A little clarification on this horse bullshit that I’m seeing in RoM.
So…here we go again on the question of value for our money and I must say that I’m disappointed so far with the comments on that posting of mine below. I don’t expect anyone to agree with me…far from it. What I really didn’t expect was the collective shrug of the shoulders or worse…the swallowing of said hook, line and sinker of this rip-off.
Again, lets look at Bethesda…who is still the only one who seems to get that delivering content and, good gawd, EXPERIENCES(!!!!) should be the point of RMT. Right now, I can buy Operation Anchorage for 800 Microsoft Points on XBox Live. That works out to about $14.95. I get entire EXPERIENCE(!!!), which gives me, let’s call it, 5-8 hours of new content. Compare that to a $10 horse. Seriously…..what experience does that horse give you that’s even close to that value? Wheeee….it gives you the experience of traveling 60% faster. Really?! You’d all pay that? Remember…this is the low-end, permanent horse. The others were $5-10 more than that if you wanted to buy it. That gives you what experience exactly?
I’m disappointed that you all aren’t demanding more from these RMT schemes that MMOs are offering, because right now they’re ripping you off. They’re pretending to give you something that you’re really not getting. You should be DEMANDING new experiences and content for your money…not bullshit vanity items that give you nothing. You see…this is all new to them and you are teaching them how to treat us all in future games. It’s an experiment at this point, just to see how they can do it and what we would tolerate in terms of market costs.
Make no mistake. The business guys will take the shortest route to the most cash and you all seem to be willing to show them the way.
…$10 for a fuckin horse. Jesus….Mary…Josheph….
D out.
Entries (RSS)
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:36 am
amen brother!
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:20 am
But Darren, you and your show cohorts spent about 25 minutes saying this was the wave of the future. I agree for the most part. What did you expect? This isn’t going to be some bargain deal. They want to make money, and they will charge hard for the premium items. You are getting a horse at what level 5? Or whatever level you are. It is the PERMANENT horse right? Hey this is what Free Realms will do and you all love that to death and think it is the Bees Knees. RMT is not going to be about saving money. It will attempt to MAKE money and this will be one way. This is EXACTLY why I love to pay a monthly sub. RMT allows you to break the rules (like getting a horse at level 1) but did you think it was going to be cheap?
I am in the DDO beta right now and I can say that their store has honest prices so far. Runes of Magic is huge and has a lot of players. This may only be happening in that game because I haven’t really had to drop 10 bucks in any other game yet. I have Runes of Magic diamonds on my account that I plunked down about $4.99 for plus some free ones I got when it went live or for some event. I have not used them yet.
Think of this like playing GTA IV online, and say it had RMT. What you did was just buy a nice sports car
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:22 am
Wait I take that back. You know what you SHOULD be mad about? I bought a horse that was NOT permanent in that game I remember now. It lasted 24 hours. You know what happens? THEY COUNT THE TIME OFFLINE. That is right, I logged in and my horse was gone because I was offline for a day.
Now THAT is something to get mad about.
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:35 am
Wasn’t Bethseda’s first paid content for Oblivion just a set of $1.99 *armour* for the horse?
Anyway, I suspect a collective shrug of the shoulders amounts to the same as indignant rage in the account book. Been dabbling with RoM up to about L20 or so and have yet to see any need to give them any money at all. I guess I’m callous enough to happily be subsidised by those folks who do feel that they *need* to get places that quickly that desperately. ‘They’ aren’t ripping me off in the slightest; quite the reverse in my case.
Mind you, as a moocher in a F2P game, I am somewhat reconciled to the fact that I have no rights at all. Heigh ho!
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:36 am
“I’m disappointed that you all aren’t demanding more from these RMT schemes that MMOs are offering, because right now they’re ripping you off.”
That depends on the MMO, I guess. Wizard101 does it right (you can buy content for a reasonable price and it’s yours forever), and DDO also seems to be following this model.
Most of the rest of the games that I have experience with so far have fairly poor models, which is why I won’t drop cash on them despite hating the subscription model.
In the end I’ll take THE OPTION of buying a horse for $10 over THE DEMAND that I pay $15/month when it comes to playing MMOs. I don’t need that horse to play once a week….
