Blizzard says that their instant level 90 service was not priced to maximize profit by selling the maximum number of character upgrades. These economic arguments feel like an oversimplification of what's going on here.
Context
First, some numbers and context. World of Warcraft's instant level 90 (the current level cap, soon to be the entry level for the next expansion) service was obviously going to be available for direct purchase, and this week we learned that the price tag would be $60. This is not quite the maximum possible price they could have charged - that would have been $75-95 - but it's pretty close.
($10 for a new copy of WoW to register to your existing Battle.net account, $40 for the new expansion and the instant level 90, $25 to transfer that new character over within your Battle.net account so you can cancel the new subscription. I'm not sure if you will need to purchase Pandaria before you can buy Warlords for the level 90, thus the possible extra $20.)
Why are we playing again?
Blizzard's comment has two interesting pieces. First, they assert that they are protecting the value of having leveled the old fashioned way, claiming that no one would level anymore if the service cost only a nominal fee (such as $10). This seems like an overly economic look at time spent playing a video game. Economics would argue that you have to be very poor before it makes sense to grind for 60-100 hours to save $10, in the process probably paying at least one $15 subscription fee.
The problem with this argument is that obtaining the end reward - a max level character - is not the only reason for playing the game. Many people who choose to level a new character will do so because playing that character is fun. When EQ2 offered a similar service COMPLETELY FREE as an introductory promotion, I went back and forth on whether to use the thing at all, and ultimately clicked the upgrade button on a crafting alt that I don't think I've even logged into since. There's no point in paying to get out of leveling the character - I just won't play it at all.
So who will pay?
Charging the folks who need the service
These services exist and make sense because that leveling game - generally a solo experience for a variety of reasons I discussed when talking about the EQ2 service - is not for everyone. If the reason you want a new character is to play that character in a group with your friends, the experience of playing the game is no longer part of your entertainment. There may be some people who come back and don't want to see any of the old content for any reason (they will get one level 90 with the expansion box), but the primary reason to need an instant level 90 is to remove this entry barrier.
Which brings us back to Blizzard's statement that the service is not set at the price that will maximize profit by selling the most upgrades. $60 is high enough to discourage impulse purchases and might discourage players from bumping up multiple alts (bearing in mind that basically all active WoW players will pay for one of these upgrades with the expansion box). My question is whether the decreased number of sales will be largely offset by the higher sale price. People who have invested hundreds of hours in raiding and plan to continue to do so are going to purchase the upgrades whether they cost $10 or $60. Maximizing the revenue from these folks may end up outweighing the lost revenue from impulse purchasers.
Blizzard may have other reasons for wanting to discourage these upgrades - they make it easy to shed an unpopular identity, and they might hurt long-term retention by removing players' reason to play the game. I'm just not so convinced that their stated pricing economics is the true story behind this decision.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Burned Alive
The action genre in general, and super heroes in particular, tend to gloss over the fate of minions. When you're shooting ray guns it's easy to handwave that this is non-lethal because Star Trek thought of setting phasers to stun decades ago. If your character is a martial artist then you can imagine that they aren't hitting people hard enough to kill them. If you are using guns and high explosives then people are probably dying, but that's sort of a genre thing. And then there's the Human Torch.
Fire as an attack type is pretty common in MMO's. It's a staple of mages of all types, but then I suppose you're free to handwave and say that it's magical fire or whatnot. Or perhaps there is a convenient stream of aliens, robots, and other foes who are at least able to fight back.
Whatever the other excuses, something about having a game in a modern setting and facing thugs, mafia, and ninjas and setting them all on fire feels a bit off. These mobs would be dying, horribly, and Johnny Storm is cracking jokes about it, presumably because his dialog is the same when roasting Doombots, demons, and dinosaurs. He's a well implemented character, someone I did not expect to like and have enjoyed playing. I don't think of myself as overly sensitive to violence etc. Still, the images on the screen just seem a bit unfortunate.
