I've just finished the eight-hour trial, and I am extremely impressed. Don't get me wrong, I think this is an awesome game, but it just plain too expensive...

My suggestion is that the prices are adjusted.

VO could attract A LOT more players if they lowered their monthly charge to $4.99 a month.

Or they could take a different take entirely. Games that are purchasable with one-time payments have, on average, much higher take-ups. I would suggest maybe $24.99.

Post replies, suggestions, ammenda, etc below.

Cheers,

K

most people tend to agree that at 10$/month, this game is already a bargain and much cheaper than other mmorpg.

though, content-to-buck ratio isn't the same at all.

i dont personally think cutting the price in half would bring twice the number of users. and even doing this would not be break-even, as operation costs (bandwidth & server farm) would add to operation costs.

so, if 10$/month is too expensive, buy a whole year! it comes down to about 80$ i think (better confirm that).

Hmm. If I am allowed, may I draw the example of Runescape.

This is an MMORPG that is, frankly, much lower-tech than VO, and it attracts literally millions of players. Most of these are fully paid-up members at, you guessed it, $4.99 a month. This is the stellar (pardon the pun) potential that VO has ahead of it. All it would take is decrease in price, and I reckon that VO will attract AT LEAST twice the players, with the potential of many, many more. The current price has zoned out a very large chunk of the MMORPG market. VO has nothing to lose by lowering the price, and everything to gain.

I it was $20 a month some people would still pay, and if it was $2 a month some people would still complain.

I'm with TRS completely - my thoughts exactly. $10 is small compared to what others charge.

Lowering price does not guarantee an increase in profits.
If any marketing data was available that would support the argument that cutting the price in half would do more than double the number of active paying players, then it would make sense to do so, and I'm sure they would have already made this move.

The reason that V-O does not have a lot of players yet is the purposeful LACK of advertising. Believe me, when things become "ready", this will sell like hotcakes, and Guild better have a good plan for exponential hardware scalability, 'cause they're gonna need it.

TRS, I take your point, but my point is simply that it would be a shrewd business move to reduce the cost of the game. As I have said before, many gamers will turn away from this marvellous game simply for the reason that it is too expensive!

It is not a shrewd business move because, unlike Runescape, Guild has no bigger company backing it. It's just these bunch of guys with a dream; as it stands, the game barely makes enough to keep itself running. Lowering the price would simply kill it, so VO has everything to lose by cutting the price, and nothing to gain.

Also you forget or are wrong about something. The majority of Runescape players are not paying members. They are the free acounts, the ones accompanied by the ads, the one where Runescape still makes money from.

Also please never mention that game again, it hurts me every time I remember playing it :D

Fnally what Lexicon said, the game is not yet ready for massive player input. It's if you wish to name it so still in "gamma" production.

Scalability has been built into Vendetta from very early on. They'll be ready.

Gamma badges anyone? :P

1 month: $9.99
3 months: $26.99 ($9/month)
6 months: $48.99 ($8.17/month)
12 months: $89.99 ($7.50/month)
24 months: $159.99 ($6.67/month)

All prices are US dollars.

Scalability has been built into Vendetta from very early on. They'll be ready.

except in deneb b-12 and c-10.

Heh. Yeah, looks like uc beat me to it.

If those sectors are any indication of things to come, we'll need LOTS more horsepower, akamai-level stuff.

Or that Nation War with over 40 people. Or the capship battles in B-8 when you get more than say five. Or...

I dont think $9.99 a month is to expensive.

You can have 1 full month of fun and entertainment for only 10$.

How much fun (measured in time here) can you have if you spend 10$ in discos, cinemas etc?

Here in Germany für 10$ I cant even go twice to the cinema. For two visits I have to spend around 15$. thats two movies and (depends on the movie) normaly 3 to 5 hours of entertainment.

I could buy a DVD for 10$ here, (but no actual movie) And yes, I can watch it over and over again for "1 month of entertainment for about 10$" but...this would really be boring, or not? The movie would be the same, every time in watch it. No changes, no surprises. In VO every minute could be different from the last. (depends on players online, the system you are in etc)

I think VO is a really cheap way of fun and entertainment for a long time. ;)

In Canada, Drazed can watch only one movie at the cinimas for $15 :(

VO is an awesome deal :)

Runescape? If I remember right, that's the game that the Cheetoh kids played during Computer Apps class in Highscool. Particularly the poor ones that couldn't afford 'real' video games. Do we realy want that kind of reputation for VO? And I don't wanna' play with no Cheetoh kids either!

What's a "Cheetoh" kid?

Drazed, I know a couple of cinemas that are CAD10 for a movie ;)

I would be more inclined to play with pricing and business models, if we didn't have such a tenuous hold on life as it is. If we were to change to $4.99, and didn't double our userbase in one month, we would go under. So, for the moment I'm inclined to keep things where they are, focus on fixing the various problems with the game and making it more accessible, and then marketing it more intensely. Hopefully that'll increase our userbase and give us the flexibility to play with other options.

9.99 might not be expesnive, but in correlation with some other mmorpgs content it is somewhat on the high level. I do know that most of these companies have some major backing in contradiction to these but still.

Guild wars is 27.99€ every 6 months = 4.67€/ month so around 6$ a month.

WoW is way more expensive but still got way more content as well

nwn2 has constantly updating content for years and years of entertainement and this for the price of 50$.

biosfear is similar to vendetta in its state of content even though vendetta looks a tad better but still the price of biosfear is around 4.95€ without discounts.

I'm not dishing vo but facts are facts. I would however not suggest touching the price at present time, but once you do do your big marketingmove (soon(tm)) and therefore consider vendetta launchworthy this does need to be factored in as well as the length of the trial needs to be reconsidered. And if I would have had to set a price (which i luckilly don't need to do) I would consider starting at 7.99$ or 8.99$ and working down to at max a 1 year subscription of 6.99$. And/or maybe consider giving buyers from the start or before the major launch the advantage of buying access to a reduced amount ergo 6 months to the price of a year, 3 months to the price of 6 months (based on /month naturally) But once again i'm lucky i don't need to make that decission since this will be a major part of the survival of vendetta in the long term coupled with new implimentations.

So once again, it doesn't matter how much you spend on other forms of entertainment seeing as these are OTHER FORMS, in the end you got to compare with content of other similar typed entertainement forms or otherwise your going to compare the benefits of a car with the downsides of using that money on buying cheese... And in the end you are competing with as well standard rpgs as fps as mmofps as mmorps or in short videogames. And a lot of these games are way cheaper then vendetta on a /month base and contain a bigger alternation (buying multiple games when they hit the bargain bin and then alternate playing them will give you more bang for your buck then what vendetta could offer for example).

but meh if I got a penny for every opinion uttered in the world, i would have been a gazillionnaire :D.