Scott at BrokenToys is reporting that Archlord, which originally was going to allow you to pay more money for more powerful characters, has been forced by player outcry to abandon these plans for a traditional subscription-based model.

Many developers have long hypothesized that the one-size-fits-all monthly fee may end up fading in the US in favor of more micropayments and premium content, as has already happened in Korea. Archlord’s changing of plans suggests a handful of possibilities:

1) There is inherent resistance to the idea of paying more for better stuff in America, which oddly enough, goes against the core principles of capitalism that the whole country is founded upon.
2) Americans hate change. See the Metric system.
3) Microtransactions and premium accounts are still coming, but Archlord’s implementation of it either wasn’t well done or struggled to achieve fairness.

Note: I have no idea if this is the case, and have never played ArchLord. Still, I hate when people dismiss different ideas because of one poor implementation, so I want to be sure that possibility is acknowledged. To be honest, I think that any port of a Korean game is a wrong vehicle to try such experimentation on. Americans already will find most of those games to be vaguely wierd, without throwing in an unusual pricing model into the mix. If the alternate pricing revolution does hit the American MMO market, it will be in a megahit product built specifically with this audience in mind.

Original comments thread is here.