Doing Business

Is a monthly subscription going to be worth it?

Almost every MMO out on the market today has a monthly subscription that players need to pay; Warhammer Online will be no different. That being said, will it really be “worth it” for players to pay a Monthly subscription and in doing so what kind of situation will players and the game publishers be putting themselves into when they bring the almighty dollar into the equation?

As a player who is paying a monthly fee for a game, there are a few obvious and immediate things to think about. If you’re paying for a game, there will be a connection to that game, with most MMO content being released on a “patch by patch” basis or in the form of in game expansions (Mythic was renowned for expansion packs with Dark Age of Camelot), so players who pay by month likely realize they are not paying for new monthly content, but instead paying for the game itself, and the general maintenance of the game. So if you are interested in continually evolving content that is what your money will be covering, don’t expect it immediately and it may not be necessarily “free” as most MMO expansions have a decent cost to them. Mythic has already stated that there will most likely be expansions for WAR to cover new content and new races (wohooo Skaven!).

The other way of looking at players who pay a monthly fee, is like a “stock holder”, someone with a literal invested interest in the success and continual evolution of the game. This view of players being investors in the game is huge with smaller MMOs where players posting their concerns and venting their frustrations gets a little bit more credence then the ramblings of the 12 year olds on the WoW forum. If players can understand that they are a member of an evolving world and thus someone who should have a say in the direction of the game, then it usually leads to a much better community all around… if of course that player isn’t a blistering idiot who just wants his class better then every other one… ok I’m still a bit bitter over the WoW community!

From the developer standpoint, a monthly subscription allows them to continually maintain their game without need of further investments. If you have a playerbase that is paying one fifth the cost of the game itself per month, then you have a decent income in which to maintain and add new content to the game, be it in the form of expansions or the eventually required patches for things the players really want. The real problem for the developers is the implied expectation that new content will come out on a steady basis for the game, and that it will be good content. To once again pick on WoW, you should not wait for almost five months before releasing a new patch to a community that has finished all the released content.

How does this all fit into Warhammer Online? Quite obviously the Warhammer crowd is different from most, as it will be filled with those who are dedicated fans of the miniature tabletop games. For those of you who don’t know, a single box of ten models can run almost $45 (American) and in some cases higher. This means that if someone were to buy a regiment box a month, they would be paying the equivalent of buying a standard MMO in box form from the shelf. As long as the game is enjoyable, I don’t see any problems with players putting down the usual $20ish for a Monthly subscription, as it is the cost of half a box of tiny plastic models that can be assembled and painted in a few hours.

Why discuss something like a monthly subscription you ask? I for one see it being used all the time as a “crutch” for the players of most MMOs out there. A large base of players use the fact that they pay for a game to blanket themselves when they complain about how their class is “nerfed” or that no good content is being produced, or that it is only being produced for a specific audience. I for one am getting tired of this defense. If you are paying for an MMO, it should not be viewed as a right to continually complain about what you are not getting. Instead an MMO playerbase should if anything be more active in the community, trying to voice their concerns and comments about the game itself. If you really don’t like the game you’re playing and the direction it’s going in, there is no use spamming about it in public mediums, most MMOs have an easily accessible “unsubscribe” option in your account options.

As a reverse, Developers should also be aware that they are charging their players to play a game, and thus should be concerned with the status of their game, not allowing it to stagnate or simply go in one direction with no deviation based on player input. MMOs are a weird symbioses of players and developers coming together to make the game they play something that can be as enjoyable as possible. Being a fan of the Warhammer World, so far I’ve seen nothing but dedication from the Mythic staff that is intent on brining the epic world that is Warhammer into the MMO scene. Hopefully this keeps up when I start paying for the game…

If there’s one thing that “makes the world go around” it’s money. If my money is being put into a digital world, I fully expect that world to be rotating, and coming out with new things to amuse me. If an online version of Warhammer can keep my attention for longer then five minutes (the demo at E3 accomplished this already) then as long as some effort is kept in maintaining it, they can keep taking from my wallet as much as they want. Mythic’s the dealer and I’m the poor kid on the street corner who needs his fix.

-Ratboy signing off!

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