Will Vendetta be totally free, or will it have a Monthly fee?
How much will the game cost?

Grim

Directly from the FAQ:

"Will there be a monthly fee to play the final Vendetta MMORPG?"

"Yes. Because of the costs associated with maintaining the servers and the bandwidth needed to support them, some recurring charge will be needed. However, we are pursuing an unsual, advanced network architecture that we believe may greatly reduce our recurring costs, thus allowing us to minimize our charges."

I think by minimal they mean somewhere around $3-5 a month. This is very cheap, considering how other MMORPGs usually cost at least $8-10 a month. A yearly subscription is also something the devs have thought about, at maybe $50 per year. It's a VERY good deal. But keep in mind that nothing has been officially stated in pricing. It may be lower or higher than these estimates. I'd hold off on deciding until you've seen a more complete version of the game and until you've heard more details on the planned pricing policy.

Unfortunately, this raises one or two doubts about Vendetta's future... since in StarFreeze's Forum poll, most of the users were revealed to be below 16 years old, how are these users going to continue playing? How does the money get from us (for those of us that can afford it) to the devs? Paypal only works if you have a credit card... and most of us dont.

PayPal works with checking accounts too

Thier parents of course....

Not all of us are below 16.

I think the average american family is not going to be so much bothered by $6 or $8 or $10 a month if its used to buying PS2 games a $50 a pop. You talking not much worse than many families I know spend on rentals (games and movies) every _week_.

I would imagine alot of the pricing will depend on what the publisher wants to recoup its investment, marketing costs, etc.

At present, Vendetta has very low overhead and basically its being made a labor of love but at some point the devs are going to need (and deserve) to be paid for thier work. I would imagine something like $30 buys you the game + 3 months subscription. $60 more buys you a full years subscription, or you can keep playing after 3 months at $9 a month. All major credit cards accepted. Available from major game retailers across the united states. Order your official strategy guide online from Amazon.com. PS2 port available 1st quarter 2005.

euhm, not to be nitpicking, but what for the europian customers ???

are you gonna leave the europian once more out off the fun ??

cheers

I hate to be the one to do this, but I'm going to throw some "real life" fuel onto the fire. I'm not deeply involved in the video game industry, but know enough about real business to make some educated guesses:

- In order for the vendetta test to become a real game, the devs will need to find a publisher. (hence, E3)

- The game will be distributed for money. Everything that is good costs money*

- The "I'm a kid I can't pay" argument doesn't hold water, as you are one of the largest consumer spending groups demographically.

- The publisher will most likely dictate how much the game will cost per month. It will probably be higher than the devs want to charge, but unless they're smart they won't have any say in the matter. (that was a subtly disguised suggestion to the devs that they should watch for this when negotiating with a publisher) As cele pointed out, they need to recoup costs from marketing etc. What cele didn't point out is that they also need to make a hefty profit margin. Either that, or they won't pick up the game to begin with.

- The europeans won't be left out of the fun unless the publisher makes it difficult to purchase the game. However, since the game as it stands is easily downloadable and update-able, I can foresee being able to download and pay for the game overseas using a credit card. Credit card companies will do all the hard work of currency exchanges and whatever. To buy games internationally off of the shelves, a european (or worldwide) publisher would be needed. Most games are published under different companies in different countries I believe.

* - The Beatles were wrong, actually. Money can buy you love, especially in certain counties in Nevada. Note: if you know of something that is good that does NOT cost money, please let me know because I'm sure I could find a way to market it :-)

Regarding the money paying w/o a credit card thingy, just look at EverQuest and other MMORPG's. You go down to Circuit City or Best Buy or Electronics Boutique, or just about anywhere that sells computer games, you see the little cards. You pay for the card (with cash), and you now have a month of the game. No credit card. Easy.

*sigh*

I hope not. This is a truly addictive and fun game, but there's no way I'll be able to afford $9 a month. Quite honestly, I'd rather not see a publisher at all. By that I don't mean "I'd rather not see Guild make money." No no no no!!! I know a lot of you, including the devs, would argue vigorously towards having a publisher. But the way I see it now, the game requires an internet connection... so wouldn't it be cheaper and more logical to provide a trial version free for download and then impose the cheap monthly fee after that trial period? Granted, yes, part of making a game popular is by putting shiny boxes on the shelves. But since all of us right now have currently managed to band together a community of over 1400 active players, with LITTLE advertising, maybe it's not such a bad method after all.