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:40 am
I haven’t spent enough time in RoM to tell how the overall Game::RMT ratio is setup but it hasn’t seemed like it’s on par with Rappelz, Perfect World, etc. where eventually you *need* to buy stamina savers, etc. from the item shop just to get by. From what I can tell — and from what your commenters are saying — so far there’s been no *need* to spend cash. The mount? Seems like you can do it the “normal” way and grind out the in-game money, or just drop $10 and it’s yours at Level 1. Should I go listen to every SUWT and see if even once anyone complained about having to run for X levels in any MMO before mounts became available??? Mounts are a convenience item. Time is money. At least RoM gives everyone the choice of grinding it out or just plunking down $10 and getting it over with. In LOTRO you have to be Level 35 *and* earn the 4.22 gold to spend on it. Did that take you one month? Two? More? Assuming it took two months, you spent $30 right there just for server access. With the new XP curve I’ll take a guess that you reached 35 way before ever getting the 4.22 gold, right? If so, you’d reached the level gate but still couldn’t get that mount the old-fashioned way. Is it maybe worth $10 for a mount immediately after character creation to some people just for the convenience of increased travel speed, presuming there’s no need to spend a dime later on? Probably…
Guess I’m not seeing a problem with RoM’s price for a *permanent* mount, *if* the game isn’t setup later on where you *need* to visit the item shop on a daily basis. It’s the forced buying I have issues with, as well as the temporary mounts, etc. like Hud mentioned.
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:44 am
Joseph
That is all.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:05 am
I hear you, but I think that going rate has already been established. Mabinogi sold their horses for $10 or a faster version for $15. Ether Saga Online’s cheapest mount starts at $15 and the most expensive is a helicopter for $30.
But, that’s a deal. For the cheapest outfit, which is just new pixels for your character, you’ll pay $16. $22 for the “nicer” stuff.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:28 am
Despite my enthusiasm for the changes to DDO on the show, the amount I have spent on RMT items in games currently stands at $0.00. But I am not really playing any games that have much in the way of RMT options.
I am curious. I didn’t see you raging against some of the complete crap that SOE is trying to sell people for $10 in EQ/EQ2.
I think we have simply hit the first RMT item that you actually WANT, and now you’re having to come to grips with the price scale. $10 seems like a lot to me as well. But I am not playing the game. If I were playing the game with a group and we were into it and looked like we were going to be playing for a while, $10 might seem less of a big deal. $10 for a horse in a game I might quit next week is too much. $10 for a horse in a game I might play for a year or more, that seems somewhat trivial.
Or look at it another way. If a couple years back Blizzard offered a deal where you could get your epic mount the riding skill for $10 or just go grind gold for it like we all had to do, I probably would have popped the $10 and felt pretty good about it. A lot of people paid more than $10 to some gold seller to get their epic mount.
So, in a way, I am with you. From the outside, not playing currently, $10 seems like a big chunk of change. But if I was having a great time, playing with a group, and looking like I was in ROM for the long haul, it might be a different story.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:39 am
I’m disappointed that you expect all your commenter’s to grab their pitchforks and torches.
First off this is a game we are talking about so let’s get some perspective on things. You’re acting like we are fighting for democracy or something when in fact we already have democracy in the business world. We all get to vote with our wallets.
Did you ever consider that the collective shrug from your readers is because they honestly don’t’ see $10 for a horse as a bad deal? You seem to say that they are all fools for swallowing this rip-off hook, line and sinker. Perhaps they don’t think it’s a rip-off at all. Perhaps you are just a cheap bastard;)
I understand that you want to stop the tide of this type of micro transaction and draw a line in the sand and say this far no further (queue Captain Picard speech from First Contact) that’s cool. Buy the Fallout DLC and don’t buy the horse. You will be supporting your cause in this whole thing.
If you want to fight this injustice you use your blog and Podcast to explain to others that they should do the same. Encourage them to vote with their wallets and that this is a critical time for MMORPG’s as what gets established as the micro-transactional norms now could be the standard for years.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:41 am
I feel a bit differently.
I don’t like systems where people who pay more get to see and experience more things, whether it’s in free content or subscription content. If I want a world where people with more money get to have more fun, I have… life.
I’m perfectly happy with RMT being limited to cosmetic non-game-balance affecting elements of play. It’s when there’s a tiered structure for content itself that I become leery. MMOs already close off too much content by creating tiered progression structures or rep grind systems. It’s player-hostile to add a real-world-tiering to that.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I decided I had more to say:
http://teethandclaws.blogspot.com/2009/07/much-ado-about-horse.html
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I stand by my previous comment. RoM is 100% free to play. I don’t see how the option to pay ten dollars for a convenience item that you don’t really need, or can grind out in game if you feel like it, is that big of a deal.
