#mmorpg analysis

MMORPG stands for “Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game” which is a genre of role-playing games where players can interact with a large community of other players in a virtual game. It is like other rpg where the player takes on a role of a character and plays in a virtual world to level up and progress through the game. Instead of a rpg that focus on single player element, MMORPG focus more on dungeons and fights that players can do together. MMORPG pricing are separated into freemium, subscriptions, and buy to play. Freemium means that the game is free to play for everyone and it incorporates an online cash shop to allow players to buy premium items with real currency. Subscriptions are where players have to pay a monthly subscription fee to continue playing the game. Some of the subscription mmorpg may change their business model back to freemium, when the budget doesn’t meet their goal. These games can then apply special limits to the free players while providing additional benefits to ongoing subscribers as can be seen in games like Tera.

In Tera they allow the subscribers to obtain an “Elite” status that grants them better dungeon rewards, faster queue time and free consumables every month. Another format would be the “buy once and play forever” option where players are required to purchase a copy of the game and are allowed to play the game indefinitely. This causes the company to rely on the initial amount of money to further develop and maintain the game. The game can also incorporate the cash shop model or to publish expansions packs to help pay for the costs. It is interesting to note that the business model has been evolving from subscription games like WOW to freemium mmorpgs throughout the years. As freemium provides the most amount of player’s interest and can easily tempt players who normally doesn’t buy games with cash shop items.  In my opinion, I feel that future mmorpg would either be freemium or buy to play, as monthly subscription games are being labeled as pressuring players to play more to get their money’s worth. In the end, all these business models work, but games these days are incorporating all the different models into one to assure the best profit while keeping the players satisfied.

  http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/07/19/does-an-mmo-have-to-cost-money-to-deliver-fun/