probley not. 10, hell ya.

[Subliminal]

god did AO get that bad of a rep at launch? mark me its the best mmorpg out there right now stability and fun wise and it has a HUGE community now btw the price is $11.95 a month i think its cheaper because its based in the Uk not america although the us servers are in the u.s.

[mistled]

Originally posted by Arshune
...last of a dying breed though. </rant> Can't be surprised by that when people sit here and bitch about three dollars.

[Sol]

Originally posted by Subliminal
god did AO get that bad of a rep at launch? mark me its the best mmorpg out there right now stability and fun wise and it has a HUGE community now btw the price is $11.95 a month i think its cheaper because its based in the Uk not america although the us servers are in the u.s.

AO sucks. By level 125 the game is reduced to a graphical chatroom with poorly done missions to pass the time. By 200 there is literally nothing to do.

I cant believe i spent 60 days of playtime in one year getting my soldier to 200. What a waste of time, besides from talking with my rl and ig friends about the game, it wasnt fun. 60 days, 15% of an entire year, $200.

edit: Did I mention the lag, the horrible customer support, 0 balance, patches that break the game, and the intense amount of bugs? The game is decent at low levels, but beyond that there is no excuse.

[Hamma]

Not sure how politics got into this one.

But it better get out of this one.

:p

[Sol]

If you play PS for 5 hours in an entire month it is more worthwhile than two, two hour movies at $7.50 each. Most people are going to be playing a hell of a lot more than 5 hours in a week.

[KeviN]

The Sims Online is only $10 a month.

[Arshune]

Originally posted by {BOHICA}mistled
Can't be surprised by that when people sit here and bitch about three dollars.

That three dollars turns into quite a sum of money when it's spread out over a long time and recurs every month. MMO games hold my attention for like 5-6 months usually, and since Planetside doesn't have all the traps of an RPG it'll probably hold me longer...that's more like 20-25 extra bucks. Add on to that the fact that they're charging you a fee in addition to the 50 bucks you already paid for the game! That's a *LOT* of money for a student like me who doesn't have a job.

[Arthell]

I think alot of people exaggerated how bad AO was at launch, but it -was- bad.

MMORPG/FPS prices will continually rise. I wouldnt be surprised to see prices reach $20 american within a number of years. Ive payed over $20 CDN for games per month because of the exchange rate. <shrug>

Funny thing is, you can spend a couple hundred bucks a month from going out, partying, etc. Yet people whine over a couple more bucks for something that they spend more time on than going out and already costs much, much less.

[Arshune]

Yeah, but going out is a lot more fun than playing video games. The price of everything eventually rises, its just that these monthly fees for video games are rising a lot faster than everything else. A little while ago, EQ was the only MMO game on the market and it only charged 10 bucks. Now there's competition around and the price goes up? That's just a lil backwards.

[Sol]

Originally posted by Arshune
Yeah, but going out is a lot more fun than playing video games. The price of everything eventually rises, its just that these monthly fees for video games are rising a lot faster than everything else. A little while ago, EQ was the only MMO game on the market and it only charged 10 bucks. Now there's competition around and the price goes up? That's just a lil backwards.

When EQ first came out they didnt put nearly as much into the game. Compared to release, there are a lot more servers, GMs, and people working to maintain the huge game.

[Arshune]

True that, I guess. But it still seems backwards to me that the prices are going up so much when the competition is only increasing. Shouldn't capitalism be in full effect here?

[BLuE_ZeRO]

People are willing to pay for it and if they keep the prices in the same range people are going to keep paying for it. If they upped it to like $45/month or something people would step back and say, "wtf I'm not paying for that pos."

[Rayhn Plexus]

I have done MORGs before, and I feel that I would be willing to pay up to fifteen bucks a month to experience Planetside.

I believe anything beyond $15 is pushing capitalism a little too far.

[snipe]

i think that it will be $20 for 2 months. i wouldn't want to go to the store every month just to get a new card

[Arshune]

Oh yeah, I forgot that Sony always does those things where you can pay for multiple months in advance...heh, and here I was ready to lead a war party off for a boycott (hah, like anyone would follow me).

[Flameseeker]

It will probably be $15, which is bad. But I really hope it's $10 or $12. If it were $15, I hope we could buy a year for like $125. We would get a discount for buying all of it at once.

[Arshune]

Any discount long-term subscriptions they offer better have an effective price of like 10 or 11 bucks a month, otherwise I'm gonna make one of my friends share an account with me...I spend a lot of my spare time playing games, but 15 dollars a month just seems like way too much to me.

