The current price for TWW on EU is 49.99€ (basic) / 69.99€ (heroic) / 89.99€ (epic).
I am playing on EU servers since day 1. And I have been paying for every expansion (around 50 euro for the cheapest edition). It is the same in US.
I have friends playing on Chinese servers. I know Chinese players never paid for expansions in WoW’s 20 years history. They only pay for subscription.
The current subscription price on different regions:
US: 14.99$/m for 1 month, 13.99$/m for 3 months, 12.99$/m for 6 or 12 months
EU: 12.99€/m for 1 month, 11.99€/m for 3 months, 10.99€/m for 6 or 12 months
CN: 75¥(10.5$) for 1 month, 198¥(27.8$) for 3 months, 360¥(50.5$) for 6 months, 720¥(101$) for 12 months
Not only Chinese players never pay for expansions, they also pay less for subscription under current exchange rate. Why is there still this different treatment after 20 years?
For an MMORPG, players shall either pay for subscription, or new Expac/DLC. Sub+Expac is double charge. New Expansions shall be free on EU/US.
Different markets with different consumer expectations and tolerances.
When WoW launched in NA and Europe, it was already an established practice for MMOs to take monthly subscriptions and also charge for the games and expansions. Ultima Online did it, EveryQuest also, and Dark Ages of Camelot and StarWars Galaxies. Those were the big MMOs in the west that predated WoW.
WoW’s business model was built around this and that never changed.
I dont agree with this oversimplification. There is a whole spectrum.
And all those MMOs that dont charge sub, but charge box game… well those ALSO make you pay for all the DLCs they produce. We get patches, free of charge.
Also, a TON of those MMOs are riddled with predatory, borderline illegal, P2W micro-transactions. Especially in Asia.
You might complain all you want.
But more $$$ to the devs usually translates to more content and more consistently. So Sub + Expac should be compared to what we get.
And compared to other MMOs, we get a lot in WoW. Not as much as I would like to, but more than other MMOs.
you mean stuff like service costs for race/server changing, store mounts and pets and tmogs or selling early acces? well they already are milking us more and more without letting expansion costs or subcosts go
Have you forgotten a billionaire company runs this game?
They could literally make the game F2P and they would still get benefit just from the shop, tokens etc. They just want to squeeze money from the already poor players like good old tyrants exploiting farmers.
They do not use the revenue neither for game quality, support quality or anything that is relevant to us players.
tokens wouldnt work as well anymore if the game is f2p. Because people would no longer to need farm gold to pay subs. So blizz would have to change the token to give it gold directly causing inflation by printing gold
No like go and play a game that actually has a large store. Then you’ll see what our future would look like.
Early Access came with the Epic, it wasn’t the only thing included. If someone bought it purely for that I can understand they feel salty ofc. But it was not sold separately as a service. Though with free expansions that would be an easy way to recoup some of their losses ofc.
Have you forgotten they are a business not a charity. They would have to make the money somewhere. That means more store stuff, more services, more things pushed at us to get us to spend money to make up for what is lost.
All the amazing mounts and pets end up in the store already anyway. And they link trader post currency to packages. Might as well go full store and get rid of the subscription costs
I am repeating myself here and I guess this will be a theme so I probably will stop commenting.
We have a limited store compared to other games. They experimented with tendies deals and decided this was not the way, so we only get them in expansion packages now.
You may enjoy free to play games but I find them an abomination. So no thank you. However there are plenty out there if you prefer that model. I think the day WoW goes F2P is when it’s done, no more development, just maintenance mode.
They do not need your 13€ sub to pay salaries and hire developers and support team, they
are billionaires who simply wanna stack more billions on their bank accounts at the cost of killing the game because they DON’T CARE.
Stop defending the undefendable, very little % of the profit is invested into the game and if you’ve been here for long enough you know what it is now in comparison to what it was back in the day.
I dont like f2p mmos either in general besides some like runescape in the past.
And i never said f2p games. Remember we are still paying the base game cost and every single expansion. pay2play isnt f2p.
theres plenty p2p games with cosmetics stuff like skins. Even wow has that already
Honestly one thing needs to go. Either the shop needs to go and all stuff needs to be earnable in game. Or they need to keep the shop and get rid of either expansion costs or sub costs.
But i have said it many times before as well the shop has no place in a game with base game costs, expansion costs and subscriptions
Stop attacking people for not sharing your view. It is so ridiculous to claim someone is defending something when they are pointing out rules, practices, how business works etc. I clearly stated we’d all love it for free but it would come at a cost. If you want to kid yourself that businesses exist for the goodness of your existence, be my guest.