UO Store Coins for Subscribers

DM_Wyvern

Hi Team Broadsword! 

First, mad to you all for keeping the best MMO running all these years. I appreciate you giving players such as myself a chance to discover the deepest MMORPG sandbox on the market.

Right now there is a lot of excitement about the launch of Endless Journey for UO - but while your team is focused on building on the Endless Journey free to play experience, would it be possible for you to send some love back to subscribers such as myself and many others?

Elder Scrolls Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic reward subscribers with a monthly allotment of cash shop currency and I think it would be great if you might be able to add a subscription incentive . like that to Ultima Online too. 

What say the vets?

Just a thought! See you in Britannia!  

InLor

One of the perks in my sub perks list: https://forum.uo.com/discussion/653/attractive-sub-features-to-lure-in-free-players#latest

jaytin

EverQuest2 also has this system you get 500 Daylight Game points per month when you subscribe, but even if you don't it's still a very playable game, at least you can access your bank and guild bank...

Bilbo

EA will never cut into their bottom line on a game that really doesn't make them a lot of money to begin with.  BS/UO/DAoC does not control the Origin Store or Account Management so go to EA and ask for your perks.  All games mentioned here also charge $2 more a month so I guess if you wanted to pay more per month than EA might consider it.

jaytin

I'm in the UK if I were to pay both UO and EQ2 month by month EQ2 would actually be £1 a month less, just saying....

InLor

Giving player perks doesn't translate into losing money. The whole point of the perks is to get more subscribers. My proposal in the other thread isn't just about asking for "free stuff", it's to get a modern mmorpg set of perks to get more people to subscribe. To convert EJs.

If you have 100 subscribers at 10 bucks, resulting in $1000, and you decide to invest 2 bucks per subscriber, resulting in 300 subscribers, then you are now making (3000(2*300) equals $2400. So your bottom line improved by $1400. It all depends on how elastic the price/value proposal is. The options are to increase (perceived) value, which can also be done free of cost, by the way, and change the price.

My strategy would be to make EJ slightly less restricted (add limited bank), make sure any subscriber feature when accessed shows a screen that says it's for subscribers only, with a link to subscribe and a list of perks, and to beef up the subscriber perks to make said list/presentation more appealing.

DM_Wyvern

InLor said:

Giving player perks doesn't translate into losing money. The whole point of the perks is to get more subscribers. 

^ This 

JollyJade

Basically a no-brainer and every other game has it. But it's UO, we have to spell it out for @Mesanna

Garth_Grey

They won't put popular items in the store that would make them a huge profit, do you really think they're just going to "give" stuff away to make up for it ?

Petra_Fyde

I thought we already had 'perks'. Aren't they called 'veteran rewards'?

JollyJade

Petra_Fyde said:

I thought we already had 'perks'. Aren't they called 'veteran rewards'?

Only there is little incentive in this. The first couple of years are mostly useless nowadays (=no incentive) and for the really useful items (i.e. shard shields) it still takes 14 years (= no incentive).

I.e. vet rewards are nothing I would sub for if I was a new player and even with my sub running month after month I only get a soulstone once a year out of it. If I save my picks for shard shields, I don't get any rewards out of it at all for the first 14 years.

I agree with the OP, some stimuli would go a long way. Doesn't have to be the usual overthought system. Just some monthly store currency stimuli.

Garth_Grey

I would like to see Sovereigns become a backpack/account bound drop, only available of course to Fully Subscribed, Fully Patched (and we all know what that means) accounts. And I don't mean some ultra exclusive EM drop, but a drop in the pack like legacy dungeon items, ToT etc. It'll never happen I know, but still...

