Subscription Fee is a joke now

Community General Discussion
122

how much is official wow numbers last report…oh wait? hmm

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Exactly how many games have a bigger playerbase for so long time? Please…

That is the case in most, if not all games. Read the EULA…

Personal opinion. If you don’t like it you don’t have to play it. You go into a restaurant you don’t like the food and ask for a free dinner?

The moment WoW goes Free to Play, it will become a pay to win #*@#. The game might have A TON of issues that I don’t like but it still is an AAA title.

For the quality it offers, the monthly fee is minimal. And thanks to the token you CAN actually play it for FREE.

The game actually has a free to play option if you wanna use it.

And for those that say it is a P2W game due to boosting groups, well, here is an idea… YOU DON’T HAVE TO PAY AND GET BOOSTED!

Amazing isn’t it?! You can actually play the content yourself w/o paying a single irl penny or in game gold (except bags and pots! Go to AH and purchase my bags now :grin:)!!!

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well the token is bought buy real money from other players, so it aint realy the same if you have a free game whit lots of stuff in a cash shop, like premium sub, where you get more than others, etc… what would happen if wow whent totaly free to play, and that would kill the game sooner or later totaly.

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I don’t know what aaa mmorpgs with different payment model do that? I don’t know about ESO or final fantasy but 2 examples i know of don’t sell such.

  • GW2 is buy to play: you buy expansions to be able to play it full. No sub fee. Cash shop has cosmetics and convenience items, no gear with stats at all. About every 3 months you get living world update which you could compare to those wow patches that bring new area to play on, these updates are completely free if you only log in even once during when it is current.
  • SWTOR is subscription model: You pay monthly sub and you get expansions for free. Cash shop has cosmetics, housing decorations, convenience items, nor gear with stats at all. Less updates than in wow or gw2 but new expansion coming autumn.

Wow charges for both expansions AND sub. I think that is too much, i would find it more suitable if it would be one or another. I would not want wow to go free to play, just wish them to stop double dipping. :smile:

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I have a really hard time seeing what quality the subscription offers.
I totally agree that WoW is an awesome, top-quality video game.
But I don’t understand what the subscription has to do with that.

Here’s how the discussion proceeds in my head:

Why do I have to pay a subscription to play WoW?

Well, it’s obviously to cover the costs of customer support, server upkeep, and content development. That stuff isn’t free, you know.

But I already paid €45 for the expansion…

Yeah, but that doesn’t cover the costs entirely. It’s not cheap to maintain such a high-quality game experience. Blizzard aren’t running a charity.

But what about Overwatch? That game gets the same customer support, server upkeep, and content development, but there’s no subscription required.

That’s true, but you have to remember that Overwatch has microtransactions instead of a subscription.

But WoW has microtransactions as well. There’s an Online Store filled with pets and mounts and toys. And there’s a lot of extra services, like level boost and race change and so on.

Well….umm…Okay, let’s be real here. The subscription is there in order to prevent WoW from becoming a pay-2-win MMO. The subscription ensures that all the microtransactions are purely cosmetic and quality-of-life benefits, not actual character power. And if you don’t have a subscription in an MMO, then it gets pay-2-win microtransactions. That’s a fact!

But what about the WoW Token?

What about it?

Well the WoW Token let’s you exchange real money for in-game gold, and with that gold you can buy anything from the Auction House or the Black Market Auction House. And the Terms of Use allow you to spend the gold on Gladiator boosts, Mythic raid boosts, and so on.
So isn’t the WoW Token the ultimate form of pay-2-win?

Okay okay, let’s stop beating around the bush. Remember a few months ago when all those Blizzard employees were laid off? That was because Blizzard weren’t earning enough money. Imagine if there wasn’t a subscription – people would be losing their jobs! Do you want to be responsible for that?! This is people’s lives we’re talking about!

But how is that the fault of the WoW players? The CEO of Activision Blizzard – Bobby Kotick – has a net worth of $7 billion, and Activision Blizzard had a record year in terms of revenue. It doesn’t sound like there isn’t financial support for WoW or the people who work on the game…

Okay dude, the truth of the matter is that the subscription keeps all the idiots out. Have you ever played a free-to-play MMO? They’re filled with idiots and trolls and cheaters. The WoW subscription acts as a barrier that ensures that only the people who are genuinely interested in WoW and are mature and serious about it, are playing the game.

But WoW has had a problem with cheaters and bots for years. And if you look at the trade chat for a short while, then it becomes clear that there are plenty of immature people in the game too. And the vote-kick and report features are frequently being used, because there are lots of idiots who disrupt the play experience of others. So how’s WoW different from other MMOs in that regard?

Okay! Fine! You pay the subscription because Bobby Kotick is a greedy goblin who’s sole purpose in life is to hoard as much money together as possible. It’s not enough to sit on a $7 billion pile of money and be content, it needs to be bigger! And you pay €10 each month to play WoW so Bobby Kotick can become even more rich. That’s why! Jesus…

That’s how this discussion always goes in my head. :yum:

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127

ok here we go…

server upkeep is the main costs. overwatch servers are capable of holding up 20 people. 30 if you stretch it. (you want the servers to be stronger than the actual game, for testing and developement reasons).
wow servers are capable of holding tens of thousands. some are weaker and some are stronger (low pop servers requires cheaper servers).

now, instances are also a different servers. whenever we enter an instance, we use data from a different server. there is also the “outland” server which hold outland and quelthalas. blizzard cant do queues for instances, so they many instances servers. all hold much more data than overwatch.
as far as i know, the world is broken to many different servers, because i just cant see how they keep so much data in one without crashing.

i dont know how the world of warcraft development works completely, but i do know its extremely expensive to maintain any mmo (massive multiplayer online) game.

