What should the pricing and distribution of the game be like?

[corsairk8]

Please give your feedback.

[Vengeance]

I know we keep beating the issue to death, but I can\'t resist throwing out another idea.

What if we charged something low (like $10/yr) to have an account on a \"certified\" server, but left it free if someone else provides the server?

That someone may have hacked his own cheats into the server, or not, and no one will really know.  But on our servers, people will know everything is fair.  (Except of course for the secret developer backdoors.

V

[corsairk8]

sssshm, we cant let our fans know about those backdoors

btw, i dont think its right to mislead people into thinking its secure, when we are running it on untrusted servers.

if we can find trustworthy people that would be good, if we can buy them ourselves thats good too.

[Buechler]

Hey I thought Planeshift was always gonna be free, so why are you talking like this?

[Thekkur]

hmm, we\'re talking about this thread as \"the thread that wont die\" but it\'s actually a topic that needs to be deiscussed. either now or in the future, that doesn\'t mind. You can\'t denie running a server costs an awful lot of money, and we need a way to generate money.

The strong point in planeshift is that it\'ll be totally free. So don\'t even bother about propositions like premium accounts  and so on.  

What we need is creative ideas to generate money. Or find someone with a broadband server that wants to host fro free 9or for something else than money, adverisement for example.

set your brain to work!

Thekkur

[BinaryReject]

i have a server on a broadband connection, i could always help

//binaryreject

[Kada-El]

I liked one of Talad\'s ideas - to actually create unique, special items in game which could be sold for real money donations. But not buying this stuff would in no way put you at a disadvantage. One of Talad\'s ideas was, for example, a jeweled sword - would give you no extra advantage in combat, but would look damn nice and be totally unique.

Maybe this idea could be expanded to new buildings, or certain game areas which could be named after a particular donator.

To get away from arguments over such things, perhaps each item could be sold over a period of days in some kind of an in game auction or something.

I don\'t know how practical these ideas are, but if the game is as good as it is looking, then I\'m sure you will have no shortage of dedicated players willing to spend a little real money on some unique items and opportunities.

[Kendrick]

can there be special magic spells too? as well as special weapons?

[Kendaro]

that idea wouldnt go well with magic. the way it would work with an item is that a normal player would have bought a sword that does 50 damage and is a speed of 30. he also has a shield that is armor points of 60. both gotten from an ingame vender for a handfull of in game money. now the player that payed real cash would have a fancy looking gem encrested sword that is 50 damage and 30 speed. also would have a golden shield with vibrant colors that was 60 armor points. you couldn\'t quite do that with magic. there isnt much you could change with a spell and make it the same effect and mana cost as a normal spell.

[Kendrick]

couldn\'t you change the color? or make it brighter?(the spell)

[Thekkur]

Kada-El: that\'s a great idea, who wouldn\'t want to have a nice looking longsword for 20 bucks? you could even make your own design... and it\'s something you could ask for christmas. The difficulty of the model would depend on the price ofcourse.

This might give us some money, but\'ll need some organisation too. (which\'ll cost money by it\'s turn). keep thinking of more solutions.

Thekkur

[Vengeance]

I really like the idea of pay swords/objects and in game auctions for those unique items.

Maybe guild houses could also be improved this way.  Those wouldn\'t confer game advantage either, other than perhaps recruiting benefits, but people do spend a lot of money on their guilds.  Look at all the domain names and web hosting that gets done for guilds.

Just an idea...

Venge

[NecromancerZeal]

Hey, I got a Server here that runs off of ADSL (DSL) Could always help hosting for the game.

[Kerrick]

In another game I played, Mystic Realms of Alhanzar, players could design their own guildhouses, but they had to pay real money to have them built. The prices were very reasonable: there was a base cost for a \"minimum package,\"
additional costs for more stuff: added square footage, more rooms/features, etc. Thus players in a guild could chip in together to buy a guildhouse. Since this game is graphics-intensive, you could easily add in stuff like tapestries, paintings, other decorations, secret doors, etc etc, all for a modest fee.
  I forget how they worked it if one of the contributing players left the guild; I think they left it to be worked out among the guildmembers.

[elmundo]

I think you should make it possible to make free donations without anything attached. The donators could get there names on display somewhere ingame and somewhere on the website, but nothing more.

I would happily donate some real life coins, and I think a lot would follow in the wake.