Cunjo: yes, plans like that are in the works. But for game-time, not credits or any other in-game benefit.

a long time ago, in a galaxy right around the nebula, I played on a MUD that had "donation items" you could purchase with cash.. only problem was, more people had them than didnt, and if you DIDNT have them, you usually had a much harder struggle on the XP ladder, or the PVP ladder.. I vote NO for any time of ingame help due to real life cash (why should some of the more opulent amongst us in RL get goodies some of us can't?) not fair.. real life isnt fair.. but online life is supposed to be..

Break19

Inc, the reason I didn't suggest game-time was that I personally wouldn't *want* to forgo any of my payments to guild. From what I've seen, I think I'm probably not the only player who would take that position.

LQ:
"you could probably even thake it a step farther and charge something like $0.50 per month for each character beyond the first."

Umm, No. Multiple characters is virtually a necessity for making this game worthwhile, and the current cap of 6 is reasonable, but should be expandable at a cost.

Lol, Lebermac. I would *love* to see a ship named the 6000 SUX.

"I'll buy that for a dollar..."

The dev could design it so that you had the choice to have in game ads or pay a monthly subscribtion. That way everybodies happy. Ads could be saved on each players computer so it wouldn't take up any bandwith. They could be deleted or added through the game update menu. On the website log-in, their will be an option to play with ads or without ads. This option would be on a per month basis to prevent abuse. The desicion could be locked once the month begins. When you play with adds is selected, there will be a few extra hologram floating in space that someone with the option off can not see.

To keep guild soft from becoming broke while trying to implement this, you could start while everybody is still paying but let everyone know that this is a temporary thing. Once the income stabilizes, then you could open this option up and remove ads from the view of paying members.

I know I wouldn't mind advertisements in the game so I could play for free.

Also increasing the length of the free trial would be great because it seems to stop just before the game starts to become more interesting.

I don't like the idea of real world ads in VO.

If there are any adds, they should definitely be only in GTS(...or maybe High Slavic, but definitely not anything like English :)

If there are any ads, I would definitely pay a little more to not have to see them ever. If I pay to not see them, they'd better not slow down the servers for me either...do like exDragon said and save them on individual user's computers.

I think a good form of donation would be that a person (or a guild) could pay for an in-game and in-role ad. You could set a minimum price, but let them play as much as they want. I think a donate button would be good too.

VERY, very awesome idea.

Anarchy online has enjoyed huge success, over their previous game population & subscriptions, after implementing the advertisements.

For some prospective players, $10/month is still too much. They might have a job, school, family, antsy wives, kids... TONS competing for their time, and only a few minutes a day to grab a quick game. An MMOG that is p2p (pay 2 play) just doesn't work for these poor guys & gals, but they'd really love to enjoy the action along with everyone else.

I'm one :D I like the way this game looks, It's great, I'm really looking forward to this demo. HOWEVER... I was very sad to read that it only lasts 8 hours. Come on... 8 hours? You might as well not even have a demo at all.

I'd almost rather go back to playing my old JumpGate account for the same price. Not really sure about VO. Paying 2 play is just not at all an option for me & gamers like me.

I can play & Mod Homeworld for free... I can play Hostilespace, Starport:GE, Shattered Galaxy, Darkspace, or... shudder & gasp... browser games for free, but browser games SUCK! Most of these above offer a bonus for payers, or limit the free 2 play (f2p) options.

Time of Defiance, EVE, ...RIP Earth & Beyond... :( ...most all other "big" MMOG have at least a 14-day trial period, some even 1 month.

Even if VO would implement ads, and decrease subscriptions to $2 - $5 per month, WHAT A BOOM! :) What a HUGE appeal to gamers out there :) I know that $10/month from ~100-200 subscribers is $1000-$2000 per month for the developers & that's barely a good income for 1 person, let alone a business of ~4 guys. Yes I know that $5/month subscriptions would only give $1000/month income. $2 sub fee will bring in $400/month.

But honestly, you all have other outside jobs, I'm sure? This is way more than enough, even at $2, to pay the monthly cost of your server, ISP, hosting, domain(s), and plus save up for new hardware. Remember that lower prices means more people subscribing. Instead of say 200 subscribers you may get 2000, 5000 even. Now the $2 sub fee turns into a staggering $10,000 monthly income!

Go for it :) Make VO accessible to more subscribers! It's an excellent business move and gaming move both. You won't regret it.

ghent, 8 hours of *play time*, not actual time. That way you can play for a couple hours, forget about it for a moth, and then come back and play for another 6 hours.
And look at WoW. It costs more (up-front and per month), and yet its the biggest success Blizzard ever made!

it will get bigger if/when more content and stuff is added to the game. The devs are aware of their options but are waiting, for some strange reason, until the game is better before making the movie to mass marketing, though if they were making more money they could pay for more people and increase their productivity, but whatever.

I think your missing my point. For people that don't want to see the advertisements, they can pay to play. For the people that care more about not paying then seeing advertisments. They can play the game free with the advertisements.

My point is that there are only ~4 devs and they are all hard at work making core content, and don't have time to integrate ads. And if they say they do then where are my PC Cap Ships and Crafting System. Anyway, anything that takes dev time to implement is not worth it at this time. If the game is polished up and all the core game elements are in place and everything is ready and marketed and they are still not seeing the stampeed of new players, perhaps consider adding in P2P w/ads, otherwise it's just wasting precious dev time.

The "strange reason" is based on solid marketing savvy: If you bring people to look at your product, any product, and it isn't ready for prime-time then they will not purchase it. You have wasted your effort and money to bring them in.

But, it gets worse:

Those people would be extremely difficult to attract back to look at the product - a serious concern with a "niche" product like a space MMORPG. It would be very expensive and likely require re-branding (trying to put a whole new face on your product so that it is not associated with previous failure).

Worse yet:

Those people will bad-mouth your product immediately after being disappointed by it, and some will do so again after you have brought a finished product to the market - sight unseen.

You can see this in action now if you go to one of the sites where MMORPGs are discussed and post that VO is really cool and everyone should try it. I predict that at least one of the first 3 replies will be a slam based on old info.

Imho extending free trial to 16 hours would be fine.
That way new players can get a taste of some nicer ships and weps and prolly get hooked.
In this unfinished state with new content under way and all known existing problems any kind of advertising would be contraproductive.

However Mac community is pretty loyal to VO so informing Apple or sites like macupdate.com about VO client updates will prolly result in more mac afficionados stumbling upon VO.
/I know I found VO like that: update link posted on macupdate.com./