I have a minor confession to make. I finally broke down and gave real money to another MMO game. It’s only the third one that I’ve ever felt like giving cash to. As of… five minutes ago, Wizard101 joins the esteemed company of Puzzle Pirates and Guild Wars in my household.
It’s really all their fault. They hooked me with great and unique gameplay (not unlike how Atlantica Online got me involved, despite the two being very different) and an extended free trial. Actually, they snagged me in their open beta, but I never did have the time to spend then to see the areas that were later locked down under a subscription model.
Yup, they started with, and still have, a subscription model. So, wait, I loathe subscriptions. How did they get my cash? I bought Crowns. Crowns in W101 can be spent on unique items (often disparagingly called RMT items). At least, that’s about all they were good for at launch. I’ve been reading Saylah and Capn’ John for a while now, and Tipa here and there, so I figured I’d pop in and see what has happened with the game lately.
Ah, what difference a couple of months makes. The geniuses at W101 are now selling “Access Passes” to unlock areas in the game. These cost a set number of Crowns (again, purchased with cash), effectively unlocking content for your account.
See the sneakery? They are selling both subscriptions and content! They are making the best of both worlds, catering to those who get the most out of subscriptions (WoW refugees), and those who would rather buy content to consume at their leisure (GW nuts like me).
The only thing that would make their monetization strategy perfect would be a blind auction currency exchange like the Puzzle Pirates Doubloon/PoE exchange. Still, since the W101 crew are now selling content rather than time, I finally cracked open my rusty wallet.
I’ve always thought the game was good, ever since tinkering in the beta days. Now, I feel the business model is sufficiently caught up that I want to support them. Perhaps that’s selfish or egocentric, but y’know, it’s my name on the credit card.
A hearty round of applause for Wizard 101 and may their business thrive! They deserve it.
What are the prices (USD) for these passes? Are they permanent unlocks or limited-time only?
I wanted to check the store, but it turned out that they are selling real-world items, too. Like coffee mugs and t-shirts. I would call this a three-pronged attack on both your pocket while creating some kind of franchise/community spirit at the same time.
I still could not check what they sell for crowns, seems I must register for that.
But I am a bit sceptical about access passes. Will they sell me basically the content of GW chapter in pieces for even more money, if you buy it all?
I will not join in in the hearty round of applause, somehow I fear the coin slots in front of every dungeon in future games too much!
So Longasc, can I ask what kind of a model you’d like to see?
I’m sort of intrigued by the Wizard 101 model, myself. It seems a nice alternative to a monthly sub where you may or may not find time to play in a given month.
I’d also love to see a way to buy blocks of time. Y’know, spend $10 and get 80 hours of playtime.
Scott, they are permanent unlocks, granted to the account. (So any character on the account can access the content.)
I did some number crunching, and you can unlock the first “world” for $5, with no other costs, if you just want to test things out. (A good chunk of the first world is the perpetual free trial, so you don’t really even have to spend anything to try the game.) Prices are a bit variable, though, since the Crown rate per Access Pass is fixed, but there is a bulk discount if you buy more Crowns. ($5/2500, $25/16000, $50/35000, $80/80000 at present.)
The second world can cost anywhere from just under $11 to $25 as a result. The third world, from $12 to $25. The fourth world, from just over $13 to $25. (Actually, $30, if you go by the least efficient $5/2500 crowns.) It’s a fairly reasonable sort of “expansion pack” pricing scheme, not unlike Guild Wars. Thing is, each world is subdivided into zones, and each zone has a cost. The zones in the first world are 750 apiece, the zones in the second world are 915 apiece, and the worlds beyond that are 1200 apiece. As such, the granular control is even greater than the GW model. Also, the more you spend in a chunk, the more you get for your money. It’s pretty standard marketing stuff, finally arrived in the MMO monetization world.
Long, I’m actually looking forward to Access Passes in front of every dungeon. It allows me to actually pay only for that content that I intend to use. Taking WoW as an example, there are endgame raids that I will never see. I don’t want to pay for them. The way the W101 crew are breaking things up into discrete chunks is fantastic, as I can tailor my experience and expenditure to match my game goals and time and money budgets. And they still offer subs for those who just don’t want to deal with customizing the business plan.
That’s the beauty of it. You can pay for content or for a sub, whichever works best for you. They even have family sub plans, reducing the cost per person if you’re playing with your kids. Their business model is flexible, which is excellent.
The mug/shirt store is brilliant. Yes, it’s another unabashed “assault on your wallet”, if you want to look at it that way, but what WoW nut wouldn’t shell out cash for some sweet Blizzard swag? *coughBlizzconcough* Establishing a brand is intelligent marketing and networking. I’m very happy seeing them do this, instead of going the AoC or WAR route and trying to rely on the strengths (and weaknesses) of the $15/sub. In case you’ve not noticed, it hasn’t worked out all that well for those games.
