New monetization model suggestion.

[LadyApollo]

Guild Wars 2 was a exceptional case, they spend a lot with marketing so can get new players to join every month, this isn't the case of HnH and never will be.
But the current model, in my honest opinion isn't healthy for the game.

That's why I think that a model that just offers a better quality of life for a limited timespan is better, it still a monthly income, players that want to support the game will get it, it's not something imposed on every shingle player.

You said that the game has a monthly userbase of 20000 players, that's a potentian of 300,000US dollers per month, but it is something that is not going to happen.
People are going to stop playing, userbase will decrease every single month, and that's what I'm afraid of.

[dank_memes]

Keep in mind 20 000 is the number of unique users accessing the site each month (and does that count browsers? Computers?) Some of these people will literally visit the site only once, some will play for a little bit and then leave, some are not even users but bots. I've been part of a community that had over 100 000 accounts on their forums, yet you never saw more than 30-40 people online in the game at a time, with maybe 100 regulars at any time during the community's lifespan (some of which popped on only a few days a month).

What's important is the conversion ratio. How many of these 20 000 users actually become regular players, and how many of these players would be willing to become subscribers?

[LadyApollo]

Oh, I thought he was speaking of the amount of unique player logins ingame, those who are already playing the game.

[Avu]

New payment model. Subscriptions give party arrows. Free to play people get 100 monthly hours.

[TeckXKnight]

New payment model. Subscriptions give party arrows. Free to play people get 100 monthly hours.

I will happily pay this subscription fee.

[draktok]

Based on the fact there is hundreds of games with online servers , this simply isn't true. We can take a game such as insurgency - which has a pay once model, and they host 40~ servers themselves and they haven't shut down. Natural selection2, the same. Monaco. I mean i can keep naming games. Servers are not so expensive that you couldn't afford them for more than months at a time. I pay to host a 64 player server for the popular game ARK. How much do you think it costs me? Thousands of dollars? It's simply not true. I can afford it for a very long time making 15$ an hour. To say that it's unsustainable is simply blasphemy.

Yes, and you have a single server that hosts 64 players, not a server cluster. If your server goes down (server dies, you can't afford to pay the fees anymore, etc), dozens of others are hosted by other players that other players can join. You're not consistently working to add more content to the game without getting paid. It is so, so much more complex than that.

Of course, you're right - but I'm not so sure on the wonderful server clusters and redundancy they currently have based on the fact that the servers have gone down at least a hundred times since launch. I'll just reiterate that there is hundreds of MMO's that have ceased being P2P and instead gone f2p w/ micro's or a onetime purchsae with micro's for a reason. There is a business reason as to why there is only 3 big name MMO's that do a p2p model. Hint: it's not because they are "greedy" - it's because such a model is only sustainable and will only sustain a community for a game worth playing.

When you've got 300 player base, online before p2p, how many do you think will continue to pay and play? 50% is a huge retention number for maintain after such drastic changes - if they maintained even 50% of that with people buying 10$ subs, i'd be surprised if it would cover the cost of rent. This game needs to be recognizable, easily accessible and advertised, not hidden behind a paywall that alienates most people under the age of 16, anyone who can't guarantee the time to be worth playing (IE, myself as I travel for work a lot) and others that simply don't consider a game in this ... state, to say the least (Eternal Alpha) worth the money.

maybe they will be more players, maybe less, to keep them alive, but to pretend this isn't hemorrhaging the community and is overall showing how out of touch these guys are i don't know.