We can't really compare Pantheon to WoW as though it's the same circumstances. While we all want Pantheon to be wildly popular (and I do think it will be big), it has to be sustainable even if there aren't millions of subscribers.
I'm not in the industry, but I suspect there's a large economy of scale which benefits the big games. Understand that there are two kinds of expenses: content creation and game maintenance. The maintenance costs are probably similar (server space and bandwidth per user should be similar regardless of subscriber count). But the content creation costs favor large population games. A 10 million population game isn't creating 10 times as much content as a 1 million population game. They probably have a similar amount of content, so the content cost per subscriber is much lower in WoW.
So we need a price structure that takes this in to account.
One other possibility is an ad-supported service for those with a cheaper rate. They could be required to watch ads periodically (though this could interfere with grouping mechanics if it's not designed in a way they can schedule it).
Another possibility is whales paying extra monthly to rent prominent buildings in game.
Or require the host PC to devote time to mining crypto in exchange for free play.
Or strike a deal with a service like Libro.fm or Audible where we pay for an account and our free monthly audio book is 'game time'. Or combo with a VPN or anti-virus subscription.
Counterfleche said:We can't really compare Pantheon to WoW as though it's the same circumstances. While we all want Pantheon to be wildly popular (and I do think it will be big), it has to be sustainable even if there aren't millions of subscribers.
I'm not in the industry, but I suspect there's a large economy of scale which benefits the big games. Understand that there are two kinds of expenses: content creation and game maintenance. The maintenance costs are probably similar (server space and bandwidth per user should be similar regardless of subscriber count).
Blizzard host and maintain all their own physical servers/datacenters, a substantially higher cost vs offloading that and using something like AWS.
cash shop will definitely happen I hope it's NOT in-game with pop-ups etc. I would rather see it during my initial login screen "check out X on our website" if VR need extra funds. I would gladly pay a premium subscription if cash shop or cosmetics not be in the game but I'm just dreaming.
Iksar said:Counterfleche said:We can't really compare Pantheon to WoW as though it's the same circumstances. While we all want Pantheon to be wildly popular (and I do think it will be big), it has to be sustainable even if there aren't millions of subscribers.
I'm not in the industry, but I suspect there's a large economy of scale which benefits the big games. Understand that there are two kinds of expenses: content creation and game maintenance. The maintenance costs are probably similar (server space and bandwidth per user should be similar regardless of subscriber count).
Blizzard host and maintain all their own physical servers/datacenters, a substantially higher cost vs offloading that and using something like AWS.
Whether Blizzard uses a cheaper or more expensive hosting, it's still scaling with population. My point is that, on a per subscriber cost, larger population games have a lower cost per player for developing the game (art assets, world building, development, etc). Sure, there can be some proportionality with populations (a very small game will likely have a smaller world and fewer assets), but there's a large economy of scale for development assets. Thus, if Pantheon is trying to be a large MMO, we have to expect it to have a higher cost per player since we can't rely upon having 10 million subscribers.
This is a hard discussion to have without knowing the break even point. If only 10k subs are needed at $15 a month to break even, and they're projecting having 25k subs then why go higher than all the competitors?
Without that number they need to meet their estimated yearly overhead, it's difficult to talk exact numbers.
Personally, I think it'd be a very hard sell to be over the current norm of $15 when this game is created by a new company with no major IP backing it. I do really want to see the marketing of this game be on point once it has an official release date though.
eunichron said:It's kind of ridiculous to claim that the cost of a sub needs to keep up with inflation, when the cost of other forms of entertainment don't really follow.
Here are some monthly subscription fees for common entertainment mediums:
Netflix (Basic): $9.99
Hulu (no ads): $12.99
Amazon Prime: $14.99/$139 ($11.59 avg monthly)
EA PlayPro: $14.99/$99.99 ($8.33 avg monthly) - allows you access all games in EA's catalog
World of Warcraft: $14.99/$13.99/$12.99 (1/3/6 months, respectively)
If inflation was a factor at all you would expect those fees to be $20+. While some of those have increased over the years, it obviously isn't inflation that sets the price of entertainment commodities, it's customer expectations. Setting the sub for a new MMO out of range of what customer expectations are is going to turn a lot of people off, no matter how necessary it might be perceived to be. I suspect VR anticipates this, and we can probably expect a sub fee in the range of $10-15 monthly at different packages, similar to what Blizzard does for WoW.
This is the heart of the matter.
When I consider Patreon, I compare my support to these numbers, and others will too.
Speaking of Patreon, I personally would be happy to pay my $15/month subscription fee, and another $10/month to support VR via Patreon. Up to VR how to make it worth while, but this allows whoever wants to pay more to do so.
Feastycentral said: Personally, I think it'd be a very hard sell to be over the current norm of $15 when this game is created by a new company with no major IP backing it.
I disagree. This game being crowdfunded, without a huge wealthy corporation behind it is a clear selling point for WHY it would need to cost a bit more than other games. And while VR is new, the staff includes people who have been in the industry for years. Panth is widely known as Brad's game, and now with Steve Clover on board - another historical name from EQ - I see no problem with it asking a bit more for the monthly sub.