 |
| Burning bodies everywhere - and strangely that doesn't stop the remaining muggers from continuing the attack |
Whatever the other excuses, something about having a game in a modern setting and facing thugs, mafia, and ninjas and setting them all on fire feels a bit off. These mobs would be dying, horribly, and Johnny Storm is cracking jokes about it, presumably because his dialog is the same when roasting Doombots, demons, and dinosaurs. He's a well implemented character, someone I did not expect to like and have enjoyed playing. I don't think of myself as overly sensitive to violence etc. Still, the images on the screen just seem a bit unfortunate.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
A Parlimentary Forum
Things have been quieter than usual on the blog as PVD headquarters relocated across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom. Thanks to Spinks and Roger from Contains Moderate Peril for answering some random questions about telecommunications as I got ready for the move. I suppose I should be dreading whatever Blizzard is going to demand that I do to verify my identity the next time I try to use my Battle.net account, but otherwise things here are going relatively smoothly. Server maintenance and developer events are most likely going to land on inconvenient hours in this time zone, but I knew that going in and I guess someone always ends up with the short end of the stick.
Amongst various British customs that I find amusing, the British Prime Minister regularly holds live televised Q+A sessions with the British House of Commons. It's oddly like the MMO forums. The people asking the questions are not afraid to phrase a complaint in the form of a question, to include random and obscure issues that have nothing to do with the rest of the conversation. The PM, like a good MMO community team member, is going to give answers that make his government look good regardless of whether he agrees or anything is going to change. They don't appear to have image macros, response memes, and leet speak, but I suspect this is only because those hadn't been invented at the time of the Magna Carta.
I don't know whether this means that MMO forums are more respectable than I realized, or the British Parliament is less so.
Amongst various British customs that I find amusing, the British Prime Minister regularly holds live televised Q+A sessions with the British House of Commons. It's oddly like the MMO forums. The people asking the questions are not afraid to phrase a complaint in the form of a question, to include random and obscure issues that have nothing to do with the rest of the conversation. The PM, like a good MMO community team member, is going to give answers that make his government look good regardless of whether he agrees or anything is going to change. They don't appear to have image macros, response memes, and leet speak, but I suspect this is only because those hadn't been invented at the time of the Magna Carta.
I don't know whether this means that MMO forums are more respectable than I realized, or the British Parliament is less so.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
To Vote Against Monetizing Nuisance
When it comes to the era of non-subscription MMO's, I'm more worried about monetizing nuisance than so-called "pay to win". The game either is or is not fun on its own merits, and for me personally it doesn't matter whether someone else is able to pay to get out of it. By contrast, non-subscription titles are far more likely to create inconveniences and nuisances and charge to alleviate these problems. This approach bothers me because it affects the quality of the game experience even if I am willing to pay the fees.
Case in point is Marvel Heroes' new "runeword" system. Largely copied from Diablo II, the idea is to collect random runes and enhance gear with them. The issue is where to store these items. DII implemented a total of 33 Runes during its run, but Marvel Heroes has chosen to launch their system with 38 runes and plans for "dozens" more in the future. Runes stack with other like runes (though this prevents you from dropping them on the ground to trade with other players - supposedly to be fixed in a patch later this month) but that doesn't do you much good once you've got 72+ different types of runes to stack.
The money in the system then, is in selling players crafting storage tabs in which to place all this new clutter. The price tag is for the most part reasonable - roughly $3 buys you a crafting stash tab that should solve your problem for the foreseeable future. From a rational perspective, unless you intend to just donate all of the runes to vendors for exp and credits (not a horrible idea in the short term for all but the rarest of runes), it's a no-brainer of a purchase. No doubt the developers sold a bunch of these things this weekend. And that's what concerns me.
The metrics are going to say clearly come Monday morning that adding over three dozen drops to the game dramatically increased their revenue on crafting storage tabs. By making this purchase - a purchase that is well within my means - I'm sending a message that every patch should add another several dozen drops (I'm not making that number up, the FAQ on the feature says that "dozens" plural of new stones are planned) and rewarding the developers for a decision that in my view adds clutter without adding fun or interesting gameplay.
