holy crap, wb3 for $25 a month?

[moose]

What the hell are they thinking?

I guess Wild Bill does have something up his sleeve because to the casual observer that is suicide.

I know AH was $30 a month, but look at it this way:

Since the AH price drop the arenas have doubled in numbers.

So, I'm going to assume that in comparison, they will lose 1/2 their numbers in the WBIII arena

giving them likke 20-30 people on a good night.

Good times for htc, bad for wb.

[Sandman]

You're not completely correct:

Silver: $9.95 is charged to your account each month and you can fly an unlimited number of hours in the WarBirds III arenas, and the ACA (demo arena). $9.95 is applied to your account as a credit toward the hourly charged play of WarBirds 2.xx, which is $1.99 per hour.

Unlimited: $24.95 is charged to your account each month and you can fly an unlimited number of hours in any of the WarBirds arenas for that fee.

[Spitboy]

No, he's right sandman. This is a move announced a week ago by iEN ... new pricing plan, $24.95 month for all you can eat in any WB arena, $9.95 a month for 5 hours in any arena, then $1.99 an hour after that.

So in effect, the $9.95 all you can eat WB3 is going away. To be fair, after a massive upheavel, they claim to be "re-thinking" that price point.

As to HTC, one thing to keep in mind. They may have double their players, but they halved their income. So in the end, they are bringing in about the same amount of $, but having to support twice as many players. So in effect, my guess is their net revenue actually dropped.

Not suggesting anything either way, but no one really knows if the move has helped or hurt HTC, since they are a private corp. Given their lower overhead, I'd guess they are still fine. The initial high price probably helped offset the startup costs, and now they've hit their groove.

[moose]

i would think that hitech finds joy in having more players, even at less of a profit

the fact that ien is clipping warbirds wings is sad because i see a massive exodus from that sim if they raise the price. either to wwiiol or to here. the mac users will be s.o.l.

this is bad because competition is good and the less there is the less we get as a consumer.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Spitboy
No, he's right sandman. This is a move announced a week ago by iEN ... new pricing plan, $24.95 month for all you can eat in any WB arena, $9.95 a month for 5 hours in any arena, then $1.99 an hour after that.

I got the above quote directly from the IEN web site.  Is it wrong?

[Spitboy]

It will be March 4.

[Ripsnort]

Of course, those of us who payed anywhere from $5 an hour for AW and $2 an hour for WB's in 'the old days'...well, $30 a month is still a bargain!

[Kieran]

The problem is the changing norm of online pricing.

$1.99 per hour was the norm (for WB) a few years back. AH came along with a flat monthly, and WB responded with one of their own. (Yes, AW and FA had been flat rate for some time, but they did not really bear such a close resemblance to WB as did AH).

WB attempted to outdo AH by coming in at a lower price break- it was a gamble that didn't pay off. As a result, you have numerous people in WB that never paid and never will pay $1.99 per hour, have never paid more than the amount they are paying and have no intention of doing so. Maybe the grognards will stay, maybe even many of them won't. One thing is for sure, it won't bring more people in.

This is a short-term solution for one purpose or another. Maybe it is to show investors some short-lived glimmer of profitability. Maybe it is a purge (hardly likely). Maybe it is Wild Bill setting the product up for another change of hands (far more likely). Any way you slice it, even the staunchest of WB diehards can't view this as a good direction.

And before Cabby comes in here and accuses me of dancing on the grave of iEN, I'm not. I don't have any reason to want to see it fail (heck, if they'd upgrade DoA I'd be playing there now!). Facts is facts, however.

[Kieran]

WWIIOL is shutting down the public forum aspect of their BBS. Seems Hatch and company think things are too nasty now. Well, they're right- too bad it took them six months to figure that one out. They say it is "the trend of MMOL gaming to move BBS's to affiliates". Maybe, but I always felt the foxes were in charge of the henhouse over there.

Sorry for the piracy here, just made me think of another odd business decision.

