IMO the idea of a "paid beta" defeats the entire purpose of a Beta test which is to get people to actually come in and test the game, not play for free. They should be picking people who are fairly experienced and likely to hunt for bugs and such.
This seems like a gimmick to get people to pay for the "honor" of stress testing their servers, and honestly the very idea makes me queasy because it shows where the whole MMORPG industry is going. It's getting far, far too greedy.
See, I think $15 a month is a pretty fair price for MMORPGs. But right now all of this paid beta stuff, or attempts to get people to both pay for a membership AND pay for content of a sort that used to be added into a game for free, and then on top of this add in korean style item shops... well I think the current gen of MMORPGs is just getting too greedy as I said. I personally hope we see a lot of these games crash so we can keep the current "flat fee" subscription model.
I'm looking at Champions Online which seems to have both a monthy fee and an "Item Shop" type concept attached to it. The idea seems to be that the costume designer from City Of Heroes was so wonderful that they can probably get people to pay for costume pieces like a korean game. Then there seems to be hints that they will add items that give in-game advantages down the road. :/
Then I was reading some stuff that some MMORPG companies want to see up a "pay as you go" type program. So basically you pay a basic monthly fee, but then if you want to raid or do endgame content, you pay extra for the honor of doing it. This being allegedly so that casual players don't have to pay for content that they'll never see or have any interest in, but in reality sounds like a way to try and gouge the hardcore gamers who are on the servers 40 hours+ a week for extra money since this is probably what they are doing with all that time.
In general I have no issue with either using an item shop model (within reason) or a Monthy fee system (which I prefer, and generally the only type of game I play), but I am having issues with games introducing both, and doing things like "pay for beta access" which by definition is not going to be a beta under that model.
But then again the game I'm looking at is Champions Online, though I half expect to give up on that game in disgust and go back to WoW given it's business model. I'm just a big enough super hero game to want to try the finished product (beta tester). I anticipate my next big MMORPG is likely to be "The Old Republic" despite the impending game balance nightmare. At least I personally have yet to hear anything about Bioware trying some kind of wonky gimmick to try and get more than a monthly fee out of people.
