Comments on: Why Subscription-Based MMOs Make Sense

By: No MMORPG Will Ever Beat World of Warcraft « Double Buffered

No MMORPG Will Ever Beat World of Warcraft « Double Buffered — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:26:31 +0000

[...] Korea and China have proven that other business models work, the subscription model encourages a strong community, is very attractive to piracy-fearing developers, and is what funds the massive development costs [...]

By: ravious

ravious — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:23:16 +0000

Thanks for the reply, JZig. More good information all around.

By: Subscription MMOs Encourage Good Game Design « Double Buffered

Subscription MMOs Encourage Good Game Design « Double Buffered — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:13:59 +0000

[...] Comments (RSS) « Why Subscription-Based MMOs Make Sense [...]

By: JZig

JZig — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:26:43 +0000

Ravious, ah, good point on box sales. For some reason I thought that was unique accounts and not total purchased boxes. The NC quarterly statement doesn’t give user numbers for Guild Wars (and no one else has any), so I don’t have an accurate number of active users. Your estimation of Guild Wars users puts the active number at 100k, which feels low to me, but I have absolutely nothing to back that up. From my searching, there have NEVER been any concurrent or active user numbers released for Guild Wars, so I guess I can’t say anything definitive.

What I AM familiar with, however, is the size of the live dev team for CoH issue 12 content, since much of it happened while they were still employed at Cryptic. The size of the live dev team has been VERY small since the release of CoV, and does not make a dent in the net profits of CoH. A team smaller than the CoH team would not be able to release ANYTHING. So, since dev costs are not a relevant part of the CoH profit equation, what’s left is costs such as support (which should scale linearly with users) and distribution (which should be lower for subscriptions vs. physical boxed expansions). Even assuming a similar number of active concurrent users (which unless I see numbers I don’t actually believe), the higher distribution costs and negligible dev costs of CoH means that CoH should net more than Guild Wars.

By: JZig

JZig — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:09:02 +0000

Tesh, I absolutely don’t feel that the leveling treadmill has anything to do with the subscription model (in fact CoH was kind of explicitly designed against that, to not as great success as we would have liked). It’s not really in the best interest of subscription-based games to encourage their players to play a lot of hours per month. They grind through the content faster, and quit earlier. We would LOVE it if our players played the game less, but bored college students don’t seem amenable to that suggestion

By: JZig

JZig — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:03:36 +0000

Matthew, I apparently totally forgot the actual business plan of Dungeon Runners. I remembered it as being microtransaction based, I and I should have checked on it, sorry about that. “Optional subscription” is another business plan that isn’t really well understood yet. It seems to work well for things like Runescape, but not as well for things like Dungeon Runners and Hellgate. I think it may have something to do with the “heaviness” of the client, optional subscription seems to work really well with java/light client stuff and not as well for things that feel like “real games”. No one has really figured out the right way to correctly monetize the Diablo-fan audience, especially because you have to fight against, well, Diablo.

By: Ravious

Ravious — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:38:22 +0000

Let’s set the record straight, mister. CoX did indeed gross a tad more than Guild Wars. That is about the only fact you put forward.

Guild Wars does not have 5.4 million users. They sold 5.4 million units, that’s what accounts activated means. I own 6 units for myself. A common Guild Wars players owns on average, IMHO, 3-4 units. Also, let’s assume that liberally there are 2 million Guild Wars account holders… I bet less than 5% actively play now.

In Q1, Guild Wars has put out one $10 mission pack (which many had already got for free), which they made Q4 2007. They only had minor updates and some pre-made events in Q2. CoX on the other hand put out a new major content update (Issue 12) in Q2, which was probably made Q1-Q2.

So let’s compare now. Guild Wars made $4.9 million by doing relatively nothing, and CoX made $5.5 million and provided a major content update. Who do you think net more?

By: Tesh

Tesh — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:35:49 +0000

Ross,
You’re right, that may be Blizzard specific. My point is that the leveling treadmill design is heavily influenced by (and integral to) the subscription model, and it’s that design choice that leads to dismissing the “old world” once it’s leveled through. It’s just a natural consequence of the leveling rush, especially given Blizzard’s apparent focus on the “endgame”.

By: Ross Smith

Ross Smith — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:49:01 +0000

To Tesh’s point about the sense of entitlement paying subscribers feel: there’s no obvious reason why developers couldn’t pay better attention to what the subscribers in general want instead of just a small hardcore. (Yes, I know you can’t please everybody, but you can make a creditable attempt.) It’s at least arguable that catering to the hardcore while the old world languishes is a specific mistake made by Blizzard (among others), not a problem intrinsic to the subscription business model.

By: Broken Business Models (Or Not) « Broken Toys

Broken Business Models (Or Not) « Broken Toys — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 04:24:34 +0000

[...] Blizzard makes money hand over fist. And rather more importantly, as Ben Zeigler points out in a well-written piece, NCsoft makes money hand over fist – and more last year from City of Heroes than Guild Wars. [...]