The subscription MMO era was not without its dirty little secrets - the whole daily quest system was invented to make repeatable content take more real world days and thus more real world subscription dollars. Even so, I'd suggest that having a single payment model enforced a constraint that the game in its one pay-or-not state had to be fun. The monetary reward for doing something obnoxious - say, adding dozens of additional runes in the future rather than new recipes that use the existing runes - was less direct. With the new model, you can pay to store the stuff but there's no way to pay not to have dozens of items that are designed to be stored cluttering your inventory with each new patch.
Case in point is Marvel Heroes' new "runeword" system. Largely copied from Diablo II, the idea is to collect random runes and enhance gear with them. The issue is where to store these items. DII implemented a total of 33 Runes during its run, but Marvel Heroes has chosen to launch their system with 38 runes and plans for "dozens" more in the future. Runes stack with other like runes (though this prevents you from dropping them on the ground to trade with other players - supposedly to be fixed in a patch later this month) but that doesn't do you much good once you've got 72+ different types of runes to stack.
The money in the system then, is in selling players crafting storage tabs in which to place all this new clutter. The price tag is for the most part reasonable - roughly $3 buys you a crafting stash tab that should solve your problem for the foreseeable future. From a rational perspective, unless you intend to just donate all of the runes to vendors for exp and credits (not a horrible idea in the short term for all but the rarest of runes), it's a no-brainer of a purchase. No doubt the developers sold a bunch of these things this weekend. And that's what concerns me.
The metrics are going to say clearly come Monday morning that adding over three dozen drops to the game dramatically increased their revenue on crafting storage tabs. By making this purchase - a purchase that is well within my means - I'm sending a message that every patch should add another several dozen drops (I'm not making that number up, the FAQ on the feature says that "dozens" plural of new stones are planned) and rewarding the developers for a decision that in my view adds clutter without adding fun or interesting gameplay.
The subscription MMO era was not without its dirty little secrets - the whole daily quest system was invented to make repeatable content take more real world days and thus more real world subscription dollars. Even so, I'd suggest that having a single payment model enforced a constraint that the game in its one pay-or-not state had to be fun. The monetary reward for doing something obnoxious - say, adding dozens of additional runes in the future rather than new recipes that use the existing runes - was less direct. With the new model, you can pay to store the stuff but there's no way to pay not to have dozens of items that are designed to be stored cluttering your inventory with each new patch.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Disclaimers and Crowd Funding
We are a highly experienced team of AAA developers and that's what we aim to deliver. So far the project has been funded solely from our own pockets and that is why we are reaching out to you now. With enough support we feel we can provide a AAA experience, but without the proper funding, some of that experience may be limited at launch.I will leave the in-depth coverage of the MMO Kickstarter du jour to people who are actually following it, such as Wilhelm. Personally, my exposure to the project is limited primarily to articles like this one at Massively, which discusses one of the game's planned classes as described in a Kickstarter update. If I didn't already know that this is a game that may launch in 2017 if it can raise another $600,000 in the next month and if its creators can actually implement the promised product for that much money, I would not have known that this wasn't a new patch for a game that I can download and play today.
- The entire Kickstarter-required "risks and challenges section" from Pantheon's $800,000 campaign page
(Not to pick on Syp in particular here, it's just the most recent post about this particular game on Massively at this particular moment, and he's much more famous than me so I think he can handle the abuse, such that it is. Camelot Unchained got similar coverage during its campaign.)
Unsubject has published detailed analysis of video game Kickstarter campaigns that ended between 2009-2012 and concluded that less than half of these projects have delivered even partially on their promises. The harsh reality is that multi-million-dollar projects by major publishers who fund games for a living - Titan and EQ Next along with countless unnamed canceled titles by studios like EA - fail to reach the finish line for any number of reasons. I wouldn't expect a five-sentence short post about the game to dwell on this fact. But what is the appropriate level of caution?
My concern is that the incentives of Kickstarter inherently put both creators and especially backers in a bad position. The game doesn't get funded at all unless people get really excited about it, so the creators have to promise the Best Game Ever. More to the point, they have to promise something that is so much better than real products developed with significantly larger budgets that potential customers will be motivated to pay now for something they might get in the future instead of something real that they can have today.