Compare to Wizard 101. In Wizard 101 only very small part of the game can be accessed for free. To get to any other the other content you are forced to buy areas. Play all the way through the first wold and you will surely have spent ten bucks. I don’t see how a requiring players to fork over ten bucks just to see your content is an inherently more “evil” business practice then charging them an optional $10 for a vanity item/ runspeed buff. In fact the latter strategy is arguably more altruistic, since you allow players to see the bulk of your game whether they pay anything or not (and the bulk of your players will certainly decide to pay nothing).
I’m not bagging on Wizard 101. I still play it, and RoM stayed on my hard drive for about a week. However I think you are making mountain out of a molehill. Is ten bucks overpriced? Yeah probably, I doubt I’d pay that much for a regular horse. Of course I certainly might pay 15 for the analogue of a Epic Mount in WoW, particularly in a game where my box cost and sub fees are zero.
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:16 pm
DOH!
Edit: I don’t see how a requiring players to fork over ten bucks to see your content is an inherently less “evil” business practice then charging them an optional $10 for a vanity item/ runspeed buff.
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
So is your argument that they are monetizing the wrong things? Would you rather have to buy a $10-15 pass to access a new zone? Personally, I’d rather they let me play THE ENTIRE GAME without a mandatory fee and then charge me for extra stuff.
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I’d rather they charged money for stuff, which I can and will choose to go without, and let me have access to the content (the zones is what I really mean) for free. To me , that’s a much better deal.
I play Wizard 101 and really enjoy it, but I pay the sub for full content, not the one-time fee per zone. I consider that to be far too expensive. I played all the way to Dragonspire in one month for $6.95 and then stopped. How much would that have cost in a “lifetime” purchase of each zone, and how often in my lifetime, or the game’s, would Ihave gone back and used that content?
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:20 pm
So Darren how much would you spend on the horse? They have to make money some how, so charging for mounts seems like a good way to make some cash. So how much would you pay?
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:00 pm
$10-$25 is about half what mounts cost in Perfect World. And RoM is constantly updating there game. Like ^^^^ said, to be able to choose what content you pay for and when, is a very nice alternative to $15/mo for a game you may only play for 5hrs one month.
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:35 pm
This game is probably the most fair micro-transaction game on the market. Anything in shop only speeds up gameplay for you.
I have been a non-cs user for my entire 3+ months playing the game. I will eventually spend, and the first thing I will get “is” a horse.
You’ll have it forever and ever, and use it ALL the time to get around. You aren’t even attempting to draw a “fairness” comparison are you?
Simply on the basis of the world’s real markets and currencies and cost of things, and compared to other f2p games and what you pay for items.
It sounds pretty reasonable to me, for a mount you’ll have forever, and can get regardless of level or any other restrictions, and it speeds you up 60%
After even a month of gameplay, let’s see how players feel about it’s worth, after having them walk on foot everywhere for that period of time, or what about 3 months?
On top of that, you can still rent a horse with in-game gold. So if you think paying is not worth it, just rent the horse in-game.
July 4th, 2009 at 12:23 am
“A horse! A horse! My Kingdom for a horse!”
“Just ten bucks to you, guv. Paypal will do fine.”
I think perhaps the real issue here is that we don’t really see F2P games as games of substance, as games that are as serious as triple A sub-based MMOs. $10 for a horse in WoW would have been fine, $10 for a horse in some F2P WoW clone that you won’t be playing next month is a rip-off.
So how are F2P games going to make money on microtransactions. I believe someone on SUWT said very wisely that they’re not micro enough. Would you have paid $10 if it had been 2 dollars for the horse, fifty cents for each shoe, a dollar fifty for stabling etc etc. Possibly it might make it easier to swallow.
There may be an issue with transactions that small though, if there is a minimum fee per transaction imposed by the bank or payment service.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:55 am
Pay $10 one-time for that horse, or pay $15 every month for that horse, and the rest of the content.
RMT usually means you’ll always own it from then on, while subscription means you have to keep forking over the money to keep playing.
Each has it’s pro’s and con’s, but times are changing, because subscription is just too limiting, keeps players locked into one or two MMO’s. If others want a piece of the pie, they have to do it with RMT.
So get used to RMT, because no game is going to hit WoW numbers with a $15 subscription. Only chance they have to lure a huge audience is RMT. And it is working.
July 4th, 2009 at 3:25 am
Personally I loath micro transactions, RMT and the whole thing. I’ll stay the F away from it as long as is possible. The words “slippery slope” comes to mind. You all know where the slippery slope ends? Down there, in the muck.
