MMOs and Microtransactions

MMOs and Microtransactions By Cecil Adkins Cecil Adkins is a fiction writer and covers MMORPGs for Examiner.com. He is an active player of City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, and several other MMOs. He can be found on the web at www.ceciladkins.com.

For most modern MMOs, making money purely from monthly subscription fees is pretty old school.  These days, even more and more subscription MMOs are supplementing their income with the use of microtransactions (usually relatively small charges for items you can't get through normal gameplay).  These are sometimes minor perks that don't carry much if any in-game benefits beyond pure aesthetics, but not always.  For some MMOs, an increasing number of game items (some with tangible in-game benefits) are available only if you shell out more than the usual $15 a month.  How much is too much, though?  Some players see these extras as just nice little tidbits that game developers might not otherwise have resources to implement, while others see them as yet another money-grab on the part of the developers or publishers.

World of Warcraft

The uncontested champion of the MMO arena is World of Warcraft, a game with millions of subscribers.  As such, you'd expect publisher/developer Blizzard Entertainment to have less of a need to charge extra for additional goodies.  So far, this has proven more or less true.  Certain services are charged for, such as server transfers, character renames, and faction changes. 

WoW doesn't really offer a lot of extra in-game items.  There are a couple of noncombat pets available through the “Blizzard Pet Store,” and also a mount.  The Celestial Steed mount caused some concern among WoW players when it was released, as it marked the first (and, so far, only time) that Blizzard charged for an in-game item that had a tangible use.  It was reported that sales from the Celestial Steed brought in $2 million within four hours of its arrival, so it's hard to argue with Blizzard's business sense in this case.  However, thus far they haven't offered anything else of a similar nature.

City of Heroes

The six-year-old superhero MMO started offering additional items via microtransactions in 2007.  Services such as server transfers, respecification, additional character slots and additional Mission Architect storyarc slots, are available from the in-game store.  Some of these items (respecs, character slots, storyarc slots) can be earned in-game or through the Veteran Rewards program, while others (character rename, server transfers) cannot. 

Paragon Studios also offers several "item packs" that contain costume items, emotes, and even powers, that are otherwise unavailable.  Most of these packs cost $9.99 and are related to character origins (i.e., technology, magic, etc).  While even the powers offered in these packs are at best a convenience to players and not something likely to make or break the game, it has been noted that as the number of paid costume packs increases, the number of costume pieces included in the periodic free updates has gone down.

The latest "item pack" to be released is the City of Heroes Party Pack, which consists of nothing but several emotes suitable for, well, partying.  These include different dance emotes, air guitar, and sports-related emotes.  While it is cheaper (at $7.99) than the full costume/emote/power packs, something just feels off about paying for a pack of nothing but emotes.  I have a feeling this won’t be the City of Heroes' store's best selling item.