A few thoughts...

[Candlz]

A week ago so many people were upset about The Big Quest. People quit, people talked about boycotting, nobody was happy. Those of us who completed it felt bad for those who weren't able.

Losing VMK forever really puts that into perspective doesn't it.

Lily said there are 250,000 active players on VMK... If they decided to make this a Pay for play game and charged $5.00 a month the would bring in $1,250,000 A MONTH! That is for something they already have in place!

That is something that needs to be pointed out in our letters and phone calls.

A year from now I really want to look back on this time and remember how we almost lost our virtual homes...

 

[VMK_Mouse]

We should take into account that a huge portion of that 250,000 VMK population is mules. I seriously doubt anybody will pay $60 per year per mule.

Also, many of those are kids. A lot of kids do not have $60 a year to play a virtual game and their parents will probably not give that to them.

 

[sm4987]

We should take into account that a huge portion of that 250,000 VMK population is mules. I seriously doubt anybody will pay $60 per year per mule.

Also, many of those are kids. A lot of kids do not have $60 a year to play a virtual game and their parents will probably not give that to them.

I'm not sure about the parents not giving them the money. After all isn't that what disney is trying to push us to do? Pay for ToonTown, POTC, Club Penguin, Fairies and Cars? Why would they not pay for such a great site as VMK? I am a parent and I would pay for vmk not only for myself but for the kids. I like it so much more than any of the rest of Disney sites.

 

[VMK_Mouse]

I'm not sure about the parents not giving them the money. After all isn't that what disney is trying to push us to do? Pay for ToonTown, POTC, Club Penguin, Fairies and Cars? Why would they not pay for such a great site as VMK? I am a parent and I would pay for vmk not only for myself but for the kids. I like it so much more than any of the rest of Disney sites.

Even so, the figure is way off. I know I would not pay $5000 a year to save my mules.

 

[Candlz]

No - but would you pay $5 or $10 a month for 1 - 4 characters?

I sure would...

 

[Dreamytime]

I am looking at my little people and am feeling like a mom sending her kids to be executed.
I know that sounds overly dramatic, but I have played with this avatars, doing all their quests (2x) diving through green car, have rooms built on them, have been upset when I forgot to buy their own pin or forgot a pirate scarf...they are more than a mere 'mule' to me.

 

[elikapekakini]

as for the parents paying to let me play mine would not do this every bit of money goes toward bills or car payments or Food i don't know about you guys but the prices for food here is ridiculous....

 

[Candlz]

I am looking at my little people and am feeling like a mom sending her kids to be executed.
I know that sounds overly dramatic, but I have played with this avatars, doing all their quests (2x) diving through green car, have rooms built on them, have been upset when I forgot to buy their own pin or forgot a pirate scarf...they are more than a mere 'mule' to me.

I feel that way too. Overly dramtic or not...

My daughter used to play but is to busy now with school. I have kept her character going in hopes that she will one day play again. I created a character for my son that he is to young to play yet... but I play it in hopes he will one day enjoy it...

 

[GiGiJoeysMom]

Hi I have been on Dis for 2 years, mainly as a daily lurker, not on posting. But this news devasted my son. I would gladly pay for this safe site. I do not know what a mule is. You mention phone calls and letters, I have spent a better part of the day trying to get a phone number to a human about this. I did send an email, but if anyone has another number I can try I would love it.

You see in the time of Dateline To Catch a Predetor, it is hard for us parents to trust the internet, when my 11 year old DS found VMK and fell in love with it, so did I because I trust it.

 

[cteddiesgirl]

While there may be 250,000 active accounts, I don't think that is s correct number of players. The number that Tigger provided yesterday may or may not be right. But, then that would average out to about 9 characters per person. While I know many here have a lot of extra characters (me included), I do believe that most average players don't have any extra characters. Many that do only have 1 or 2 extras.

Depending on how much they would charge, I would go a max of 3 characters. 1 girl, 1 boy and 1 for storage. I will be moving all my stuff over to my main account though. Just in case.

I still believe that VMK could be a viable free site. They just need to work a little at it.

 

[Adventuredaz]

I am going to side with CT on this. Clearly the 250,000 numbers is one VMK pushed to staff and Disney. However if we look at the daily numbers it usually averages 5,000 players on line at a time. A lot of that is people that made a character at Disney or checking it out. And many are mules that are "active" They have not deleted inactive player for over a year to keep this number up. I don’t want to be discouraging at all just present some of the facts.

Disney tends to charge per account, which means if I kill all my mules I still need $180 a year for 3 accounts. At this time its all I can do to pay for gas and I drive only 2 miles to work. Point being not all accounts will convert to pay for various reasons regardless of desire to do so. Some of the player who are kids might not be able to get parents to pay, others might pay for one shared account for several kids.

