true, but it’s not your money 
so you don’t lose anything.
but also look at this. They added a lot of new mounts in 8.1 that you can earn ingame but only 1 store mount.
I don’t care if they add store stuff as long as they add a lot more stuff you can earn ingame.
in some games it’s not even optional. Sure you can choose to not buy it, but if you’re not buying it, then you’re useless in the game and you’re forced to buy it anyways.
Honestly it’s not that better. I probably lost the same amount of money on SWTOR lootboxes. All F2P games turn out to be selling junk for real money. In fact SWTOR even had exclusive time locked content - if you weren’t subscriber for ~6 months at a certain date, you’d never be able to play it(and that’s supposed to be F2P game)
SWTOR is awful for that. I just subbed so I could have access to things. Their f2p version is awful.
their Preferred status is fine imo. you can level as normal, you are having to deal with a credit cap and a slight decrease in XP after level 20, but you get xp boosts to offset this, so you don’t have to worry about that anyway and you do have to buy a weekly pass for operations (raids) if you want to do those for free, but honestly, if you are gonna “raid” you might as well sub. But World of Warcraft doesn’t give you this option AT ALL! their “free to level 20” is pathetic compaired to SWTOR.
I think it’s high time for Blizzard to consider Free to play option for World Of Warcraft. The game isn’t what it use to be, it hasn’t been since Wrath of the Lich King if you ask me, but the down hill slope just got so much steaper after Warlords of Draenor (yes yes I know Legion had it’s moments). I do not think it’s fair for Blizzard to demand a monthly fee for the game anymore, just make it Free to play, you can level as normal to max level, but you are restricted in say… you can’t post on the AH, you can’t mail gold but otherwise you can play the game as you want and not just to level 20. I also think you can have a preferred status, which all of us wiould get pr. automatic for having been subscribers. Preferred status is for people that have been subscribed to the game. Preferred status would perhaps be able to post things on the AH, but not send money to other characters, maybe the gold cap could be lower for F2P and Preferred status. This would get a lot more people back to the game I’m pretty sure and they would make their money with micro transactions instead of this monthly fee.
Lowering the cost of the sub to say, 5 € a month won’t be enough to make me stay in the game, it should be free, because I don’t think the quality of the game is good enough to pay for anymore. Yes there, I said it Blizzard, the quality of your game is rubbish. my sub runs out in 20 or so hours and I’m not coming back until they release the nightelf Heretage armor, when ever that is. take that as you will.
one final note: I think its rotten that you can’t use store credits to buy subscription on the store unless you are already subscribed. this means my store credit is worthless unless I want: A: pets, mounts, swag or B: character transfer, name change or other services. Why can’t we use battle net account balance to buy sub after it has run out? money is still money to you right? Rotten I tell you, rotten!
Yes, it’s awful. Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that there is not a single F2P/P2P game with the amount of content WoW is pushing regularly. Only FFXIV is close, but it’s subscription based too, so doesn’t count.
WoW has way more (repeatable and legacy) content than FFXIV - but it is a much older game.
that is logical right? Subs give more money than F2P, so they are abe to afford pushing regular content faster, but lately they have been very lackluster on the quality of said content, this is why I’m saying it’s not worth paying for and therefor it should be “F2P”. Blizzard have so much money, look what they are choosing to do with it!
That’s only true if you have a really big sub base, and even then sometimes F2P is better model financially.
The problem with F2P is that usually the profit is mostly reinvested in the cash shop(because that’s what actually makes profit) and as a result new content gets in really slowly.
that might be, but I still think it’s time for Blizzard to cave in and revert to the F2P/preferred/Sub model. Forcing people to pay to play is so 2005, it doesn’t fly anymore unless your content can justify it and in there lies the problem. the content is sub par and not worrth the money, even if it is only 9.99, it’s still 9.99 more than SWTOR, which I can enjoy for free, with a slight inconvenience of having to do more missions to level up because of the xp gain cut after level 20, at least I’m able to level after 20, which is more than I can say for WoW.
Sure, if you don’t care about new content being produced, it’s a perfectly valid opinion. Just for reference, you won’t be able to do operations(their name for raids) in SWTOR as F2P, and it took them ~5 years to produce a new raid anyway.
The day WoW stops sub model and goes b2p or f2p i simply uninstall.
Such payment models are simply fancy words for more fluff , more microtransactions , pay to win and less actual content.
Absolutely not, with that change the quality of the game would drop down significantly, and Blizzard would start to focus more on creating the new things for its store than about making new content.
I know, I really only play the game to do the new story content anyway. I do miss the operastions and the PvP though, they were fun, but can I be arsed to find a guild if I know I might not be stcking with the game long term, no not really, I’ll keep the memory of how it was I guess, maybe sometime in the future I might try it, if say, the Expansion after BFA will also be a AP version 3 type of progression, then I’m out. I hate AP. And new content is being produced, just more slowly than WoW, because again… less monery to work with, but what they do put out never disappount, which can’t be saidd about WooW in the last 4 years now can it? (yes yes I know, some aspects of Legion were great, but the core system was still rubbish)
Neither are pay to play. BDO charges for the base game and usually has it on sale and GW2 chrages for expasions as I recall.
It’s worse, they are extra subs! I dont know why the playerbase let them get away with it.
as if the content they are putting out now is so great, lol. I can tell you this much. the content is so bad, they even have future plans to scrap it already in 8.2 that’s how bad it is, they already planned to get rid of it. I’m of course talking about Azerite armor and all that. I do welcome that change, I wish they put it in now, maybe I would still want to play the game, oh well, maybe I’ll be back in 8.2, hopefully they will be releasing the heretage armor for my race then. for now, I’m done with the game.
It’s mad.
But people are content to do it I suppose - so it’s not going away anytime soon.
Well if you want it a lot worse, a lot slower, and have less people around than there is now to play it with, then I can totally see your point. 
Those games you mention are buy to play. You buy the game but don’t have sub fees. Pay to play refers to paying for accessing game and is opposite of free2play games that you don’t pay for access.
WOW is a pay to play game. Should WOW be buy to play game? Maybe. I think WOW should give up either sub fees or keep the sub fees but offer game itself and expansions free. I am not cheapskate when it comes to games but I have noticed it is harder and harder to get my gaming friends come (back) to WOW when they would have to dish out moneys for both expansion AND for sub before they even know if they like it in it’s current state. When other games (like for example GW2 you mentioned) offer same or better quality but with more wallet friendly business model it is practically impossible to get them to wow. No sub or not having to buy the game would make stepping back into wow bit easier and also make it easier to start playing it as new player. 
FFXIV does not give you a free race change once a month. You get (or used to?) one or two with the first couple months but that’s it. There were other perks like some glamour (transmog) stuff but it’s not every single month and some rewards have been moved to ingame stuff you get by trading in an item you get by earning achievements.
Agree on the ‘more space’ for banking with the retainers if you want more than the base two, but if you don’t want more than one character per realm you can just pay a cheaper subscription (cheaper than WoW’s) and you don’t really need multiple characters since “alts” aren’t a thing there like they are in WoW, what with all the classes being available to a single character. I’ve had my cheaper sub there with one extra retainer for a while and I think it works out the same as WoW’s or even slightly lower 
GW2 was pay to play but the bank space was ridiculously small even with the default slots, and ugh all the locked chests that required purchased keys.
Honestly, I’d rather WoW (and FFXIV) stay subscription only. When MMOs go F2P/are B2P they inevitably have lots of stuff for whale-players to pay tons of money, and lock things behind either grinding for ingame currency or real money since “free” isn’t really free.