July 4th, 2009 at 8:49 am
So I pay $10 to get a horse I can use immediately (assuming no level restriction) or I pay $15 to play for one month at the end of which I can finally get a horse in a different pricing model. Oh wait I forgot to add in the initial $50 (being generous) purchase price of the second pricing model. Which would I choose…
Sure an RMT company could go down a slippery slope but it is to their best interest to find a pricing scheme that keeps their customers happy and paying but while still making a profit.
RMT is the future, I have been saying this for years. Sure there will be a place for subscription games, perhaps even in games that also offer RMT, but the flexibility of an RMT scheme is just too beneficial to company and customer alike.
July 4th, 2009 at 9:54 am
To echo what some of the other commentors have said, RoM is a free to play game. You haven’t paid anything for the privilege of trying the game and you haven’t committed yourself to it via subscriptions. A ten dollar horse seems outlandish only if you disregard the other content that you enjoy for free. Sure a horse seems paltry next to Fallout DLC or a new Fable II island. Yet, RoM presumably has more content than either of those titles on offer for free whereas you might have paid sixty dollars for each of those single player experiences. They have monetize their game somewhere and if a horse isn’t a good value proposition to you, take your eyes and wallet elsewhere.
July 4th, 2009 at 10:25 am
The economy is this: in microtransaction model, you are free to join and play the game. But if you want to get some benefits, you can buy those with money. The point is perceived value: for a person not playing that game, any items/services in that game are absolutely worthless. But for a person playing the game, you witness the difference between paying and not paying, and you keep seeing the “payers” for as long as you and them are in game. Unless you walk away from the game, the value will persists. And when you start spending, and the game is smartly made, you will see more and more ways to use money to get ahead in the game.
Microtransation games depends on their modeling, a good model can keep people so hooked they end up spending more than $15 a month. In fact, there are stories of people spending thousands on a game. Also, the barrier of entry is so low, even minors can afford them. The end result is that these games are actually more profitable than subscription based games, and many mmo makers are listed company earning millions in net profit. Thus, this model is spreading everywhere.
You can get angry over this kind of things, but it is a tide that can’t be pushed back; this is where the profits are for non-blizzard companies, and you can bet they will go further and further in pursue of profits. Don’t think anyone can withstand this tide for long. It’s better to either accept this or move away from the genre completely.
July 4th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
You can’t put a price on it by comparing it. Because everyone puts a different value on the things you are comparing.
If you first agree that 15$ a month is worth it for WoW and everything in it, meaning you’d have nothing but glorious happy fun time things to say about every second of your life spent in that game and any time, then you could also agree, that 15$ is worth a “XXX” in a game like RoM for 1 month 5 days.
It will always fail looking at it like that.
Things that effect this?:
People have different skill levels
player a take 3 hrs to complete first 10 quests, while the next 11 million ppl all take different amounts of time for those same quests While some don’t even do them all before going fishing for 2 days then returning.
There are BILLIONS of variables that affect the argument based on a comparison of your dollars worth. So much so, that it makes arguing it from that standpoint illogical and false.
Firstly, you should not care what anyone else feels about the worth of something. If you feel it is worth it, then do it, if not, don’t.
It’s like ppl putting too much stock in the latest fashions.
When you get down to it, everyone would like everything for free, or maybe even get paid for playing. So that makes it even hard to judge whether any community of players is trying to simply make the market “more fair”. There is no base line.
The base line now, is what the games ARE charging. All of them. That’s the true equalizer. You wouldn’t be handing over your money if you thought it was unfair, period.
So the current conclusion is that the current market prices across the board for all f2p MMO’s is fair, based on their success and continued operation.
July 5th, 2009 at 5:35 am
It’s a slippery slope with RMT. I don’t have a problem buying vanity items etc so long as they can also be found in game but if the issue is that it allows the developers to play god. It’s very scary thinking that they could introducing some nice new items and only make them available via real cash. Suddenly we’re paying for everything and our $15 fee has become $50 a month.
July 5th, 2009 at 6:12 am
The problem is your not hooked on RoM. This has been my problem with the whole RMT from the start. Its no different than gambling. Once you get hooked on a game like RoM and feel you HAVE to HAVE something, you’ll fork over the cash. The probably is you see $10.00 for a horse, but lets say the horse was $3.00. Then it was $1.00 for a riding blanket, then $2.00 for a saddle, then $2.00 for a bridal. Then in order to ride it, you had to have riding clothes that cost $2.00. So when your all done the horse cost, well, $10.00. At least they came right out and said $10.00 instead of what I would have expected which was nickel and diming you to death.
And this is the future of gaming?
July 6th, 2009 at 1:44 am
[...] Wilhelm2451 in Misc MMOs, World of Warcraft, entertainment. Tags: RMT, Runes of Magic trackback Darren’s post about the Runes of Magic $10 horse certainly echoed through the local [...]
