pay-to-play & "Game time" is a rip off.

[Allarius]

I'm not living IN WoW. So that doesn't fit. You rent a place to live, for a place to live and everything living entails. Your comparison doesn't even make sense.

So you never leave your house? There's never a point where you're not actually residing in said place? What about vacation? If you can't see how the two can be compared then I don't really know what else I could say.

[Violent]

Something required by law is a little different than a subscription to a video game.

As moana said, no one would continue to pay for something, unless they really were getting some benefit from it.

Says who?

And that's not what he said. He didn't mention "getting SOME benefit" He said "I would suppose that if they do, they don't really feel as if that's true."

See the difference there? One implies you benefit from it. The other implies an amount of benefit.

[Violent]

So you never leave your house? There's never a point where you're not actually residing in said place? What about vacation? If you can't see how the two can be compared then I don't really know what else I could say.

There are many people who never do leave their houses. There are some people who CAN'T. If you can't see the flaw in your comparison, there is nothing left for you to say to me.

[ShadowOfThePast]

I'm not living IN WoW. So that doesn't fit. You rent a place to live, for a place to live and everything living entails. Your comparison doesn't even make sense.

The principle is the same. You are moaning about paying of the time when you are NOT IN THE GAME. It's as valid as if you would be complaining about having to pay rent for the time you are NOT IN THE APARTMENT.

[Violent]

Oh look, another entitlement/whining thread about how dare a game company charge and how everything should be F2P.....

Seriously, go find another game if you're unhappy with Warcraft. Go back to CoD.

Me? I'm getting my dang money's worth. 15k achieves, 60 FoS, several legendaries, and 415 days logged.

LOL! Calm your whinny self down, internet-white knight.. No one said anything about "free" You can go back to playing your CoD now.

- - - Updated - - -

The principle is the same. You are moaning about paying of the time when you are NOT IN THE GAME. It's as valid as if you would be complaining about having to pay rent for the time you are NOT IN THE APARTMENT.

It's not though.

[Belloc]

I'm not living IN WoW. So that doesn't fit. You rent a place to live, for a place to live and everything living entails. Your comparison doesn't even make sense.

You want comparisons?

Okay, let's compare services. When you pay the WoW subscription fee, you're paying a service fee (or a service access fee, to be more precise). Let's look at other comparable fees: Internet access, TV access, Phone access, Movie and Game rentals, Storage access, Membership Clubs, MMO Subscriptions.Want me to keep going?

All of those charge fees in exchange for providing you with access to the service for a period of time. Some of them allow you to pay extra for additional benefits (Membership clubs offer special deals, phone companies provide extra minutes or long distance, internet provides extra speed, WoW provides realm transfers/name changes/etc).

So... does that just about wrap this up? The WoW subscription fee is a service access fee. You aren't paying for minutes, you're paying for access to the service. If you don't use it, you don't get any benefits. If you stay logged on 24 hours a day, you don't get penalized. Everyone is treated the same because no one is counting minutes.

[ZehGeek]

Yes, you can't play every single hour, but WoW is cheaper then some other activities. Say watching..oh two new movies that come out in a month.

Average movie time is about Hour Fourty-Five..Maybe Two Hours at the most.
Average ticket piece being 12$ or so, least around where I live.
We'll take out the rediculous cost of Food which ususaly ends me up another 15$ just for medium popcorn and drink.

So 24$ for..say 4 hours of entertainment when I play WoW for 15$ with a 2-3 day raid schdule for 3 hours each day and enjoying my time a lot more consistantly compared to each movie that could suck extremely, price of food etc etc..I like those odds better.
Plus that doesn't include farming for say Transmog items, Pet Battles, Achievments, Dungeons, other runs with Guild, Dailies, leveling more toons, etc etc.

(Very basic example, and probably extremely bad because I'm half-asleep but I hope the point comes across. If you play WoW more then a couple hours a month..there is plenty of worse ways to spend your 15$)

[Deleted]

does anyone actually have the Chinese minute/hourly rate? i'm guessing per month with the time i play would be massively higher.

WoW China only requires you to pay for the time you spend logged in. A one-time use card which gives you 4000 minutes of playing time costs 30 RMB (4.66 USD), or about 0.45 RMB (7 cents US) per hour.

[MoanaLisa]

And that's not what he said. He didn't mention "getting SOME benefit" He said "I would suppose that if they do, they don't really feel as if that's true."

See the difference there? One implies you benefit from it. The other implies an amount of benefit.

Aside from comparing World of Warcraft to car insurance--which is laughably unconvincing on its face--people get to decide whether or not they'll be a customer in this case. They have a perfect right to walk away if they wish. You do. I do. Everyone does. It has nothing at all to do with benefit. Entertainment is its own reward and if you don't find it rewarding or entertaining then find different entertainment. Freedom of choice. If you could make a convincing case that you were somehow scammed by Blizzard into believing that you were really paying for something else I might agree with you. But you can't.

[Allarius]

Says who?

And that's not what he said. He didn't mention "getting SOME benefit" He said "I would suppose that if they do, they don't really feel as if that's true."

See the difference there? One implies you benefit from it. The other implies an amount of benefit.

You don't see how refusing to pay for car insurance and how refusing to pay for a game subscription can't be different?

If you benefit from it, you're getting an amount of benefit, but yet they're different. Sense makes none.

