How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

[Feba]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

More than $200 in lumpsum on a video game, regardless of how often I will continue to play it, seems a little unreasonable to me.

[Sevv]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

Lol i wondered why you had me make that lol.

[Kitalrez]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

Well, in a Masonic Lodge, most bylaws are setup so if you have lifetime memberships they charge a fee of 20 yrs worth of payments up front, then place this money in a separate investment account and live off the interest. (Similar to how Shriner's Hospital system's endowment fund is set up, for obvious reasons). The reason 20 yrs was chosen was that at the time lifetime memberships started going into effect, (late 19th century, early 20th), that was about how long most members of the lodge were going to live. People came in around 30-40, and lived to somewhere in mid-50s to 60. You'd get a few people who might live over that range, but if you invested wisely enough, your account could more than cover this. Up until people started living longer this account system worked perfectly, with very few lodges going into debt under the system.

Now, think about S-E's situation here, what's the average time an account lasts? Is it one year? I'm thinking more like a year and a half to two years, personally. So, what if it was a year and a half's worth of payments? At $13 a month, that would come out to be around $234.00. Not significantly over $200.00, but enough to cover things. Now, maybe they ought to include things in there to sweeten the deal, like allowing you to cap out the mules on that account for free. After all, they've got you for life now, and you'll probably recruit others to play if you like it, they can afford to throw you a bone here and there.

What SE gains:
1. Consistent, predictable income. Provided they invest your subscription, they have a guaranteed income of at least whatever the current CD rate is per quarter. To a shareholder, they seem more stable and worth investing in.
2. Consistent player base. You know at any one time about how many people are going to still be playing next month.
3. If someone leaves early: you get to keep their money. No organization I know of offers a refund if you decide to cancel your lifetime membership before you die. Buying it in the first place is a gamble.

What players would gain:
1. Financial rewards for longterm play. If you last longer than 1.5 yrs. this is starting to pay for itself.
2. Extra mule account space without additional cost. 8 slots but you only pay for one.
3. The ability to cancel your credit card after you've made the lifetime subscription payment. Many of us are hanging on to outdated cards because if we ever quit, we'll need them to come back.

There are probably other benefits to both parties. The way subscriptions are working these days, the same games offering lifetime subscriptions tend to also offer 30-day trials. Sure, you might lose your first character, but you could test it out for 30 days before starting that lifetime account. I was hooked in my first 30 days, I'd suspect others could be too. I knew D&D online wasn't for me in the first 30 days as well.

[Balfree]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

I wouldnt pay a lifetime account because I'm not sure if I'm going to be playing a game forever, a lifetime account is also bad marketing because after say.. a lifetime, the company would stop making profit from you and thats dumb.

If you payed a lifetime unbanable account, wouldnt that allow you to break certain rules and go unpunished? Like for example doing RMT, or ingame hacking? Lifetime and Unbanable accounts will never exist in games.

Lifetime accounts are for services where a company can profit from you without you paying them directly.

[Feba]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

Balfree- 1, the company would make it's profit up front, and on expansions, and there'd still be plenty of people paying subscription fees monthly. There's also the extra profit made on anyone who quits before the monthly fees overtake the lifetime cost. Again, LOTRO has already done this. 2, as has already been discussed. Lifetime accounts DO exist; and nobody seriously expects unbannable accounts or thinks they'd be a good idea. A lifetime account would still be bannable.

[Balfree]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

Oh, i see, LOTRO's as follows...

* $14.99 per month
* $41.85 per 3 months
* $77.70 per 6 months
* $143.40 per 12 months
* $299 Lifetime Membership. Lifetime Membership means you'll never again have to pay a subscription fee for LOTRO*!

Dumb as hell for them though, expansions alone on a MMORPG? I can see it working for something like Guildwars where their servers dont need as much maintenance since its all instanced worlds, unless they keep releasing expansions (beating a dead horse eventually), they wont be making any money after a while.

Lifetime subscriptions are broken, unless youre truly commited to a game it aint worth it, and you dont really know what tomorrow brings so it sounds kinda dumb to me.

