Well, it’s more like a suggestion, but I got you reading didn’t I? Apologies if this has been suggested before, I have just skimmed a few threads.
Star Wars is a money making machine because the parents have been freely able to transfer their love of the franchise to their children. This money-making mechanic could also be viable for Blizzard if they opened up for family subscriptions for WoW. I am one father that feels a serious reluctance towards starting shelling out for three subs. to be able to play with my boys. However I know the experience is good. At the same time there are loads of cheaper alternatives.
Some have brought up the problem of abuse of a “family” subscription in previous threads, but this can be minimised: In stead of opening up for multiple accounts, just make it possible to use the same WoW account on several Blizzard accounts. People will be more reluctant to let people they don’t trust fully use their own account to play around with, risking gold-transfers and equipment loss. However, leting several people in the family use the same character pool to choose from would be more or less the way it should be for a family. It also makes it very easy for parents to keep track of their kids activities. It would also be possible to limit the size of the character pool to make it even less attractive to be abusing the system.
I get that this is not easily implemented, but I’m pretty sure it can be done while maintaining security. It could also be a good test-bed for this kind of payment model for Blizzard in the future.
I like the idea. The technicalities would probably need to be ironed out to avoid abuse and such.
I know in my family the Spotify Family subscription is a hit, because everyone uses it and desires the premium benefits, so the deal makes sense.
I also like Netflix’ model, where your account can have up to 5 different profiles. So you mom can have her profile with all her cheesy love drama, you can have yours with japanese anime, and the dog has its with political documentaries.
It works.
Blizzard’s susbcription offers for WoW are very out-dated. They lack flexibility in who they’re targeted for and overall more choices to choose from.
But realistically speaking, they’ll probably keep things the way they are so long as they’re the most profitable for them. And given the recent success of Classic WoW, it’s unlikely Blizzard sees any reason to change things again.
I mostly agree. But in order to maintain, and expand on, the success of the WoW Classic resurgence, a family plan seems like a obvious choice to me. Blizzard understood the importance of community in the MMORPG genre better than anyone 15 years ago, and that was fundamental to its success. With the success of Classic, they now have a unique opportunity in the gaming world to extend this to families in a big way. However they could just choose to let it happen in a small way, and get only families with a solid economy. That would also save them some money in the short term. However they will not be able to maximise their profits, because the gaming experience far from
holds up without a strong social component.
As an accountant I have to say both of you are right.Common sense comes with experience and why Podruge can do it it’s because he or she has done it so many times and Pacimous knowledge about it is useless without practical experience Podruge has on in game economy.
Seems a bit like going overboard. The idea of a family subscription is quite natural from a consumer point of view – which is us!
Someoneelse making the banal statement that if you can’t afford the subscription plans that Blizzard currently offers, then don’t buy them, is not profound. It’s just stupid and not an intelligfent input to the discussion. It doesn’t become more substantiated because of “common sense” or “an accountants point of view”.
Whether a family subscription is in Blizzard’s interest is worth taking into account. But even if it isn’t, then that certainly doesn’t bar the idea from having merit for the customers – again, us!
Way back the kids used our accounts and now pay for their own accounts. Some sort of family plan would enable an introduction to the game to those that may well go on to pay for their own accounts separately.
Similar to parental controls, the account ‘owner’ could then allocate both time and access. I agree on the Netflix model…can set up profiles for me, the other half, resource drain 1 and resource drain 2
just to be precise, I do call out your suggestion as one lacking common sense, cause it does not increase profits for the company.
this game subscruption isn’t some good which will bring bigger volume of sales if it’s get cheaper. the price isnt that elastic, if it gets lower, not enough new customers will chose to play it. People play games which they like, not just any FtP game. if people have 0$ they play pserver.
in fact the biggest profits to work ratio is achieved by selling store mounts for example. So to compensate the lack of subs most of the in game rewards would have to be relocated to the shop, which will brake the game for much more customers.
what you want will just cheapen already dwindling resource flow for actual content, cause continuous subs ( like 6+ months ) are the only predictable cash flow stream which enables suits to budget expansion costs.
if you will cheapen 15$ sub to 5$ you will play a game with payable DLC or there will be massive in game shop like SWTOR one for whales.
Given there is already legal way to pay gold for sub I think Blizzard should instead introduce an additional premium sub version with various perks, like the store mount for 6 month bundle, but more predictable. this can actually increase profits cause there are plently of rich players who would like to spend more, but they have nothing to buy except token = fund Ftp subs.
I would buy some Single player campaigns with some unique cosmetics for example.
I totally agree. To me a family package is just a win for both the consumers and Blizzard. This is especially true for WoW since a major part of its attraction is that it is such a good social platform. If they are able to reach a critical mass with kids it will start growing by it self. If not, the buzz around Classic is just going to fizzle.
Apologies if this has been suggested before, I have just skimmed a few threads.