[K West]

I've always loved DoA (3D) and would really be interested IF it had an AH view system. With WWII aircraft having an already restrictive view makjing it worse with the head-on-a-stationary-pivot only makes it worse.

 As for WB's going $25 unlimted or $10base + $2hr it's a case of WildDill doing something for stock purposes and whatever the ends to that are he has in mind. Or he's got some delusion to making WB's into the pricier, "premier" sim as it once was.

 I lean more to some business move ending in $$$ to *his* pocket somehow.

 Westy

[Spitboy]

I think you're dead on with the WW2OL forum move, Kieran. Stoopid decision that underscores a "blame the players for our own failure" mentality. And I really don't see a "trend" toward outsourcing forums. What happens is, companies screw the pooch, and players pick up the slack. But that doesn't excuse a company from the duty to provide a common forum for players. As an MMP game, that's simply something you have to do.

[Skuzzy]

Well, concerning the area of doubling the numbers but making the same profit.  Not quite true.  I have no idea what the financial situation is at either WB or AH, but I do know a bit about the service side,..in particular, the Internet service side.

One of the more expensive parts of running a product/service such as these is the Internet connection.  You can effectively raise your net profits by getting larger and larger numbers online.  Why?
It is about economies of scale.  For instance, the per 64Kb channel cost of an OC3 (about 140Mb/sec) is less than half the cost of a T1.
So as you increase your numbers online, you decrease the overall costs per player for the Internet bandwidth.  This leads to higher profitibility at lower subscription costs.
To get there, however, you have to assume you can fill an OC3 and charge accordingly.  Failing to fill that pipe could put you out of business.

It really gets to be about numbers.  Again, I do not know a thing about WB, but if the numbers in thier arenas are less than 275, then the $24.95 price point is really the bottom price they can charge.  Now, granted, this assumes a lot of things.  There is usually an online to subscription ratio which should be fairly consistent.  I do not know what that number would be, but I would/have assumed HTC's ratio would be close to the same as WB's ratio.

Anyway, I digress.  The point being; It is possible to increase your net through lower subscriptions without having to double your base to make up for the reduction (in the case where the subscription is cut in half).

[moose]

Thanks Skuzzy for the info

Just makes me feel more comfy

Now, I wonder where WWIIOL will go from here. Is it much better now with all the patches? They might be a contender if they've got everything figured out.

I don't think there is room in the MMOL flightsim crowd for 3 sims. 2 perhaps, but there seems to be an odd man out when there's 3.

[Kieran]

It was better in some ways on my last trip. I really considered heavily trying a subscription for at least a month, then I found the same joystick drop situation (if I play Allied I lose joystick after every sortie) I had before and I became busier than ever at work. As it is, I haven't logged onto AH more than once this last month, and only for a few minutes. I couldn't see subscribing to two sims I couldn't play.

[Habu]

I love WW20L. I played it first time on Friday.

No idea what to do after getting in the plane. Just sitting in the hanger quiet. Asked on the radio for help. A guy from a big squad started to give me pointers. An hour later I had my first air to air kill. Fast forward to Monday. I have close to 30 kills and have made Sgt. I would be higher but I was not taking missions and not landing the ones I took at first.

After 25 hours of play or so I have had one dropped connection. The frame rate is seldom below 40 and I feel the software is rock solid. I have a AMD 1900 with an Nvidia Geforce 3 Ti 200 64 meg vid card and 512 meg of memory. I am a serious enough gamer to udate my system every time I feel the need. Better to spend 500 bucks on a new processor and 100 on a card than to gripe about low frame rate.

WW2OL rocks. I followed it as it was being developed but refused to pay to play when the "beta" fiasco happened. I am glad I waited. I am stepping into a great game with established squads and having a blast.

I am even getting used to the lack of padlock. Nothing like shooting down a hot Spitfire pilot one on one when 3 days ago I could not even figure out how to start the engine in my Emil.