Price Reduction =)

[Rowyne]

It seems that SE's PR department could do them a huge favor by just simplifying how they post their prices. Some details just cause confusion. No one is going to pay for the monthly service and not have at least 1 active character so they can play it. Why don't they just say..

Reg Subscription Price: $12.99/mo for additional characters add $3/ea
Discounted Subscription Price: $9.99/mo for additional characters add $3/ea

Just stop listing the character fee separately... Additional character fee, sure, but don't even have show an option that no one is going to use. No one in their right mind is going to pay for the game subscription and not have a single character to actually play the game with.

Exactly. It is 9.99/month no matter how you try to dress it down. Taking the character fee out of the equation is deceptive advertising because, at a glance, it makes the sub fee look cheaper.

It is only a $3 discount.

[Uriko]

Price isn't too bad but it's leaving the space between 1.20 and billing starting awfully close. I do think that £2.10 per character fee is a bit ridiculous (seriously, we're still in the age of charging extra character fees?) but the base rate is pretty low so it kinda balances.

Hopefully 1.20 makes the game worth logging onto again though, I'm just hoping we have enough time to experiment with 1.20 to decide if we want to stay after billing commences.

[Riv]

$4.99 per month with the 180 day plan. That's like 30 bucks for half a year which is a steal imo and i have no problem paying that. If you can't fork that out then get a job or gtfo.

To the ppl complaining about 3 bucks per character: If you use multiple characters then you are probably fairly hardcore anyway (although i only use one char and consider myself decently hardcore), so you will probably be around for quite some time. Just go with the 90 or 180 day plan and use those savings to pay for your extra character(s). I don't understand why people have multi characters anyway but I digress.

Stop whining.

[Rowyne]

$4.99 per month with the 180 day plan.

No, it's $7.99 because you're not factoring in the character fee. Who's only going to be paying the service fee? Nobody.

Stop whining.

Stop helping to spread false information.

[Sevokevo_Royuki]

Oh Bohoo you trolls will be gone soon. That is when I will be happy for those who don't want to pay.

[Alerith]

What's with all the "extra character" rage? True, most MMO's allow you a number of more characters free... Then again most MMO's restrict your character to one job class, one crafting class, etc.

FFXI and XIV have the advantage of giving your character access to all classes. XIV even has retainers so you don't have to have a mule for selling stuff.

Also:

"The above price plan includes a save slot for one character and the 30 day basic service fee."

+1

[TheVedis]

READ!

"The above price plan includes a save slot for one character and the 30 day basic service fee."

I think you need to re-evaluate who is spreading false information.

you may want to re-read what you looked at

the 9.99 is what that applies to(6.99 + 3 = 9.99)


the pricing itself says this

"* One character save slot as well as a basic service fee is required to play FINAL FANTASY XIV "

[Rowyne]

READ!

"The above price plan includes a save slot for one character and the 30 day basic service fee."

I think you need to re-evaluate who is spreading false information.

Wow. This is what I'm talking about. SE's talent for making things convoluted once again confuses people. People actually think they're getting a bigger discount than they really are.

you may want to re-read what you looked at

the 9.99 is what that applies to(6.99 + 3 = 9.99)


the pricing itself says this

"* One character save slot as well as a basic service fee is required to play FINAL FANTASY XIV "

TheVedis is right. If you scroll down the page and look at the fee breakdown, you'll see the real details.



What this means, in reality, is this:

30 Days - $6.99 Service Fee + $3.00 Character Fee = $9.99
90 Days - $5.99 Service Fee + $3.00 Character Fee = $8.99
180 Days - $4.99 Service Fee + $3.00 Character Fee = $7.99

The absolute cheapest you can play this game is 8 bucks a month. But the only people who will benefit are the diehard fans, the ones who will be willing to pay 6 months worth of fees upfront. Anyone who is on the fence and only wants to pay by the month will get it at 10 bucks a month.

[Pebe]

This may be completely wrong, so don't hold me to it. This is jusat an example.

Personally I don't mind the character fee, and there is probably a good reason behind it. Like previously said by many people, one character can do everything. Now in an MMO, being able to everything entails ALOT. Now think for a second, how much memory do you think one character takes up. Everytime you log in or log off you character data is being retrivied or stored on the ffxiv servers (I think, please someone who knows more about this help me explain). This has to be the case, otherwise you couldn't play your ffxiv character on a different computer. So somewhere stored in ffxiv's memory is all of your character data. Which includes things like, character graphics, quests completed, jobs leveled, items held, linkshells, friends, etc. But not only does it include that, but each character also probably has a massive chunk of memory reserved for things to come. If not, then everytime they add new content they will expand on the memory allocated for each character. Now, imagine 5 years from now and think about how huge this game will be and how much memory each character alone will take up. I personally am curious of the exact amount of memory SE reserves for each character. Probably could make some interesting comparisons between memory and cost.

This is just an example for I am sure there is far more to the character cost than just memory cost, maybe memory cost doesn't even play a factor (It is kind of cheap now). I can't really say, only SE knows.

[Ranara]

This may be completely wrong, so don't hold me to it. This is jusat an example.

Personally I don't mind the character fee, and there is probably a good reason behind it. Like previously said by many people, one character can do everything. Now in an MMO, being able to everything entails ALOT. Now think for a second, how much memory do you think one character takes up. Everytime you log in or log off you character data is being retrivied or stored on the ffxiv servers (I think, please someone who knows more about this help me explain). This has to be the case, otherwise you couldn't play your ffxiv character on a different computer. So somewhere stored in ffxiv's memory is all of your character data. Which includes things like, character graphics, quests completed, jobs leveled, items held, linkshells, friends, etc. But not only does it include that, but each character also probably has a massive chunk of memory reserved for things to come. If not, then everytime they add new content they will expand on the memory allocated for each character. Now, imagine 5 years from now and think about how huge this game will be and how much memory each character alone will take up. I personally am curious of the exact amount of memory SE reserves for each character. Probably could make some interesting comparisons between memory and cost.

This is just an example for I am sure there is far more to the character cost than just memory cost, maybe memory cost doesn't even play a factor (It is kind of cheap now). I can't really say, only SE knows.

Honestly there is no real way of us knowing how much it takes it up, but its just data stored in a database. My guess would be a file under 1MB.