If the topic of discussion is the WoW subscription and its price point â and whether it is expensive â then any attempt to deduce that through comparisons to WoW should be directly relatable.
WoW is a video game and the subscription is for access to a video game, so it would stand to reason that it is compared to other video games and other video game subscriptions when deducting whether the product is expensive.
Apples to apples.
Comparing it to the price of karaoke boxes, movie tickets, milk & bread, concerts, or whatever else that has been brought up, removes the comparison from the context within it exists â which is video games â and therefore creates a warped view on what expensive constitutes.
Apples to oranges.
Weâre not looking for a relative comparison here, weâre looking for a direct comparison. Why? Because whether the WoW subscription is expensive as a subscription product relates more to the price point of other video game subscription than it does to the number of milk bottles youâve bought in a given month. The latter says more about your own personal finances and priorities than it says anything about Blizzardâs price points in the video game market.
Regional pricing.
Something that Blizzard doesnât have.
Our salary is the third of theirs. PPP is half.
So, turned around, comparatively, Iâm paying 39⏠a month for WoW.
Because itâs not comparing it to its direct competitors - games.
If you want to replace your WoW experience with something else of similar value, how much would you have to pay.
Itâs a bit difficult, too, due to sunk cost. Veterans already purchased 10 releases and 20 years, with current prices itâs nearly 3000âŹ. We have a big world but we also paid big for them.
Yes, but not whether itâs expensive. Itâs expensive if it costs significantly more than other related products. And it does.
It may still be great value to the individual person though.
It can be expensive and have a fantastic value proposition, which it definitely has to many players because they play it for hundreds of hours every month.
But where the value proposition is relative â because it depends on the individual and how much milk theyâre buying, how many hours they spend playing the game, and how much karaoke they sing â then the question of whether itâs expensive is not. Thatâs a direct comparison to other video games and other video game subscriptions. And WoW just has a higher price point. Itâs more expensive. It can still be great value to the individual person, but that doesnât mean itâs not expensive.
My most played game on steam has 300 hours played and it cost 60⏠or something when I bought it. Next in line cost 60⏠and has like 270 hours played. Then weâve got games like Horizon: Zero Dawn that I beat in 20 hours that has a 50⏠price tag. Trine cost 15⏠and I beat it in 5 hours.
Just this expansion Iâve played 2100 hours on my main priest, then I have 2 more priests and then I have a paladin, druid and DK as well.
Iâd pay far more than 300⏠every 2 years if I want games to play for that amount of hours if I didnât play WoW.
I think retail is worth it relatively to other games for the price, but only if you play maybe more than ~5-15 hours a month. Otherwise itâs not worth I think, simply because the game is not your property as someone else said. You pay to rent it. In other games you might also pay a similar price for the hours of entertainment, but afterwards the game is yours. You can play it again, you can gift it to someone else, etc. It belongs to you. Wow has the issue where our games donât even belong to us. Itâs not even our property lol.
For example, I might beat Sekiro in 20-40 hours. Then after 2 years I maybe get an itch â I can play through it again.
But this isnt true. If we all had the same perspective this might be the case but we dont.
Some people can afford to drop 200 grand on a car and its not expensive for them because they also spent 300 million on a new boat.
Its relative.
The current model is excellent and I do not want to see it change. There are enough free to play MMOs out there for OP, and I would be very disappointed to see them cheapen the game in the way OP is suggesting. I would leave at the first sign WoW was switching toward a free to play or âhourly subâ model.
I currently have two WoW subs ongoing as we speak, and it is worth every cent.
If you only play a couple of hours a month and feel that it is not worth it, then maybe it is just not the game for you and you would be happier playing Baldurâs Gate, Candy Crush, Skyrim etc.
Thats just free money to them, people who play little or forget they are subscribed. I doubt companies will change this. As trying to get people to subscribe to some things and then hope they forget so it automaticly renews is a nice way to make money.
But IMO they should just get rid of subscription entirely. It no longer is the quality that deserves a subscription and we also pay for the base game and subscription. And theres also so many micro transactions already.
I reckon more people would be willing to try wow if it would cost so much.
And you dont think the game already has been cheapened in quality of gameplay, story,balance, monetisation? The price hasnt dropped but the quality has
Meanwhile, I got 120 hours out of Zero Dawn and received the game as part of the PS Plus Extra subscription, which costs about the same as a WoW subscription per year. There are 100s of other games in the PS+ Extra catalogue, with new additions every month.
A lot of my WoW time is spent on waiting. Waiting for friends to come online, waiting for people to come back from smoking, bio-breaking, eating, checking on the kids, talking to the partner, answering the phone, waiting to get accepted into a group, waiting for a queue to pop (40 minutes for LFR a few days ago), waiting for the next reset, etc. This doesnât happen in single player games â when I play those, I actually do play them.
Iâd also say that repeating the same content over and over provides less value than going through twenty different games and having twenty fundamentally different experiences. Plus, you can take breaks from single player games whenever you want, without feeling like you are wasting money if you donât play them while the subscription clock is ticking. And the moment you stop paying, you canât access your characters and stuff anymore, no matter how many hundreds or thousands of euros you spent on the game before.
Its in a worse place than before tho. Wow became to suck more over the years. So now it actually has competition. Back when wow was better there simply was no real competition
2 beers? are the bottles made out of pure gold or something? why would 2 beers cost 13 euro.
and 13 euros still is pretty pricy per month for a game wich requires you to buy the base game, current expansion and still has alot of microtransactions.
The 13 euro sub cost only is justified if the game does not have microtransactions like a f2p game.
And you forget that not everyone lives in the same country. There is a reason you hear people from eastern europe and turkey complain about the costs.
Would be nice if there was a type of «pay per hour» for those that only log in every now and then. Hour price would probably be higher then the «average» hour price from subs, but still cheaper then sub if u dont play more then a few hours per month. Will Blizz do that though? Probably not, they gain more money from keeping us subbed. For me the sub is worth it even though i dont play much. Iâd hate to suddenly run out of pre-paid hourly gametime mid key or something.
