cash shop: if not pay to win then what?

[Don]

Times appear to be rough for the subscription model MMORPG as even WoW has bad news, and every other week you seem to hear some news about some former subscription model MMORPG either shutting down or going F2P. Now cash shop generally are the backbone of F2Ps, and one thing I hear a lot about is that you shouldn't have a game where paying money is required to come out on the top. But if you're not paying for in game advantage, then what are you paying for?

We'll ignore stuff you might buy that's clearly content, like say LoTRO basically splits an expansion into 3 packs of stuff on cash shop at an equivalent cost. Obviously if you enjoy playing the game it'd make sense to buy that at some point. We'll also assume your game doesn't fulfill some special niche, like EQ2 and furniture. Your game can sell vanity items but you can't assume your players are going to be virtual interior designers who will shell out $50 for furnitures every month.

To me, as a gamer, at some point there has to be considerable power for me to put money in a cash shop. I'd like to buy power akin to pre Whirlwind nerf in Diablo 2 level of destruction. I understand you can't really do that for say, PvP, or the end PvE game, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect to rain down destruction on regular stuff if I have to pay for it. EQ2X sells the Rune of Annihilation and it does pretty much what you think it does: instantly kills any non heroic/epic stuff (i.e. everything that doesn't matter). I've never bought one of those since they're still a bit overpriced but that's the kind of power I'd expect to have if I actually pay money for.

What would you pay money for in a cash shop?

[Flip]

The only little game im playing now that is like that is the MMO for the iPhone/Android platforms called Pocket Legends. Its totally free and monsters drop gold, but you can also use real money to buy plantinum, which lets you explore new areas, get good gear, and customize your character more. I've yet to buy platinum and i do not know what would make me do so. I'm simply having fun and wasting time. The cash shop itself doesnt make the difference, but instead i think the game does. I do not want to be mega elite on Pocket Legends, i just want to kill 20 minutes here and there. A game like Diablo 3, if they decide to do a cash shop, might change my mind because i do plan to try and spend a lot of time and be involved in the community.

Even still though, i do not like this separation in games. The free players will always scoff at the ones who paid and it will always be considered 'cheating' or 'cheap' to be a paid player that can plow through everything. All the people in the game should have the same opportunity. A beast player in WoW everyone can admire, but a beast player in a cash shop type game will just be written off as rich.

[Don]

For every guy that admires a 'beast player' in a MMORPG I can find another guy that will tell you that guy has no life. Is it any different that you pay for your gear or that you had some friends in uber guild that can run you through some instances? That said selling permanent power is problematic since power in MMORPG tends to be result of spending a lot of time and is transient. I think the more successful model is selling means to get power. XP potions have been one of the top sellers in a cash shop since they existed.

It seems like the more successful cash shops really do just sell stuff that caters to certain niche, like League of Legend with its avatar customization, or EQ2X with furniture. But that's not a workable model from a planning point of view. You really can't design your game assuming all the virtual interior designers will be in your game because you got the best furniture around. If League of Legends and EQ2X switched their cash shop speciality most likely both games will flop financially. Maybe we still don't know what's a generalized successful model to sell stuff in a cash shop, and the game that figures that out first will be able to challenge for the top of the MMORPG world. Right now I feel most cash shop the same way as Flip did. I can see why they could appeal to some people but it doesn't seem like a generally workable model unless you're assuming your players are just stupid.

[Don]

I think you can break down cash shop stuff into a few types:

1. Stupid deals. These are stuff where the only reason you'd buy this stuff is because you're stupid. Either the guy selling it is stupid or they think the customer is stupid. For example EQ2X used to sell 40 slot bags for $15, which can be bought in game for a trivial amount of currency from tradeskiller. Presumably those items were priced before there was tradeskill-made 40 slot bags and just never changed. There's no shortage of such deals in all cash drops but I do not think counting on players being too stupid to tell what's going on is a viable long term model, not to mention if someone did buy this stuff you actually have a pretty good chance of losing that guy's business forever when he figures out he's been duped.

2. Game-speciality stuff. EQ2X specializes in selling furnitures. LoL specializes in selling avatar skins. While there's nothing stopping anyone from copying this stuff, for whatever reason this isn't easily duplicated across games. You just can't say because EQ2X made a ton of money selling furniture we'll make money selling furniture. I guess you can think of these as propritory secrets.

3. Vanity stuff, and really a lot of #2 falls under this. New apperances, mounts, zoos, whatever. It's obvious what purpose these serve, but sometimes it's hard to tell if it's actually successful. WoW sold a ton of mounts on their cash shop, but is it because it's a successful model or is it merely a result from their position as the biggest MMORPG. Likewise it's hard to say LoL selling customization is successful because it works, or whether it's because they're one of the biggest F2P out there.

4. Content enablers. XP potions is the #1, but obviously a lot of other stuff fall under this category. It seems like stuff here should sell like hotcakes, but it seems like aside from XP potions that always sell like hotcakes, there's not much people pay for enablers. Maybe it's because most of the enablers are priced poorly, or people just think they can eventually get this with enough time?

5. Bonus content. This doesn't count stuff like LOTRO where an expansion is split up into 3 adventure packs. There's really nothing 'bonus' about this stuff since you're supposed to have all of that originally. The problem here is that the bonus content has to yield either a ton of fun/gameplay or a lot of power, otherwise why would you pay for it? If you assume you can't easily create 'tons of fun' very easily (and that kind of stuff might be better as available to all anyway), you can only sell 'tons of power', and then you're going back to selling power.

In the end I think the future of cash shop is going to be power disguised as content. It'd be like say RIFT's chronicles of telara where you can take on a raid boss by yourself for lesser loot, but not too much less. It's pretty obvious that the top power in any game that features a cash shop requires a very high time, skill, and/or organization commitment that is far beyond what normal people can put in. You should be able to get stuff that's pretty close to the top while bypassing a couple of these requirements if you're willing to pay. It does not need to be like you walk in a room and the boss keels over, but it could be something like RIFT where instead of having to organize 19 other guys you just get 5 legendary NPCs on your side. You may still have to be pretty good to actually win, but you can completely bypass the 'find 19 other guys that will tolerate each other' part that may be impossible to surmount otherwise.