If I pay and have to pay more to get useful benefits, I quit. If I don't pay and have to pay to get useful benefits, I... don't know, probably quit. If I don't pay and have to pay to get fun stuff, I laugh at people who buy it and laugh at whatever company is selling it. I don't think I'm the only one who thinks like this.

Another online game I used to play went this way. You used to be able to pay to remove ads and get a slightly cleaner GUI, no biggie. Then they added more resources for customers which paid an additional fee, people quit. Then they made research go faster for customers which paid yet another additional fee, I think they lost half of their players that day. What's remaining of the player base is either all totally new or is paying. And from what I gather from someone who went the paying route, the game has died out completely.

The difference was that here you're already forced to pay to play, there it was free. Which makes it even worse of an insult to the already-paying customers. Insulting paying customers is a really bad thing for a company to do if they like keeping them as customers.

Well, I didn't notice at first glance. That might be because horde are used to avoiding looking at Horde Cat Druids whenever possible.

I don't think that is a fair characterization or necessarily an accurate conclusion.

My first "MMO" experience was a game called www.kingdomofloathing.com. Free to play and no ads. At first it was just a pet project by a guy wanting to get some programming practice. He accepted donations (as many sites do) and for any donation over $10 he gave you a nifty little in-game item.

As the game became more popular, "donations" started to really pour in. After the success of his first item, he added monthly items that could only be purchased with one of the donation items. Each month was a new item that was only available for that particular month. The game was soon making enough income for him to quit his job and hire on several full-time staff members to help run the game.

The game is still free to play with no ads, but the dedicated playerbase (which is almost entirely North American/European/Australian) spends thousands of dollars each month purely on in-game items. There was no business plan, there was no marketing - people simply wanted to have shiny items in the game they were already enjoying for free, and they were more than willing to pay for it.

On top of that, you have American games like Oblivion selling cosmetic items such as different colored mounts in single-player console games for actual money. Look at Xbox Live's Marketplace in general, actually.

I'm certainly not saying Blizzard is going to start selling arena gear for $10 a piece, but if you think direct-purchase in-game items are an impossibility, you just haven't been paying attention.

If you read my post carefully, the focus was on the SEA/Asian market in general and the Chinese market in particular and why market research there won't be very applicable to the US/EU service. I'm not bashing item malls in general.

(p.s. I don't disagree with anything in your post, btw; Cosmetic items really do add value without any of the adverse effects I'm talking about)

I don't know about you, but grinding boss mobs to get MVP in the hopes of obtaining a new hat is my kind of gameplay.

I ran the Brewfest quests for the dress and the hat. That was easily an hour of time I spent doing these quests, I'd definatly grind a bit for appearance-only items. I'd prefer standing around in SC in a fancy dress, itemrack would let us change quickly

If PA really thinks that, they need to get with this small thing called Reality.

I worked at an MMO company - MGame USA who produced some horrifically bad Korean Ports (Hero Online and Legend of Ares) and during the initial stages of port over, and beta testing the English Client the question came up of subscription model.

In Asia, the most successful model is that of paying for perks, or increased exp, in-game items, etc. along side of being Free to Play.

I told them, the board members, the lead Devs, and everyone, hell WE (being the only 5 Americans that worked there) told them this model would fail badly in the US. They laughed at us and told us we didn't know what we were talking about, and that "Pay to Play" is merely a fad, and that the US has to catch up with the rest of the world. (The "world" to them being Asia.)

Fast forward 9 months later, and MGame USA fired all of their US Staff (I quit 1 month prior to this ), fired the Korean Managerial Staff and CEO of the US division because it posted their first back to back quarterly losses ever for Mgame/Netgame. They then installed an all new staff from Korea because "things weren't being ran right".

It wasn't that we had no user base (10k + players was the norm), the buffs you got from the perks were amazing, and were basically required post mid-game. It was that people saw free to play, they liked it, then realized that to progress, you HAVE to have these buffs. We had the player base, we had the customer support, we just didn't have the subscription model.

