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Microtransaction-Based MMO's: The Future of MMORPGs?
December 10th, 2008 by Mike
If you're unfamiliar with what Microtransactions are, they're items you buy in a virtual world that you pay for with real money, not virtual currently. Today via Kotaku, they stated that EA's upcoming Star Wars MMO might be microtransaction-based.
Rather than asking for a monthly subscription fee, ala World of Warcraft, EA boss John Riccitiello has strongly hinted that the game will instead be "microtransaction-based".
Depending on how you're thinking about this it could be good or a very bad thing. Good if the items offered are not critical to the game, such as clothing, different types of mounts, basically anything that doesn't have an direct effect on your character. However if this means that I'm going to be paying real money to buy armor, weapons and/or skills then this could change the way MMO's are played.
Buying virtual items with real money is nothing new however, people have been doing it on Ebay for years. That was until 2 yrs ago when they banned such auctions, however new sites have popup since, such as MMOBay.net to replace them, so you can argue that it won't have a big effect on the gameplay. But in my opinion you can never underestimate the greed factor of publishers.
MMO's such as Second Life have been selling virtual goods for real money since the start, however the items being sold are purely cosmetic and player created. Now EA and other companies such as virtualgreats.com are stepping in and trying to get a piece if not the whole pie for themselves.
If you've ever played the card game Magic or I guess Yu-Gi-Oh for the younger readers, you know you cannot be competitive without shelling out big bucks to create your deck. I fear the same will become true of MMOs. While it would be nice to play MMOs for free, I don't want to feel like I'm playing a gimped version of the game because I can't afford the 100 USD sword for my character. I think the key here is to make the gamers that aren't buying these items to feel as though they're still getting the full game experience and still have a fair fighting chance in PvP and PvM as the players who are buying the top of the line equipement.
However another aspect to think about is crafting. If EA decides that armor and weapons are fair game, how will this affect the in-game economy and craftsmen? I can't see it having a positive effect on it. I'm not against the move away from subscriptions to microtransaction, I'm just worried that publishers greed will get in the way and that ephasise will be on making money in-game instead of making games better.
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