Purchase account and then subscriptions?

[liep123]

I'm a little confused how the payment for AION is going to work.

From what I can tell I need to go buy the game (49.99$) and then that gives me a serial number and 30 days play time, and AFTER that 30 days its 14.95$ per month?

Why do we need to pay 49.99 for the first 30 days? I mean normal thinking individuals will say "the first 30 days is FREE and then you pay 14.95 after that" Or at least just start off with 14.95 from the first month.

Did I get it wrong and the 49.99 is just for the option to be able to get the headstart and the players that join after sept 22 start with 14.95?

Halp please.

[Namix]

no , the price of the game is basically the price of the game .... it includes obv the cost of the cd's/ the box / the litriture along with VAT or local tax amounts and also includes the cost of shipping it to wherever you got it AND ofcourse profit.#
this is how companies make money , the way your describing it a company following those rules would be backrupt before they even made a game , the monthly charge goes towards things like server costs and paying the staff to maintain the servers for you to play on as these kinds of game dont usually get decent sale figures over long periods of times.

[Iggy_Ride]

Think of it like you're buying a whole game. Sure you can download it, but that registration key/serial code/CD key is the important bit. That's your license to play the game. No PC or console game do you actually "buy" you only buy the license to play them. Even in the old days when you would buy a game on disk and there was no download you were only buying a license for it. That is how companies realized all they needed to do was sell a license, then have the game available for download. Since that realization services have cropped up like Impulse, Steam, Direct2Drive, and EA's Online Store, as well as NCsoft's own NC store.

That first month you buy the license to play the game. The agreement that you accept by installing the game says that you are willing to pay however much NCsoft deems appropriate for continued online service (patches, server hosting, etc). That is what the subscription, the $15 (rounded up) a month is for.

CD keys only cropped up when CD burning and ripping became more prevalent. This was the first line of defense for protecting your game from Pirates. Pirates took the content, stripped it of any Download Rights Management (DRM) and released it to the world for free, causing game companies to receive less profit. CD keys are usually unique to the copy of the game you buy anymore. Later on came Online Registration and services like SecuROM which were anti-copy protection services to make sure noone could rip the game or play it without the disc in the drive. Eventually these were cracked and so piracy still exists today. When Direct Download or Digital Distribution became more prevalent they added an online registration process to the downloads, as well as activly running authentication and DRM. Steam is a great example of this. Steam itself (the client) is DRM. It is the best, least intrusive, DRM I've seen yet, but it is DRM.

I know I pretty much overkilled it, but in short:

Month 1 ($50 or $60) you are paying for the game
Months 2-n ($15) you are paying for extended service, Server hosting by NC soft, patches, maintenance, and more content.

[liep123]

I don't want a DVD case and a piece of pretty paper, i just want to pay 14.95 and get a email that sais "thnx for your money, here is some letters to type on our website so you can play" -at least thats how my old pay to play game used to work

Lets see some other examples:
WOW, online retail 20$ and then 15$/month (still initial payment but its only 5$ more not 35$) [10day free trial!!!!!]
Pirates of the Caribbean Online: Free download, 9.99/month [no free trial, but no retail]
EVE: Retail Price:$29.99, and then 14.95/month [14day free trial]
Ragnarok online: Free download, free limited play, 12$/month for all features

So to come back to your original post, you said that online game companies that allow their clients a cheap or free first period to try out their games would quote "would be backrupt before they even made a game"
I say thats pretty far from the truth, asking me to pay 50$ just to get to see what the game is like is seriously messed up in the head.

The first hit should always be free, if your product is properly addictive/good we'll pay for the rest.

[MaelstromOC]

Haha, you think WoW was only 20 dollars in the beginning? Also, have fun running around in only the original two continents in that game and with the old level caps without buying the expansions.

You're initial purchase is buying the GAME (i.e. all created content, characters, items, etc) that the company has had to spend tons of money to produce and create. It's an online only game and the additional charge per month is for access to a network that they maintain, additional content that is constantly added, fixes and whatnot with the patches, etc. This game isn't simply turned on and there you go, there's a good deal of maintenance that goes into all of it.

