Should WoW be Pay to Play (no subscription)?

Community General Discussion
1

Pay to play is a term that refers to when you buy the game to access it - Guild Wars 2, Black Desert Online e.g.

The advertisement for the shop items makes me wonder if the game is profitable enough from the store alone. This would also mean it has been for years btw, but I digress.

Let’s not forget that even basic services such as race changes will cost you money. Unlike FF14 for example, there’s no loyalty program in place to give you a free race change once a month. Name, server, race and even faction could easily be free albeit with a month-wide cooldown, maybe a longer CD for things like faction and server change, since they impact population balance.

So I’m asking you, who’s reading this: Is it a respectable thing at this point to demand a monthly fee to access the game?

I’m not suggesting they expand the store, I just don’t think the subscription cost is justified anymore. Especially now that they’ve flat out begun recycling expansions as of BfA.

What do you think?

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2

I’m ok with a subscription, but I think they should dramatically lower the cost of the expansions.

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3

I have no issues with the sub.

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4

You might not suggest it, but that’s exactly what will happen if they do it. Transmog? You better pay 10$ for that sweet armor. Mounts? Same thing. The amount of money they’ll lose from lack of subscriptions will be immediately transferred to the cash shop.

If you expect a reasonably regular content patches, then we either have to subscribe, or we have to pay for each individual patch. Nobody works for free.

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5

Pay per play would work out ridiculously more expensive than £9.99/€12.99 (?) a month.

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6

100% agree with this. Pretty much all, if not all, pay to play or free to play MMORPGS have a SUPER big cash shop, and they have everything from content packs to clothes to bigger backpacks or character slots.

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I started playing EQ2 and they tried to make me pay for a second character slot.

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8

I like to think as subscription being the reason why the content keeps me here, unlike guild wars 2 where I was casually on it…now I’m not on it at all anymore.

9

Yet Final Fantasy XIV nickels and dimes you at every stage.
Pay more for storage.
Pay more for character slots.
Pay for the App

Not to mention the huge amount of exclusive cosmetic stuff in the store. It’s like crack to people - the amount people are willing to pay to dress their kitty girl up like Lightning or in less savory ways.

…And still asks for a subscription. And their servers are jankier than WoWs. Yes, really.

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Why would anyone need more than 1 character slot in FFXIV? You have all the jobs on 1 character anyway.

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Final Fantasy XIV is played by many as a Kitty Girl life-simulation*.

People reroll all the time - purely for the character cosmetics and extended RP - lite.

Not that I have an issue with it - I only use one character myself though.
*Soon to be Viera

12

I don’t mind paying subscribe to MMORPG games that i really love to play. MMO’s one of my favorite genres of all time and i have played all kind of mmo’s and their subscriptions, pay to win, etc. I have loved almost every game i played too. :blush:

13

No. I prefer the sub model.

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14

If you have a problem justifying the small amount the subscription to WoW costs, just stop playing…

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15

The problem is that the sub model is becoming a F2P model… with a monthly fee.

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16

Exactly - and the sad thing is we’ve all just watched it happen.

17

I’d much rather pay a sub with access to pretty much everything, than have so many things stuck in a cash shop I will never use. Many of the things I appreciate with WoW are things that seems to end up in cash shops in other games, and I can’t play a game that way. I don’t buy selected things from stores. I like to have a stable payment every month at a reasonable price, with access to pretty much everything.

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18

At this point in time, when there are games like Path of exile out there, anyone can easily see that the cost of playing WoW for a couple of months is beyond reasonable.
I really hope that it eventually turns full f2p price model, because finally I’d be playing again with all of my friends who currently cannot see it as a good option. This is in fact a 15 year old game that costs a lot more to play than newer and fresher stuff that’s out there right now. I can barely convince myself to pay after I saw how little content BfA has to offer. I guess the nostalgia train has me for a little while longer…

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19

I hate games where the guy that pays the most real money gets the most advantage

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20

If this is a veiled poor quantity of release thread, you people should just quit & save what’s left of your collective sanity…