Time spent payment for MMORPG

CK Sample III is requesting an alternative payment model for online role playing games:

MMPORG companies out there: if you want to retain professionals like myself who want to play when there is actually time available for playing, then switch the pay to a time spent in game subscription credit instead of a real world time subscription. Offer that as an alternative means of payment, perhaps even at a slightly higher price point, for people like myself.

CK’s weird use of MMPORG instead of the standard MMORPG aside, this is an interesting idea. I see some problems though as when I do play these type games, the sessions are long. So unless the number of hours purchased is like in say 25 or 50 hour chunks minimum, one would run into having to stop in the middle of a battle and/or quest and juice their account with more time. I’m sure that could become more annoying than paying for a subscription that seldom gets used.

I’m still playing Everquest II but very sparingly at the moment – like one day a week right now. So I’m paying for 6 days a week that there is no play time. Sony is making a few bucks off players like me. Since we are rebooting our offline business, it might be awhile before I have more than a day or three to spend playing MMORPGs.

My first reaction to CK’s suggested alternate payment model was hey, that’s kind of cool, but the more I think about it, I’d rather have unlimited time throughout the month. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not unlimited since there are only so many hours in the day, but when one gets immersed in the virtual world one of the last things s/he needs is to be reminded by something in the real world needs to be paid to keep playing.