Premium Price change discussion

[DeletedUser]

I currently buy Premium on a monthly basis, costing me £2.90 a month(so this is what I shall be basing my figures on), and once the new premium roles in this will increase up to £3.99, an increase of around 38% for me.

Now according to this Inflation Calculator, from 2006(last price increase? I think I read it was four years ago but I could be wrong.) up to 2009 the price of the premium should on average increased by 2.5% a year, which would today put it standing for me at £3.12 a month, leaving 87P or an equivalent 28% "unexplained" increase.

Also at this juncture I would like to point out that if I had been playing for four years, this would become an average price rise of 28p a year, something which I would personally be more than happy to pay.

So we have an increase of 87p to explain away, let me first point out that I imagine though incorrect that other the past 4 years Tribal Wars has seen a large growth in new players, which of course leads to more strain being placed on the numerous servers(which in themselves aren't cheap) which in turn leads to a high energy bill which when coupled with rising energy prices leads to decreasing profits and surprise surprise prices increase.

Returning to the increase in player numbers this also leads to an increase in bandwidth, something which is completely unavoidable when you have something successful, and the bill for the all Servers bandwidth is more than likely obscene.

Lets also discuss the proliferation of wireless hot spots and Internet capable devices over the last four years, put shortly, its huge, these days you can pretty much access the Internet anywhere(esp with the V6 mobile features) which again leads to more people online/online longer which in turn leads to higher energy bills and higher bills for the bandwidth, thus you never know TW might be becoming a victim of its own success.

Also I'm sure that someone in this thread said something along the lines of "The development of V6 is a one off cost", I'll put it like this, you are WRONG(more than likely), from a software engineering point of view a supposedly 80% of a software lifecylce is spent in maintaining the software, i.e fixing bugs etc. so yes dev may be a one off cost but it still needs maintaining, in addition this is still a live project, so development of it is still ongoing, i.e 6.1 is being released today.

Also please take into account that as this game grows so does the amount of people behind the game needs to grow so new dev staff need to be employed to keep up with us, and as I'm sure your aware people aren't cheap.

These are probably just some of the issues I'm fairly sure that TW and Innogames are facing at the moment, and lets be honest fair play to Inno for keeping the price down as long as it has, but like I've tried to point out yes it may be above the rate of inflation but there is more to be taken into account than just inflation.


This however I potentially don't buy without further information(Sorry CLT, it isn't anything personal):

[clt]The value of points changed because the versions of TW in Asia will have different premium models and abilities, to better suit the market in some countries there. While there are no plans for tribalwars.co.uk to change like this, it'd be technically hard to maintain two different premium point systems in the same code base.[/clt]

I can fully understand that having two different premium points will be difficult to run, however when was this implemented? More than likely after the original premium model was released, so potentially the entire "simple "model could be moved to a seemingly more complicated model due to a few countries having different models, which doesn't really seem particularly customer friendly from our point of view but at the end of the day I'm sure it won't be too difficult to work out really, its only slightly different numbers.

So far, I know of 8 people who aren't going to pay. Nauz, with your vast fortunes, I guess you will continue to pay. With what you will be paying, and what the 8 people I know want be paying, TW loose. And it isn't just the working population who have premium, quite a few of our members have premium who are still at school, so your argument there is a load of cods-wallop.

This also isn't personal, its more of a general devils advocate thing

Does it really matter if you quit? Will it make any difference? At the end of the day you quitting will more than likely work in Innogames favour, lets assume 25% of all players quit, the people paying the extra monies for premium will more than cover what they've lost from loosing you, and they have less bandwidth and energy, as well as everything else being used less, so even more shiny pennies are made!!

This is all a big assumption though and I'm only guessing

edit: Sods law, make a big post, post it and find out that only a few minutes earlier someone posts a better, more concise post saying the same thing, damm you Thargoran

 

[Nauzhror]

Nauz, if you got a 45% pay rise, it is only because you confused the hell out of the board with how much profit they were making.

