should an expansion pack come with 1 month play time

[Vankrys]

Maybe not a month, but certainly at least a week.

Problem with free trials on expansions is if you don't then buy it and you have characters above the old level cap (i.e. above 85 if you don't have MoP) then what happens? Locked out of that character? Reduced back down to the previous bracket?

not a free trial, since you buy MOP, you unlock MOP on your account, there is no reason to lock you based on level or gear you get during that time. once time's up, your account freeze with whatever level/gear/achiev you gain, as usual.

Just a reasonable amount of time to play the product you bought. after that, want more time, buy it, but at very least, you'd buy MOP with knowledge you will be able to play some without additional fee. i think that's a fair business model and a right way to treat your consumer base.

[xanzul]

The original game does come with one free month. It's a standard for all sub based MMO. But an expansion never come with a free month. It is my belief that this is wrong. An expansion should always include a free month.

if you buy an expansion pack, you can't even play the content you bought until you also buy at least 1 month playtime. I am not arguing for or against sub model, but if you spend $40 in an expansion, you should be given some time to try it.

this could even help the game gain popularity.

Why is it wrong? Because you say so? No. I'm sorry but just no. Just because people are butthurt that the only way to play expansions is to give Blizzard money isn't a reason to give away game time. Name one mmo that gives 30 days free with expansions. I won't hold my breath because NONE of them do. Not Rift, not EQ1, not EQ2, not Ultima Online, not Daoc. NONE. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Why aren't you whining about those games? Right because god forbid Blizzard make any money. There is a real simple solution to that: STOP GIVING THEM MONEY.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:14 AM ----------

I think you shiuld be able to buy a month for the equivalent of 5$ (1 month is 15$) when you buy the most current xpac.

I think Blizzard (and any other company) should charge however much they like for expansions and game time and consumers can decide whether to buy or not buy. You don't get to haggle over price here so get over it.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:16 AM ----------

you could imagine the scenario that you have an account but not active.
If a month is included in the expansion purchase could convince more to dive back into the game.
it could boost your xpac sales and promote it further.

as for making for expansive. It's all about the ratio [entertainement value / price]. That equation is let to the costumer to solve.

Are we going to pretend Blizzard doesn't give players 7 day trials for all their latest expansions and content patches? Really? Don't want to pay? You don't have to.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:18 AM ----------

I think expansions should be free. What are we paying a subscription for if not the new content? I can understand if it was an actual sequel, but expansions are just big patches basically. Should expansions come with a free month? If they insist on ripping people off anyway, absolutely.

Oh for gods sake just give it a damn rest. NO ONE is being ripped off. NO ONE is required to buy a god damn thing. Honestly if it really offends your delicate sensibilities to have to pay for luxuries such as entertainment then DON'T. Hit them where it hurts: their pocketbooks. Otherwise nothing is going to change.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:19 AM ----------

Better: If you have an active subscription, you can try the new expansion for free for 30 days (and you have purchased all required previous expansions).

We already get free trials for new expansions. Why is no one mentioning this? Is it getting in the way of pushing this "money grubbing Blizzard" agenda?

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:21 AM ----------

Yes it should.

Again why? It isn't industry standard. Not even remotely. Even Rift had subscribers pay for expansions and required and active subscription to play it. This isn't new or different it has always been this way. Again don't like it? Stop paying it. That is the ONLY way to change anything.

[Valnoressa]

Returning Subscriber - Two free weeks to try the new expansion if bought during the expansion.
Average Subscriber - One free month at the start of a new expansion if bought at release.
Collector's Edition/Digital Deluxe Subscriber - Two free months at the start of a new expansion if collector's edition/digital deluxe is bought at release.

That's how I think it should be. That being said... I don't feel, as a happy customer, I'm entitled to such a set up seeing as how I'm buying the expansion anyway because I'm enjoying it thus happy enough to pay for my sub.

But if they wanted to chuck it in as an extra bonus? No complaints here.

[xanzul]

Don't see how it could hurt.

You don't see how a cut in profit can hurt? That right there says it all. Things cost as much as they do for a reason and companies such as Blizzard hire marketing teams to determine price points for all levels of their service. Blizzard isn't just throwing darts at a board to come up with prices here.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:27 AM ----------

$40 for the next expansion should net the player all the prior content, which would go a long way towards easing the cost of getting into this game for new players (all 8 of them).



I guess it's perspective... I don't look as patches and their related content as a bonus, I'd say they're part of why I'm paying a sub to begin with.

