FF14 payment system

[Don]

Was reading the threads on the payment issue but this isn't what it's about. I was reading the pricing and this is like one of the most bizarre pricing system I've seen, up there with 2 whoopers for $3 when a single whooper costs $3.19. It's not even a bad system. It's just weird. The pricing goes:

$9.99 monthly for basic account service.
$3.00 monthly for each additional character.

Sounds pretty simple right? But the basic account service includes no characters. So you could pay $9.99 a month for the right to er... patch your game, I guess. I even checked FF11 and the basic monthly fee includes one character, at least I think that's what it says. I mean it's not like $13/month is an outrageous amount of money to charge for a MMO, or did Sqix really think there was going to be a lot of people paying for 0 characters on their account?

[SineSwiper]

That's some deceptive pricing practices right there. This game is destined to fail on so many levels.

[Shellie]

Im showing on the official website it's $12.99 for one character(and a mule) and $3 each additional. Of course that adds up the same, but I don't see anything about a $9.99 option.

12.99 is typical for MMO's these days, but of course you always got more than one character. I don't remember how many you were allowed on FFXI, but I think it was one per server as well since you could switch between jobs at any time and level those.

[Don]

FF11 was like $12/month for the basic service that includes 1 character and $1/month for each additional character.

I know my brother was telling me the 6 month deal was great because it averages out to like $8/month which is way below the industrial norm and I'm pretty sure that doesn't include a character. If you add it back in you get $11/month for a 6 month pack, which is pretty consistent with industry standards.

I'm giving Sqix the benefit of the doubt here and assume that they won't think people are this stupid. I mean it'd be like buying a PS3 that doesn't come with a controller or a game so the price tag looks cheaper. There's a reason why nobody actually does this because you can't possibly fool anyone like that. As soon as you click 'create a character' it must say 'that'd be $3/month!' and people will be able to put 2 & 2 together... right? If they don't say that, it'd be outright fraud since it is the norm in MMORPG to not charge people for additional characters.

Then again, I saw on the threads a lot of people actually thought it was $9/month to play ($9.99 rounded down), so maybe people really are this stupid.

[Don]

Here's the official site: http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com/pl ... nvi04.html

I guess every reputable site just added the cost of having one character on top of the basic account fee since clearly nobody is going to play a MMORPG without at least 1 character and get $12.99, but you can see clearly it's $9.99 monthly, $3 monthly per character. I guess they really are trying to see if people will fall for this and think the game is only $9.99 a month(or $9 if you round down)

[Shellie]

This is where I got the info:
http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/#/about/game_info

[Don]

Well Lodestone is the site Sqix launched to support the game launch so it's got to have newer information.

I don't think it's some kind of sin or deceptive marketing but I'm really surprised they think breaking up $12.99 to $9.99 + $3.00 will fool people, and more surprisingly it does seem to work!