No, I just got promoted from one position to another $15 -> $23 an hour.

Nauz, with your vast fortunes, I guess you will continue to pay. With what you will be paying, and what the 8 people I know want be paying, TW loose. And it isn't just the working population who have premium, quite a few of our members have premium who are still at school, so your argument there is a load of cods-wallop.

Logical fallacy. You knowing 8 people quitting does not mean that there are 8 out of every 9 people quitting.

Also I stated the majority of the paying customers were over the age of 16. Stating that there are some who aren't does nothing to disprove that.

 

[DeletedUser]

No, I just got promoted from one position to another $15 -> $23 an hour

$?

NO ONE cares about $, its co.uk, england uses pounds. Most of the uk uses pounds. :icon_eek:

 

[Nauzhror]

$?

NO ONE cares about $, its co.uk, england uses pounds. Most of the uk uses pounds. :icon_eek:

What on earth does that have to do with percents?

Is the percent between 15 pounds and 23 pounds somehow different than $15 and $23?

No?


Oh, and as told to lindley, don't speak as if you are the collective. State what you care about, not what everyone else does, as simply put you don't know what other people care about. Believe it or not, .co.uk or not, a large percentage of the players do not live in the UK.

 

[DeletedUser]

What on earth does that have to do with percents?

Is the percent between 15 pounds and 23 pounds somehow different than $15 and $23?

No?

Go sit in your corner.

Oh, and as told to lindley, don't speak as if you are the collective. State what you care about, not what everyone else does, as simply put you don't know what other people care about. Believe it or not, .co.uk or not, a large percentage of the players do not live in the UK.

To subtle perhaps? Please see http://forum.tribalwars.co.uk/showpost.php?p=210227&postcount=126, as you can see its pretty much the same but with a little twist, maybe it wasn't the right emoticon(I wanted the bandit emoticon but they don't have it), I personally thought it was quite witty, no?

I personally don't have a problem with percentages in any form, they are all the same really however I would like to remind you that it appears "Believe it or not, .co.uk or not, a large percentage of the players do not understand basic percentages." :icon_razz: (See what I did there?)

Or were you being ironic with the lindley reference? Who knows.

 

[DeletedUser4147]

I can't believe all this. IT'S SIMPLE MATHS. Now i haven't got time to write it all out, but, i will eitehr later today or tommorow for you all. With fairly precise increases.

This will just show that Nauz is right, from rough workings this has been the case, and those arguing him are just plain Failing, tbh.

I don't see hwo you can carry on throwing things around.

1 major problem is: Currency is worth different amounts, but, the percentage raise will be the same, as nauz said earlier. 15 - 23, in dollars is the same rise as 15-23 in pounds, AHHH

 

[DeletedUser]

*cough cough*
29.5% increase
go read my response one page ago.

 

[DeletedUser]

Rip- off

i have cancelled my account yesterday the reason being if the figures below are correct then its in excess of 80% increase.
please tell me how you can expect someone to pay an 80% increase

Current system

10 Premium points £4.90 for 60 days = 8p perday

New system

200 premium points £3.99 for 28 days = 14p per day

maybe we should all pay the £50 for 2 years
then who looks after the servers in 6 months time when no cash is comming in or a year or 18 months???
or maybe they can say due to finacial problems we are unable to continue the servers.
asking people to contribute for a 2 year or even a 1 year period is insane.

the sad part for me is i have left my tribe in the **** and for that i feel bad

 

[Nauzhror]

i have cancelled my account yesterday the reason being if the figures below are correct then its in excess of 80% increase.
please tell me how you can expect someone to pay an 80% increase

Current system

10 Premium points £4.90 for 60 days = 8p perday

New system

200 premium points £3.99 for 28 days = 14p per day

maybe we should all pay the £50 for 2 years
then who looks after the servers in 6 months time when no cash is comming in or a year or 18 months???
or maybe they can say due to finacial problems we are unable to continue the servers.
asking people to contribute for a 2 year or even a 1 year period is insane.

the sad part for me is i have left my tribe in the **** and for that i feel bad

It is absolutely not in excess of 80%. even with the figures you just claimed it is under 80%. It is a 45% increase, quit beating the poor dead horse.