Where are you people getting "should" from? What game? Please state which subscription mmo has this model where everything is given away for free so people can log in, play the content and quit the game all without paying a dime. It isn't sustainable or realistic or sensible for any mmo unless it is free to play. All I'm seeing is a whole lot of people who don't have a clue how the world works and how companies stay in business.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:29 AM ----------

And........?

Seriously? You don't see a problem in this? Look kiddo companies exist to make a profit. Giving away expansions and game time doesn't lead to profit. Get it now? Or are you saying if Blizzard gave away expansions and game time that Wow wouldn't have lost subscriptions? You do realize box sales and subscriptions gained from them are a significant part of the profit Blizzard makes on Wow right?

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:31 AM ----------

I absolutely have always said this exact thing.

I *think* (but may be dis-remembering) that tBC came with 1 month of free time....

But anyway, yep. 40$ for a cd-key (since you download all the data via patches now anyway) is really outrageous.

Never happened. Ever. At all. Please stop spreading misinformation. Not one single subscription based mmo has ever given away game time with expansions. None of them. Not Blizzard, not SOE not Trion. NONE OF THEM.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:32 AM ----------

This^. I mean raf gives free months I dont see why expansions shouldnt. Also during the last annual pass whoever bought colectors D3 got 4 months gametime too.

RAF gives away gametime because it brings in a new subscription. Come on folks this isn't rocket science here.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:34 AM ----------

whilst it should be free, do you really think that they will give you 30 days free when you buy an expansion ? its guaranteed income for them from those that buy the expansion.

Again where are you people getting "should" from? Of course people want things cheaper or for free that isn't a reason for it to happen though. I'm sorry but it just isn't.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:37 AM ----------

Hmm good point.

Best solution I can come up with is reverting your characters to the pre-expansion state, but that sounds dangerous and prone to complaints.

Blizzard's customer support has a rough enough time dealing with the rollbacks from failed character transfers. They don't need a bunch of lookie loos spamming GMs with tickets because their character is borked due to an expired free trial that broke their character especially when they didn't pay a damn thing in the first place.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:39 AM ----------

No, you can't play MoP at all as you don't have the expansions. If you want to play any expansion, you need to have the WoW+any previous expansion released till the one you choose to play.

To the OP: Any single free day given away by Blizz it is considered a profit loss. They could do it (free month) but I doubt they will. When a product starts to sell less or it is in decline the maker will try to squeeze every penny out of it. Quite the opposite if you ask me. I foresee this in the future right before the game will go F2P (if), pulling a last stroke of income out of the returnees and cheers...
And yes, I agree with some posts here, expansions should be free or come with a free month.

Again why? "I like free stuff" isn't a good enough reason. I want market data on subscription mmos that have done this and how it affected their profits.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:41 AM ----------

I think it would benefit blizz to do this. Having a month free might be enough incentive for more of the old players to come back and check it out.

I find it absolutely hilarious that no one is bringing up the frequent 7 day trials many players get. They only seem to come up when people want to slam Blizzard and think it helps their argument.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:43 AM ----------

I think it should. But we can only wish, as we all know Blizzard is known for being quite greedy...

Same goes for SOE, Trion and any other company charging for their product. It isn't greed. Grow the fuck up.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:46 AM ----------

My reasoning is: you should be able to use a product you just buy without additional purchase. maybe not for the lifetime of the extention or even the tier, but at least, get to play the leveling.

It's like, you buy a product and you can't use it until you make another purchase that is about 40% of the price of the initial purchase.

Are you seriously going to sit there and claim that no other company charges for value added services and add ons for their products? Seriously? It is just Blizzard? Yeah ok whatever. This site is filled with terrible consumers who are ignorant enough to think they are forced to pay for things and doesn't occur to them their greatest power is to NOT buy. People like you and others in this thread are precisely why Blizzard charges the prices they do because people pay it.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:49 AM ----------

Most likely the opposite would occur. If you are not currently subbed it is less likely you would continue after your additional free month so what benefit does the author get?



If you bundle 30 days sub into the price, increasing the price you pay to buy the expac, you are taking it away from the customer, not leaving it for them to solve.


Basically it would be nice if expacs came with additional game time, but there is no justification to insist that they *should* come with said time.