They just didn't understand that Americans hate the concept of paying for perks. It didn't work in EQ (see Legends: Stormhammer) with exception to a few spoiled brats/players who wanted to ezmode and join TR, it hasn't worked with EQ2 in any large success, and it never will.

The US Demographic detests this idea, any gamer will tell you that its stupid, and every company that tries to push this will get a resounding response of "lol ur dum".

Could you imagine the outrage if you played CS:S or Halo 3 or TF2, and for 20 dollars you could buy upgrades that allowed you to move faster, do more damage and take less damage?

Or if you paid 20$ extra a month, you could have a permanent World Buff even in Arenas for WoW?

Yeah it wouldn't fly. Execs are stupid, aren't gamers and don't realize the cultural differences between Markets. This stupidity extends to PA.

Speaking of which, what happened with those EQ2 servers that allowed you to buy items and such in game with your credit card? I'm pretty sure FFXI did something similar, but I can't google either because of all the goldseller sites.

Blizzard had no say in it whatsoever. The9 is the company licensed by Blizzard to operate and maintain WoW in China; this is an excerpt from their 2006 annual report:

Another excerpt:

Furthermore, the anti-fatigue system does not apply to players over the age of 18, meaning it has zero affect whatsoever on the gold farming industry. All reports of gold-farming I've read have indicated that most gold-farmers are over the age of 18, and regardless of that, if a gold-farming company did hire someone under the age of 18, they could simply play using the Player ID of someone else.

I assure you, the anti-fatigue system is only in place because of Chinese law.




As I posted earlier on this page, there are several examples of successful direct-pay items in the U.S. Implementation is of course the key, and the hypothetical examples you gave were clearly outrageous and would be met with scorn. A game like Halo is founded upon balanced and even play for all players, so purchasing buffs like you described would undermine the entire structure of the game. However, how many millions did Bungie make from selling the extra map downloads for Halo 2? People are willing to put in their credit card number and pay for things that will enrich their game. Talk to the creator of Kingdom of Loathing and ask how he likes living in a house that was paid for entirely by in-game item purchases.

I think the best example of how well in-game items would do in WoW is the TCG. Turtle mounts going on eBay for hundreds of dollars indicates that people are willing to buy.

Obviously, if purchased items are all but required for advancement in the game, most U.S. consumers are inclined to be insulted and have no wish to pay. But if they are entirely optional, it brings out the consumer in them.

I don't mean to advocate the sale of in-game items, per se, but I do wish to point out that it is becoming more and more prevalent.

Ok you need to be more clear what you are speaking about.

Paying for visual flavor, who cares, useless market share, its so little it doesn't matter. It was less than 10% of our overall revenue buying items that make you guy look cooler, or a fun pet, etc.

Paying for access to more content is just like expansion packs, which are an inevitability with the style of MMO's prevalent within the US today. (Your Halo reference.)

Paying to enrich your playing experience is what I'm talking about, which is the current model adopted by 90% of the successful MMO's within China/Korea, and where they derive most of their revenue from. (my references.)

The best example I can give would be that if you didn't pay, you would be restricted to Season 1 gear only.

If you paid 10$ a month extra, you could obtain S2 gear.

If you paid 30$ a month extra, you could obtain S3 gear.

This is the model that all MMO's use currently in regards to gear sales/balancing within the Asia continent, and this is the model that everyone WANTS to use as it is by far the most lucrative. We had customers who literally paid over 700$ a month. SEVEN HUNDRED A MONTH for the ability to level faster, summon boss mobs on a whim, transfer stats to other items, etc.

We made quite a bit of money, with most players paying at least 20$ a month, and a hundred or so paying over 100$ a month. We still didn't turn a profit.

If the MMO market wants to move towards fluff ala WoW TCG, I could care less, they won't turn much of a profit from it as evidenced by what I've seen and experienced both in WoW and LoA/Hero Online - a small handful of players anywhere with the TCG items/New Haircuts, etc.