Everything about the system encourages the creator to over-promise in a way that will actually make the already-tough job of doing a difficult project on a tight budget even more difficult. Kickstarter certainly isn't going to object - they get their cut if the project is funded and get nothing if the project is not, and thus you're free to ask for the better part of a million dollars and say that the only risk whatsoever to your project is that it might be "limited" "at launch" compared to AAA titles. If the project doesn't launch at all or isn't worth playing due to untenable scope, there's no one looking out for the people who paid hundreds of dollars two or more years in advance for unrealistic promises and hype.
Thus, a question: To what extent should discussions of MMO's that are in the process of seeking crowd funding include a disclaimer about the odds that the product actually delivers?
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Optimal Exp and the Cash Shop
If my records are right, the last time I added to the list of MMO's where I have capped a character was back in mid 2012(!). I spent a decent chunk of late 2012 and all of 2013 re-capping characters who were not longer max level due to expansions, but failed to reach the cap in any new titles. I finally broke the streak when I got Cyclops to level 60 in Marvel Heroes around a week ago. The journey there is an odd commentary on exp boosts in the non-subscription era.
Like most non-subscription titles, Marvel Heroes offers exp boosts in its cash shop. You can get a limited number of these in-game; one exp boost and one drop rarity boost per character per difficulty from non-repeatable quests, and up to two random fortune cards (roughly 85% chance of containing a random boost) daily if you farm all the terminal missions and spend all of the cube shards accordingly. They are also frequently thrown in with character bundles in the game's cash store, so I had a fair number of them in storage.
Busting out the bonus potions for the last ten levels was a relatively obvious and easy choice - I spent the last 10 hours or so running anywhere from +50% to +200% in exp bonuses, and thus on paper shaved probably 10 hours off of my leveling time. I had 30 minutes of bonuses adding up to +240% left on the clock when I finished, so I ran some legendary quests on Deadpool and advanced from level 25-29 as the last bonus expired (dropping me down to my new permanent baseline of 40%).
In total, I definitely saved some time, I "wasted" some content (I didn't finish all of the story missions because they are tougher and less exp/minute, and I will need to do some of these later for quest rewards), and technically I didn't pay anything extra out of pocket since I got there entirely through thrifty use of stuff that came with hero bundles I was paying for anyway. I wouldn't say the bonuses were required, but in a game where I will be continuing to repeat the content it's nice to be able to move on to the next objective early.
Nothing here is broken - indeed, they're willing to "undermine" their own exp boost sales market by granting permanent bonuses for your alts relatively freely. (I'm currently at 41%, 42% soon, it's relatively easy to get to the mid 70's with four capped characters, and a player who caps all the heroes can actually have 210% permanently for all new characters that are added.) It's just something to watch for, and something that games that don't use the exp curve as a revenue stream don't have to deal with.
(By contrast, Marvel Heroes has been very willing to add inventory clutter with currencies that don't go in its currency tab, massive variety of relics and boosts that are just slightly different so they can't be stacked, and a new runeword system that will add forty different runestones to the inventory. They are very willing to make it easy to get more characters on which to acquire loot that needs to be stored but very inflexible when it comes to any discounts on storage.)
Like most non-subscription titles, Marvel Heroes offers exp boosts in its cash shop. You can get a limited number of these in-game; one exp boost and one drop rarity boost per character per difficulty from non-repeatable quests, and up to two random fortune cards (roughly 85% chance of containing a random boost) daily if you farm all the terminal missions and spend all of the cube shards accordingly. They are also frequently thrown in with character bundles in the game's cash store, so I had a fair number of them in storage.
Busting out the bonus potions for the last ten levels was a relatively obvious and easy choice - I spent the last 10 hours or so running anywhere from +50% to +200% in exp bonuses, and thus on paper shaved probably 10 hours off of my leveling time. I had 30 minutes of bonuses adding up to +240% left on the clock when I finished, so I ran some legendary quests on Deadpool and advanced from level 25-29 as the last bonus expired (dropping me down to my new permanent baseline of 40%).
