Hi, it's me again. After a year and a half (almost). Developers will remember, I ranted a while ago that there are players like me, who would play from time to time and pay for time spent in the game, instead of monthly subscriptions.

In fact, I proposed subscription based on played time, not earth time. :-) To put my money where my mouth is, I subscribed for a year, to make a point that money is not a problem, and to give something to developers.

After all this time, I've spent about 30 hours in the game. I do not regret the 3$/hour, as I said - I subsribed to give support to developers, not to bitch about high costs of the game. :-)

At that time, I was being told that the game is going to be considerably better in a year time. IMHO, it did progress, but not as much. It is still a nice game, though. So, I'll just repeat my old question:

guys (and girls), are you going to offer prepaid service (sell online hours) for those who play from time to time? I still think this woulddl benefit both your clients and you, because you will tractor-beam more people into this nice game. :-)

Like the last time you asked, the answer is still not yet.

I'm not sure it would influence more people to play.
Or even if it would create more revenue.

Rado.hr, I won't presume to speak for John Bergman or Guild Software but, I will give you *my* honest impression of what's to come.

It's been told to us that more content needs to be in place before Guild makes any kind of marketing push and that the new UI client was just a first step.

As the rest of the bugs and issues for the UI are worked on, the items in the most recent news article will come into play.

As the game fleshes out closer to the ideal John and company have in mind for *ready*, more thought will go into other forms of payment and your question will be addressed. One downside to it may be how complicated it is to set up and maintain.

Personally, I like the idea and I'm sure they will bounce it around when the time comes.

Personally, I'd hate it. I'd be less inclined to login and just "muck around" (chat, find nooks and crannies in stations, etc) if I had to pay per hour - I'd feel like I was wasting my cash or something. (Lord knows what'd happen to Firemage's relay.)

(Just look at broadband - everyone's switching from the charge-per-hour model to a flat rate per month.)

as long as they offer both plans cabbage it wouldnt make any difference.

for those of us who play regularly a monthly subscription, and for people who dont play as often perhaps an hourly rate at ... say $1.00 an hour that can ONLY be purchased in 20 hour blocks but is good until you have used the time.

This way people who only log on a few days each month for an hour or so at a time could buy a block of time.

Personally however I think relayer is probably right. Payment options are most likely not high on the priority list at the moment.

I don't think it would hurt to let people pay by the hour...the devs would probably make more money off people like rado. Like Spellcast said though, they must offer both types of plans. I think a lot more people (myself included) would choose not to play if hourly payment was the only option plan. (Did anyone ever play Megawars on Compuserve in the early/mid-90's? It was a ton of fun, but outrageously expensive.)

what Ragnarok Online does is it lets you buy hours of playtime but they eventually expire in 6 months or so that way you cannot just horde all your time. Just a thot

-Miex

I agree, there should be a duel payment option. For me, I spent over a month just using the free trial period with the time only used on three or four days.

Question for you exDragon. Would you have played more if you had known that you were not limited to the 8 hours of the trial.

Also, what happens if your in the middle of a duel or a cap ship battle or some other player sponsored event and your minutes run out. Are you immediately disconnected with a big fat message saying "you need to buy more minutes to continue playing!"?

well, the 8 hour trial gives warnings at (i think) 1 hour, 20 minutes and 15 minutes... (if not it should)

so the pay by hour option could work the same way, alerting you to the fact that you need to buy another pack of time.

Yeah - and at the end it flashes a countdown from 20 to 1 with a "CONTINUE?" Flashing, while you scramble for extra tokens in your pocket.

I think it gives 2 hours, 1 hour, 30 min, 15 min, 5 min, and 1 min warnings. IDK, it's been ages since I've been in-game.