WoW Esports in 2019 - WoW

I think it asks you to log in cause it’s on the US site and not EU?

Excuse me but;…

All you (want to) see is a big bad company and i see everything is working as intended.

Not at all. In fact, I’m actually very happy with Activision / Toys for Bob’s remasters of Spyro and Crash Bandicoot for example and hope that they’ll remaster the other games as well.

I have no issues with Activision as long as they’re not messing with the Blizzard Entertainment side of things.

I like it when games offer optional purchaseable content because the alternative is not offering that content at all. The monthly subscription is worth less in today’s economy than it did when MUDs and MMORPGs first came around. Servers costs decreased but everything else increased.

Frankly, and I’m not going to be popular with this comment, I often find that the people flying into a fit of rage at the sight of any and all optional purchaseable content are typically the ones living on a small fixed income.

WoW players don’t know how good they have it, really. Pick up a competing MMORPG or two (not even talking about those Asian pay-to-win cashgrabs!) and realize that if you want to truly customize your character’s looks, own cool mounts and pets, or participate in fluff content like housing you will either farm gold 24/7 or put 50+ bucks into the game monthly.

I don’t mind that alternative. In fact, I have splurged quite a lot on the ESO and GW1 + GW2 cash stores. However, the people going mental over a couple shop mounts and pets (versus the 400+ in the game) would have a heartattack if Blizzard decided to actually become the “money-grubbing, whale-hunting corporate overlords” that many claim they already are.

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More games with no monthly subscription to compare WoW to :thinking:

It’s not about how much they cost, how few there are, it’s pure principle alone.

The entire point of paying a monthly subscription is to have access to everything the game has to offer. The game has way more pets and mounts available in-game to never have to even look at the store, but that’s not the point, the point is that a monthly fee should cover the cost so a store isn’t necessary.
Otherwise why bother having a subscription fee?

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So that you don’t have to pay IRL money to get a mount, bag slots, riding skill, flying, access to more ui, access to more alts etc etc

E-sports work only for games that are competitive by nature. WoW is a casual theme park by design, and Blizzard have wasted years and millions trying to shoehorn E-sports in. It’s never going to work.

Can you imagine if netflix or spotify used that logic and said well, you’ve already got a decently large catalog so why not have some exclusive stuff behind an additional paywall?

Y’all keep comparing WoW to all these free 2 play games when every other subscription based service out there is all inclusive, that’s where the comparison should go. Not games making all their money selling cosmetics and speed boosts.

ESO Plus is just sad “pay 2 rent” mobile tactics.

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Amazon Prime do it. But then you can see that with the film selection the two offer. If you want to watch newer titles you have to pay. If you want to watch the stuff that’s included you make do with the older stuff. Netflix can’t offer many newer titles and most of it is much older.

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Fair point.

I could argue that those movies you buy through Amazon and they just use the prime player because why bother having two so the entire Prime Video selection is still “free”, but I do see the similarities so I’ll concede that point.

Still doesn’t change the fact that I think it’s ridicilous to have additional paywalls in a subscription game so I suppose we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

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Having a cash shop in a subscription game certainly is not something we want, but if we use the movie analogy, then the only other option would be to almost double the sub fee:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/285783/cinema-ticket-prices-average-annual-price-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/

I mainly used the movie analogy because it was subscription based. If this site doesn’t take inflation into account then that rise is fairly consistent, 7.49 pounds in 2017 would be around 4.75 pounds in 2001 if this inflation calculator is correct.

I wouldn’t really mind paying a bit more for my subscription if the store went away, even 15-16 euros a month would still make WoW one of the cheapest hobbies out there. That’s like a week’s worth of 1 sainsburys meal deal a day.

Well, I used that analogy because it’s easy to understand. I’ll link instead a very detailed study by Raph Koster(the guy behind UO and SWG) about cost and price in the video game industry and the probable outcome:
https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/23/the-cost-of-games/

Problem is, it wouldn’t be 15-16 euros if Blizzard did away with all optional revenue sources. The pets, the mounts, the token, the character services. All of them would have to go in the name of the “we pay a sub and it should include everything” philosophy. It would be more like 30 euros.

That would price out a large number of the playerbase however so Blizzard would have to raise it even further to compensate for that loss and suddenly you would find yourself paying 50 euros a month just to preserve the “purity” of your subscription service.

The only reason WoW and other (mandatory or optional) subscription-based MMORPGs can keep the subscription fee at a flat 15 dollars / 13 euros a month is because of the players willing to pay more.

Oh yeah because Blizzard definitely needs over 200M (assuming around 4M players left) euros to create the amazing content that they are giving us monthly.

It is. Just grind gold and buy a token. Voila. You got your stuff by playing the game.

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