In total, I definitely saved some time, I "wasted" some content (I didn't finish all of the story missions because they are tougher and less exp/minute, and I will need to do some of these later for quest rewards), and technically I didn't pay anything extra out of pocket since I got there entirely through thrifty use of stuff that came with hero bundles I was paying for anyway. I wouldn't say the bonuses were required, but in a game where I will be continuing to repeat the content it's nice to be able to move on to the next objective early.
Nothing here is broken - indeed, they're willing to "undermine" their own exp boost sales market by granting permanent bonuses for your alts relatively freely. (I'm currently at 41%, 42% soon, it's relatively easy to get to the mid 70's with four capped characters, and a player who caps all the heroes can actually have 210% permanently for all new characters that are added.) It's just something to watch for, and something that games that don't use the exp curve as a revenue stream don't have to deal with.
(By contrast, Marvel Heroes has been very willing to add inventory clutter with currencies that don't go in its currency tab, massive variety of relics and boosts that are just slightly different so they can't be stacked, and a new runeword system that will add forty different runestones to the inventory. They are very willing to make it easy to get more characters on which to acquire loot that needs to be stored but very inflexible when it comes to any discounts on storage.)
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
New Year's Curiosities for 2014
I went back and forth on whether to bother with New Year's resolutions and predictions this year. I play a bunch of different games, and I'm not going to change what game I'm playing just to comply with a post from late December - thus I usually end up with a handful of very specific goals that I know I will get done in the next few months and a bunch of vague/qualitative hand-waving for the remainder of the year. Likewise, it's hard to predict much of anything with any accuracy in MMO's since we don't really have the data we'd need to do so.
Instead, this year, here are some things that I'm curious about.
Will Marvel Heroes Pay Off?
I made a late-year-decision to pre-purchase $130-worth of upcoming characters for this game. So far, so good, but the year is young. My shortest-term goal is to get Cyclops to level 60 to start the synergy exp gravy train rolling. My mid-range goal is to have at least 10 characters to level 25 for the first tier stat synergy bonuses (currently 2 for Cyclops and Deadpool), and the long-term is to have at least 10 characters to level 50 for the upper tier stat bonuses (currently just Cyclops). If at least five of the Advance Pack characters make this roster then it's pretty safe to say that the purchase paid off for me.
Will TESO/Wildstar/EQ Next/Camelot Unchained customers revolt?
TESO and Wildstar have announced second quarter release dates, presumably with non-refundable pre-NDA-drop pre-purchase offers to follow. Western console players have not historically tolerated subscription business models, so it's hard to see how TESO does not have a business model re-launch this year. Wildstar at least has the sci-fi sub-genre going for it, but is it far enough outside the box to beat the non-subscription trend that has now claimed every AAA MMO since World of Warcraft? Or, will both products (intentionally or otherwise) charge early adopters $60 for their game box and upwards of $100 for pre-paid 6-12 month subscriptions, only to go F2P within the first year?
Meanwhile, SOE is hard at work pre-selling alpha access to Everquest Next Landmark - which sounds like an odd cross between the real Everquest Next and a paid public test server for EQN player studio content. Camelot Unchained won't launch this year, but paid alpha testing for potentially thousands of Kickstarter backers (mostly in the $200+ range, plus a smaller number who get earlier internal testing access) is supposed to begin this fall.
Thus, by the end of the year, there are scenarios where large numbers of players are dissatisfied with their pre-purchases. Will customers actually change their behavior in the future? Are we as a demographic just willing to accept this as the cost of being present for the launch of each online game? Are these games even catering to the traditional MMO demographic found on forums and blogs, or are they attempting/succeeding in broadening the market somehow?
Will a major title's F2P re-launch go under in 2014?
I strongly debated making this heading title "LOTRO" due to uncertainty about its license option years, my longstanding questions about whether revenue from Turbine's version of "free to play" is inherently front-loaded, and the curious decision NOT to develop an expansion pack for 2014. In fairness, longterm subscribers are correctly noting that with required annual expansions and diminishing restrictions on non-subscribers, it can feel like they're paying more for no good reason.
Bottom line here is that the closing of City of Heroes can be written off as the wrath of NCSoft, but another high profile F2P relaunch going down could have an effect on customer confidence. If not LOTRO, then perhaps Aion, Tera, or one of the Funcom titles? Or perhaps it just isn't possible to affect gamers' consumer confidence - see above discussion.
