This is a train of thought that got started from little IM/Skype convo that I had yesterday…so most credit goes to said person for putting this, before today, forgotten point in my head. You know who you are 
The thought: will Mythic break the $14.99 price point for Warhammer? Excellent question and think I recall Marc Jacobs floating this idea a while ago?and the reaction was not positive. This is not breaking NDA by any stretch, but we all know that the only real innovations that WAR is bringing to the table are public quests and RvR (…and PvE tie-ins to RvR…). I’m sure there are other features in there that Mythic can point to, but if we take those two as the main bullet points, can they justify a, say $19.99 price point?
I’m thinking the answer is ‘no’. I don’t think, beyond micro transactions, that any MMO company can really justify asking for more than $14.99/month….in North America at least. The market has been holding steady on the 14.99 point for quite a while now. With some MMOs either going free (Guild Wars), or even reducing their monthly fees (LOTRO), I would think that most of us as customers would just give a collective “wtf” at a price increase for two just bullet point features.
Bigger question is: even if Mythic did raise the monthly price, would we just bend over and pay it anyway because we’ve been hyped to for the last 2 years and we just can’t resist? After all, people bought the iPhone, and that is a whole bunch of dumb-ass stupidity there.
D out.
P.S. I’m serious…Public Quests…ummmm…/prrrrrrrrrrr
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July 29th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I dont think the game so far warrants paying more than the price we have gotten used to. I am having to lay off the beta now because I just cant do the low end stuff anymore. I found myself getting a little burned out, and the other segment of the test is not up my alley at this time. Not breaking NDA though!
July 29th, 2008 at 11:58 am
D, let’s try to get some play time in here before too long in WAR. I’ll holler.
July 29th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
It’s funny actually. Most of the country’s most succesful consumer product businesses from Kellogg’s to Google are either founded on the idea of free products, or were significantly aided by packaging their product with free tie-ins. I wouldn’t be surprised if more and more MMOGs go the free route in the US and EU as we go.
July 29th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Oh, and indeed PQ’s are purr-inducing.
July 29th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Well, I didn’t think EverQuest would go beyond $9.99 a month, nor did I think PlanetSide deserved more than it was getting (was it $12.99 before Station Access went up to a penny more than two subscriptions combined?), but now both are $14.99. You can argue that, after WoW, $14.99 is kind of the standard and so why shouldn’t they rise to that level, but then that brings into question what drives subscription pricing: Game quality or industry pricing?
If it is game quality, then a couple SOE titles are over-priced, but WAR might be able to make the case that they are worth more.
If everybody merely feels constricted by the industry pricing norm, then WAR will have a tough time selling itself as being worth more per month than any other subscription MMO title. (I cannot think of any title charging more than $14.99 a month.)
July 29th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
No, from me. I’m barely hanging on to being subscribed to MMOs, if it ended up being more than that a month it would probably give me that one little push needed for me to drop MMOs completely.
July 29th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
an extra buck on top of the usual monthly fee would probably be ok but to be honest anything more than that and really be thinking if its worth it, public quests or not …..
July 29th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Most of the EU are paying more than $14.99 per month
In the UK the normal price = ?9 per month …about $18 ish
In mainland Europe it’s – 15 Euros which is about $23
However Conan and DDO (two I know of) are ?9 +TAX about ?10.50 / $21 ish
and EVE (as you can only pay in EUROs) is about 15 Euros / ?12 / $23 ish
I hope they stick to the WOW / LOTRO price of ?9
anything above ?10 has me really thinking about the monthly cost.
July 29th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I’d push it. I would go $18.99/mo or $45 for 3mo. Then in my marketing literature I would say “as low as $15 month.” If someone is willing to pay three months in advance, it’s still the same old $15/mo. If not, then I get an extra $4 per month. The $18.99 price point is also misleading because it “appears” to be a $3 increase at a quick glance if you are thinking $15, but it is actually far closer to $4 more.
The strategy is sound because the fan boi players will all come to your defense and just say “just pay for it in 3 months chunks, noobs!”
July 29th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
$14.99 is still a steal to me compared to how much enjoyment I get out of an MMO monthly. We could throw numbers around all day, like comparing it to going to see a single movie, etc.
Every MMO I’ve played for any amount of time I would have gladly paid $20 monthly for and in some cases I did have multiple accounts. Actually, WoW was the first game I did not have multiple accounts in.
July 29th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I can’t say I wouldn’t pay it, but I’d be pretty annoyed about it. They say DAOC is still profitable and what do they charge per month? $9.99? $12.99? $14.99? I can’t recall to be honest but one thing is for sure, they don’t have many people subscribed to that game, and for it to be still paying the bills, it seems pretty lucrative.
Then again, I think they made the game for $3.1M and WAR is upwards of $40-60M+ right? The profit margin on DAOC at 250k subscribers (in its heyday) is probably a lot better!
July 29th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Anything over the standard $14.99 a month will have people looking extra-hard at whether to hit that subscribe button at the end of their free month. I’m not saying whether or not it’s worth it… as I’m not in beta (grrr) I can’t say one way or the other.
