They’re gambles, though. I nearly got the Hellgate: London one along with Cameron but decided against it, while he went for it and got burned.

I’d do it again if I felt the game was good enough and that I would get enough enjoyment out of it to rationalize the larger up-front purchase, but I’d never do it pre-launch again. At least Turbine has continued to offer the chance to become a Lifetime member. Does Cryptic have plans to do that with Champions and/or Star Trek?

The main thing I like about Lifetime is that in a sense, it turned LOTRO into Guild Wars for me. I never have to “quit” (ie. go through the cancel-resub-cancel-resub cycle) I can just take breaks whenever I want and there’s no guilt and more importantly, no hassles of the aforementioned cancel-resub cycle. It’s always there when I’m ready to play again.

However, when I do the math…lifetime subs still aren’t economical for me. If I resub in a game for two months out of a year, that’s around $30 – $40. I wouldn’t see any real value for six to eight years. That’s, of course, not taking in to consideration how much more I would play a game if I had access to it all the time. For now, I too am not clicking that “buy” button.

There are no regrets for making that investment in Champions Online, I like the game. But I do not think I would make it a habit of buying lifetime subscriptions – I would rather see more diverse pricing models in general and that allows me to change the way I pay and play over time. Look at mobile phone operators for example, where there can be many many different options in how and what you pay for.

That’s for an established game, to consider doing that for a game at launch is even far riskier, especially how we have seen so many promising mmorpg’s really not live up to expectations once the new car smell had worn off.

From a business standpoint a nice solid monthly income versus sporatic levels of incoming cash would be more desirable unless I knew my product sucked, in which case I would try milking it for all it was worth before people found out

I’ll never let a company burn me like that again.

The problem is that this can lead to cash flow problems down the line. A lot of people expect that LotRO’s latest “mini” expansion, “Siege of Mirkwood” required a charge to get money out of the lifetime subscribers; they made it easy to get the expansion if you are a normal subscriber (just had to sign up for a multi-month subscription, again taking advantage of the time value of money).

Personally, I don’t think I’d pony up for the lifetime subscription. I might end up spending more than $200 on LotRO, but the time value of money works in my favor at this point. Plus, like rcw003 above, I don’t feel like throwing money at a game without knowing if I’ll enjoy it beforehand. No sense in throwing down a lot of money only to find out that I really don’t care for the game, or that the developer decided to go in a direction I can’t stand.

My thoughts.

I played/playing LotRO for almost a year, 8 months on subscription, and just switched over to lifetime when they brought the price back down to 199.99. But am currently taking a break from the game. (I’m not sure if this is because I now feel I’ve paid for the game and don’t need to consume every minute to get my monthly fee back out of it, or if I’m just burnt out.)

Would I do a lifetime subscription again?

If I had to buy it before the game released, No. A demo is not near enough time to see what the community will be like, how quickly they respond to bugs, or if the game is even fun on the end game side.

If it was offered 2-3 months after launch and I had a chance to see if I’m going to enjoy the game and the people playing it, there’s a good chance I’d switch to a life time membership.

Do they benefit the developer? I think this question depends on a very unfortunate thing. Do you believe your game is going to be as successful as you hoped, or not? If the answer is no, then yes lifetime subscriptions will absolutely be an overall benefit. People will buy them early on when the game is fresh, new, and exciting, and then when things wear off a few months down the line you’ve still managed to get their $200 or however much the lifetime subscription cost. Games like Warhammer and Age of Conan probably should’ve offered lifetime subscriptions because, while not everyone would buy it obviously, enough people would that they would’ve probably made a significant amount more in those first couple of months than they did (just speculation of course).
On the other hand, what if WoW had offered the same deal back in ’05? Imagine how much revenue they’d have lost by now.

The question of whether they benefit the player is probably also situational. They obviously can be beneficial if you end up loving the game and playing it for years, but I think more often than not they are probably a poor purchase. As you said, thus far we’ve only seen them offered very early after release of a game and the customer is asked to make such a decision without much experience – sometimes they haven’t even played the game yet at all.

That being said, there is a certain appeal to knowing that you can freely log in anytime without worrying about setting up a subscription. There are many games I’ve considered trying again, but I just don’t think they’re worth the money to do so. With LOTRO, I can log in and mess around at any time without feeling bad about it. Of course, this is mostly an illusion because in reality I simply paid for the subscription fees (and more) up front. I’ve only clocked in maybe 3 months worth of play since the game launched. Still, even if it doesn’t make sense, I do like that feeling that its there for me anytime I want to play it.

Does that make it worth it and would I get one again? No. Probably not. Especially after my experience with WoW where it became commonplace to clear content, gear up, and then cancel until the next patch. Unless there was a game like EQ where content came at such a blistering pace (and was only occasionally made obsolete, unlike WoW) and there was always something interesting to do then I just don’t see a lifetime sub being necessary.

I do think I’d be more willing to consider it if I could buy one at any time, but there’s a clear reason most companies wouldn’t do that. Like I said in the beginning, if you see a lifetime sub it’s most likely because they don’t believe people will stick around and they want to get them early. Am I being jaded or is that just realistic?