Honkwomp

InLor said:

One of the perks in my sub perks list: https://forum.uo.com/discussion/653/attractive-sub-features-to-lure-in-free-players#latest

The thing is, at this time I feel like EJ is so limited, it has no advantage over just making a free trial account.  What good is being a vet if you cannot access your bank and have to walk around?  A free enticement is not an enticement if you make it punishment and that is exactly what not having access to bank and mounts is  EJ is.  EJ is so limited there are already strong incentives to be a subscriber.
I do like the idea of rewards for subscribers, but I would rather make the rewards generous, but also give free subs greater play options and  bank access.  For pay you get the rights to place a second house, some store tokens, access to special store items etc  I probably could come up with more items that don't empty the ledger at Mythic but those come up off the top of my head

InLor

Housing is fine being only for subs. Bank space for EJs should be added, yes. I have been arguiing the same.

Honkwomp

Bilbo said:

EA will never cut into their bottom line on a game that really doesn't make them a lot of money to begin with.  BS/UO/DAoC does not control the Origin Store or Account Management so go to EA and ask for your perks.  All games mentioned here also charge $2 more a month so I guess if you wanted to pay more per month than EA might consider it.

Okay first, thought Broadsword, not EA owned the game.  Some things are handled by EA but I think they contract to do that   I am sure that EA get's it's cut, but the coins themselves, how many you get etc, I would bet is completely up to Mythic.   After seeing the trash talk an play on Atlantic, I think the biggest danger with letting free players do too much is that accounts become worthless and banning accounts is the one thing that Mythic has as leverage over bad behavior

Bilbo

Honkwomp said:

Bilbo said:

EA will never cut into their bottom line on a game that really doesn't make them a lot of money to begin with.  BS/UO/DAoC does not control the Origin Store or Account Management so go to EA and ask for your perks.  All games mentioned here also charge $2 more a month so I guess if you wanted to pay more per month than EA might consider it.

Okay first, thought Broadsword, not EA owned the game.  Some things are handled by EA but I think they contract to do that   I am sure that EA get's it's cut, but the coins themselves, how many you get etc, I would bet is completely up to Mythic.   After seeing the trash talk an play on Atlantic, I think the biggest danger with letting free players do too much is that accounts become worthless and banning accounts is the one thing that Mythic has as leverage over bad behavior

BS only manages UO/DAoC, EA still owns them.  EA owns the store where you buy the coins and EA owns the account management system where you pay your subs.  BS collects no money other than what EA agreed to pay them to manage UO/DAoC and that is used to pay employees and expenses.

Captain_Lucky

Not that it would ever happen but 16% of the people don't want free stuff? lol

Bilbo

Free, there is no such thing as FREE you pay for it one way or the other and as tight as EA is they aint gonna give nothing away for free on games that they subcontracted out to manage.  What is even funner is that people think, I know sometimes that hurts, that EA reads these forums or even cares about UO anymore.  Please feel free to E-Mail EA all your wants and desires but do not hold your breath waiting for an answer.

DM_Wyvern

Bilbo said:

Free, there is no such thing as FREE you pay for it one way or the other and as tight as EA is they aint gonna give nothing away for free on games that they subcontracted out to manage.  

You're missing the point here Bilbo. Cash shop allotments for subscribers is a way to boost the number of overall subscriptions (and convert EJ free to play accounts to paying accounts) and helo increase usage of the cash shop in general. They could only make more money, if they were to offer a monthly allotment to subscribers, like most major MMOs with free to play options already do.  

Bilbo

Grimjack said:

Bilbo said:

Free, there is no such thing as FREE you pay for it one way or the other and as tight as EA is they aint gonna give nothing away for free on games that they subcontracted out to manage.  

You're missing the point here Bilbo. Cash shop allotments for subscribers is a way to boost the number of overall subscriptions (and convert EJ free to play accounts to paying accounts) and helo increase usage of the cash shop in general. They could only make more money, if they were to offer a monthly allotment to subscribers, like most major MMOs with free to play options already do.  

