subscription-models
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Breakfast Topic: How much would you pay for a lifetime membership to WoW?
Do you suppose we'll ever get the option to purchase a lifetime subscription to World of Warcraft? What about even a lifetime Blizzard game pass? The advantages are many. Obviously, you'd save money once you played past the regular subscription value of the lifetime option. You'd be free from worries about billing and payments. It's likely you'd enjoy perks reserved for lifetime members, as well -- perhaps a special mount or title. Me, I'd like knowing as a lifetime member that I'd made an investment in the game and the company that created it. It's a way to ensure not only that the WoW content keeps coming but that Blizzard itself remains healthy. A lifetime membership would cement my emotional attachment to the game while at the same time relieving the stress I sometimes feel to log on "just to get my money's worth." During times when I'm especially busy or even disinterested in the current content, as a lifetime member, I'd feel less pressured to log in simply to avoid wasting my regular subscription fee. Of course, this late in the game's life cycle, there's always a risk that you might fall out of love with WoW or fall in love with another game after you'd already paid for a lifetime membership. What if all your friends and guildmates left? Heck, what if WoW became free-to-play, leaving you with adjusted perks you didn't particularly appreciate? Would you take advantage of a lifetime membership to WoW if it were ever offered? What benefits would capture your interest? And how much would you be willing to pay for a lifetime subscription to World of Warcraft?
The Mog Log: Final Fantasy and free-to-play
Subscriptions are dying. There's no two ways about it. Star Wars: The Old Republic is switching over, and whether or not they liked the game, fans of Final Fantasy XIV have no room to throw stones about the game's success. That leaves a handful of holdouts in the normal subscription space, and that doesn't include the next major release on the horizon, as Guild Wars 2 is under the same buy-to-play model as its predecessor. Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XI are two of the holdouts. And in a world increasingly dominated by games without subscription fees, that's pretty significant. So the question becomes whether or not the games will embrace the free-to-play option, whether or not they should, and how this sort of option could work in the game's favor rather than against it. After all, there are some roadblocks to making the system work quite right, but there's a lot of pressure on the market for a change.
DC Universe Online announces Legendary subscription plan
DC Universe Online's PlayStation 3 players are getting a new payment option for their DCUO fix today. Due to the game's imminent conversion to F2P, Sony Online Entertainment is introducing the Legendary subscription model. The Legendary model is DCUO's premium membership plan, and the only thing that has changed so far is the name. However, new features will be applied to the subscription once the game transitions to free-to-play, though no details have been released regarding what those features may be.
MMO development still riddled with risk
With all the new MMO titles in development, sometimes it's easy to forget that running a profit in this business is actually something of an accomplishment. Starting development on a big-budget subscription-based game, with the barrier of entry purportedly being as high as $1 billion, seems like an extraordinary risk for all parties involved. According to analyst Piers Hardings-Rolls, this cut-throat trend is only deepening.Their research shows that popular new development strategies, like purchasing lucrative intellectual properties and importing cheaply-developed MMOs from Asia, has done little to shake up the subscription-based business, where most of the profit is still concentrated in a few extremely successful titles. We were a little disappointed that their research didn't touch on the increasingly-prolific free-to-play/microtransaction model, but we suppose that'll have to wait until another day.