 

[DeletedUser]

i have cancelled my account yesterday the reason being if the figures below are correct then its in excess of 80% increase.
please tell me how you can expect someone to pay an 80% increase

Current system

10 Premium points £4.90 for 60 days = 8p perday

New system

200 premium points £3.99 for 28 days = 14p per day

Am I missing something here? That isn't a fair comparison to begin with, surely you should compare like to like i.e

5 Premium points, £2.90 for 30 days = 9.6p per day

200 Premium points, £3.99 for 28 days = 14p per day

which if I remember correctly is about 47% which isn't anywhere near your 80%

 

[DeletedUser]

It is absolutely not in excess of 80%. even with the figures you just claimed it is under 80%. It is a 45% increase, quit beating the poor dead horse.

so a 45% increase is fair then!!!!

alot of folk in britain are fighting for jobs and taking pay cuts to save jobs, so this increase is fair i suppose!!!!

its a joke enough said!!

 

[DeletedUser]

Why have a 5K PP option. That will last almost 70 years with both no ads and PA.

 

[DeletedUser]

ZthDimension, you are right, comparing 10 pp for 60days against 200 pp for 28 days is not a far comparison. But I can't get that through to Nauzhror either when he goes the other way comparing 60 days against 84 days. Also, within your post about all of the expenses, you can't include energy in the way you are doing. Yes, if you have more servers you are using more energy, but 50 servers is going to use the same energy whether 10,000 users are connected or 20,000 users. And this doesn't matter either whether connecting for PC, laptop, cell, iPhone, hotspot - doesn't come into it. Also, the mobile system is crap, i stated it before. If they want to reduce network traffic, reduce / remove the graphics on the mobile site.

Blades has a point, even if we agree to disagree and it is 45%, hell of a lot.

 

[DeletedUser]

How will GratisPay change?

Why have a 5K PP option. That will last almost 70 years with both no ads and PA.

Are you just generally unobservant, or really, really bad at maths?

Read it properly!

 

[DeletedUser]

Yes, if you have more servers you are using more energy, but 50 servers is going to use the same energy whether 10,000 users are connected or 20,000 users.

Yes and what do these servers run on? Air??

Energy prices as WE all know have shot up in the past few years therefore running those 50 servers has increased energy spend, modern servers and Energy effciency drives in data centres are helping to reduce this load, but even so the energy price is likely eating into any profits made. Less not forget that new servers etc dont come free nor do these energy efficiency items.

DONT get me wrong I'm not keen on the price increase in the slightest, to me would have been better to do what our own government does and add the increase in stages so that the cost is better spread out.

As for the points changes, clearly if this is to suit the Asian contingent, it shows how much the Euro/American opinion really matters doesnt it. This to me stinks of the $$$$ grabbing scenario half the modern world is doing to get into the Asian market.

 

[DeletedUser]

Also, within your post about all of the expenses, you can't include energy in the way you are doing. Yes, if you have more servers you are using more energy, but 50 servers is going to use the same energy whether 10,000 users are connected or 20,000 users. And this doesn't matter either whether connecting for PC, laptop, cell, iPhone, hotspot - doesn't come into it. Also, the mobile system is crap, i stated it before. If they want to reduce network traffic, reduce / remove the graphics on the mobile site.

Blades has a point, even if we agree to disagree and it is 45%, hell of a lot.