[mistled]

While I too hope that the game comes in at around $12 a month, all I can say to you is get a job. Your profile has you as being 17, so it's high time to go out and work. The $3 a month is less than an hour of work. :)

[BLuE_ZeRO]

plexus your sig is owning the table format. You should delete it or at least make the link work.

[Arshune]

It's not really that I can't pay for it, I worked the only job I ever had so much that I had enough to "retire" for my senior year, heh...but it seriously would suck having to pay 15 bucks a month for a video game. Granted, PlanetSide is almost exactly like what I always thought of as my dream game, but it's still just a game.

[Civilian]

I've been known to blow my money every once in a while, but $15 just seems really high to me for some reason. It's not that I can't afford it, it just seems excessive. The difference between 12 and 15 a month is pretty large if you figure it over an entire year. Imagine what you could do with 35 extra dollars.

Once the game starts, I will probably change my mind because I rarely buy games, but right now $15 just sounds like too much. :(

I will be interested to see what kind of discounts they offer for a yearly subscription, because I would like to pay for my subscription when I have money rather than wait to do it on a monthly basis and it's either pay the water bill or play Planetside. But who needs water anyway? ;)

[Arshune]

Does anyone know how much of a discount Sony gives people who buy extended subscriptions of EQ? Maybe we could engage in more guesswork, heh.

[BLuE_ZeRO]

It would actually be $36 but if you're worried about saving $36 over the course of the year and you can afford it you need to stop being a cheap ass. If they don't have jobs that's one thing but $36 is nothing. Government taxes probably taxes me over 12 times that amount each pay check. Bastards :shakes fist:. You would waste it anyways.

[Civilian]

Yes I can count, I was just rounding. And you're probably right, I would waste it, but it would be nice to have the option.

I mean what about Squeeky, he can't even buy a keyboard. How's he gonna pay $15 a month? :(

[mistled]

Around here, a decent mocha costs over $3, so I can't say I've got much sympathy for people who think $3 is a lot.


haha... who knows what Squeeky's going to do.... I'm sure he can find the money though if he tries

[Flameseeker]

$35 could buy the War3 expansion pack. I want the expo!

[MrVulcan]

well the diff from 12 to 15 is + 25% guys. That is a huge bump in price. Not much can raise its price 25% and get away with it.

[Falcon]

I think the price will be like 12-15 but im hoping for 10 like the rest of you. i think that the gaming industry is full of greedy bastards lol

[mistled]

and I think the gaming community is full of stingy tightwads.


It's not a raise in price. There hasn't been an announcement as to what it will cost. When there is no price, you can't raise it. :)

[Hamma]

Unfortunatly many more games will go to the pay to play model in the future.

Mainly because gamers thing everything should be free, I mean many of the people I know dont even pay for games, they download them.

How does a company even profit off that? :p

[Alucard]

I got bored of this forum halfway through

[Dqua]

From: http://eqlive.station.sony.com/support/accounts_billing/ab_pricing.jsp

New EverQuest rates as of April 25, 2002:

$12.95 per Month
$35.85 for 3 Months
$65.70 for 6 Months
$119.95 for 12 Months (a 23% discount off the monthly rate).
$199.95 for 24 Months (a 35% discount off the monthly rate).

You guys should realize how much Sony has done on a monthly basis with EQ and why it would feel to justify charging that much. They run 45 servers for EQ, and not just individual servers, server clusters. Added they patch very often, compare this to your average FPS dev. However this has a flipside, SoE and VI, have very often screwed the pooch with patches, left content, abilities, etc. broken for months even years on end. Also, their GM support can be awful at times unless you play on the 39.95 a month server. Example: You submit a request for GM assistance with being stuck under the world from a glitch, and maybe you might get help with in 5 hours if you are lucky, if not wait a week and you might. Also, they've nerfed tactics/abilities, if they are used to defeat content in such a matter that a dev didn't want it to be done. SoE/VI however has been better about communicating with the player base over the past year. Whereas this is a FPS with no NPC's, so .../shrug. Alot of people who've played EQ will tell you that they won't ever touch another SoE or VI product again because of these reasons.

In no way am I trying to knock the PS dev team, I think this will be a good and unique game and hope to play it myself. Just trying to give some people who have not dealt with SoE's online division before some insight.

BTW, hi first time posting here.

[Zoolooman]

*WARNING*

Internet experts are in the area!

Political thread detected on *gaming message board*!

Pointless ignorant political discussion imminent!

Evacuate!

*WARNING*

I would have posted this earlier, but I didn't catch the thread in time. :|

I'm glad we have a message board filled with political science experts between the ages of 17 and 22.