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What MMO-players are paying for
"The unknown factor here is how price sensitive MMORPG players are. How many less players would play WoW if it cost $20 per month instead of $15? How many less players will pick up WAR if they announce a $18 per month price tag instead of $15?" (Tobold's MMORPG Blog, Tobold)
What are you willing to pay for an MMO? There was an interesting conversation “Monthly inflation” on this issue at Tobold’s excellent MMORPG blog lately, adhering to subscription-fees players are willing to pay for their favorite MMO and the inflation of subscriptions for World of Warcraft and the like.
Currently, typical MMO-subscriptions come at around US$ 12 to 15 (in Europe, prices are ranging around 15 Euro, respectively). There is indication of the popular upcoming Warhammer Online raising the bar even higher, probably to around between US$ 15 and 20. Most operators of MMOs have increased their monthly fees by around 30 percent in the recent 5 years, generally speaking from US$ 10 to US$ 13—which seems to be acceptable to the majority of commenters on Tobold’s posting. It’s interesting though to see what people would agree to pay (or not pay) for:
Two or three commenters find a fee of US$ 15 to 17 as high as they would go if they are not able to put enough hours into gameplay per week. Changed counters that he would be willing to pay more if it resulted in fewer immature players. Another commenter even alludes to his or her reluctance to certain prices for WoW if Blizzard’s profit margin is too high. Tobold’s opinion is “that future MMORPGs will cost more than $15 per month, probably already starting with Warhammer Online. And people will pay up, maybe under protest, but pay they will.”
While the games-industry saw quite some lively discussions about monthly subscriptions vs. microtransactions, to us (obviously, combined with a free to play-approach) microtransactions still seem to be preferable, enabling you to “pay as you go” instead of making you play longer to get the most of your subscription.
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