[Speaker]

This would be a terrible idea. Think, everytime you are logged in you would feel like you have to be doing something you are just throwing away money. People waiting for raids to fill up will be logged off. Cities would be empty. Lots of people wouldn't log on unless they knew they had something to do. And if they do log on and nothing is happening they would log off immediately. It would completely destroy the game. It would be dead.

[MoanaLisa]

Just a warning to all:

Knock it off with the hostility toward differing opinions. Show some respect and restraint or the thread will be closed and people banned. Thanks.

[Pachurick]

I think changing to an hourly rate will just increase the kinda of game play that is rushed. Timed/speed runs. The slow perish since time is indeed money. Logging in to stay online and chat is now costing you every passing minute. The urge to be sure to do something, anything, while online becomes overwhelming. No one has time to stop and help a friend, res dead, go out of the way for anything.

The world just becomes... Kind of like the real world... Everyone passing by. No time for a hello, or to help the some one broken down on the side of the road. Unless its to my gain, I don't got the time to waste...

[ShadowOfThePast]

Well I don't know what the OP's fixation about the issue is but it is very clear that she/he isn't exactly a "rocket-scientist". With all the examples and reasoning that clearly show OP is wrong she/he still refuses to just suck it up and admit the defeat and illogical thinking.

[Druidjezus]

] You do the math, cause I'm bad at it..

That's clearly not the only thing you're bad at...
Logic?
Economics?
Business?
Thinking?

I don't normally do "attack posts" but do you honestly think they're EXPECTING you to get a full months of play time for your subscription fee? We pay $15 a month to play this game. That's it. For a person who makes even just above minimum wage that's 2 hours of your time. You pay even less if you pay in 3 or 6 month blocks.

So, in the OP's mind, for his $15 a month he should be entitled to ~730 hours of game time. Since you're bad at math, this is based on the average month containing 30.42 days (365/12, it's actually more like 30.44 because of leap years but I'll round down to help your stupidity look marginally less bad).

That works out to about 2.1 cents per hour....

Let me ask you something, OP.

Do you think that servers run on pixie dust?
Do you think that developers work for free?
Do you think that Customer Support Reps and Community Moderators work for WoW game time cards, to play on the servers running on pixie dust?

My guess is, since you clearly can read and write, that you do not think any of these things. So how would you assume Blizzard turns a profit, or even breaks even. Because yes, that is the rule you MUST allow for in their pricing, they MUST cover their operating expenses, or WoW shuts down.
If we were only paying by play time, Blizzard would have to charge considerably more for their subscriptions.


Now, since I've come down from my initial shock at your post, I am guessing you aren't really referring to the price but to the phrasing of the words "game time", and in that I agree with you. It is strange that the industry standard is to purchase a month of "game time" because that sounds like you're buying that 730 hours that I mentioned above.

Would it be more agreeable with you if they referred to it as "Open Account time"?

Or would you really just prefer to pay for game time at a rate of $5 for 24 hours or something like that (FYI, that's probably about what the cost would end up being)

Now, I did rule out the possibility that you were foolish enough to consider that they could STILL offer $15 for 730 hours of game time, but since I like to cover all alternatives, this is what you'd give up for that price point to even be a POSSIBILITY:

Phone support
In-game support
Forum support
Forums
Patches
Weapon/Armor art
Character Models
Environments
Quests
Dungeons
Raids
Arenas
Battlegrounds
Azeroth (and Outland)
Spells and abilities
The UI
The game client

At a rate of $0.0205 per player hour.. we could afford to develop for you an application that lets you open it and says "Welcome to World of Warcraft". If you'd like that, I'd be happy to sell it for you, $15 for a full month of usage time, paid in advance.

In the end, you get what you pay for, and everything runs on money.


In order for my faith that all functioning human beings must have at least some level of reasoning capabilities to continue, I honestly HOPE I just fed the troll...
Does anyone agree?

[Dristereau]

Given the amount of time I spend playing this game I have to say I'm glad we have Game Time.

[Deleted]

This would be a terrible idea. Think, everytime you are logged in you would feel like you have to be doing something you are just throwing away money. People waiting for raids to fill up will be logged off. Cities would be empty. Lots of people wouldn't log on unless they knew they had something to do. And if they do log on and nothing is happening they would log off immediately. It would completely destroy the game. It would be dead.

This is so true.

[Celista]

Honestly, if they started charging us by the minute for usage most people would likely end up paying far more than a flat rate of $15/month. If you only play the game a few hours/month and don't feel like the sub is worth it, I suggest looking into a quality f2p game.

[Allarius]

Phone support
In-game support
Forum support
Forums
Patches
Weapon/Armor art
Character Models
Environments
Quests
Dungeons
Raids
Arenas
Battlegrounds
Azeroth (and Outland)
Spells and abilities
The UI
The game client

As much as I'd like to agree, I think you went a little too far. Development for the game shouldn't(and hopefully isn't) tied to the gametime, but rather the purchase of the game, which he intially did.

The 24/7 support, forums, etc however would definitely not be included.

[ablib]

There have been almost 3 pages of sensible replies to the OP so far on why his proposed system doesn't work in the real world.

The OP has either failed to understand why this process is in place, or is being argumentative for the sake of it.

Either way, this thread started out ridiculous, became stupid, and is now useless.