Expecting a company to give a game away is simply retarded, I'm sorry.

[Iggy_Ride]

And guess how much WoW was at release? yep you guessed it, $50 same as Aion. Besides every expansion you have to upgrade your account with for. You don't get Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King just by buying the original World of Warcraft.

you forget, POTC online? really? REALLY? you're surprised you don't have to pay much for it? it's not a well made game, it is a movie-game tie in, that should tell you something right off. It's got to have that $10/month just to barely stay afloat, how big is the playerbase? really?

EVE $30 vs $50 $20 difference. Different company, different pay model, besides EVE isn't as big a name as NCsoft or Blizzard, heck I don't even know EVE's developer!

Ragnarok: again, free main game, very limited, not very good quality. Not very great content.

Now, I hate to be cliche, but you get what you pay for.

Also, Aion doesn't have a free trial right now because it's BRAND SPANKIN NEW to western markets! You don't hear about a game getting a free trial like this right off the bat. I'll bet you within a year, maybe two, there will be a 7 day free trial, just like for Guild Wars, or City of Heroes.

[Namix]

I think NCSoft assume you may do a little research before you "just go out and buy the game" , i was saying that IF a company made a game and just let you pay a subcription for it of 15 dollars right from day one they would forever be in debt... and therefore go bankrupt. The costs of making a game like Aion are pretty big and unlike with most FPS games for example, the cost is CONTINUOUS (with server hosting,mantenance and development). Its a matter of facts a figures NCSoft could not afford to do what you said and still be in business for long. Honestly comparing the prices to games that have been out for a while is pointless , + WoW has had how many updates/expansions???? i bet they werent free were they. NCSoft did updates/expansions with lineage 2 (chronicle 1-2-3-4 etc) at no cost to the people playing (i dont know what they will do with aion tho).

This is a bit of a random discussion tbh , the simple answer is if your not happy with the way NCSoft charge you then don't play / buy the game, other than that tho it seems you really do not grasp the ways of the world and business, all i can hope is someday you will

[Thaqui]

The cost of buy the MMO box usually decreases drastically over time, depending on how popular it was. Age of Conan was $50 at release, dropped down to $20 very quickly. WoW was also $50 on release. Now it's $20 for the base game, $30 for Burning Crusade and $35 for Wrath. Any way you look at it, Aion isn't new in requiring you to buy the box.

[liep123]

@Maelstrom

No one is giving anything away and you will never own the game, all you pay for is a license to make use of a NCSoft service.

@Iggy, it does'nt matter what the playerbase is or how "good" a game is the concept is global.

These arguments of "they have to earn the money to cover the development costs" its complete nonsense. One year from now how much money do you think they made from the 11months of 14.95's? (164.45)
So your argument is that they spent lots of money to develop a game, and the "best" way to get the money back for the development is to earn 50$ per person VS 164.45$ per person?
And how many people do you think are going to say "I don't want to pay 50$ just to get to see what its like"

I completely understand that if you pre-order now you get to reserve your char name etc - thats a value added service that would be worth the 35$ extra for some. But jeez is it so much to ask to give the rest of us with not so much money and more patience a "normal" price?
I'd really like to play this game and so does a few of my friends, but it just hurts that they expect me to pay that kinda money before I'm allowed to pay a normal fee.
You talk about "you get what you pay for" I've been around the block with plenty of MMO's, AION isnt exactly the next best thing since sliced bread, sure its not total poop either. I'd really like to see the 50$ thing vanish after the first month of live servers at least.

[Iggy_Ride]

Not going to happen. All NCsoft games have gone this route (save Guild Wars, but that's different) City of Heroes? you had to pay for the full game, then pay monthly LineageII? same deal.

The game WILL eventually have a free trial, but not in the beginning. A demo for single player is on thing with a FPS or other game, but on a MMO, since every player is on the servers it's different. NC isn't going to want to let three times as many players get on the servers that first week as the amount that bought the game just so people could "try before they buy" most likely that huge number would lag servers and cause general problems. That would not be a very good buisness idea would it? put off half your paying playerbase as well as all the people with free trials? no way!

