Ultima Online Increases Monthly Subscription Rate

Thanks to Blues News for pointing out an announcement from Origin/EA that Ultima Online's monthly subscription rate will increase to $12.95, though you can still buy 6-month prepaid packages for the previous rate of $9.99 per month. We covered Sony's flat-rate MMO subscription a few days ago, and it'll be interesting to see if EA would consider doing similarly for their properties, which would include Earth And Beyond and The Sims Online. But does Ultima Online still have certain charms that other MMORPGs can't offer?

Comments

Not as bad as sega.net

[lightspawn]

Remember when they increased their prices from $0 to $9.95 a month?

The plan was
1. Sell games promising online play
2. Let people play for free for a while
3. Not make enough money
4. Start charging monthly fee
5. 95% of players don't pay
6. Other 5% don't pay as soon as they figure there's nobody left to play with
7. No need to support the servers any more
8. Profit!

If that's not asking for a class action lawsuit, I don't know what is.

Where does the money go?

[Kelerain]

I have been following planetside, which launched recently at $12.95/mo + $50 box. This seems awfully expensive. Can they not afford to roll the game costs into the monthly fee? Compared to entertaiment vs most games this price is awful. So my question is, can they afford to do this any other way? Where does the money go (in what ammounts)? I know the obvious stuff they tell you (bandwidth, servers, admins, patches) but does that suck up the entire ammount? I would think they would make more by giving the game away or at least for much less than they do. Where does the money go?

Re:Where does the money go?

[Kelerain]

You completely ignored the initial development cost which can be said to be paid for by selling the boxed copy.

Not nececarily. I know it takes money to develop, but the person who buys, plays thier month, and quits is also getting stiffed. They can't DO anything with that box without the fee. Its a pretty high bar to entry. IMHO, it would be smarter to roll the initial cost, and the cost of any expansions into the monthly cost. I'd pay $15 a mo or something w/o box cost. Thats $15 first month (no longer free) + $3*11 = $48 in the first year. Almost perfect.

The telco's for example know better than to pull a stunt like this. I know of few if any DSL providers that stick you with the full modemn cost (somewhere ~$250), and most have constant 'special promotions' that include a 'free' modemn. The cost of this comes back to them in the monthly fees.

I think that paying $50 for a box, that lasts only 1 month before becoming fairly useless on its own is a bit of a ripoff. They need a better buisness model.

Re:Where does the money go?

[sweetooth]

The telco's for example know better than to pull a stunt like this. I know of few if any DSL providers that stick you with the full modemn cost (somewhere ~$250), and most have constant 'special promotions' that include a 'free' modemn. The cost of this comes back to them in the monthly fees.

Telcos have charged outrageous fees for modems and installation for DSL/cable etc. ISPs that offer DSL not provided by the telcos are often charging full price for modems. I've recently seen the costs of installation and modems drop because the telcos are trying to increase their market and that is a good way to get people over the initial cost several hundred dollars. Of course they just make it right back through higher monthly fees and modem rental fees, but they have a larger burden to offset than game manufacturers.

I think that paying $50 for a box, that lasts only 1 month before becoming fairly useless on its own is a bit of a ripoff. They need a better buisness model.

Why should they get a better business model when this one is working fine for them now? There seem to be relatively few people bitching about the initial cost to buy into the game. Mostly, I think, due to the fact that most games cost $40 - $50 up front. Charging less for the game initially might draw in more people, but some bean counter would have to sit down and see if it actually increased profits.

Re:Where does the money go?

[herderofcats]

Kelerain wrote:
> The telco's for example know better than to pull a stunt like this. I know of few if any
> DSL providers that stick you with the full modemn cost (somewhere ~$250), and most have
> constant 'special promotions' that include a 'free' modemn. The cost of this comes back
> to them in the monthly fees.

Actually, it turns out there are good economic reasons to have up-front box costs that has little to do with profits from those boxes.

What the online game companies have discovered is that you have to get the player to play long enough to become hooked into the game. They have found that the up-front cost forces the player to commit to that first "free" month so that they will overcome the steep learning curve.

Thus online games companies that have allowed you to download the clients for free have a much more difficult time getting people to play long enough to see if they like the game.

-- Herder of Cats

Re:Where does the money go?