I'm not a server person so I could be talking out my ar*e over the coming sentences but following my logic I think I'm right and the following link isn't relevant to the servers TW is running however it is a proof of concept: Server CPU Power consumption so as you can see when you have the CPU fully maxed out it easily doubles the amount of power consumption so based on these figures there should be a difference in power consumption between 10k and 20k users. My point with the iPhone, hotspot thing was that over the years it has become hugely easier to stay on line, thus meaning that the servers will be dealing with a constant higher than average traffic to the site, if you catch my drift.#

edit: In response to post below, fair play, I'll concede the point, I was thinking from a personal at home point of view(god knows why in retrospect) rather than an actual business point of view.

 

[DeletedUser]

Baskb, i wasn't saying not to include energy. The way in which ZthDimension was putting it was that the more users that are connecting increases the amount of enerygy. What I am saying is that it doesn't matter whether you have 1 user or 100,000 users, if you have 50 servers the amount of energy will not change.

I don't know how TW manage there servers, but there are ways to bring costs down. Rent server space from data centres on a VM Ware system. Based on the old 5 pp price, I could get a virtual server with 200Mb HDD, 4Gb RAM, 20Gb dedicated line with unlimited band width for every 25 paying players. This is within a level 5 data centre who have power and internet access quadrupled. Their location, flight path to Heathrow, is the only concern if a 747 doesn't make. Other than this, they have everything covered. We have 3 servers there and the only downtime in the last 4 years was when they switched to some routers over and it didn't go according to plan, putting our servers out of reach to 10 minutes instead of the planner 5 minutes.

There are over 5000 players registered on TW3. Say 25% pay premium. This will get you 65 servers. Not sure of how many playing on world 1, 2 or 4, but the money from these 3 worlds is available for staff costs etc.

 

[DeletedUser]

Yes and what do these servers run on? Air??

Energy prices as WE all know have shot up in the past few years therefore running those 50 servers has increased energy spend, modern servers and Energy effciency drives in data centres are helping to reduce this load, but even so the energy price is likely eating into any profits made. Less not forget that new servers etc dont come free nor do these energy efficiency items.

DONT get me wrong I'm not keen on the price increase in the slightest, to me would have been better to do what our own government does and add the increase in stages so that the cost is better spread out.

As for the points changes, clearly if this is to suit the Asian contingent, it shows how much the Euro/American opinion really matters doesnt it. This to me stinks of the $$$$ grabbing scenario half the modern world is doing to get into the Asian market.

Not even a worthy argument. The amount of energy used by one server is laughably small compared to some other things we daily use. Surely, if energy played any role then they would have just gradually raised the prices.

Or actually, energy prices did indeed increase, but so did their incomes. Therefore it's irrelevant to include since it already was included.

 

[DeletedUser]

Not even a worthy argument. The amount of energy used by one server is laughably small compared to some other things we daily use.

Come on HF please at least give this the validity it deserves.

Yes a Hair dryer uses more, as will other items at home.

But do you leave these on 24hrs a day 7 days a week 365 days a year?

With regards the price increases, perhaps it is a moot point.

The point I'm trying to raise overall is that running this small TW server(s) is not as easy as some actually think it is and there are a lot of costs many of us never see unless we work in those sort of enviroments/fields.

Again let me stress I'm not happy about the increase, but will it stop me playing? Doubtful! As when Mr Chancellor puts up the price every year of other luxuries enjoyed by people (Cigs, Booze etc) and of course petrol I will just have to rebalance and adjust to the prices to continue playing, maybe one less beer a week or similar.

 

[DeletedUser]

People need to stop telling InnoGames what a bad move this is, or how much money they'll lose, or how you and your X friends will stop buying PP.

Are you a company economist?
Do you have access to InnoGames figures on revenue and expenditure?
Do you know the demographic, in terms of geographical and social of TW players?
Have you seen how changes in real income in the uk and abroad have affected their PP sales?
Do you actually know what you're talking about?

Unless the answers to all those questions are yes, you're in a much worse place to comment about how many customers they'll lose, or how bad an idea this is, or how foolish InnoGames are. Especially if your sentence starts with "If you're under 16 like me and my mates...." because seriously, most people, myself included, know much, much less about InnoGames workings than the people who work at InnoGames.