Why 14,99 $?

[Aerlana]

Why 15$? yes good question,
you suggest 10$. i will ask you "Why 10$"?
Why not 5$? or 20$?

it is 15$ because SE think it is the "good" price to have enough people and enough money income to
1) the servers (electricity, repair them etc)
2) the employees (those on dev team and those that work on servers)
3) make money (yes, SE want to make money!)

Many people forgot the good question :
"Why would i pay xxx$ for this thing? Would not better to use this money to this other thing?"
If you think 15$ is too much for FFXIV, it is your choice, and probably good choice,dont pay it, stop play. if you prefer pay and play... dont ask why 15$, play

[AmnesiaHaze]

If you can't afford 14.99 a month, MMORPG's are the least of your problems...

made me laugh , qft

[Felis]

They're both around $15 for the basic membership and both require a pre-purchase.

Basic fee in FF XIV is $13

[Kimikryo]

and the game you buy costs way less than EOS

[Lecreuset]

getting a job helps

[Nysneirdre]

getting a job helps

True! If they don't like the fee, there are plenty of scam to play (cough) free to play games you can play.

[Kimikryo]

only one downside with the job .... less play time

[Linadae]

My personal aversion to F2P comes from personal experience. Once a game goes free it almost immediate drops in quality as resources are poured into the cash shop. Expansions become smaller while still costing the same amount ( that is if they bother with expansions) they often drop those things that make them unique such as the fully separate and voiced class stories from swtor because they claim it's to expensive to produce. Even though voice actors are on contract for several years and the scripts for those years have already been written (information from swtor's former lead writer).

Also with P2P companies actually have a budget for a month ahead because they know just how many people are playing and can project next month's sub money with far more accuracy, meaning they can now budget for future production/improvements.

Free games don't have this option they don't know how much money they will receive each month as players either buy nothing from the store or perhaps the next month many players suddenly spend several hundred each. Meanwhile those that are avoiding the store are sucking up resources and not playing for the usage. This causes the company to abandon content or lower quality of the content while putting things on the store to lure in more money. This cycle repeats until people stop buying then they put the game in "maintenance mode" so they can throw out the next piece of F2P cr@p.

[Mhaeric]

This kinda thing continues to strike me as slightly odd.

I've seen reams of stuff tearing TESO to pieces for having a sub fee and a purchase fee, yet the same people don't even acknowledge FFXIV, which has exactly the same payment model AND stands as possibly the only direct competitor to TESO on the PS3/4. They're both around $15 for the basic membership and both require a pre-purchase.

Why is it perfectly acceptable for Squenix to do it but not Zenimax/Bethesda? Don't get me wrong, I have no issue with the model (or the games); it's just that the market seems really biased against TESO.

I think it's because they're marketing the game as being the same type of immersive Elder Scrolls game they know and love (it just happens to be in an MMO format for the first time in their very successful series). So you end up with this large contingent of people who want the next Skyrim, but have either never been exposed to the p2p model of MMOs or don't want to have to pay it. The most common thing I see is people saying it should be f2p, but not understanding that the f2p model comes with a whole different basket of cherries which would probably ruin the whole immersive thing that ESO is going for.

While I can't speak to the JP market, FFXI had a very similar outrage when it came out in NA iirc, although I think a lot of it was deflected by and directed towards the extra costs needed to play it on the PS2 at the time ($99 for the HDD on top of the cost of subscription,) so the subscription model complaints took a back seat. FFXIV didn't have this outrage, because the series had already broken that ground, and the fans knew what to expect.

[Feilina]

As a child I could buy a sausage with mustard and a roll for like 10-20ct. Today I have to pay around 3 Euro.
I quite accept the price and feel lucky that it hadn't increased too much.