I wouldnt want a lifetime subscription at all, but lets say for the thread's sake if i had to give you a number.. I wouldnt give more than $300 away.

[Feba]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

huh, price went up from what I saw.

Either way, a quick glance would show that that price is over *two years* of playing at the next lowest rate, obviously they are going to have a lot of people that quit before that time is up.

First of all, your statement is faulty for the sole purpose that it assumes everyone will have a lifetime subscription. Obviously, not everyone is willing to make that investment (or gamble, if you'd rather). It also assumes that the company instantly spends this money, instead of saving it (in which case the long term interest could make even more money)

As to you personally not wanting to risk it, that I can understand.

[Balfree]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

Yea like you say i bet the company expects people to quit early, but surely you agree that if someone doesnt, and lets say this someone also doesnt buy their expansions, they arent giving the company any more profit. Naturally the company knows that this rarely happens, and that the money they overcharge ($15, i think thats a little over the usual rates no?) the other players who pay monthly can cover those rare occurrances. Its not a scam but its fishy.

Well i guess its not a "bad" move on the company to allow lifetime subscriptions... most people dont use them. I personally wouldnt do it if i was providing a similar service.

[Feba]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

$15 and then going down for buying in increments of 3, 6, or 12 months isn't that odd-- it's basically the same as the system used by EVE online; except EVE doesn't offer lifetime passes (as far as I know)

Oddly enough, it's possible to pay for EVE time with in game currency.

[Balfree]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

o.o

that is weird

[Kitalrez]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

Balfree's confusion about how the economics of Lifetime memberships was sort of my point in my long rambling post earlier. See, the point of lifetime membership fees is not that you spend the money, ideally YOU NEVER SPEND A DIME OF THIS MONEY. What do I mean by this? Well, I mentioned Shriner's Hospital system before, let's revisit that.

I can, with a straight face and clear conscience, promise you that if you donate a dollar to Shriner's Hospitals, we Shriners and the hospital board we control will never spend a single dime you gave us on the children or their care. Now, that's horrible, I hear you saying. Not really, because I'm going to spend 3-400 times that amount on the children and their care over the next hundred years just based on the interest I earn from your money. Your donation was not and will never be used to directly pay for anything, it became what is known as "principal" in the Shrine Hospital's endowment. Here's how that works:

1. I take your donation, put it in the endowment fund. That fund has just grown by a small amount.
2. I also raise the recorded amount of "principal" in the account. Principal money is something I can never touch. Everything done in this account, from administration, to donations to the hospital, to paying taxes on what we do and our employees is entirely paid off the interest, not this principal.
3. Using safe, extremely long term investments, I slowly earn interest on this account. Some of that interest I use, the rest of that I reinvest. As I'm reinvesting, I'm accepting more donations, which grows the principal amount, and increases the amount of interest the account earns.

Now, to Balfrey's questions. First, principal can never be used, but it can be invested. This is how you make money. Interest from this money is what you live on. I can hear you laughing or arguing about "safe" investments. Yes, for an individual, there is no "safe" investment period. However, for an endowment fund, there are all kinds. For instance, a 50 year treasury bond. For an individual, this is probably not the best investment. We invest for the short term, trying to get things in 10 years or less. Shriner's Hospitals on the other hand are looking to last around 500 years or more. They will end up buying millions of dollars worth of these, because they don't need the money now, won't need it anytime soon, and are getting a guaranteed return based on the bond interest. The only risk inherent in a treasury bond is whether or not the US Government goes bankrupt, which is unlikely in the next 50 years. Contrast that with the corporate bonds most of us invest in when we go conservative on our investment strategies. Companies rise and fall every day, that's why these bonds have such high interest rates or can be resold for so much. All you have to do with a long term bond is hold it until it matures, and it pays off a fixed interest rate. Thus, as long as you own one of these and your economy hasn't just collapsed, you make money.