Any Late Year Surprises?
In 2013, the big expectations were for end-of-year TESO and Wildstar news, leaving the beginning of the year pretty quiet and the end of year similarly quiet once both titles punted to 2014. All these moves mean a relatively crowded schedule for the 2nd-3rd quarters (TESO, Wildstar, EQN:L, WoW's Warlords expansion)... and what precisely for the back end of the year? Syp's annual list notwithstanding, I don't see a ton of waves here. I know better than to suggest a Titan reveal will happen this year, but this could be a good platform for someone with something up their sleeves - SOE? Turbine? - to make some waves.
What are you curious about in 2014?
Instead, this year, here are some things that I'm curious about.
Will Marvel Heroes Pay Off?
I made a late-year-decision to pre-purchase $130-worth of upcoming characters for this game. So far, so good, but the year is young. My shortest-term goal is to get Cyclops to level 60 to start the synergy exp gravy train rolling. My mid-range goal is to have at least 10 characters to level 25 for the first tier stat synergy bonuses (currently 2 for Cyclops and Deadpool), and the long-term is to have at least 10 characters to level 50 for the upper tier stat bonuses (currently just Cyclops). If at least five of the Advance Pack characters make this roster then it's pretty safe to say that the purchase paid off for me.
Will TESO/Wildstar/EQ Next/Camelot Unchained customers revolt?
TESO and Wildstar have announced second quarter release dates, presumably with non-refundable pre-NDA-drop pre-purchase offers to follow. Western console players have not historically tolerated subscription business models, so it's hard to see how TESO does not have a business model re-launch this year. Wildstar at least has the sci-fi sub-genre going for it, but is it far enough outside the box to beat the non-subscription trend that has now claimed every AAA MMO since World of Warcraft? Or, will both products (intentionally or otherwise) charge early adopters $60 for their game box and upwards of $100 for pre-paid 6-12 month subscriptions, only to go F2P within the first year?
Meanwhile, SOE is hard at work pre-selling alpha access to Everquest Next Landmark - which sounds like an odd cross between the real Everquest Next and a paid public test server for EQN player studio content. Camelot Unchained won't launch this year, but paid alpha testing for potentially thousands of Kickstarter backers (mostly in the $200+ range, plus a smaller number who get earlier internal testing access) is supposed to begin this fall.
Thus, by the end of the year, there are scenarios where large numbers of players are dissatisfied with their pre-purchases. Will customers actually change their behavior in the future? Are we as a demographic just willing to accept this as the cost of being present for the launch of each online game? Are these games even catering to the traditional MMO demographic found on forums and blogs, or are they attempting/succeeding in broadening the market somehow?
Will a major title's F2P re-launch go under in 2014?
I strongly debated making this heading title "LOTRO" due to uncertainty about its license option years, my longstanding questions about whether revenue from Turbine's version of "free to play" is inherently front-loaded, and the curious decision NOT to develop an expansion pack for 2014. In fairness, longterm subscribers are correctly noting that with required annual expansions and diminishing restrictions on non-subscribers, it can feel like they're paying more for no good reason.
Bottom line here is that the closing of City of Heroes can be written off as the wrath of NCSoft, but another high profile F2P relaunch going down could have an effect on customer confidence. If not LOTRO, then perhaps Aion, Tera, or one of the Funcom titles? Or perhaps it just isn't possible to affect gamers' consumer confidence - see above discussion.
Any Late Year Surprises?
In 2013, the big expectations were for end-of-year TESO and Wildstar news, leaving the beginning of the year pretty quiet and the end of year similarly quiet once both titles punted to 2014. All these moves mean a relatively crowded schedule for the 2nd-3rd quarters (TESO, Wildstar, EQN:L, WoW's Warlords expansion)... and what precisely for the back end of the year? Syp's annual list notwithstanding, I don't see a ton of waves here. I know better than to suggest a Titan reveal will happen this year, but this could be a good platform for someone with something up their sleeves - SOE? Turbine? - to make some waves.
What are you curious about in 2014?
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