I remember when I first started playing free to play MMOs, I was super excited to get a chance to play these games without having to buy them. The concept of microtransactions seemed really novel – play for free, but make small purchases along the way to enhance the experience. My first free to play MMORPG was Maplestory and the game's cash shop at the time was actually really balanced. I never ended up spending any money and enjoyed the game for free, but the items for sale in the cash shop were mostly cosmetics and EXP boosts, which don't qualify as “pay to win” in my eyes. These items were pretty cheap too; a couple dollars could rent a cool looking outfit or buy an XP boost. I don't think any one item in the cash-shop cost more than ~$10 at the time, which meant that the transactions were actually micro. Nowdays, microtransactions aren't so micro anymore.

Yes, you can actually charge $1,000 in one shot in Felspire

I was inspired to write this article after recording a video for a Chinese developed browser game called “Felspire”. You know how League of Legends has an option to add $5, $10, $20, $35, $50, or a $100 worth of Riot Points to your account? Well, Felspire let's you add $1,000 to your account, which only foreshadows its absurdly expensive cash shop pricing. Purchasing a Master VIP card costs 1,588 diamonds, which is equivalent to $53. Since when is $53 for a single purchase “micro”? You can't even access the game's “VIP Mall” which presumably sells more overpriced nonsense until you're VIP level 4, which can be reached by buying that Master VIP Card for $53. Gear can be purchased in these games straight from the cash shop too – oftentimes for $10-$20 per piece, so gearing up a single character could cost hundreds, if not thousands. Dropping upwards of $50 for one item is definitely not a micro-transaction, that's enough for a full cost game!

Felspire - Generic Chinese web MMO Gameplay

Reaching maximum VIP level in these Chinese web games can often times be absurdly pricy. VIP level 10 in League of Angels from GTArcade requires 10,000 dev points. Players accumulate 1 Dev point per 100 diamonds purchased. 30,000 diamonds (300 dev points) can be purchased for $300, so that's about $1 per dev point. Guess how many Dev points are needed for VIP level 10. Go ahead, guess. Got it? Well. You're probably off by quite a bit – it costs a whopping 10,000 dev points, or $10,000 to reach maximum VIP level in League of Angels. These aren't micro-transactions anymore, they're macro-transactions.

VIP Levels in League of Angels / GTArcade

Micro-transactions are quickly becoming macro-transactions in client based games too. A single mount in Echo of Soul from Aeria Games is about $30 while a pack of 57 magic lamps is $75. It's not always about a single item being high in price though. Players need to drop hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, in some games before being competitive in PvP. Games like Forsaken World allow players to train certain stats for cash, so the strongest players tend to be the ones that sunk the most cash into their characters. This is particularly true for games that sell items that enhance the chance to upgrade weapons. The move towards more and more monetization will only hurt games in the long run. The short term tradeoff for more profit now usually doesn't end well. Just look at games like ArcheAge and Allods Online that launched with a bang, but monetized a bit too much early on and ended up losing most of their players.

So what do you think? Got any fun examples of an MMO that has obscene prices in the cash shop? Share in the comments below!