As it is, I’m probably going to have to drop one of my current subscriptions. I can’t really justify paying for more than 3 games (LOTRO and Station Access at present).
Now, if they offer a multi-Access WAR/DAOC subscription, I might be tempted to cough up an extra $4 or $5 bucks a month just for the nostalgia factor.
As more studios add more MMO offerings to their lineup, I’m hoping the Access model becomes more common. I wish Turbine would offer one.
July 29th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
They’ve already come right out and said that WAR will not cost any more than the MMORPGS currently on the market.
Which is a good thing because I would not pay more.
July 29th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
It better cost 10 euros a month. Im not going to stand paying more for less service this time..
July 29th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I would love to find out how the public quests are any different from the quests in Alterac Valley in WoW. Not knocking the game, I just don’t see how it’s “innovative” if somebody already did the everyone collect wolf pelts thing.
July 29th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Take a look at subscriptions rates for some games in South Korea and Japan – they are in the range of 30-35 dollars/month. But in these cases they also have other payment options, e.g. hourly rates also.
I do not see a problem with any MMORPG game company putting a different price tag, higher or lower. I do not see it as much money in terms of entertainment services.
Higher monthly fees would probably make people to decide more quickly when it is time to quit the game though. What they need add is more payment options (e.g. subscription, hourly rate, family accounts, multi-game deals etc) to give people more incentive to stick around in some form rather than just quit.
July 29th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Sente, their culture differes a lot from ours so it’s not a good comparison. Some of these things we do for entertainment are, just about, national sports. Also consider some of the other ‘entertainment’ industries they have in their culture. ><
July 29th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
If they were smart they would make the monthly subscription cost ever so slightly less than WoW. It would act as an extra incentive (to the already long list) and assist in pulling some of MMO population away from WoW.
July 30th, 2008 at 7:03 am
I could personally pay more, up to $19.99 doesn’t sound unreasonable– but– I think if they want a significant portion of WoW’s market, they have to go with WoW’s pricepoint. Don’t they want curious players to hop over? Don’t give people an extra excuse to stick with what they have.
Certainly a lot of folks seem to think $14.99 is expensive. I could roll my eyes at this one, I know it sounds like one of those “back in my day” but it wasn’t that long ago that I gaped at my visa bill after paying ~hourly~ rates to play Federation & Air Warrior on GEnie.
These games are a bargain for a month’s worth of entertainment. Just so long as they’re entertaining.
July 30th, 2008 at 8:46 am
If we look at LOTRO and the lower cost of the monthly due to the 3 month deal (9.99), we can also note there is not much overhead there. Small bandwidth being used due to the small population. Heavy instanced single servers, not much server side due to the small amount of database work needed.
But, with WAR it could be considerably more manpower and horsepower and bandwidth due to RvR and the PQ system.
Sid67 has a good plan though to compensate.
Give people a deal if they go for 3 months (even making it say 13.99 to beat that other games monthly that kinda looks like WAR or that WAR kinda looks like)
Then everyone wins.
July 30th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Nope. After 3 years of waiting for the next thing i’m not paying a penny more for any game. I want to try out war it sounds good so far but the only way i’d pay a higher monthly fee is if the game client is free.
July 30th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Oh yeah Rog, I’m with you on memory lane on paying $5 an hour for Air Warrior and Stellar Emperor on GEnie. But back in those days a huge chunk of my income was not tasked for things like a mortgage, multiple car payments, all the insurance you some how accumulate, and so on. So I would play at $20 a month if it was fun and friends were playing, but I cancel accounts pretty quickly when I am not playing as well.
@Keen: As of this moment, the FAQ on the WarHammer site says:
“Warhammer Online will require subscription fees that are competitive with current titles. Currently we’re in the planning phase of billing, and we’re looking into various options including game cards and different subscription levels, but no final decisions about payment plans or options have been made at this time.”
I am going to take the FAQ as definitive in the absence of something else, and while you can read “competitive” as “$14.99,” I don’t trust prices that aren’t in numbers. Is there some place on the WAR site that says “same as WoW” or $14.99?
July 31st, 2008 at 7:10 am
I really want to play this game, but not if the cost will be more than any other MMO. I don’t see it happening. $14.99 is a good price break and I don’t think you can justify, especially on a yet unproven game, that having two unique features can make up the difference in price. I just don’t see it, if anything they may make the price lower to be competitive with WoW. Realistically, that to me would be the way to go, especially if you want to grab a large portion of their audience and pull them into your camp, which I think is the reasoning behind the low price in LOTRO.
August 15th, 2008 at 4:32 am
Wisest quote I ever heard, “it doesn’t matter how much something cost to make, or what the aggregate value of it’s parts and concepts are. It’s still worth exactly as much as someone is willing to pay for it.”
Sometimes that kind of sucks, especially when for the price of a movie from the cheap shelf you can get 20-30 hours of entertainment, but nobody is willing to pay the price of a movie from the new releases shelf. But, you can’t really blame people for wanting to pay what they are comfortable with. EA just has to figure out, are enough people willing to pay $14.99 to make up for the number of people willing to pay $19.99? And there again, are they willing to risk being wrong?