Its the direct affect on gameplay that won't =-ever-= fly in the US in any meaningful numbers (see over 2% of your playerbase.)

You don't think Blizzard would be interested in increasing their revenue by 10%?

I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Why would you even bother saying that when on this very page I said:

I've specifically said that purchasing things which undermine the foundation of the game is clearly not the way to go, which definitely includes buying T6.

As for Deris' example, he himself claimed that the two games he worked on were "horrible" - why would they be a financial success if they were horrible games, regardless of their revenue model?

All of my examples have been of a mostly cosmetic nature: horses in Oblivion, TCG items, etc. What is the point of telling me "Selling T6 would be a bad idea!"?

Edit to add: A perfect example of what I'm talking about and what we'll see more of is the $10 name change.

Games being horrible doesn't mean they can or cannot be profitable.

See : Silk Road Online, LOTRO, EQ2, and any number of shoddily produced games that have turned profits for very little investment. Just because a game is bad fundamentally doesn't mean it won't have a rabid userbase. Keep in mind we didn't turn a profit due to the size of the market we attracted. Most players stopped playing when they figured out the scam of "When you hit level 40 you really need to purchase upgrades".

Our games were VERY popular in Asia, with Scions of Fate boasting over 2m accounts created. (The game being free to play and easy to bot boosts this number at least double, but thats what the press releases always boast about.)

Cosmetic items have no impact, and thus no one cares about them. Keep in mind I said 10% of our income when we have no subscription model. WoW wouldn't make a pittance of that.

If thats what the PA panel was referencing, then they missed the slow boat on this one. I'd venture to guess that they were referencing the buy advantages/buffs system which produces a much larger profit margin for a much lower developer cost ratio, and has been PROVEN to work in previous venues. From a purely analytical view, this is the "smart" thing to do, nevermind the fact that games have tried this (maple story, LoA, SoF, Hero, RO) and haven't even touched 5% of what their market in Asia is.

But we'll agree to disagree and leave it at that, I don't think we're understanding eachother.

An example like Oblivion's Horse Armor is a pretty good way of demonstrating how much PC gamers will shit all over a widespread implementation of that sort of model. I can't say Blizzard won't try and 'turn to the dark side' but honestly, I think they're more interested in customers having long-term fun than the folks who run the X-Box Marketplace. Their creation of Battle.net tells me as much.

P.S. -- @ the title: Most annoying line of the best game(s) ever, strange how it's the most memorable

When a company does consider to implement some system of purchasing something to enhance playing the game they have to think of the downfall to it along with the benefits. If Blizzard did charge people to progress further or get that extra PvP gear the more people payed, how many people would actually do that. They have to feel that the amount of money they would get from this would make up for the profit lost from people saying screw this, I'm canceling my account if I'm being forced to pay more for something.

I don't get what the disagreement here is about. I agree with what Deris has mentioned (and like him, have first-hand experience, except being on-location rather than a sister/related company in USA), and I agree with Lookit as well. This thread is touching on two wildly different models; you can't compare one with the other.

Fact 1: WoW isn't going to turn into a game where your wallet size determines how far/fast you progress. It's as simple as that - Blizzard in fact actively combats gold selling, which is the exact same thing as that business model (albeit haphazard and unofficial). Not to mention the rockstar-like status of guilds who finish end-game content being the central core of the carrot-on-a-stick to keep people playing, which would totally be decimated by such a model.

Fact 2: Like it or not, US/EU and even Australian gaming culture is different from Asian/South East Asian. In-game malls mean different things to both worlds. Keep that in mind for this particular topic.

I just recalled a discussion I had with my boss's boss regarding WoW back in my old job. He refused to believe that Blizzard didn't sell in-game gold in some form. He even pointed out a few locally operated WoW gold-selling websites and said something along the lines of "You can't prove that Blizzard isn't behind these companies and sharing profits". And his position was vice president of game operations. THAT, unfortunately, is what the mentality for online gaming is like here.

I'd pay money for a few items, take that RNG!