[MUD-Dev] Pricing structures and selling characters and items

[Myschyf]

I was just curious what you folks thought about pricing structures for
games, especially in light of the lawsuit against OSI.  I'm getting ready to
write an article on game pricing, which will include a history.  If I use
anything any of you discuss I will, of course, write you and ask for your
permission before I do so, so please don't let the knowledge that I'm
writing about it stifle you.  Also Jessica Mulligan is co-authoring this so
it may appear on Happy Puppy as well as Lums.

Anyway to get back to the subject at hand the way I see it is that game
companies are going to have to charge more -- its just a matter of how much.
I'd say prices would start at $15.00 an hour (or, more than likely, some
cockamamie figure like $13.95) and go up from there.

My friends that play EQ are all very excited about the possible veterans
shard at 50 bucks a month.  (If you don't know what I'm talking about EQ now
has an exit poll asking players if they would pay $50 a month for a veterans
shard which had a player cap and superior customer service).  They all
answered yes to the exit poll and there must be another few thousand out
there just like them.

On the other hand I'm reminded of the disastrous results when M59 raised its
prices.  However the market is different now.  These games reach a lot more
people who have discovered a passion for online gaming.

The other thing I've been thinking about is the selling of mid- to high-
level characters and very good or rare items.  Ebay is what has me thinking
along these lines.  If the players can make money off these things why not
the gaming company?

Most of these games (well, actually, ALL of them right now)  take months to
level up a character.  Sure levelling up a character is a certain amount of
fun but as a 10-year-veteran of online games I can honestly say that I am
sick to death of levelling up characters (or getting them to skill capped or
whatever the equivalent is of a levelled up character in any specific game).
Additionally, as I become more and more busy with my career and other
activities outside gaming I find I have less and less time to devote to
making a high level character.  Nonetheless I still want to play and when I
play I don't want to have to kill butterflies with a butter knife in order
to play because my time is so limited.  I want to hook up with my friends,
climb the ice glacier, scale the mountain and go kill the meanest, baddest
dragon that lives in the cave on the mountain (a little IOK/LOK nostalgia
there).   I would pay 100 bucks to get a 30th level or 3X or 4X GM character
(to use EQ and UO terminology), spend a week or so learning the interface
and getting comfortable with the mechanics and then off I go.

I know some of you are going to think that doing this would lessen the
'total experience of the game' or something like that but everyone doesn't
have to buy these high-level characters and not everyone would.  Also this
would present an interesting solution to the ebay problem.  Since you can't
stop people trading and selling characters and items on ebay you might as
well undersell them.





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