Ive been thinking this for a while but never bought it up but what with the new announcement that players can now buy a lev90 for $60 i think its time to address what could be a serious accusation at Wow... Has Wow become a game for the wealthy?
Obviously the first significant cost is the sub fee itself and on top of that there now exists a plethora of services and extras which all cost more money. And its open to debate at just how much these extras effect gameplay, how necessary are they for modern Wow gameplay?
Basically speaking compared to every other MMO out there the costs involved to play Wow both smoothly and competitively is looking more and more that u need to have very deep pockets to do so. Obviously anyone can play Wow without spending extra cash but u must be lucky enough to have rolled on a busy realm and if u want to have the same stuff as a coiner u must be prepared to put in much more time and effort. The coiners will get all the newest and coolest sparkly stuff which the store carries and is not available in-game.
In the early days the only charge was the sub fee and that meant that everyone was on a level playing field as every player spent exactly the same on the game. And anything cool that a player had to show off was equally available to every other player to go out and get it... Now guys with deeper pockets can buy all the latest and coolest stuff from the store, realm xfer/faction change/race change/name change at their leisure, and now they can boost a catalogue of toons to top level. There is a significant difference between the wealthy guys game experience and the poorest players game experience.
Ive heard many times on Wow forums the opinion that removing sub fees will somehow mean that Wow will attract asshat players but the truth is that there is absolutely zero evidence to support this. Are people really saying that poor gamers are nastier individuals than wealthy ones? That somehow richer players are nicer people to play with?
After playing alot of free MMOs i did not find them 'infested with asshats', in fact i would say the total opposite, their communities were all very friendly.
Maybe its just me but it does appear that most players who are still playing Wow are all spending alot of money, have all the poor players left the building already?