Poll: MMO Pricing (Poll)

[nova18]

Please read before voting.​

Fixed Fee: Your typical WOW plan, you pay monthly.
Pay as you play: Buy gaming time in advance (ex. you pay for 24 hours on your account and after 24 hours you are disconnected from server until you buy more.
Megavideo plan: The MMO is free to play, users receive a standard bandwidth allowance and advertisement revenue is used to cover server costs, users can purchase Premium accounts to remove advertising and receive faster connection.
Free: MMO is free to play for everyone, income comes from selling in game items.

Remember, this poll is about which YOU would prefer, but also which one is best for the MMO.
For example, we would all want the FREE plan, but the company has less money to support the game when compared to a Fixed Fee game.

[small]The poll is for my own personal study into MMO's, in case anyone was curious.[/small]

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

Fixed, it's just easier for everyone.

 

[brettman170]

I've always preferred the Guild Wars method: Treat them like actual games. You buy them, great, now you own them. They are yours. You can stop paying for them. The income comes through the several campaigns and expansion that are available to add to your content, like buying a new game would be. No monthly fees or in-game purchases with real money.

 

[El Poncho]

i clicked thewrong one:| i picked the 3rd insteado 2nd

 

[nova18]

i clicked thewrong one:| i picked the 3rd insteado 2nd

Dont worry about it
I'm just trying to get a general feel for what people prefer.

 

[Talendra]

I like the guild wars method, I just don't get into MMO's to get my moneys worth anymore. With guild wars I can happily play a couple of hours and not having to worry about paying a full month for it.
So I guess the pay as you play would be better for me, but guild wars satisfies my occasion MMO urges well enough.
At least until the old republic, i'm hoping that one will have me willingly forking over my monthly payment.

 

[DazZ.]

I clicked fixed as it give developers payment to stick with the game. However if they then use this fixed payment method to develop a game that is a total grindfest so you play for longer, instead of being a good game then id prefer they paid me.

 

[Halfbreed13]

The Megavideo one works for any MMO. Really, all the money made is going into the pockets of the devs. How awful is Blizzards support? Yet they have millions monthly from subscription fees. That money has to go somewhere. Now, if the start menu or something like that has ads, then there is no interference in the game and free play. Hell, Protoype had enough ads to fill two games, and no one calls it out on that. The loading screens and startup menu could have the ads that fund it, and then there is no problem, except of course, the devs don't make obscene amounts of money >.>

The free play but pay for items is dumb because it gives an unfair advantage to people who are good but don't waste real money for fake items.

 

[Reaperman Wompa]

I agree with the Guild Wars method, but if not that then either Magavideo or pay as you play, the other one sucks as sometimes you only play a few hours a week, other times it's 9 hours a day, as long as the hours were cheap (20 to 40 cents an hour, it's fair that they get a decent amount of time for their money) pay as you play makes sense.

 

[KaiusCormere]

I think that gamers get better quality from pay games, both because the developers are more connected to us as the source of their income, and because the players form a more committed community than the free-play crowd.

I think that fixed-rate is best. Pay as you play makes it easier to walk away from the game, which is a benefit (if the game is crappy). Fixed-rate on the other hand is a benefit if the game is something that you'd actually want to play a lot. I think that both players and developers would like the game to be enjoyable for a long time, and so fixed rate seems the most suitable.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

Fixed fee for me. 15$ a month is a trivial cost for the amount of time that I spend playing an MMO, and I prefer to just pay it and get it out of the way.

 

[teisjm]

I think the third option is the best.

MMO's (WoW) has gotten so huge that the whole world knows about it, if you could add some sort of advertizing, so the game wouldn't have a monthly fee would be awesome.

My problem with MMO's (apart from grinding) is that i'm constantly trying to decide whether or not they're worth the monthly fee, if you removed that fee, the games would rise dramaticly in popularity i think.

I wouldn't mind if they did some advertizing. For instance, In WoW they could switch the loading screens with commercials, everyone who moves from one continent to another, or enters an instance would see it, and since you already have to watch the loading screen it's not like you spend more time waiting just cause it says coca-cola instead of hot half-naked elf.

 

[the Tadman]

Free to play is extremely annoying. Usually they sell in-game items like cool looking clothes, stat resets, whatever. But when they sell something that makes you better then an avarage player, that makes me mad.

 

[nova18]

Free to play is extremely annoying. Usually they sell in-game items like cool looking clothes, stat resets, whatever. But when they sell something that makes you better then an avarage player, that makes me mad.

Agreed, I used to play a crappy little MMO called Conquest, until I realised that unless I shelled out cash, I would never have the kind of money/equips that all the high level players had.
It annoyed me more because I had decent PvP skills and I could hold my own against most players, but the people with the bigger wallets would hunt me down and blackmarked me so that no guild would let me join.

Needless to say, I stopped playing.