Paid Content

As an avid Dungeons & Dragons nerd, I’ve been following the emergence of D&D Insider with rapt attention.  Sadly, I think this analysis that I stumbled across a couple of weeks back on Trembling Hand goes a long way to sum up my stance on Wizards of the Coast and their ability to develop their way out of a wet paper sack.  And the worst part?  For all of their broken piecemeal content, unreliable release schedule and questionable value, Wizards somehow feels that the time has come for them to monetize what content they do have in the form of a monthly subscription.  And when all of the tools in DDi are released, they’re proposing jacking the prices up to MMO-land.  Let’s not forget that additional online content will be extra, above and beyond the proposed $10-$15 per month.

Lest I rip Wizards of the Coast all by their lonesome, let’s have a look at some of the other more aggregious examples of members of the industry running what amounts to well-marketed digital Ponzi Schemes.  As is mentioned in MMO Crunch’s interview with the infamous Erling Ellingson, Funcom has already announced a paid expansion to Age of Conan.  To be perfectly frank, after wasting some of my own time on a friend’s “free” month, I think my subscription money may be better spent on DDi.  At least Wizards is committed to publishing quality e-zine content for that $10-$15/month.  Funcom?  I’m really not sure what the hell they’re selling, but it sure as hell isn’t value.

While we’re at it, I guess the real question is, “What is an MMO worth anyways?” and probably secondarily, “What sort of value should I be able to expect for my $50 on a new title and my $13/month (or whatever)?”

Let’s go ahead and use World of Warcraft as an example, because I’m familiar with it, and perhaps more validly, because it is currently the industry standard.  For $30-$40, you get the original game plus the first expansion bundled in and your standard free month (maybe two, I don’t know).  Obviously, this is immediately before the second expansion is due out, so prices on the other content have been higher, but right now, this is what’s out there.  Anyways, with that, you get 10 classes, 2 factions with 5 races each, 2 old-world continents with 15-20 zones each and 1 expansion continent with 10 zones and approximately 50 quests per old-world zone and 100 per new world zone.  In addition you have roughly 20 old-world dungeons, 5 old-world raid dungeons, 15 expansion dungeons (depending on how you count them) and 8 expansion raid dungeons.  Now these are all just numbers and the experience of any given game has to be seen to be believed, but you can see where this sort of standard means that relatively few games can compete in the marketplace and make their subscription cost feel “value added.”