Expansion Packs: Ideas to help Graal
 

My ideas are getting buried in the Lifetime Classic thread, so I'll start a few new ones.

Expansion Packs
Purpose: to generate a new source of revenue by, instead of just Giving away particularly large chunks of New Content (not to be confused with bugfixes), we sell it in Expansion Packs. The players buy Pack 1, that unlocks Bomys on a world that didn't used to have races, Zorbis Gnomes and Vampires on another previously raceless world, unlocks two or three new Optional dungeons per server...and the servers that participate get to share a % of the profits.
Options: Expansion packs for single servers, global expansion packs applying to later servers (if you already have expansion pack 1 and a new server opens, you're considered to have expansion pack 1 on that server too when they release it), plus we need to work out the price-to-content ratio
Expansion: Depending on which method we use, we can sell hypothetically infinite Expansion Packs for the various servers, as well as the occasional Anthology Pack of Expansion Packs (Get the first 9 side-dungeons of Classic, plus all 5 new races for one low price!)
Requires: A spot in the shop, the content from the servers, a way to lock down content to just those who've paid for it.

Really, Graal already does this: No saving for trials, no flying for nongolds, no global guilds for nonVIPs. This would just be another level and, more importantly, a permanent one - you BUY an expansion, you OWN it, it's more than a year of VIP during which something may-or-may-not be released for you. Further, since the developers get a slice, they're encouraged (as Koni pointed out) to make elite content for their best clients - you can only get a mount if you've got the expansion, you can only be a blood elf paladin in the expansion, you can only fly to the moon and fight the forces of Nod in the expansion...
The real Danger is that we don't cripple the game in process. No fair deciding the Blood Axe and Hearts 8-12 are Premium Content, that's selling people less than a full game. But deciding that the new races belong in an expansion, or the alternate quest for the blood axe...that's just a prettier version of the server, for those willing to support it.
The secondary danger is in choosing how to implement Expansions. Do you buy one for all? Are players going to drop $5 for content just on Maloria? If they pay $5 for Content Everywhere, what happens when I make my server? I don't get a cut of the initial Expansionfest...in fact, if there are already 9 expansions out, I have to make 10 packs before I get an even share of the New Release money. Is that fair? After all, they didn't buy Expansion 1 because someday that'd be my Rocket Boot expansion...but someday, My players might buy Expansion 1 for just what it gives them on my server. And is it fair that, ten years down the line, Konidias is still getting the same cut of the Expansion Pack 1 profits that I get when I start my server? My players aren't buying it for his BomyRiding patch on G2K1 anymore...should the lion's share go to the server/site from which they upgrade?

Discuss.

(Yeah, I think 3 identical polls is plenty, on reflection)

It sounds like a good idea..but I'm pretty sure they wouldnt give everyone a share of the profits. Maybe limit it to classic and gold servers?

But it would be nice to get some sort of bonus for releasing expansions...but I doubt they will let it be monetary.

Well, right now they're making $0 off New Content on various worlds. If they make $4 per player per expansion (say, one expansion every 3 months?), I think they could afford to give away $1 to keep it coming...

I seriously doubt they are going to give money to developers for making expansion packs...thats not how the graal buisness model works. In fact they make money off our free labour (and sometimes off of ambitious players who want to make their own playerworld).

*shrugs* Wouldn't they then be willing to make more money off more of our free labor?
I mean, this is why I'm concerned that they oughtn't be allowed to cut up the main quest and say LA LA LA EXPANSION PACK MONEYPLZ! - the players have already paid to be allowed to play a game all the way through, but as has been evidenced on Graal's competitors, players are more than willing to shell out half-again as much as they paid for the original (or $10 more on FFXI) for an expansion that only offers them more areas, more stuff, more races/options.
If Kingdoms sold a $10 expansion pack that let you play as an orc with completely different stats from a human, it unlocked the orcish mudhut model (though you still gotta build it yourself), and unlocked the Orcish Homeland, how many people would buy it? I don't know, but given the excitement that City of Villains generated, I'd say a fair percentage...

I'm just saying thats it's really far fetched that they would give developers a cut.

*shrugs* I heard they already give PW Owners a cut of upgrades, but that assumes PW Owners really can bring in their own subscribers, which has yet to be verified in either direction.

I think expansion packs are the wrong way to go. It's hard enough getting people to upgrade. This extra content used for the expansion packs should be the stuff that players get from their gold upgrade. There shouldn't be a need to worry about forking over more money just to access all the content AFTER you've upgraded to gold...

Plus it's doing that thing that I don't want to see being done. Which is giving people who pay more money, an unfair advantage. There's a difference between say... having clothing items for sale for real money... and having entire areas for sale for real money. One is cutting off non-paying customers to a handful of non-stat changing items. The other is cutting them off from large pieces of content.

uhm... I wouldn't pay 4$ for a bitflag.

Expansion packs would only be worth it if the amount of content was equal to say about another half of GK being added all at once, otherwise it's rather pointless. The best thing about Graal (or so its suggested on the website) is you can upgrade and see and get lots of updates all the time (you shouldn't have to pay more).

yeah, but the tradeoff is if you get a year of VIP, VIPs might not get anything that year. So how else do we convince servers to generate Premium Content? I mean hell, NWN and FFXI and WOW charge the players for an expansion pack when they come out with new races or dungeons or classes, why not Graal? My point is that given the choice between charging for update packs and charging annual upkeep fees of our Classicians, I'd prefer we charged for Actual Content rather than Potential Releases.

Wow.

HELL NO.

What works for other games, doesn't mean it will work for Graal.

There is no way in hell that you could sell expansions for Graal and expect to make money off of it, Graal just isn't worth that.

I also love it how you brought up FFXI and how they have expansions, need I say more?

...obviously, as I'm utterly lost. FFXI. Expansions. True. My upstairs neighbors spent more on the expansion than on the original - because he bought it to play a blue mage, and by jingo, he's going to PLAY a blue mage.

It's a fair point that in order to sell an expansion you need a complete product...it's generous of the players to pay Graal for the privelege of playing a game that's still growing, with quests yet unfinished and un-debugged...so yes, charging for "expansions" that only deliver what was initially promised would be wrong, but sidequests? Races? Prestige classes? Once all the core stuff's up, what's wrong with making a buck off expansion?

No one is going to buy expansions for a 2D game, I certainly will become a non-paying customer if this was to ever be released.

In regards to what I said about FFXI, I was laughing at that because of the fact if you look at that game, then this one, you could understand why people pay for expansions on that game.

That argument's been made before. "D00d, look at ___, it's a million times better than Graal and only costs twice as much per month, I'd play that instead." But the fact of the matter is that money is money, and Graal offers its crude rendition of "better games" at a fraction of the price. If Graal can sell subscriptions cheaper than other games, why can't it sell expansions cheaper than other games?

But mostly, I'd just like Graal to sell something tangible. From all I've heard, even a tangible bitflag beats buying another year of VIP in the futile hopes something'll be developed for it before it expires. -_-
(I won't get VIP myself, I don't like guilds that much. ^^)

I only upgraded out of boredom and nothing left to do with money last month, and to re-post on the forums.