How has this strategy worked so far? Well, The Shrine has existed since about the last 15 years of the 19th century... (I have my history somewhere around here, all I can find is the hospital history ATM, sorry), the first Shriner's Hospital was founded in 1922. So, the entire system is less than 100 years old, and only about 40 years younger than it's parent organization. Now, as I explained this I'm sure some of you were thinking we must be funding some kind of expensive operation or third world care center. Not true, if you walk into the basement of Intermountain Shriners Hospital in SLC... (Shriner's Hospital for Children of Salt Lake now, I think), you will come to a room called the "Gait lab". The Gait Lab looks like something out of Dreamworks or Industrial Light and Magic, and with good reason. The same technology used in 3d modeling in each of these companies is also used in Shriner's Hospital, with advances shared or patented out to industry. Hollywood uses this technology to create CGI effects for StarWars like Jar Jar Binks or huge battle scenes. Shriners use it to model the walking behavior of children with orthopedic injuries or deformed limbs. Each child who goes through the hospital is popped into a little black custom-made leotard with white balls on it and a 3d model of how they walk is created. From this, technicians can model how that child would walk with certain operations or different prosthesis designs. You can then custom make replacement limbs or systems of care for that child. Its StarWars style orthopedic care from a hospital that doesn't charge either families or insurance companies for its work.

Obviously, if I can do things like that from an endowment fund set up in 1922, its possible to actually make money from one that isn't meant to last longer than a decade or two. Think about it, we could all play for 20 years or so, people would trickle out, SE would keep the servers running and possible collapse us down onto a few servers. In the end, the few relics of us left will all be playing on one server. At that stages SE could decide they're tired of the whole thing and shut us down by refunding our $234. They can do this, because by this time they will have already made millions from us. Heck, they could double it and still make money. Plus, we're all in it for life, so we'll probably end up buying expansions as they roll out. They're making money all over the place.

My suspicion is the only reason SE hasn't done this is they haven't seen the potential until now. Had they done this when FFXI first came out, we'd be laughing at every single quitting thread or rumor that they were shutting the servers down for years to come. Had they known how big this beast would've become back at the NA PC launch, you would've seen this set in stone way back then.

[Telera]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

LotRO Lifetime works pretty much because as Feba said, not everyone is willing to shell out the lump sum, even if they know they're going to stay in the game until server shut-down. I know I'm staying. But I still haven't bought a Lifetime account. I'd like to be able to, but it's too much to sink at once for me. Even if it pays for itself eventually.

There are hundreds, if not thousands more with the same opinion. The relative number of those holding lifetime and/or Founder accounts is probably much smaller than those of us just paying the recurring fees.

$15 is also what SWG cost back in the day. And FFXI is only 2-3 dollars less than that initially, but more if you want more characters. I was paying more for XI w/ mules and 1 alt than I do for LotRO. At least with LotRO I can make 5 characters on every damn server if I wanted to, and still not pay over $15. Having a mule no longer costs me real-world money. Those $1 extra add up over time.

But lifetime sub, to any game, I doubt it. Too much of a lump sum sink that I often don't even have at the time. I can do $15 a month, but pouring out a sudden rush of $200+, nope. Not even for LotRO. And I love it like my firstborn. :p

[Balfree]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

I think I came to the conclusion of what youre explaining (and well) on your post while you were still typing it Kitalrez

Truth be told its not a conclusion you come to without thinking about it for a second unless youre into economics or whatever.

To be completely honest.. right now.. i'd prolly buy a lifetime subscription for FFXI, since im paying without playing at the moment.. but i know for a fact that im coming back eventually, if i had a LTS i wouldnt be feeling like im throwing money away every month. But this is because FFXI is a very special game.

[Omniblast]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

On the apply for Age of Conan Beta, it asks you, What other MMORPG's do you currently play.

FFXI isn't even on that list. T_T.

[Feba]

Re: How much would you pay for a lifetime subscription?

FFXI isn't even on that list. T_T.

that... doesn't make sense.

I mean, FFXI isn't WoW, but it's still a hueg MMO.