In other words, maybe it should always be provided as an option to download the game online (obviously with restrictions until you pay) with a PDF manual off to the side. Rather than spending all that money on duplicating all those CDs, printing all those manuals, and assembling all the packaging... all your customers will be lingering right under your nose. The majority of them will have the ability to download it right off the internet! This isn't a new concept, and some MMORPG companies have successfully pulled it off and continue to grow to this day. Of course they later added the boxes on the shelves, but they still get most of their customers online through advertising and word of mouth. It's convenient, cheap, and quick.

1400 active players? Erm... Pages 159-30 of the rankings are blank... With 50 players per page, that's about 1500 characters with a score of more than 0. Add in the fact that many people have more than one character, and it's significantly more... And many of them may stop playing once they have to pay for it...

Yes, I was only counting players with a score greater than 0. Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "active." But still, that's a lot of people who went through the effort of signing up, loading/setting up the game, and actually playing it for a while. Once a real marketing campaign kicks in, MMORPG geeks will come pouring from everywhere on the internet. But for now we have the equivalent of a tiny leak on a dam, just waiting to burst open.

of course once that happens we'll have all the problems that come with it... language problems (swearing/flaming), assholes that do nothing but annoy others... you get the picture.

More customers mean bigger server loads. Bigger server loads mean more overhead costs. There is a minimum ammount of money at stake here. The developers have to recover the considerable costs that they put into this game. The developers have to cover the costs of maintaining a server (and moderators and administrators) capable of supporting a customer base which starts to pay the salaries of all the people at guildsoft and provide them enough capital to continue to improve the game so that they can after a reasonable time period offer V2 to stay in the market. That doesn't come cheap. The 'going rate' on the market is about $10 a month. My guess is that there are very hard economics behind that fee and that trying to go significantly beneath them is risky.

Secondly, you have to understand that in most cases the profits on a game are very front loaded. There isn't much of a point in giving a 3 month free trial period to a game - better than 50% of your customer base will be willing to move on by then. If every game had a 3 month free trial period, no one would buy games (which is why games only offer a very limited ammount of gameplay for free, 3 _days_ at the most).

There aren't many games out there of this quality, true. But there aren't many online games without a publisher out there that aren't one man shows that are barely squeeking by on a customer base of a few thousand.

I hate to tell you this but one way or the other sooner or later, free open Vendetta Test is coming to an end. It might be coming to an end as early as next week, and that could be either good or bad news depending on the reasons for the demise of 'free'.

Well, nowhere did I mention about having a 3-month trial period, or any other time period for that matter. I was thinking more along the lines of a week or two. All the wormholes wouldn't be accessible in the demo/trial either. Aw heck, maybe even automatically delete the account after the trial period, with a grace period to allow the person to restore their character if they choose to buy it. Point is, there are many ways to distribute a sample or demo of a without running the risk of "free gameplay" through exploits.

It's my strong opinion that trials and demos are a must, especially if you'll be committed to paying a monthy fee! Why would you risk paying a monthly fee before even knowing how the game is or whether it even runs on your system? I can see why there's so much concern over exploiting a trial version, perhaps through multiple accounts, but if it's pulled off correctly it can definitely save a lot of headaches.

I also highly doubt that they'll pull the plug on Vendetta Test within a week, at the earliest, if they were to find a publisher let's say. It was Guild's original philosophy to test out the game and its servers by allowing a sample of the public to play under "real world" conditions. They can change it to a closed beta if they wish, but they would need to do A LOT of hiring to test these "real world" conditions. Hmmm, let's see... hiring 1000 beta testers at around $6-9 an hour each... versus letting the public test it for FREE. Which one is cheaper again?

Let's say they did end up finding one publisher in the end. And let's say Guild signs a contract with the publishing company that says they'll have to stop public testing by next week. Well, at this point the publisher has done something against Guild's philosophy, and perhaps went so far as to impede or cripple the development of the game. And guess who the publisher blames when they don't get enough money in the end! The developers. Ironic, isn't it?

Arolte: Please blame any lapse in reason in the above post on the fact it was very hastily written 5 minutes before a final in programming languages.

I agree that all games need some demo.

My concern is not that the publisher will want to have Vendetta become a closed Beta, but that the publisher will want all members of the Beta test to sign a NDA (as is usual in the industry) before continueing further with the testing process.

ill sell my soul to play for free the rest of my life.... Please? ill work for you devs...

Cool. I got no problem with that. Send in my NDA through mail and I'll be happy to sign it.

Two responses here:

1) While yes, a "boxed" edition of the game would add to the overhead, THAT may be the yearly subscription fee system. The download might be the monthly subscription system.

2) Only problem I see with NDA's would be having minors play. Only way that would work AFAIK is that the parent(s) would have to sign for em.

Furby, may i ask why parents would have to sign?