All those other MMOs charge more per month than UO does.  Then we have the people saying that EA already does this with a %10 discount and guess what you pay $5 a month to get it.  EA is paying BS to manage UO and do you really think that EA is making a lot of money from us, I don't.  EA has never given anything away for free when it comes to UO/DAoC, every time they did a  discount we were always left out.  What all you people don't get is BS does not control the purse strings, EA does and EA does not read these forums.  You all are just wasting your breath here playing what if games.  Send EA an E-Mail with some reasonable ideas with maybe some reasonable projections and believe me %300 increase is laughable.  you would be lucky to get a %10 increase in subs.  You all think $10 a month is so much when you spend that on coffee everyday.  I also love the fact that I am missing the point when the fact is we are dealing with EA not some other company that gives a shit.  Here is another question for you because you said it, how does giving away free coins increase the cash flow in the on-line store when alls you are doing is spending free coins, come on really.

If you think you have a good idea and you know how to put together a good business plan then please by all means put it together and send it to the people that control the money, EA, because alls you are doing here is howling at the moon.

JollyJade

Grimjack said:
You're missing the point here Bilbo. Cash shop allotments for subscribers is a way to boost the number of overall subscriptions (and convert EJ free to play accounts to paying accounts) and helo increase usage of the cash shop in general. They could only make more money, if they were to offer a monthly allotment to subscribers, like most major MMOs with free to play options already do.   

Yep, same as giving an option to grind the currency used for the in-game store (in homeopathic doses ).

I quite often found myself telling myself "I will grind that currency ingame and not spend my money" (kinda just for the challenge).

Then after some weeks I realize how tough the grind is and add some real money to finish it off. UO does not have that official stimuli in the first place to start such a project. The closest to this in UO is grinding gold for gametime, but even that is only possible because 3rd party sellers supply that market.

BTW: I once tried to grind a lifetime STO subscription ingame. They have daily caps how much you can grind. The math said it would only take me like 1000 capped out days. I grinded maybe like 200 days of this so far, but boy am I always tempted to just throw those $200 bucks at them and be done  

That's something UO does not have at all: incentive to go look at the store..

As much as everyone hates STO/Arc/Zen, they at least knew how to increase revenue through F2P. 

Bilbo

JollyJade said:

Grimjack said:
You're missing the point here Bilbo. Cash shop allotments for subscribers is a way to boost the number of overall subscriptions (and convert EJ free to play accounts to paying accounts) and helo increase usage of the cash shop in general. They could only make more money, if they were to offer a monthly allotment to subscribers, like most major MMOs with free to play options already do.   

Yep, same as giving an option to grind the currency used for the in-game store (in homeopathic doses ).

I quite often found myself telling myself "I will grind that currency ingame and not spend my money" (kinda just for the challenge).

Then after some weeks I realize how tough the grind is and add some real money to finish it off. UO does not have that stimuli in the first place to start such a project.

BTW: I once tried to grind a lifetime STO subscription ingame. They have daily caps how much you can grind. The math said it would only take me like 1000 capped out days. I grinded maybe like 200 days of this so far, but boy am I always tempted to just throw those $200 bucks at them and be done  

That's something UO does not have at all: incentive to go look at the store..

If there is ZERO incentive to go to the in-game store then why do we have it?  The three most used items are the Transfers, mythic tokens and soulstones and people are going to buy those no matter if they get free coins or not.  UO gave us coins one time but you had to have an account in good standings and it had to be so many months old and it was enough to get us the aniv. robes and guess what I never spent any more money than what they gave me so their free give away gained them nothing.

JollyJade

It has been pointed out multiple times that you have little idea how marketing works. I neither have the energy nor the time to explain it to you. Get a book if you are really curious how the basics work. 

Or maybe you are trying to tell us the UO store has reached it's full potential already? Hmmm, I dunno..

DM_Wyvern

JollyJade said:

It has been pointed out multiple times that you have little idea how marketing works. I neither have the energy nor the time to explain it to you. Get a book if you are really curious how the basics work. 

Hate to say it - but pretty much this, Bilbo. ^

If these subscriber cash shop currency allotments were not helping generate extra revenue for these other MMOs, you can bet they would not have them in the first place. 

Gem

I agree EJ folks should have banks at minimum storage level.

For those paying, I like the idea of coins--OR allow us to have multiple houses per shard. (I'm so old I recall when we each could have 5 houses per shard!)