Beauty of Micro-transaction MMO’s

Taken from Florensia OnlineThere is room to grow in the world of massive multiplayer online gaming. A large online community should not have to subscribe to a monthly charge to play great MMORPG’s because there are other known models that work, including the micro-transaction based MMO.

At first, this sounds like a dirty word, micro-transaction. Often we relate it with being “nickle and dimed” through a video game by means of dirty marketing which feeds our enthusiastic gamer addiction. Put this thought aside for a minute and keep an open mind.

Imagine a game with worlds the size of World of Warcraft and stories as in-depth as Guild Wars (which is not monthly itself) but free from monthly payments (or “playments” a new term that needs to be coined). The reason behind the monthly charge covers service fees, technical support staff, bandwidth, servers and sheer volume of Activision Blizzards user base.

The micro-transaction concept could still help pay for all the overhead of running an online gaming business because gamers tend to be over-enthusiastic about their great addictive games. If you build a game with excellent content, replay value and strive for a community atmosphere a micro-transaction title can work just as well as a subscription based game.

One beautiful aspect to micro-transaction models is paying for content when you’re willing to pay. This includes cosmetic character alterations, basic needs items (health potions) and other products to enhance the playability of the game without requiring the gamer to do so. There will be some gamers that use this as a “free ride” and never buy anything while other gamers spend way too much because they have expendable income which helps balance out costs.

The trick to a micro-transaction game balance is allowing players to enhance their experience without taking away or crippling their game to force a micro-transaction. You do not need a “fire enchantment” which causes a bit more damage and looks really cool, but it can make your character look more sinister and provide slight benefits to battle.

Wouldn’t this make the rich more powerful than those without a lot of cash? It might might them moderately more powerful and definitely more pretty to look at, but it also allows players who would never be able to experience any of the game a chance to play. In some ways, the level ground is already broken in MMO’s like World of Warcraft based purely on game experience… a player who’s been playing for three years and has a level 70 character will dominate a person with casual gaming habits. Nothing in the world is fair, at least this gives lower level characters a chance to spend some cash to get their character on par when they’ve not got time to work through the game with hours of time investements.

A player that can’t play World of Warcraft but would love to play the hot game is worse off than having battled someone with a better ring, more options and a lightening staff. At least gamers with small budgets can have a massive multiplayer experience without having to foot the bill for a monthly subscription.

There is a time and place for subscription and micro-transaction style games, it might be time to try a micro-transaction system in the United States to help compete against the World of Warcraft addiction. The trick will be to provide users with a great game play experience, higher end graphics, professions, side-quests and storylines with many possibilities.

Try a micro-transaction title today, checkout Florensia Online and Silk Road Online.

0 thoughts on “Beauty of Micro-transaction MMO’s”

  1. sure micro-transactions are fine if the people who spent shit loads only played a bit, but the majority of people who spend real money on in-game items are old people, who are retired or in college and play 24/7. The best type of game is one like Guild wars with no monthly fee and no sale of in-game items, because otherwise old people who shouldn’t be on games just beat all the normal players (people under 18).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Rumor: Wii Motion Plus DelaysRumor: Wii Motion Plus Delays

Wii Motion Plus is Nintendo’s next big hardware up sell, an add-on that should make the Wii controller more realistic and flexible when playing highly sensitive “real movement” games. The hardware has been looked at by many in the industry as fixing imperfections in the current hardware, a patch of sorts.

wiimotionplusThe Wii Motion Plus is going to be bundled with Wii Sports Resort, a title that’s obviously playing off the biggest Wii hit Wii Sports. Latest reports are showing the game title missing from the upcoming release lists, so, it’s not too far fetched to assume the hardware will be delayed along with the game, considering this was the first game to rely on the Wii Motion Plus hardware.

The delay is rumored to be due to a few problems with the Wii Motion Plus, more than likely during the final stages of testing the prototype products. In Nintendo’s defense, they’re usually very good about due diligence when it comes to producing hardware and software, taking the time that is needed to get something into the customers hands that’s acceptable quality. All eyes are on Nintendo with the Wii Motion Plus because people see this as the final “fix” to make the Wii controller do everything it was promised to do.

While Nintendo doesn’t see the original controller as broken (nor do the millions of customers buying them everyday), this new hardware should make it more sensitive for games that require perfect movement… games like Wii Sports Resort?

At this point we’d expect to hear news of a slight delay by Nintendo soon. We’d rather see it arrive late than utterly broken and useless.

(Thanks, Kotaku)

Episode 269: Roundtable Time and Spec Ops: The Line ContestEpisode 269: Roundtable Time and Spec Ops: The Line Contest

This week is a special episode as Jonah Falcon cooks up a true videogame roundtable and is giving away three Steam codes for the latest third person shooter, Spec Ops: The Line, while Paul Nowak reads this week’s gaming flashback Wally Bear and the NO! Gang.

The videogame roundtable has the crew discussing two topics: videogame violence and “play to win” premium game portals.

All that plus Reader Feedback.

To find out how to win a copy of Spec Ops: The Line, listen to the podcast and find out how!

Activision Blizzard Trying To Scare Off Competition?Activision Blizzard Trying To Scare Off Competition?

A few months ago, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said investing $500 million to a billion still wouldn’t be enough to compete with an MMORPG like World of Warcraft. The MMORPG space is a costly investment and you’d need to really burn a lot of money to start competing against the mega-giant, but Mythic VP and Warhammer Online lead designer Mark Jacobs disagrees with that quote.

Jacobs says $100-million dollars would be needed to start competing against the giant subscription generator that is World of Warcraft. Although few developers are sitting on $100-million USD, it’s a bit more realistic an investment for a studio to scrape up compared to a billion bucks! A billion dollars is a scary number when you consider that’s the start of an investment that may, or may not, pay off in the end.

Kotick may not be using complete scare tactics, he may be working off experience when dealing with MMORPG’s. A startup MMO isn’t a cookie cutter system, there is a lot of development efforts, $100-million dollars worth, but MMO developers slip dates many times. When you start slipping your dates you’ll start burning more money and, before you know it, you’re a billion in the hole. Jacobs thinks $100-million will cover development costs and messing up, so a billion is still way over budget.

Perhaps this is a bit of a scare tactic, assuming a developer will fail and slip their dates isn’t really a great way to start quoting prices. However, shooting too low isn’t always the best method of building your development assessments. The end result, scream ONE BILLION and you may scare off any potential startup MMO developers.

Warhammer Online lead designer did mention one big barrier to entry: the need for “at least half a million subscribers to be successful.”

(Thanks, 1up)