Plus there is a significant amount of subscribers who buy expansions and quit within a month and don't come back until the next one. Why on earth would Blizzard allow them to do that for free? Especially now? The lack of logic and intelligence in this thread is just astounding.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:53 AM ----------

as a side note, it is never pointless to have a civilized discussion. Even it has 0 chance of ever happening, that never stop people to have intelligent and fruitfull discussion. You can discuss a business modele without the feel that the discusssion failed because the modele hasn't change.

i don't believe the discussion is pointless. I just express my point of view. Obviously, in a capitalism world, the right price for anything is how much the buyer is willing to spend, but going beyond savage capitalism, it is my belief that selling a product (expansion) that down the line forces the purchases of another product (1 month sub) tu use is not fair play. I am not criticizing the sub model, it has his merit, i am criticizing the absence of a "test" period for the product (talking about MoP, not wow in general)

maybe 1 month is too much (i don't believe so, the lifetime of an expansion supposed to be 1.5 to 2 years), but mop doesn't even offer a single day to play the product you bought for $40.

In all honesty these threads really are pointless. Of course consumers want stuff for free but that isn't a sustainable business model. Period. End of story. End of discussion. Blizzard has all sorts of promotions that give things away for free but to give expansions and/or 30 days game time? No. That is just flat out stupid and would cost Blizzard far more than they would make in profit from people showing up to get freebies.

---------- Post added 2013-05-16 at 06:56 AM ----------

Maybe not a month, but certainly at least a week.

Problem with free trials on expansions is if you don't then buy it and you have characters above the old level cap (i.e. above 85 if you don't have MoP) then what happens? Locked out of that character? Reduced back down to the previous bracket?

And again I have to point out Blizzard gives away 7 day trials like candy. Usually every patch and each expansion that requires purchase has a 10 day trial. It is more than enough. At this point people see Blizzard losing money and think they can exhort some freebies out of them. Nope. Sorry. Not going to happen. I'm sure we will get a lot of new promotions in the coming months but nothing to the extent of what is being asked in this thread. Like I said it just isn't a sustainable business model.

[Vankrys]

at least xanzul has the merit to make his position clear ^^

like most topic relating to personal opinion, there is bound to have people that agree/disagree/don't care. the secret is respecting all opinion and argument one position as objectively as an opinion topic can be. i disagree that i whouls wave my right to oppose some business decision, even if it's the standard, and i that i should just silently accept anything. I believe in speaking up and expressing opinion.

xanzul have mention a free 7 day trial, i am not very familiar with it but i remember around the time of 4.3, blizzard offer free cataclysm, a free level 80 and 7 day of play time as a marketing tool to attract more player.

Offering time with the purchase of an expansion could also be a marketing tool, to attract people, that have stopped (or never played) to sign up for the game and why not get hooked by it (that will depend on the intrinsic quality of what they saw, different for everyone). So, let's leave on the side the fact that we are a bunch of parasite/freeloader (not my opinion) and view it as a powerful tools to gain both sub but also positive PR which may even be more beneficial for the company than one month sub.

and yes, considering other product, you do get absurd deal on cell phone for example when you sign up for a plan, company are willing to make sacrifice to get you onboard. it's not unheard of.

[Deleted]

This is Acti-Blizzard we are talking about here, so no i dont expect anything for free.

Afterall, when was the last time they rewarded their loyal customers by giving something away?

[PenguinChan]

At least a week of free time would be nice. Maybe 5 days? At least with the digital deluxe / physical collector's editions. $40 is quite low for an expansion and I don't expect free time to come with that, but it would be nice.

[Deleted]

You don't see how a cut in profit can hurt? That right there says it all. Things cost as much as they do for a reason and companies such as Blizzard hire marketing teams to determine price points for all levels of their service. Blizzard isn't just throwing darts at a board to come up with prices here.

So the point that Blizzard have $4.6billion cash sitting around as discussed in another thread doesnt show u that they have massive amounts of cash that they dont have to pay out for any day to day runnig of the company?

Dude, Blizzard is one of the best moneymaking (some call it money-grabbing) organisations around. Their profit margins are sickeningly huge and unnecessary except to pay off their shareholders... some think its about time they rewarded loyalty to their customers.

[mistahwilshire]

I don't really mind the current model. I wouldn't be mad if things were cheaper/more cost efficient but compared to console gaming or really most other gaming markets in general I have no issues with the amount of money I've spent on WoW for the hours I've spent playing over the past 8 years.

[Vaelorian]

as a side note, it is never pointless to have a civilized discussion. Even it has 0 chance of ever happening, that never stop people to have intelligent and fruitfull discussion. You can discuss a business modele without the feel that the discusssion failed because the modele hasn't change.

i don't believe the discussion is pointless. I just express my point of view. Obviously, in a capitalism world, the right price for anything is how much the buyer is willing to spend, but going beyond savage capitalism, it is my belief that selling a product (expansion) that down the line forces the purchases of another product (1 month sub) tu use is not fair play. I am not criticizing the sub model, it has his merit, i am criticizing the absence of a "test" period for the product (talking about MoP, not wow in general)

maybe 1 month is too much (i don't believe so, the lifetime of an expansion supposed to be 1.5 to 2 years), but mop doesn't even offer a single day to play the product you bought for $40.

