Maybe I haven't searched hard enough, but I have not seen an MMO that has a pay-as-you-go payment plan. I am talking about a system that charges you for only the time that you are actually logged in the game, rather than a flat $15/month subscription fee or a cash-shop.

Wouldn't this system be great for everyone? Say for example that if the rates were $0.07~0.1/hour of logged in time, and the average "hardcore" player plays 49 hours a week (thats 6-7 hours a day), then by the end of the month the total comes up to roughly $15 anyway. But, for a casual player this would be a lot less. And this would be a great incentive for any one that would have never played the game because of the hefty subscription fee. Now they don't have to worry about "getting their money's worth" because they only pay as much as they play.

What do you think?

I think that would give a new meaning to "AFK" status!

My idea is similar to yours. I thought a good idea is to be able to buy in blocks of hours e.g x amount of hours for x amount of dollars. That way you pay for the actual amount of time you play. No matter how good a game is, I will not pay a monthly fee to play it. I would like to play all of the games available now. Warhammer, LOTR, WOW etc but I can't afford to pay $20 Australian, each month for each of them. I play Guild Wars now as it's buy the game and play free and I play every night and a lot of the weekend also ( I'm retired) but as much as I love the game, I am getting tired of it. My friends and I would love to be able to play a game a couple of nights, then another one for a couple of nights and so on.
I am sure they would make a lot more money if they used this system. As it is now, a lot of people are like me. We simply don't pay at all.

EVE would be almost free...

I think it's because MMO's are designed to be time sinks and the price is to convince the more hardcore players that they're getting a bargin.

Simply put, it wouldn't make as much cash for the company.

You also have to take into account that the cost for having you on the server is not primarily what you are paying for. It's continued development of content which goes on if you are logged in or not.

I believe it's China where most of MMOs run on models similar to this. The internet cafes buy the games in bulk and the players pay hourly rates to the game companies on top of what the internet cafe charges for service.

Clairaudient:
Simply put, it wouldn't make as much cash for the company.

So they would just put up the prices to an outragous amount, so its probably better the way it is

Too much work to keep on taking in requests for more time and its a lot simplier to go and do a 3-month or 6-month subscription. Their servers would overload from so many pay amounts (Think of Blizzard's game World of Warcraft, WoW has 10 million players, 10 Million players sending in 10 million, or so, requests would cause even the super-computers of would cringe.)

It sounds like a really great idea, that would make a lot of the casual players happy, and actually making more people play because they'd be able to afford it. But I still don't think that'll happen considering they probably won't make as much, and it would take way to long to some up everyone's play time at the end of the month.

They're just to lazy to do it.

A subscription compels the player to play as much as they can, so as not to waste the money they've spent. A pay-as-you-go system would give the player freedom to choose, something the companies don't want.

How much money do you think they would lose , I hope Blizzard doesn't see this thread , it'll give them ideas to have a 15 dollar payment , followed by payment for every hour you play .

I don't know, this idea has potential and could work, but in the long run it has the potential of costing companies money. After all, companies like Blizzard, for example, are just that: companies. While appealing to their customer base is a priority, they do need to watch their bottom line, being their profits.

It's already so cheap to play these games. It doesn't really make sense to deal in smaller amounts. Of course, you're not just paying for time, but a slew of other things. Perhaps people need to make some other spending cuts if they're fussing over hours spent in an MMO. :p

We should also think about the cost for the MMORPG company, they continue to run their server 24/7, as well as other in-game supports such as technical team and GMs while they maintain operations. I guess the main reason why there are no such pay-as-you-go payment plan is because it will ultimately cut the company's profit to its minimum along with their service.

If you will recall this is how the common internet service providers started, they charged by the minute or hour. AOL, Protige, Quest and many others. Then you ask yourself what the hell happened to that and why you are paying flat monthly fees. A. More predictable revenue for the company and B. No complicated billing system if everyone is paying the same thing.

I remember that. I think Prodigy was my family's first internet service and I really had to watch the time back then. I believe there was actually some free time available before they started charging by the hour or whatever. It got to be very expensive if you spent too much time on it. I imagine the same would probably be the case if MMOs started offering an hourly rate. It takes a lot of subs to cover the costs of running the servers, so they can't just let people spend $1.00 / month on the game and expect people with more free time to keep things afloat. Of course, they could have ads, but nobody wants that. We get more than enough already.

bloodyleach:
If you will recall this is how the common internet service providers started, they charged by the minute or hour. AOL, Protige, Quest and many others. Then you ask yourself what the hell happened to that and why you are paying flat monthly fees. A. More predictable revenue for the company and B. No complicated billing system if everyone is paying the same thing.

Yeah, we never had that. We had like 10 million free 5000 hours AOL CDs.That's litterally how my Comp Sci teacher still has free AOL.

Slycne:
You also have to take into account that the cost for having you on the server is not primarily what you are paying for. It's continued development of content which goes on if you are logged in or not.

I believe it's China where most of MMOs run on models similar to this. The internet cafes buy the games in bulk and the players pay hourly rates to the game companies on top of what the internet cafe charges for service.

Adding to what slycne said, this method brings more "insurance". If you pay per-minute that means you only pay for the time you play, if you pay monthly that means you purchased the whole month, whether you play for it or not. This also has a psychological effect:

If paying per minute/hour:
"*Logs in*
*bad first impression*
"why bother..."
*logs out never to log in again*"

If paying monthly:
"*logs in*
*bad first impression*
"...meh...I already paid for the month anyways..."
*logs out for the day but logs back tomorrow*"

in short: cause if they charged per uptime they could rob you enough :D