Tigger’s figures show about 28,000 hits, which may be the accurate number. Pretending they pay staff $10 an hour for a skeleton staff of 10 is 1,600 a day in labor plus Management and IT staff costs on top of server costs and other operating expenses. Other Free advertising game sites pull in better numbers and pay sites even better. This just shows that while it could be sustainable I think they looked at all this data to arrive at their decision - I am sure it is not one that they took lightly. This is about the time they are likely working on the promotion for next year and beyond, we have no way to know what they plan or why this did not fit into that plan or budget. VMK is and was a Marketing asset that for whatever reason never reached it's full potential. Some had to do with management, some with coordination and I am sure a variety of other factors.

I will miss all my friends and the game itself and feel it is worthy to save but don't discount that the people at the top have evaluated the situation fully and all options were on the table in the end this is where they ended up. To liken this to a recent situation with Kyle Petty who was pulled from his teams (Petty Enterprises) car and even still have lost their long time sponsor after this year. Nobody was happy with the decision but it had to be made and unfortunately was made too late to save the sponsor. Can you imagine your father a racing legend having to say “look Son this is our only option” I am sure to some extent it had the same feeling to Disney and the staff, this is something nobody wanted but it is where we all are. And the petty's didn't want to talk about it either.

 

[VMK_Mouse]

While there may be 250,000 active accounts, I don't think that is s correct number of players. The number that Tigger provided yesterday may or may not be right. But, then that would average out to about 9 characters per person. While I know many here have a lot of extra characters (me included), I do believe that most average players don't have any extra characters. Many that do only have 1 or 2 extras.

Depending on how much they would charge, I would go a max of 3 characters. 1 girl, 1 boy and 1 for storage. I will be moving all my stuff over to my main account though. Just in case.

I still believe that VMK could be a viable free site. They just need to work a little at it.

Yeah, I totally see where you are coming from. I do not want to see VMK go away either. I am just trying to be logical about this.

As far as numbers go....


I have a lot of characters as does my daughter and sister. Between the three of us, we have over 300 characters. @_@ Yes I know!!
Several of my friends in the game have over well over 100 peeps each, some closer to 200.

This is 1000 characters with what we have and what they have, give or take. I know there are a lof of other human ppl with a lot of virtual peeps.

I would venture to guess, VMK is looking at IPs to determine how many ppl are actually playing VMK. Mules would all be considered as a single IP/player.

_____
I would pay a flat rate of $50 a year to play VMK. It would take about 1000 people willing to do that to pay 1 persons average salary, on the lower end in Cali.

To employ Phinny, Hula and Lily, a minimum of 2500 people would need to play. Then they would need to have another 2250 people to pay a designer, then 2250 more to pay a tester, then another 8000 players to pay 10 VMK_ staff members. That is 17,000+ players.VMK would need to make $850K to break even. (roughly)

I have never seen the number of players on VMK at one time reach 8000. So, lets just multiply that times 4 and pretend that only 1 out of every 4 players can get on VMK at a time. That is 32,000 actual human players.

Let's say half of those players (16,000) will pay a rate of $50 a year, that is $800,000 in revenue. That will not even cover salaries, much less the office space, electric bills and it certainly will not bring a profit.

 

[Jasonbobdude]

Even with all of the mules, there ARE a lot of people on VMK and if they kept it open even more people would join. I only have one account that I use regularly, but if I did have multiple accounts that I used I would be willing to pay $5 extra to keep them.

 

[cteddiesgirl]

I would venture to guess, VMK is looking at IPs to determine how many ppl are actually playing VMK. Mules would all be considered as a single IP/player.

But, keep in mind that IP's are not necessarily 1 player with many mules. It could be a family playing. Some households have 4-5 different players.

But, VMK doesn't have to go fully pay to play. It could remain free and still make a profit. Adds on the page, promotions within the game for various products, movies, etc. And tons more. I'm not a marketer, so I can't come up with the ideas they could. Why haven't they done this?

And VMK actually grew a lot when they promoted the game. Then they stopped promoting it and the numbers actually started to stagnate and/or get smaller.

If they would get better servers, have better customer service and promoted the site, then did a mix of pay to play and advertising on the screen and in game, they could make this a viable, profit-making game.

 

[gshawen]

I would buy a family plan for me, my wife and my 98 children as long as it was affordable.


P.S. We have no mules!

 

[tinkabellspirate]

I would buy a family plan for me, my wife and my 98 children as long as it was affordable.


P.S. We have no mules!