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[Sowelu]

A lot of us here hate monthly, yeah.  And there's clear evidence that "buy once" DOES work for a lot of games.

My personal favorite is Puzzle Pirates' pay-as-you-go model.  It can be more expensive for a regular player but is much nicer for a sporadic one.

Some subscriber-only features...like, being promoted to the level where you can serve as a ship's officer...can also be bought a la carte' on the pay-as-you-go (doubloon) servers.  You buy in-game doubloons for real money, you can trade those for more practical game money (you buy cannonballs with normal currency, not doubloons, for example).  The key here is that you can buy an officer's badge for the equivalent of $X real money...and it lasts for 30 days of connected time.  If you play for thirty days straight, it lasts for thirty days.  If you play once a month for thirty months, it'll last you two and a half years!

Also, it lets people with money to burn subsidize other players in the same way that EVE does.  You can buy an assload of doubloons, and either trade them with other people to get rich quick or simply give them away to promising new recruits.  It's not quite an "I Win" button...sure, you get the advantages of the stuff you bought, but doubloons don't magically wish new objects into the world.  It just cuts down the grind of the money-spending player, and adds it to the subsidized player.  Which honestly isn't too bad because the grind is called "playing normally" and is pretty fun...

So yeah, there's that.  I felt bad about hijacking the 0x10^c thread with pricing models so I made this.

[Neonivek]

It was hardly a hijacking.

One thing that has kept monthly fees small is the fact that people tend to use less of their total time. Then someone who gets it at a playing basis.

[Rakonas]

What I'm really not a big fan of is the ones where you typically pay for most content through microtransactions, but there exists a premium account version where you pay a monthly fee, yet you still have to purchase some things with microtransactions. I agree that Puzzle Pirates has one of the best pricing models I've seen yet, though.

[Levi]

I despise the Free to Play model, for various reasons that I might go into more detail later.

Monthly doesn't bother me so much, as I feel the game developers will continue to try to make the game fun for me as they don't want to lose my precious money. 

A single payment up front is still my favourite usually.

[Sowelu]

What I'm really not a big fan of is the ones where you typically pay for most content through microtransactions, but there exists a premium account version where you pay a monthly fee, yet you still have to purchase some things with microtransactions.

You mean City of Heroes?  Bleh, yeah.

[Ozyton]

I don't really play MMOs myself, but I wanted to draw a little attention to Spiral Knights. It's a free to play game, but you only have enough 'regenerating energy' (referred to as mist energy) to do a few dungeon floors a day, and getting higher tier equipment needs more energy than can fit in your regenerating tank. You can buy 'solid' energy using real money, or go buy some with in-game money from other players. There's a sort of constantly rising and falling market of 'solid' energy so you don't really need to pay a single penny to get the best equipment as long as you're good at making in-game currency.


Guild Wars 2 looks a little interesting to me since it's free to play (as far as I'm aware), but I'm assuming (hoping) it will be a one-time up-front fee to play the game (much like any other regular game)

[Briggsy16]

I have no problem at all with pay monthly models. I can afford to pay it so it doesn't bother me. If the game is good, I'll happily pay for it.

[Telgin]

I despise the Free to Play model, for various reasons that I might go into more detail later.

Monthly doesn't bother me so much, as I feel the game developers will continue to try to make the game fun for me as they don't want to lose my precious money. 

A single payment up front is still my favourite usually.

Seconded.  Two of the MMOs I play regularly have gone to the free to play + nickel and dimed to death model (Everquest and Everquest II).  I just stay with the monthly plans like I had before they went F2P, because it's just a hassle to pay for crap like the ability to hold more money, or play the class I want, or learn another AA point.

If there was a F2P model that worked completely on appearance or otherwise non critical features of the game, I'd be fine with it, but I know few mainstream games like Everquest could hope to be sustained on such income.

Systems that charge by time don't seem like they could be balanced easily to me.  I'd probably get off cheap, since I only play about 10 hours per week, but those who play 40+ wouldn't like it.  Maybe if it was capped at a sensible value...

Pay once is the best solution of course, but for MMOs with ongoing support, I don't mind so much having a subscription fee.  Getting expansions for free would be nice though, if I have played the game for a while or something.

