If you run a MMORPG, would you make it free or paid?

Would you make it a paid game or a free to play game?

If it is the former, how would you proceed?
Subscription based or one time purchase?

If it is the latter, would you prefer
Really free, but accept donations out of free will. Or with in-game-purchase?

Personally I'd charge monthly fee. I think it is the most fair way for a paid game. And I think it is fair for me to charge for a service, especially this service requires my attention to keep it working flawlessly and to continue to improve it.

 

There is better way to charge people than asking for donation. If it is a donation at free will, most people will just rather be freebie.

Here is an idea from a Counter-Strike server I used to play on over a decade ago,

The server had 24 slots. However, only 20 people can join before you get the message of "server full". The extra 4 slots are reserved for the VIP members who paid a donation. They can join the server even when it is "full". After some people joined as VIP, the server would often be more than full. It raised the need for getting a VIP membership. So pretty much most of the regular players there had a VIP membership.

For a MMORPG for example, you can run a server with much higher number of players. It also mean a lot more VIP member slots. The more people who pay for VIP membership, the more need for the rest of the players to also become VIP in order to be able to join the server when it is "full". You can have a server for 3,000 players with extra 100 slots reserved. The potential VIP membership signing up will be a lot more than 100.

 

Pay to play is probably the best for both players and developers. Steady revenue for the developers to keep up making the game better and custom support excellent, while the players can just pay the same fee and play fair instead of pay to win.

Yet, like I have mentioned earlier, there are more than just one way to pay to play while being different from pay to win. Either monthly fee, or a VIP member fee for "reserved slot" to join the server when it is "full". The former is probably a more steady income, while the latter might retain more players over long period of time since there is really no fee to play (if) you are willing to wait for a little while for the free slot to join the server.

 

$7.99? Isn't it a bit cheap? Back in 2003 or so, I was already paying $15 per month for Lineage 2.

Yeah, I think the best sustainable model is monthly subscription based with free expansions, or free to play but with paid expansions.

I agree that too many games these days have $ option as #1 when the developers were making them. It is sad that nobody realized that if they just focus on making the best game possible, the money will come by itself.

 

Well, good for you if you have the money to throw at the project. Imagine all the cost involved running the game itself (even if the game was given to you at free cost). You still need to have the budget for either running a game server at home, or you can pay for some cloud based service to run the game. You also need to spend time and effort, possibility money on custom support to solve possible issues. Do not count on any game to be "problem free". Even if you get volunteer in-game moderators, it will be quite hard to get someone to do tech support outside the game for free.

The bottomline is, running the game will cost you money and time. Are you having enough cash to get it all sorted out?

 

Better equipment for real money? That is the typical F2P but Pay to Win type of games. I'd stay away since it is not fair for everyone.

If you need to make the game better, or at least running it smoothly without much problem, then it will cost you. To make the model sustainable while being fair, you need to charge (equal) amount of money to everyone.

Anyway, it is your choice. Personally I just found too many F2P games are in fact P2W. If you want to do any good in the game, it will cost you much more than a monthly subscription based game in the long run.

 

Well, I should have made it more clear about the fantasy part is limited to the fact you got a perfect MMORPG. Now you have the choice to run it, and how to run it... in a sustainable manner.

I know for sure, I can actually provide the game for free if I only launch it on a small scale... For example, just one server for a few hundred or maybe a few thousand players at most. Anything beyond that, I do not think it will be worth my money and time just to entertain others.

 

Except all the "successful MMO games" have actually made profit. Otherwise they are not considered "successful". To make a profit, their revenue had to exceed the cost (initial cost of development, and the operation cost). Our little fantasy took care of the initial development cost already, but it still leaves the operation cost if you choose to run it. Are you willing to throw your money at the project to keep it running for free? Do you actually have that kind of money to sustain the server for long?

 

Good luck on having enough money to keep throwing at the operating cost of your MMORPG. Do you really expect to get your cost breakeven by selling fireworks etc. items that not needed for the advancement in the game? If you really sell the items required for playing the game, then it is not free any more, and just another pay to win model.

It does look like the initial develop cost is the highest, it is why I am using the fantasy setting where the game is readily available to us at little or no cost. Think about when I was playing Neverwinter NIghts (1), some people made persistence world based servers. It was basically free for the development.

One of the most successful server back then was a world made of areas created by various people. Every once in a while, people would use the toolset in the game to create more areas and send it to the server owner. After checking it up and fix all the bugs, it would be added to the continuous expanding world. The operating cost for the server owner was just the server hardware, and internet connection fee, maybe a little electricity bill too.

The server owner was not charging anything to play on his server, but he did charge money after "keep your characters and items" after every expansion. I doubt he made a lot of money through this though, it is probably only enough to cover some of his cost.