[Teppy]

I run an MMO; we charge $13.95/month. Here are the costs:

$0.74 Credit card company
$0.90 Bandwidth
$0.38 Hardware, assuming 2-year replacement

With only 2000 subscribers, we're not yet at the point where we need to have paid GMs or customer support staff. However, we're close, and that's where the real costs come in. Right now, half of my time is spent on support. I work 80 hours/week, and am probably 2x as efficient at support as a non-developer would be. As we grow, we probably need a $30k/yr cost-to-employ person per 1000 players, so add to the above:

$2.50 Customer Support

So that's $4.52/month. I've heard that most of the big comapnies spend a bit more than that ($6-$8 total).
The problem with including many months of gameplay with a retail purchase is that a publisher/developer sees just a fraction of the retail price - the store and distributer take a big bite.
I know that Blizzard includes online play with their titles. Does anyone know whether you can summon someone if you, for instance, lose an item?

Re:To me, it matters not...

[alyandon]

According to the Wine App Compatibility database it works fine.

Planeshift

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole money thing is why i support Planeshift !

Absolutely!

[zmcgrew]

I tried EQ back in December, but didn't like it. I promptly returned to UO. I (At this point) would never leave UO. If they charged me even more, I would still play. The community is hte greatest!

I'd hate to see players leave. If it empties out, I don't know where'd I go... Maybe back to Raganrok, I hear the latest beta is quite nice.

Any suggestions?

Ultima's Lasting Appeal

[rickwood]

I started out with UO, and switched to AC. I've also played DAoC and play tested a few that were promising but never were released. EQ gave me motion sickness, though I understand that they've fixed this since. I recently switched back to UO. I have many reasons, including the fact that all my bro's switched back to UO. One big thing though is UO doesn't limit my moral choices.

Using AC as an example, if "A$$NUGG3+" starts mouthing off to you or is just being annoying your choices are find someplace else to be, or log out. (Assuming he's not doing something you could call a GM over, of course.) Now, what I want to do, and what my character would do is kill this punk mofo and take his gear. AC doesn't really let you do that. Going PK in AC is kind of a pain (You have to do a quest), and unless you're part of the right clan you're just gonna get run out of the game. (Important Safety Tip: Unless you know it's okay for you to be there, don't go to "The Hub" as a PK.) Even then, unless the punk in question is a PK as well, you can't touch them.

Not so in UO. In UO, while there are penalties and consequences in game to killing someone who hasn't actually stolen from you or attacked you, you can kill them, for any reason or no reason at all. So when "A$$NUGG3+" says, "u r gay ur guild is gay", etc., you can beat him down. (For the record, I am one of those annoying people who role plays, so when you insult my guild, I "keep it in play" as we said back in the day.)

True, there are zones where you are protected by the "Guards", and if you try and attack someone there you probably will never land the blow before you're off to resurrect. Most places if you attack someone who is flagged as an innocent, i.e. they haven't done anything bad in game, you'll likely get a "Murder Count", but that isn't the end of the world. There are other places where it's law of the jungle.

I'll pony up the extra dough mainly because UO lets me really play my character, whereas AC and the like artificially limit my choices in order to try to eliminate "griefing." Of course, all it really does it provide griefers a consequence-free environment.

In a perfect world, the game service provider would only eliminate the cheaters, and let me take care of the griefers "in game." I am still waiting for the perfect online fantasy RPG. I have high hopes for Middle Earth, but something tells me they aren't gonna let my character "Telumhatar" riddle "A$$NUGG3+" with arrows just on general principle.

Re:Ultima's Lasting Appeal

[rickwood]

I played AC on both Thistledown and Darktide, though mostly on TD. On DT everyone is trying to kill everyone else all the time and I found very little role-playing. It was more like Quake than an RPG. If memory serves me correctly, when I first made a DT character I was attacked before I ever got spawned in.

I haven't forgotten what UO was like in the bad old days, when solos would get killed just for being solos. That's why I switched to AC in the first place, because I thought I wanted a no PvP game. What I found out is that no PvP is more annoying because the punks and trolls have no concequences, which just makes them bolder.

In the years I played AC, UO changed and grew. As another poster said, they put in a really great craft system. They fixed some of the problems in the acquisition of gold, so I didn't have to "work" eight hours at tailoring or whatever so I could adventure for a hour. But especially they put in the "new lands" and made it so there were several grades of protection for characters, from guarded zones where attacking another character means certain death, to wild lands where there is no law but might makes right.

It's not that I want to just randomly kill people, but I want the choice. Some people just can't learn manners except at the sharp end of a sword.

Something that other mmorpg dont have?

[Drakker]

Does UO has something that other mmorpg dont have? A well balanced craft system. It makes all the difference seriously.

There's nothing more fun than testing out on monsters your new armor suite and grandmaster sword. :)