One thing that sincerely bugs me about it is that plenty of the employees don’t have great pay (especially considering the location, and remote working no longer an option). I’d be perfectly happy to pay more if this situation was because of financial struggles but it seems to be more about the dispensation of the (quite adequate it seems) profit margins to those who already can’t really complain.
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Prepatch is normally here before the expansion releases for everyone though so officially its in the old expansions timeline.
They could fix that easily by reducing the number of levels of gear you can get,it would take some adjusting for players but upgrades being more meaningful is a good thing rather than +3ilvl on a ring where the difference barely matters. You should be able to feel the upgrade you get every time you get one.
Zaralek Caverns was part of a major patch, it lasted a few weeks before the majority left it behind unless there was a specific reason to be there.
Prepatch will be like two/three weeks before the next expansion. You don’t officially go into the new zones until the actual release date. I wouldn’t consider it significant enough.
It feels like Iridikron is going to be a part of the Xal’atath story in the future imo.
and it’s good by the way if it’s really is the case
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Dunno bout the rest
But guild wars 2 launchs ALOT less contrnt then WoW does lol
If you invest into anything in life whether it was games, electronics, cars or stocks. It’s an investment. By playing the game and purchasing you also honour the work likes of Chris Metzen and don’t get me wrong here. Metzen didn’t just come back only to save the story as a whole. He is the story, Chris Metzen is the mastermind of WoW’s success. I’m not even a fanboy, i love an good passionated artist when i see one. It just tells he wants to do it, as you and other players committed into his vision and played it through. Welcome home by Chris Metzen: It’s an graditude from him towards playerbase. That’s how i see it.
From Google , so not exactly “accurate” but lets take it as reference point :
" Blizzard Entertainment pays its employees an average of $100,061 a year "
That’s about 8.300 a month . Number of employees working on WoW is not know , but lets be very generous as say a 1000
8.300x1000 = 8.3 million $ in salaries .
Now lets look at the concurrent player base of WoW which is estimated (no official numbers here) to about 1.2 million ( very low to my view (I’d say its closer to 2 mil worldwide , maybe more, but lets go with that )
On a sub price of 15$ that’s 18 million a month .
That means that even with the current small players base and overestimated numbers above they get a clean 10 million profit EVERY MONTH just from subscriptions .
For a year that’s 120 million$ pure profit from subscriptions .
Now add to that cash for the game , + cash for transfers + cash for mounts .
Imagining what they earned with 12 million concurrent player base makes your head spin .
Yeaaa they are so poor .
Delivering 3 patches in 1 expansion is expected . If the game was not profitable they would not continue it for 20 years .
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Great analysis!
So they get rent for free, dont pay utilities and being a games development company pay no costs for IT infrastructure and so on?
Youre not wrong, they are profitable as hell but your analysis is kindergarten level.
Anyway back to claiming to be scammed because expansions may come out quicker. 
I’m not saying that i totally disagree with you, but.
You’re forgetting operating costs like, electricity and water for their building(s) and not to forget the server room(s) which they use to host their services?
Still they make a lot of money, otherwise they would’ve killed this operation years ago.
The only thing i find offensive is that they kept firing people, closed down the european headquarters and then proceed to pay out a ludicrous bonus because he did such a good job…
I am not forgetting the operational costs at all . I am omitting them because they are not WoW specific .
The servers , It infrastructures , IT hardware , Electricity , Security, Software licenses and all that is shared across the whole company .
Meaning it is not just payed by WoW . It includes every single title they release . And all other titles they release except for WoW do not have subscription price .
So the only reason for a subscription price is the release of said “frequent” patches .
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Even if these expansion are going to be released like 1 or 1,5 year cycle
You should be able to afford 90 euro per one because god damn if you can’t you should not play wow you should be thinking about how to make money 
That is literally the point of my argument 
They haven’t increased by inflation, would you prefer that they did?
I think some of you are reading too much into this. The expansions will probably have a .1, 1.5 and .2 patch just as Dragonflight. They actually mentionted seasons when they talked about delves. Seasons = more than one patch in the expansion. And they will probably have as much content aswell. And yes, maybe the patch cycles will be faster so the time between expansions will be shorter. But I don’t see this as a problem. Even with the shorter patch cycles in Dragonflight I feel like I run out of things do to after a while.
more like ESO.
GW2 has its Living World but thats not an expansion
They recently shifted model now with their last expansion.
ok they did? stopped playing with End of Dragons. didnt really liked the expansion and changes
Gotta love how people are assuming to me it feels like they aredoing this to avoid the: old god nzoth got killed in one patch.
We do not know if expansions will have last patches even. For me the more they work on a story saga and thin it out over time better it will be.
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Well, they are kinda stretched thin now after they killed of most their villains in Legion and BFA.
Least they also used BFA to give us one with Knaifu and now DF with the rock dragon.
But yeah…
Wonder what Magatha is up to.
Diabolical
I’m usually good about these things and yet even I didn’t see it from this angle.
Full disclosure, I did buy the Epic Edition, not because I wanted to but instead because I was forced to.
Even if I found the amount for the Epic Edition to be a bit pricey, I have from now until what?!.. late next year?!.. to come up with 75 quid, so virtually everyone is going to buy it and not just the people that can afford it.
Money aside, would you rather play on launch day or wait to play 3 days later?.. so it’s not really a choice is it?.. so stop framing it as such.
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I don’t like the sound of this.
I would prefer them to tell a proper story and I’m not rushing expansions is going to be good for this.
WOD shows what happens when they don’t take their time to tell a proper story, they just rushed that and skipped the whole middle chapter.
Or are these going to be Beyond the Storm Part 1 as an expansion?
Did I miss something ?
Where did he say they were ditching the 3 patch cycle for an expac ?
To me it came across as though they were trying to cure the “ZOMG Blizz have no idea on story no more” issue.
Hence, ok, this is the Saga, split into 3 xpacs. So you know where the story is going long term, but split into xpacs still.
You know, like Harry Potter, and the Philosophers stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, Order of the Pheonix etc… But not like Deathly Hallows Part 1, and Deathly Hallows Part 2.