[Matz05]

I like games that are one-time or pay-per-expansion best.
An offshoot of this is the lighter microtransaction models where the game is made of modular expansions. This could work quite well.
I am ambivilent of pay-to-grind-less or pay-to-look-different-and-be-taken-seriously models (usually go hand in hand).

I have serious issues with reccuring payments, considering that most companies cannot be trusted not to take the pump-and-dump approach to development (otherwise known as "milk the cash cow to death then throw the corpse in a ditch and deny all responsibility") and I go through cycles of playing a game fanatically for a while, then switching games. I want the game to still be there when I come back.

[Rakonas]

What I'm really not a big fan of is the ones where you typically pay for most content through microtransactions, but there exists a premium account version where you pay a monthly fee, yet you still have to purchase some things with microtransactions.

You mean City of Heroes?  Bleh, yeah.

Actually I was thinking of LotRO, but yeah there are plenty of mmos with this bleh-ish pricing model, unfortunately. I have to assume it works financially, though.

[Orangebottle]

TF2's microtransaction system is the only system I enjoy playing with. You can find anything that you can buy on the Mann Co Store. Keys, nametags, hats, weapons, etc.

[freeformschooler]

I think some F2P games are alright. I like F2P games that are uniquely fun without paying.

TF2's chest-and-key system is silly, but when I play TF2 I really don't care about hats or fancy shiny weapons or whatever. So it's fun for me.

Path of Exile, the D2-like MMO coming up, lets you pay for benefits like customization, aesthetics and character slots. You're at no disadvantage game-wise when you don't pay.

A lot of F2P games deliberately limit your fun unless you play, though. Or worse, as on Wurm, the rich kid can climb to the top of the ladder and knock you off at any time without repurcussion. I'm not a fan of those models. As with others in this thread, my favorite model is still pay-once, but I'm not sure how well that would work for a large MMO.

[Heron TSG]

If there was a F2P model that worked completely on appearance or otherwise non critical features of the game, I'd be fine with it, but I know few mainstream games like Everquest could hope to be sustained on such income.

Puzzle Pirates works like that. Money is used primarily for fancier clothing and buying ships and whatnot more easily, but it's all still perfectly accessible without payment. (Due to the doubloons to piece-of-eight transfer market.) You can get by pretty easily without paying a dime.

[fenrif]

Monthley subscripions are fine with me. Though it's only really worth it if the game actually grows after release. Asherons Call did this perfect with the monthly events and continuing storyline.

GW2 looks like it has the right idea too. Pay once up-front, sell expansions down the line, and have a shop for cosmetic items. Most free to play games are terrible nickle-and-dime operations and I can't stand them. Sometimes they get it right, like D&D online... But usually not. I think generally the most important thing is keep all the RMT items cosmetic. Doing quest packs and stuff can work too, but only if they're a one time purchase and not a rental.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I don't play much MMOs. Used to enjoy a couple in the past but getting older I've found that free time is something that comes rare and I'd prefer not wasting it slapping the tits off a palette swapped enemy for 8 days to try and find the Magical Bollock of Fire +3.  I believe montly transactions were the corner stone of MMOs since the long long ago in the before times. Such titles as the orginal Neverwinter Nights on AOL which really popularised the genre/payment model.

Personally though I've never bothered with any game that has monthly fees. In paticular are games such as WoW which would charge something like 60 bucks for the base game and then bring out expansions AND have monthly fees.
I've always thought the best model is buying the base game. Then having an ingame item shop for cosmetic items so that playwers can burn some money for some cat ears or whatever. Reasonably priced expansions with decent content could also be added to this model with what I believe would be little consumer hate. 
I guess this is usually refered to as the "Guild Wars" method but I've never had much traffic with the game, although after watching some gameplay videos GW2 does look pretty cool.

Free2Play has to die in a fire. A big one. One so big that it would encase the very soul of Free2Play in burning torment for the millenniums that the fire would burn. Around this fire we will build a city and there we will live; the fire reminding us of the mistakes of the past and how we will learn from them. It will be the symbol of my people! ... Might as well throw in Ubisoft as well.

TF2's microtransaction system is the only system I enjoy playing with. You can find anything that you can buy on the Mann Co Store. Keys, nametags, hats, weapons, etc.

TF2 is not a MMO, no matter how hard Valve has been trying/has ruined the game. /shakesangryoldmanfist