On the subject of payment, it's all how you figure it. If you were in NC's shoes and you stood to make a $35 extra per person buying the game, would you give that up? You're putting that whole cost into the first month, think then of how long you'll play the game. let's say six months. $35 devied by 6 is about 6. So it's like you're paying only $20/month instead of paying $50 the first month then $15/month after that. What if you end up liking it and playing for a year? then it's $3/month extra. 2 years? $1.5 a month. the longer you play the less that initial investment becomes important.

If I was a game devleoper I would put the argument like this:

Side 1) I let people have a month free, overload my servers at release, and have to pay a larger startup costs for sending out the CDs to those who don't want to or can't download the 15 gb client. I also have to spend money on initial advertisement so that I can hook a significant amount of players to support my employees, the men and women who develop the game, the bills for the bandwidth on the servers, keeping the servers up, supporting my own family, and, hopefully, enough to develop more good content for the game. But I want to give this away for free... But now I have to make people play because the server problems made running the game harder and chased away some of my normal already paying customers!

Side 2) I Don't let people have a free month, I stroke and keep my current customers happy by not destroying the servers with such a shock right away, I still have to pay all my bills, but now, I can overcome the first shock, my servers are intact and cost less to maintain because they don't need resets, fixes, etc. The people are paying for the discs if they can't download the client, the people who download the client are nearly direct revenue, meaning I can use that money to advertise and get MORE new accounts! All is well

[Namix]

180 54000000 13500000

If 300,000 people buy the game and then play for a year NCSoft will make ruffly , 67,500,000.

From that money you have to deduct: Production and Development Costs , Advertising , Staff Payment , Tax , Import/export Costs , Server Building and mantainance , datacentre rack space , bandwitch cost , power cost , legal fees , Sale agreements and partner costs. I cant think of any more but im sure there are loads more.

It might seem alot of cash but once you take out all those deductions your left with Profit probably but not as much as your thinking AND there wont be 300,000 people playing it for an entire year or even buying the game.

For server costs heres a benchmark for you : a 11 man Counterstrike Source server costs around £150 a year to host (its not even a top of the line server), an Aion server hosts at least 300 times as many people and has to handle more data than a source server would, so the cost for just one aion server would be massive.

[liep123]

You're arguments makes 100% sense of this game was developed by "unknown mmo productions inc with a limited budget"

NCSoft is not a poor company and neither does it lack experience, they've been in the business for ages and certainly don't have money problems. Also very few companies use their own servers, everyone knows you rent servers and bandwidth from the pro's. There are companies that specialize in that - why re-invent the wheel. Its very typical for new games to get some extra bandwidth for the first few months until things settle down.

Look I'm not trying to say "bah ncsoft u greedy ho's I hate yoo and wont buy ur game"

I understand the retail DVD's are great to save people from the huge download, and I think its great there is a collectors ed. with a little bonus or even the pre-order name reservation thing. All I'm suggesting is, once the first month is done and things have settled down a little give the rest of us the option to buy the game online for 20$ or w/e and use the 5$ as a "activation fee".
To much to ask?

[Namix]

yup it is NO COMPANY WOULD EVER MAKE A NEW PRODUCT THEN WITHIN A MONTH REDUCE THE PRICE BY 50%.

thats like BMW making a brand new car and for the first month its price is 80,000 then after 30 days reducing it to 40,000 , it just isnt going to happen because its bad business. Im not saying that i dont want it to happen because we would all love the world to work that way but unfortunately is doesnt.

[Thaqui]

The other reason to have a requirement to buy the game outright is to stop gold farmers from having an unlimited amount of accounts. The alternative I think would be requiring a $45 purchase for the game and giving 3 months of playtime.

But there is a good reason to have the original box cost $50 from a business point of view: if the game bombs, like Warhammer Online or Age of Conan, the company has the box sales to offset their loss when the subscription numbers drop.

[liep123]

I'd be happy even with just 60 days playtime with the 50$ purchase.

I guess I'm the only poor person on these forums though *sulk*