July 6th, 2009 at 8:54 am
[...] Sense Gamer, is peeved about being asked to pay ten bucks for a horse in Runes of Magic. He’d prefer to pay for new content — like new quests and dungeons — than pay for cosmetic or game-tweaking [...]
July 6th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Eh, worth is in the eyes of the beholder. For someone who doesn’t play Fallout 3, a DLC that delivers content (in the form of new maps, enemies, experience points and actual emotional experiences) is worth none of their money. For someone who does play RoM, the same horse might well improve the quality of their play experience through convenience, prestige, or what-have-you to the point they feel it’s worth it.
For someone who plays both, and has a limited amount of $10 to spend, then weighing up the comparative options might become important. For others, they may very well choose to pay for both things if they have the spare cash or feel they benefit from both.
Relative/comparative worth is only important to some people. When City of Heroes started their microtransaction costume packs, I personally was against the wedding pack because it didn’t offer enough bang for the buck. Couple of costumes, some wedding emotes, that’s it for $9.99. Others happily plonked down the money because they were going to use the wedding costumes super-often. The company was listening to the feedback though, because subsequent costume packs tucked in a fancy long-recharge nifty-looking (but only moderately useful) power to sweeten the deal. With that, it became worthwhile enough for purchase for another subset of people (including me.) Others might very well still be holding out until whatever they value (maps? enemies?) show up, if ever.
To me, as much as I can see measuring up comparative monthly subscriptions against the overall experience of each MMO, or weighing how much $9.99 is worth for each City of Heroes bonus pack as reasonable, stretching the comparison across games might be taking it too far. Then again, some folks do like to measure how much a book or movie costs, how long it lasts you, and then compare the monthly subscription of an MMO and feel cozy about how much value they’re getting out of that MMO. YMMV.
RMT and slippery slopes are a very valid concern. I’d suggest that the player has to decide very carefully which companies to support, because some will be out to nickel-and-dime you to death, capitalizing on addiction and greed to keep the player paying for their self-esteem/ego hit. Some walk the line quite carefully. Some will not even get on the slope at all (but lose out on a way to gain capital as a result. Hope their other pricing schemes will support them.)
Ultimately, you as the consumer choose where to put your dollars. Companies will adjust their pricing scheme dependent on this, if enough people agree with you to skew the statistics. That’s why no one charges $100 because they know fewer players will put down a sum like that at once. $10 is small enough for most people to shrug.
$10USD is slightly more for me because of currency exchange, so I personally do more cost-value analysis and comparison shopping. Others may not want to spend the time or mental energy weighing up the decision. That doesn’t matter to me. I will choose not to play a game where the playing field becomes too skewed against the have-$$$ and the have-nots, or where the reminders-to-pay/bonuses to paying customers become too obnoxious. (*cough* Dungeon Keepers *cough*)
Plenty of other games out there.
July 7th, 2009 at 3:51 am
[...] note: If people thought 10 USD for a horse in Runes of Magic was bad, isn’t 18k gold worth a hell of a lot more than 10 USD for a mount that doesn’t [...]
September 29th, 2009 at 2:36 am
After reading the various comments here, one thing I didn’t see:
If someone wanted to play the F2P ‘Runes of Magic’ and pay $15 per month – the same that WOW costs, they could choose to buy whatever they wanted and spend the same as they would if they had a subscription to WOW. After I had gotten in the game, I decided ‘I think I’m going to be able to play this for at least 3-4 months. I plunked down $50 (they had a good deal with diamonds if you bought $50 worth – aren’t they clever) and said “So long as I get about 3 months and a week of enjoyment out of this (and don’t buy extra diamonds) I’m paying the same as I would for a WOW subscription. The thing that got me to do that – bag and bank space. Needed more. I could have gotten by on what they gave, but I wanted more. I rented extra space and paid up for six months in advance. For what I got, that was about $25. I figured the enjoyment I would get out of NOT needing to go to the shops to sell frequently would be worth that.
Just as other people’s enjoyment they get with a horse; but that’s a one time buy not a rental.
In conclusion, I think the micro-exchange model is a good one. I don’t like how some companies (DDO comes to mind) are doing it – (pay to get in this dungeon!) but I do like what I’ve seen in ROM thus far (pay if you want extra nifty things you can probably live without but these will make you happier). One of my favorite things about the F2P games is that I don’t have to slap down $50 for the box of the game (with one free month subscription) to find out it is a pile of crap.
Logan Horsford
Heroic Cthulhu podcast
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