Would You Pay to Play on a Good Game Server?

I've been playing a lot of Battlefield 2 lately and I've noticed how hard it can be to get a good game in. No matter what server you go on, there is always at least one person who ruins the fun, either through team killing, spawn killing, or cheating.

I play games to take a break from my website work, not to have to deal with a bad gaming experience. So I came up with this idea: Why not have a server that requires people to pay for a higher quality gaming experience?

I feel paying to play on a server would do these things:
1. There would be much less abuse and breaking of rules on the server. Noobs and cheaters will be very likely to stay away from a server that costs money.
2. Casual players, like myself, would have a place where they know they could get a good game in.
3. The fee would be paid once every two months and non-refundable if you are banned for abuse. That way, people would be much less likely to break the rules.

I would probably have a set of 4 servers of various sizes and 128 server slots in total. That way, there would always be enough players on one of the servers.

How does my idea sound? Would you be willing to pay to play on a server?

 

It is a very good idea. I think that a lot of people would pay to be able to play in a faster server with less cheaters. You are always going to get occasional cheaters which you can of course ban from your server.
My tips to you:
-Accept paypal, a lot of people playing online games do not have credit cards.
-Get a real lawyer to right the terms and conditions of your site, this way you can't get into trouble if you delete some cheater's account.

 

Thanks for the reply! After doing some thinking and figuring, this is what I would like to have for servers. Unfortunately, all of them would have to be unranked as ranked servers must be public. I would expand to other games as the need arised.

I would have:
1. A 16 player server in Dallas for the US.
2. A 32 player server in New York for Europe and US.
3. A 16 player server in Dallas just for high pingers.
4. A 16 player server in the UK for Europe.

I would charge $3.99/month for access to all the servers for a single game. If you were caught breaking any rules, you would be banned without refund. A dollar out of each payment would go to Child's Play, a charity that gives video games to kids with cancer.

I would hope to have 90 paying clients and 80 server slots available. The servers would be slightly overbooked like this because the chances of everyone being on at one time are slim.

How does this sound?

 

I would say the whole plan would be a big waste of time.

Ok well im not sure about the american servers but here in australia you do get the normal jackass now and then punkbuster kicks people with high pings or teamkill (3 punishs)

If you cheat stat-padding you can get kicked from the servers 2 weeks first then a permament ban I think. or they just get their stats reset which is funny when they spend hours cheating just to get them reset within a blink of an eye.

The servers here in australia are sponsored by Internet providers so the games never lag. Personally if you were offering that to australia I dont think people would take you up on your offer.

If you want a good match join a clan and have ladder matches (clan vs clan)

Also another thing is with BF2 if you dont have the users you wont be able to get off the ground.

 

That would be too cheap, I don't know if it would cover the server's expenses (specially after the donations). I think you can have more players in each server.

 

If you did it you would want to build it for expansion... Only having 90 clients w/ 80 playing at a time is unrealistic..

A lot of people pay monthly for WOW. Not for the quality of players, but I would much rather pay for a reliable WOW than an unreliable Diablo II.

I don't mind paying, but the bad apples need to really be ruining the game for people to want to switch over from a free game to a 4$ a month game... Also figure out what age group primarily would be using this b/c that will be a major factor to if they have a credit card.

 

its just like being in a clan for the most part. Most clans have their own server and often have membership fees. Those fees cover server expense. I know its like this with CoD2 and Couter Strike as I have been clanned before. If you had a Call of Duty 2 server, id join up and play.