The reality of your subscription fee for FFXI

[Alhanelem]

IDK, I might be an outlier, but even though prices at the supermarket and fast food places and such have increased like 40-50% in just a few years, in part thanks to the pandemic my earnings have kept pace to the point where I actually feel like I have more buying power than I did 5 years ago. But maybe I Just work for a company that respects its workers.

[Zehira]

Different states different laws in the USA. Virginia is a commonwealth state we make up our own rules. The minimum wage hasn't been increased since 2009 and we are going to see a couple of dollars more later this year.

I am an independent contractor (not RMT) so I am not entitled to the minimum wage. Anyway, FFXIV team is bigger than FFXI team because one has its cash shop and one doesn't. I know some people in FFXIV couldn't stop buying more Fantasia ($10 each) so I guess microtransactions are very important for any modern MMO business.

(I am glad Legend of Mana is on steam. I'd love to try it. )

[Haldarn]

Inflation is one thing, but it's not that simple.

Infrastructure costs have reduced, the initial capital investments in hardware and software have long been paid off, administrative and support staffing has become streamlined and has very little cost associated with it. That means our £8.99 per month is vastly more profitable than it was in the past.

Exchange rates mean that in 2004 my £8.99 was 1200JPY and your $12.95 was 1400JPY and others' €12.95 was 1700JPY when the fee to Japanese players was 1418JPY. Today, my fee is worth 1345JPY, yours is still 1400JPY and € translates to 1675JPY. Obviously in the interceding 17 years, this has fluctuated.

But bottom-line profitability aside, the overwhelming factor that determines our subscription fee (and hence perceived value for money) is none of this. It's market value. For a standard sub here in the UK, WoW and TESO are 11% more expensive, FFXIV is the same. The market has determined that this is the expected cost of a subscription service (the model of which has now expanded to include our software, our media, our TV/film, our phones, etc.). All of those things are only good value for money if the subscriber (the market) decides it is so.

And finally, there is a lot to be said about the evolution of the MMO model. There is something to be said about XIV's expansions becoming F2P after 5 years, or free players in LotRO being supported by subscribing players - both inflate the population of the worlds with casual players to the benefit of those who are more dedicated. Would opening up vanilla + RoZ for free play bolster FFXI, or would it mean a spiralling mess of free accounts used as mules and bots that would stress servers, ruin the economy (lol) and make a poorer experience than the one we have.

Perhaps it'll all be addressed next year.

[Pixela]

FFXI has only the subscription, FFXIV, TESO, WOW all have large often updated cash shops to offset losses. They are all basically f2p game models with a sub.

The game also used to make money from expansions, that they can no longer make (because the floating SE dev teams work on making XIV expansions now instead) so they have to make new content from the subscription in a way they never did before.

The wages of the developers have increased over time with inflation, the number of players has gone down (so the overall income has gone down) and inflation has sliced a chunk of the value of that £8 off too.

So they are expected to do more with the subscription fee money than ever before and the real value of that income is less than it ever has been, with the coming super inflation due to CV this will be more serious than ever before.

If your employer offered to pay you what he was paying people in 2012 you would not be happy, yet this is what we are doing to them by paying this same fixed fee all this time.

Do I want to pay more? No, of course not but I'm also aware that if the game becomes unprofitable it will shut down, and I don't want that more than I care about paying an extra $1-2 a month.

Having said all of this, I'm well aware they won't increase the sub. Simply because most do not understand what inflation is or how it works. So they have to get creative, which they have been.