Long, forum access and base game registration is free, but I haven’t found a list of the game items sold with Crowns. (It’s robes, hats and such, with interesting effects.) I do wish they had that on their site somewhere, to better inform shoppers… but you can play the game for free and see what they offer by talking to Prospector Zeke just beyond the Shopping District, at least to see what the Crown items are for the first zones.
Edited to add: Pete, selling blocks of time, to be consumed at whatever pace, would be another nice alternate. I side heavily with selling content, rather than time, but I would appreciate that sort of option as well, mostly for the choices that it would offer. Puzzle Pirates does something sort of like that; there are “Badges” that you can buy that unlock access to parts of the game, and they typically decay on login days. So, my Captain’s Badge that allows me to form and edit a crew will decay only on days that I log in. I can effectively spread the thirty days that it gives over a year or so, if I can only play once every two weeks, or need to take an extended break, that sort of thing. An hourly version of the same thing might be nice, but I’d almost want the countdown to be measured my minutes, rather than hours. If I want to log in and check my AH or mail, then log back out, it may take only five minutes, but it could “consume” a billing hour. That’s one of the downsides of selling time, if it’s in discrete chunks. It’s one of the big reasons I’d rather pay for content than time.
Well, that sort of sucks. My son and I each have the 12-month Sub that we got for $60. So we can play for 12 months and after that we get cut off. Although I think we can still play we’re just restricted to the “Trial” area of Wizard City.
But you’re saying for about the same amount of money, we could have access to all the areas that we currently already do have access, but forever?
In fact, at the prices you quoted, $5+$11+$12+13 equals $41, it’s even cheaper than a 12-month sub.
So now, even though other people are paying $6.95/month for their sub, and I paid (on average) $5/month for mine, I still feel kind of gibbed
This seems to be the new subject for 2009. Changing the way we pay for MMO’s.
I have been searching for deals on my old MMO’s (I got 10 bucks off a 60 day card for AoC), and it is helping me put some time in without being inundated with that dratted monthly fee or playing so much I get bored.
In so many words, pay for what I want…
Guild Wars is always handy for me to play if I get the itch when I am not subscribed to an MMO, and I really refuse to buy anything this year unless it really impresses with a trial or something.
I hope some major changes come down the road, and we should support devs and companies trying something new monetarily
Cheers
Well, Capn, if they get Dragonspyre out, that’s another $14 or so, I’d guess. If they do it while you two are still subbed, and you get through the content, you’re roughly even. If they do even more than Dragonspyre, you’ll get ahead.
…except for that “perpetual access” bit, of course.
Good for me, not so good for you. I do wish they had done the Access Pass bit from the outset.
Open, I’m definitely keeping my eye open for changes. Buying content, not time, is one of my major checkpoints.
On the plus side, except for rolling Alts (a lengthy process in W101) and helping friends (and without Guilds there’s not too many of them in there), there’d be very little reason for my son & I to go back to Krokotopia or Marleybone, and once Dragonspyre comes out, little reason to revisit Moo Shu either.
So when our Subs expire, if we still want to play, we could just buy access to the Dragonspyre zone rather than get a full subscription each.
Very true. I hadn’t thought of that. Staying on top of new content should be relatively easy, and if you don’t sweat the altitis, you shouldn’t have trouble.
@Pete S – I would love to see blocks of time as well. It would make it a lot easier for a casual player like myself who wants to play several MMOs to pop in and out of them at will.
If I bought a 15 hour block for City of Heroes it might take me a few months to use it up, but that’s 15$ NCSoft would get that they otherwise don’t right now because I don’t feel like subscribing to the game just to dust off my superhero once in a blue moon.
I prefer the common subscription model with expansions costing extra. But I also like Guild Wars “Chapter” model.
I would hate the coin slots in front of every dungeon. If you really play a game, you will enter them all anyways.
And as I told you, I fear I might end up paying more and all the time.
Ah, but “really playing a game” means different things to different people. I know several players who play Puzzle Pirates completely free because it’s more interesting than a chat room (but they use it mostly as one), and they can dip in and pay for stuff they want when they want. MMOs are more than the level/loot treadmill, but that’s what the sub model is built around.
That’s the whole point; make your business model flexible so those players with different definitions of “really playing the game” can still wring fun out of the game, and you can wring money out of their grubby little hands. Some will always get more out of subs, others will get more out of microtransactions, some will get more out of buying content, and some players will even change over time. Life does that to a bloke. Trying to jam everyone in the same mold will inevitably leave someone out.
[...] leads me to the final part of my fancy title, a solution to MMO payment models. It is all about choices. Offer full subscriptions for those who prefer buffet, but offer a la [...]