13 million are more than enough to cover the expanses, but wow has alot less these days, so minor micro management get the extra revenue to maintain AND for the board to be happy.

you need to also understand its a business, blizzard was bought by activision which means they have to keep upper-management happy at all times. which means more revenue. subs are to cover EXTREMELY expensive games and keep upper management happy.
deal with it. and again, if you got a problem with that, get a job. with minimum wage you can cover a month of gameplay in 1-2 hours of work.

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oh, ok…sorry i misread it, but even so it’s in a good position right now, it’s picking up more players all the time, a lot of WoW refugees i imagine and still releasing a lot of pretty good dlc and expacs of which the previous ones come free with the latest…
i think its completely wrong to say that free to play is bad, that’s entirely down to the will and the talent of the developers and any backers, or even that f2p will be bad for WoW, i even think it might be better and possibly even inevitable…or i’m just talking out of my backside again…:slight_smile:

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there is no bad or good here.
thereis only the possible or the impossible. you guys are asking for the impossible (without knowing).

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I play wow almost 5-7 hours a day .so with monthly subscription it is totally worth for me .

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I usually defend Blizzard on various matters around here. This is not the way you do it.

You’re not presenting an understandable reason for the subscription. The above doesn’t make me disapprove of the subscription cost any less, it just tells me that you’re not a critical customer.
This is like having a conversation about the prices of Apple products with a devoted Apple fan.

Even the server upkeep is a lie you tell yourself. Why?
Let’s go through it.
Blizzard charges Russian players a lower subscription than US/EU players.
In Asia Blizzard uses a non-subscription business model for WoW. It’s pay-by-the-hour and a lot cheaper than in the EU/US.
Other Blizzard games don’t charge players anything for access to servers for the relevant games.
So US/EU WoW players are basically forking the bill for everyone? Great! That’s just awesome!.. :+1:

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but at least we wont have crybabies like you “oh i pay 12 euros a month but im terrible at the game but blizzard i want everything cause you know I pay i pay i pay”

/spit

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If you don’t feel the £9.99 a month is worth it for the product you’re enabled to play for that fee then switch to playing a different product. It’s the same with any purchase. Product A costs x amount and product B which is of a comparable nature costs Y amount. You choose which to buy based on your budget and preferences. The concept of switching applies to anything we buy, whether that be physical items (watches all tell the time, washing machines all wash clothes etc etc) or services. The tipping point comes when the price of one hits the level you decide to switch to another which does the same thing. Is there anything else out there that’s completely comparable to WoW? I’m not sure there really is. There are similar MMOs but none I can think of that are exactly the same.

If you don’t think £9.99 a month is worth paying for what you get then play something else if you prefer to. This is the product they offer and the price for using it. Everyone has a different budget. For me, the price is less than a couple of pints in some pubs so isn’t high at all for the amount of entertainment I get from it.

As for free to play. That’s a dangerous route to go down where over time you end up paying out more and more for bits and pieces. Once a game has gone that way there’s usually no going back. If you want something like the Fortnite model then perhaps it would be better if you ditched WoW and played that instead.

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But isn’t that what people are obviously doing to an increasing degree?!

It’s not like WoW is being flooded with new or returning players. And that might have something to do with the hefty upfront cost of getting to play the game (€45 for latest expansion + €10 for the subscription).

Even I – who by all accounts am a huge WoW fan – am more selective in regards to when I re-subscribe to the game.

And it seems Blizzard’s business model leans increasingly toward catering to whales who are willing to spend a lot of money on the game, rather than reducing the financial barrier to entry that the game poses in order to attract new or returning players.

I mean, the downward spiral in player numbers might still result in an increasingly profitable business for Blizzard, but it hardly results in a more thriving MMORPG for the playerbase.

We’re not Blizzard. We don’t stand to gain anything from them earning a lot of money. What’s in our interest is that the game is accessible to all the people who find it appealing and attractive to play – that’s what breeds a healthy gaming community in the long term. And a high subscription cost sure as hell doesn’t make a game more accessible.

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Jito attacking blizzard :thinking:
Heres an idea earn 175.000 per month and play for free.

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137

That’s an incredibly dumb sentence. :face_with_monocle:

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139

Well so is all the stuff that comes out of your mouth .
Dont like payeing dont play simples.

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It’s not like the sub fee is a new thing, it’s always been there. Aside from the initial expac cost and the sub there’s nothing else to pay. I think over the years I’ve bought 2 mounts from the shop and that’s been it. You don’t create a community by lowering the cost or removing it. You run a bigger risk of the exact opposite by making the game that disposable that no one bothers to play it as they have no investment in it.
The gain from any business you wish to deal with making money is that it still exists. The moment it becomes unprofitable is when it’s more likely to suddenly disappear and you won’t have it there anymore.

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It’s a bit more nuanced than that.
I still find that WoW is a wonderful video game, and therefore I am willing to pay what it costs to play it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be critical of that cost. I can separate my enjoyment of WoW from my criticism of Blizzard’s business practice.

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Yeah your the guy who wanted paye as your play awful idea hence why china went to subs.

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I have to disagree with the same content updates part. Last real content update for Diablo for example was RoS which you had to buy. Then we had Necromancer-pack which we had to buy also, but the other content updates have been very minor. At least very far from WoW content updates. Not sure about other games you mentioned. I haven’t played them much.

But Blizzard will probably keep this model as long as they think it’s profitable. Whether we like it or not.