Dude the OP (dunno if that is you or not, didn't check) asks "should an expansion pack come with 1 month play time?"

And the OP expect people to say no? People always want stuff for free. And as such this is a silly way to start discussion.

You can indeed discuss business models etc. Or you can ask: what would be fair?

[Reyzzz]

Terrible idea business-wise, they will never make first month of an expansion free, maybe if you subscribe for 6months, you get 7th month free.

[Vankrys]

Dude the OP (dunno if that is you or not, didn't check) asks "should an expansion pack come with 1 month play time?"

And the OP expect people to say no? People always want stuff for free. And as such this is a silly way to start discussion.

You can indeed discuss business models etc. Or you can ask: what would be fair?

some people did actually say no, other said don't care.

maybe the question might be biased. We could separate 2 questions out of it.

- Is the currnt model fair for the consumer or should it offer some play time? (kinda the original question)
- Could blizzard somehow benefit from such move (from positive PR, getting people back into the game, bigger expansion sales volume)

[-Superman-]

Most people fail to see a for-profit company and all the ways it finds to make money. Why would they give it away for free when they know people will pay for it? Bad business to just give it all away. Look at these F2P models. They are all pay to win anyway. "You play for free, BUT if you want mounts, content, weapons, gear, or more than 2 characters, you PAY us for it".

[crakerjack]

I think that since blizzard can't balance the game correctly around casuals and hardcore players... that the monthly fee should only be 5 bucks... paying more than that for WoW is absurd. They don't need 15 bucks from every player to keep the realms up... they don't need that much money to make WoW work... nor do I believe that the players money is being spent well... This is why I was against Pet battles to begin with, while they were working on that, they could have been creating new skin models, new raids, new something... something that was relevant other than keeping people playing when they aren't able to raid or PvP.

[-Superman-]

All I'm seeing is a whole lot of people who don't have a clue how the world works and how companies stay in business.

Look kiddo companies exist to make a profit.

Come on folks this isn't rocket science here.

Grow the fuck up.

This site is filled with terrible consumers who are ignorant

The lack of logic and intelligence in this thread is just astounding.

In all honesty these threads really are pointless.

Don't you ever just respond to someone's opinion? Do you always have to be such a jerk to others? There is a polite way to debate ideals. It would seem you are still in need of one. You don't have to sugar coat anything, or kiss any butts, but you could just use facts and leave the insults at the door.

[leaks]

Seriously? You don't see a problem in this? Look kiddo companies exist to make a profit. Giving away expansions and game time doesn't lead to profit. Get it now? Or are you saying if Blizzard gave away expansions and game time that Wow wouldn't have lost subscriptions? You do realize box sales and subscriptions gained from them are a significant part of the profit Blizzard makes on Wow right?

Where the hell did I say anything about giving away expansions? What are you even babbling about? And companies give away things all the time to promote more business "kiddo".

[Vankrys]

Where the hell did I say anything about giving away expansions? What are you even babbling about? And companies give away things all the time to promote more business "kiddo".

i just got a samsung S3 for free, just changing my cell plan. ^^

[Ferocity]

I'd say it depends on what expansion it will be.

If it will be: 5 more levels, 5 new zones, 9 dungeons (including 2-3 "reintroduced" or rather rehashed), MoP-style raids, further dumbification of game's RPG core, then yeah - such expansion pack at best should come with 1 month play time, but actually it should be just a free content update which we lacked so much.

If it will be: 10 more levels, 7+ new zones, 10+ new dungeons (no rehashes), raids which can be done with friends (<-keyword), some new global features (alternate advancement, player housing, and so on), revisited solid RPG system, veteran/loyalty system, removal of CRZ - such expansion can go without any time added.

And yeah, we are owed faster content releases. So far still only 6 dungeons (not counting rehashes), raids which you can't do with friends, as they are not tuned like that. What content did we have? If you happened to roll tank or healer and enjoy relaxed raiding with friends, there are very high chances that you didn't have any new content after MoP release. Unless you are a masochist and enjoy peeling one mob whole eternity, and thus waiting for more dailies.

[-Superman-]

i just got a samsung S3 for free, just changing my cell plan. ^^

But you committed to 24 months @ $40 (or more) per month. It cost you $960 for your free phone

[WeaponXAnimosity]

WoW expansions have become glorified patches, in my opinion. The endgame boss is always introduced later after the expansion via patch. With how WoW has been doing it, I just don't understand anymore what their direction with expansions is.