A bargain at 1/30 the price!

OK, I’m clearly missing something in this story from Wired:

GamePal customers pay a $300 deposit, $150 for the first month and $130 for each subsequent month for access to their choice of 50 accounts (available initially) for 14 popular MMOs, including EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes and Ultima Online.

Newcomers to these games who aren’t sure where they want to devote their time are in luck: GamePal allows them to try out what they want.

“For all 14 games, they can choose any (available) account they want,” said GamePal co-founder Eric Smith. “It’s up to them what game they want to play.”

Say what? Pay $450 for the rights to play MMORPGs? That sounds OK — assuming you have more money than sense — until you realize that no way in hell can you even play a fraction of those 14 MMORPGs to any degree, and certainly not enough to get a taste of each. (Heck, most of your month will likely be spent downloading patches for them anyway.) And remember that it only costs $15/month to actually play one of these, after initial purchase of the game. If you really want to try out World of Warcraft or City of Heroes or EverQuest for free, finding someone who’s no longer using their account and will let you fool around on theirs for a weekend isn’t terribly hard.

I and the Wired reporter are either missing what the real business model is here, or GamePal is run by lunatics who are soon to be living in their car. Or maybe both.

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