How many MMOs would you maintain?
I got to thinkin' over the weekend (dangerous I know) when fiddling around on Age of Conan with the trial period. Sure, I kinda don't like it, but it's somewhat engaging and seems to have an interesting story. But not interesting enough to justify paying 15 bucks a month for 2 hours of playtime.
Then I remembered how a whole lot of free games (Maple Story, Second Life, Flyff, and countless others) use alternate pricing systems. In most of those cases, it's RL cash for in-game benefits. IE using $$ to acquire virtual land in Second Life, or special coins to buy different, unique gear otherwise unobtainable in Flyff.
But this wouldn't work for games like AOC, EQ, EQ2, WoW without substantial retooling of their equipment, among other things...
So what about micropayments? At an estimated cost of 15.99 US/month, you pay 53 cents a day, 2 cents an hour! for the ability to play the monthly sub games.
But that pricing mode is under the assumption that you play 24/7. So what if you play 20 days at 4 hours a day? The price jumps to 20 cents an hour. Still much preferable to pay (as a fickle customer) as I use it, as opposed to letting it sit stagnant.
If (insert game company here) would allow you to play (insert alternate game) at a reasonable hourly rate, would you? And how many games would you maintain?
but to be honest I couldnt see paying anything for logging into a game a couple hours a month. Just seems like a waste of time lol.
but to be honest I couldnt see paying anything for logging into a game a couple hours a month. Just seems like a waste of time lol.
Some games, like CoH, I can't stand in periods of longer than a couple hours anyway, because of its extreme repetitiveness. (Then again it would take me that long to get used to the controls and remember where I was. hah)
Others, like EVE, I don't -want- to spend too much time getting involved, because the last time I played EVE I fell asleep several times in a few hour session mid-Saturday afternoon! One hour should be enough to set some skills a-trainin' then do some ore runs.
Lastly, games like WoW, where I DO want to play, but can't devote large amounts of time to for various reasons (for WoW it is motion sickness) then it makes sense to play one hour a week... but still, 15 bucks a month for 4 hours is a waste. If I wanted to spend 15 bucks for 4 hours of entertainment I'd go to two movies.
Or some other nonmonthlyfee game.