Should MMOs try this

[Prime_Hunter_H01]

I want to hear the opinions of people with experience with subscription mmos.

I was talking with a friend and the topic went on to mmos, we play mainly Free to Play ones but some subscription ones were looking good to us. And I said that they should sell day to day tokens for people who cannot play enough to justify a subscription.

I would like a system where an MMO offers the flexibility of either the standard 15$ for 30 continuous days, or selling day by day tokens in bundles at a higher cost than 50 cents per day if calculated, because a system like that seems like it would be a win win, as the company get the sale at a proportion higher than the continuous subscribers per day and for the added cost, the consumer gets a convenience for only paying for the days that they can play, and it is up to them to analyze if they play enough to justify the continuous sub.

It would be actually be easy to justify a price that for anything else would seem like gouging by paying double, but if you are a person who can only play on weekends what seems like a better deal. 15$ for 30 continuous days, or 30$ for 30 days consumed in 24 hour chunks as needed. Though abuse seems like it may be easy, I would hope that consumer common sense would keep them in check. Because you could only charge so much before you make that model redundant, but to be cynical, a way to charge double for the same amount of service time and not incur the rage of the customer should be an attractive offer to any business man and the down time of the token customer is the same as an idle subscription since inactive accounts are kept even if the person goes on a long hiatus.

Edit: by my mistake I made this in off topic, could this be moved to Gaming

 

[Rayce Archer]

I suspect most game publishers wouldn't want to implement the business infrastructure needed to make that work. Not to mention in most earning models its better to make money in bigger chunks even if you are giving customers a better deal.

Also a pay-as-you-go model would compel users to think about gaming and whether its still worth their money; its my understanding many people with WoW subscriptions may quit playing for a month or more without bothering to unsub.

 

[Gray-Philosophy]

Your idea actually sounds pretty nice

My own dream scenario would be to actually get the hours you pay for. I very much enjoy MMO type games, but too often I find myself unable to dedicate enough time to make monthly subscribtions, or even 1-month gametime cards worthwhile.

As unrealistic as it might be (because profit lulz), I'd love a system that gives you 30 days worth of gametime when you pay for 30 days, only ticking down during time spent logged in. You log in, play for 2 hours and log out. You now have 29 days and 22 hours left

 

[gamer_parent]

Also a pay-as-you-go model would compel users to think about gaming and whether its still worth their money; its my understanding many people with WoW subscriptions may quit playing for a month or more without bothering to unsub.

This right here is pretty much the singular reason why publishers won't do it. If you do it in this fashion, you give the user a chance to back out every single time they turn on the machine, where as with a subscription model, it's once per month they get a chance to back out.

A captured audience is the best audience.