Those who play MMORPG's know that most MMORPG's require a monthly fee to play. This is usually 14,99$ USD a month (although some games drop down to 12,99$ a month, and a rare few to 7,99$ a month)
This is basicly how its been since the 2nd generation MMORPG's launched. the first generation AOL MMORPG's, with Never winter nights being the most well known (Not to be confused with the Never winter nights released by Bioware a few years back) used a pay per hour system.
However, this is slowly changing. More and more MMORPG's decide to go for a so called "Item shop" payment system. The game is free to download and free to play. Players can buy special ingame items to enhance the gameplay, such as better equipment or potions. in some games, only "fancy" things can be bought in the item shop, which have no influence on the game.
All of those MMORPG's come from Korea, where this payment system is very popular. In many cases, Item shop MMORPG's are doing better then MMORPG's using a monthly fee (Or an extra fee on top of the internet usage fee in internet cafe's).
While it is not as popular in western countries as in Asia, We do see more and more MMORPG players play item shop MMORPG's.Games like Flyff (Fly for fun), Maple story and Silkroad online are doing very well. in fact, all of Silkroad's servers are full any time of the day, and its in the top 10 most played games on Xfire.com . Obviously, a lot of those players have no intention to buy anything from the item shops, playing the game fully free.
Yet here in the west, we still see many people who prefer a monthly fee over an item shops. reasons for this are:
- Many believe trading ingame items for real money will result to unfair gameplay
- A lack of a monthly fee often leads to an immature community.
- Most Western MMORPG players prefer diffrent gameplay then our fellow Korean MMORPG gamers, and all of those MMORPG's are based for a korean audience, not a western.
And what I think is the most important reason, The free to play MMORPG's that come from asia are most of the time low quality titles often made with a limited budget.
This, however, is not the case with Korea. Korea actually has quite a few quality item shop titles. such as ArchLord, RF Online, R.O.S.E (three titles which still charge a monthly fee in the west), and the soon to be released SUN (Soul of the ultimate Nation)
While we have received nothing but item shop junk games from korea ( to say it boldly), It seems that a few of those quality free to play titles are reaching the west. Most important examples are: Dekaron (Known as Two Moons here) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VldwZgGLaTo and SUN (although I am not sure if an item shop has been announced for the west, it certainly does have an item shop in the east) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh_wvLQ4ljc
One has to wonder how many people are still going to pay 15$ a month (and often 45$ for client +30$ for each expansion) when the same quality gameplay can be found for free? Even more intresting, what will mmorpg developing companies do when people start leaving the game for a free to play MMORPG?
If item shops are the future is yet to be seen, But the item shop market is certainly growing bigger and bigger.
Feel free to leave a comment in the comments section. Tips & constructive critism for my next post are also very welcome.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
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9 comments:
So you're willing to admit that Archlord is an "item shop title"? :))
j/k
I think that the main thing is that western gamers are used to a buffet/all-you-can-eat pricing system such that they think it is "fair" if you, due to your life circumstances, have the time to sink into a typical western timesink MMO and get ahead as a result of that "advantage", but it isn't fair for someone who works or studies or whatever and wants to "catch up" by "paying the difference". In other words, in the typical western gamer's mind, there is this illusory concept of "level playing field", which of course is never the case ... most Western MMOs require substantial time commitments to get ahead and keep up, and that is certainly not a level playing field. It's a mindset issue above all else, and I doubt it will change soon, but it's more mindset over rationality in my opinion
So you're willing to admit that Archlord is an "item shop title"? :))
j/k
I think that the main thing is that western gamers are used to a buffet/all-you-can-eat pricing system such that they think it is "fair" if you, due to your life circumstances, have the time to sink into a typical western timesink MMO and get ahead as a result of that "advantage", but it isn't fair for someone who works or studies or whatever and wants to "catch up" by "paying the difference". In other words, in the typical western gamer's mind, there is this illusory concept of "level playing field", which of course is never the case ... most Western MMOs require substantial time commitments to get ahead and keep up, and that is certainly not a level playing field. It's a mindset issue above all else, and I doubt it will change soon, but it's more mindset over rationality in my opinion.
You're on to something here. keep it up and you might be heard ;)
"ArchLord, RF Online, R.O.S.E"
are NOT quality mmos. They lack c/c and balance.
Ever since I quit WoW I have been MMO hopping to help cull all this free time I seem to have now.
I ran into many item shop games, and although the included gameplay didn't keep me for long, I found the new business model to be quite interesting.
From my experience with WoW, I would say maybe around 50% of the players ebayed gold in addition to paying monthly. With that in mind and the fact that the going rate for gold is actually pretty costly, I believe a western item shop game could actually be quite successful.
I understand there are concerns that this payment method will give an advantage to the people with bigger wallets, but hell, some people don't even get to play due to the monthly fee. A friend of mine from Brazil said he can't play WoW because it actually costs him something like $40 a month (not really sure) due to the currency exchange rates.
Sure, people willing to pay for virtual items have an advantage in the game, but really, it's everyone else that has the advantage here.
As long as the quality of service remains the same, sign me up for free entertainment!
I think westerner players are discriminatory. As Anonymes says, some don't get to play because of the monthly fees. Of my experiences in forums such individuals think it's either kids with no credit card or poor losers with no credit card and they don't want to see those two ingame, they diss them too. They are against game cards as well and they are persuaded the quality of the communities will go down if x MMO has game card. I'm among the poors with no credit cards and I've bought game cards and/or used PayPal for a few games, like Saga of Ryzom and City of Villains, and the communities in those games are excellent, very mature, very RP too.
The game I play right now is Guild Wars which has no monthly fee but you pay for each game that comes out in order to play the new content. Since the income comes from each campain, I have never seen a MMO like GW that is constanly updated, bugs squashed, features constantly implemented as well. Anet can't afford to sit on their asses like the other MMO companies because otherwise we might not buy the next expansion if we are not pleased. Some did not buy Nightfall because they were disapointed with Factions so now Anet has to work harder to gain back their players' trust, it shows because Factions stayed high in the chart while NF was just in the first two-three weeks of the top ten PC game seller chart.
I'm looling forward more different models like Guild Wars and those shop MMOs, I think they are slowly coming here. Just in GW per exemple you will find people from everywhere in the world playing because there is no montly fee and it is therefore more accessible.
Actually, I am not a fan of item shop games at all. I am fine with paying to support a game I liek, but I really don't like exchanging money for in game swag. It has the potential to create a tiered system I don't like, where people unwilling to spend money are left with crap and just can't compete (looks at gunbound)
In order to keep the money rolling in, they need to keep convincing people to buy, to do that, they make bonuses slowly bigger, and that never leads to good things.
Also, all the games you mentioned are asian in origin. With the success of WoW slowly seeping into other games as people hang up their elves, I think that we will see a surge in people willing to pay to play.
Also, I am not going to lie, Pay to play games really weed out a lot of the spammers and trolls.
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