Chris, I’d extend your excellent idea and make the “lifetime price” include whatever you’ve paid since account creation. Prorate it, so that at any point, you can convert to a lifetime subber and pay $200 total (or whatever) whether or not you’re new or old. (So after three months at $15/month, you’d pay $155 to convert to a lifer.) If you somehow go over the limit via monthly payments, you’re automatically converted to a lifetime subber, and never pay another dime.

It’s the Guild Wars model at that point, just at a much higher price point, and “homegrown” by how much you play, not by how much time you’ve paid for buffet access.

Of course, I’d just prefer to go the Guild Wars route, but I can see this sort of “do it yourself sub” as a happy middle ground, allowing you to test out the game before diving in.

This means that the “lifetime sub” price likely be a bit higher than the “lifetime sub” of GW (paying for convenience), but not onerously high… I’d probably peg it at $100, maybe $150 max. That’s a year of slightly discounted $15/month sub price for the consumer (playing a game for a year is fantastic by most measures), and still a fair chunk of change for the devs. If GW can keep running their servers on $30-150 per head, $100 per head would do nicely, methinketh. Especially if the insatiable graphics beast were ignored and smart business were running the engine…

I played WoW, in my prime, 60 hours a month. That worked out to .25 cents an hour.

I would play other games at the same rate, say 0.25 per hour, and have it CAP at 15.00 an hour, if I were to play it that long. Now lets use that for TR since it is a common game in this thread, that I didn’t “mind” playing – and how to incorporate a Lifetime Sub into it.

I start playing TR again, only paying 0.25 per hour. First couple of months I don’t get much of a chance to play so heck, the time I did play I still feel I got value for it.

Now, I start getting sucked in, and a couple months in a row I hit the $15.00 per month cap. Wow, this game is really working for me, its great, its fun. Woohoo.

NOW, give me the choice for a lifetime sub. Say, anytime within the first 12 months of the game, you get the option to lifetime it for the $200 bucks. At that point I have had a fair chance to evaluate how much I play it, how much I like it, and how they have improved the game.

Sounds simple. Even if TR only got $3-4 bucks from me a month, there are so many benefits. Other players see more other players. They get something from me instead of nothing. My very limited time doesn’t impact server load, etc.

The pricing problem is even more magnified in WAR, since you really need other players to have fun in that game – friends and/or enemies. Most other MMO’s these days play quite fine as single player experiences.

I just found it online for .96 cents…yup less than a buck, and I get 30 days..

May just have to create new accounts on a regular basis…lol..

Guild Wars rocks btw!

@ChrisF: that’s an interesting theory about WAR. Quite possible.

@slux and Jeromai: /concur

I liked Auto Assault. I just couldn’t justify $15 a month for it. At $10, I would have subscribed for a couple months to drive around and blow stuff up. At $5, I would probably have subscribed indefinitely.

Ditto Tabula Rasa. $10 for a while, $5 probably forever as long as I still get mileage out of it now and then. All you need is two more people who think like me, and that’s one more ‘full $15′ subscriber than you already have.

Not to mention the temptation of second accounts then.

Universal NCsoft pass. Think about it, NCsoft! Aion is coming out. I’m a hardcore CoX fan. I’d pay you a bit more to be able to play Tabula Rasa and Aion, but I’m not paying $15 each for all of them.

I might be mistaken, but didn’t Mythic offer a joint subscription offer for DAoC + Warhammer for existing subscribers?

I’m still subscribed to LOTRO because of Founder / special offer pricing. I don’t play it heavily at all, but I can rationalize away something sub-$15. Talk about easy money. I don’t tax the servers at all, but they still get $$$ from me.

Lifetime membership folks? The money is already in their wallet. For the value of around 20 Founder months. Prepaid.

Guild Wars. The ultimate in cunning pricing. No subscription. Just buy the box when you feel you need it. Take advantage of the addictive nature of multiplayer gameplay / desire for content and dangle ‘expansions’ and bonus packs or quick skillup packs in an online store. Microtransaction model done right.

As long as someone is interested, they’ll eventually buy something. And another. And another. Until their ‘collection’ is complete. The people who enjoy your game the most are the happiest to give you money.

If they’re not, no harm, no foul, they just stop. No bad feelings. Until maybe they think about trying it again. Maybe a new box that is being so highly recommended, etc.