Do you think with annualized expansions, they should cost less?

[Ghaleon]

No i am fine with current method.

[Ghillie]

If they roll out content through patches as fast as they did throughout the duration of MoP, then the price is justified where it currently stands. However, if they start churning out expansion sets every year (which will never happen) the price would most certainly have to come down. I am confused, though, about what the replay value of a yearly offering from the Call of Duty franchise has to do with the price of a WoW expansion.

[Mage of Rage]

I dislike the idea of annual expansions - I somehow think we're going to be shortchanged on content since Blizzard will rush to put it out.
Biannually, however...

[SmokeNicotine]

No. As long as the quality is there it shouldn't cost any less. $40 is by no means expensive.

[TheWindWalker]

No offense but you're part of the problem You are saying "yes I will pay you what I've been paying you for less content." You're basically suckering into them, which is not good for consumers.

And you're unfortunately rather delusional. The options he gave are "$60 for a few weeks or $40 for over a year" and you're response was "how dare you think $40 for over a year isn't ripping you off?"

[Rivin]

I guess you forgot the part where you are paying $15 a month.

I pay ~$12 per month for a sub (six month installments). 12x12=144. So that's $184 for a year of WoW, sub and expansion together. Now let's assume the average non-WoW game lasts me one month (that's being pretty generous) and costs $60. That's $720 for a year of entertainment. Or maybe I'm a Nintendo fanboy and all of my games cost $40 each. That's $480 per year.

In terms of time spent versus money invested, it's still heavily weighted in WoW's favor.

[Zorohon]

In my opinion, $40 dollars for yearly expansions are a fair and reasonable price... I remember paying more for TBC and WoTLK!!

[Toiran]

Annual expansions do not mean less content.

If you take out beta times and such, major development time i'd imagine is close to a ~year for the last three.

They have said they wanted annual expansions from the beginning, and now people are trying to turn it all around to something negative, teams grow, teams get better at providing more content faster etc.

I don't really think expansions should be £40, I don't think games in general should be the ridiculous price of £50, especially console games.

But, I don't see why they need to lower the price either, I'm not going to say no for a cheaper expansion, but I don't see how it's justified by a annual expansion.

[Throne]

Remember, no matter how they spin it, more expansions will mean smaller content.
And don't use the quantity of quality analogy because that's still less than a year of development time.

They've increased the number of people working on the game. So it'll take less time, equal man hours tho, for the each x-pac.

video games, in general, aren't expensive. Especially compared to TV, sports

[MoanaLisa]

If we actually get less entertaining content, then yes, that would be a fair complaint. So far, despite all of their efforts to make shorter expansions, that hasn't happened yet. If they actually manage to cut off WoD at the 12-month mark and we do end up with a whole raid tier less or whatever, then that might bother me. Right now I have no reason to believe that's what will happen though.

I think it quite likely that you would get two tiers over a 12-month expansion: a large one at the start and another about six to seven months in. If the tiers are as sizable as they were in MoP I don't know why you would need more. The real test is--if they ever manage to do this, which I don't believe they've even tried to do yet--is how much content do you get over two 12-month expansions versus how much over one two-year expansion. Or if comparing 12 month to 18 month then 3 expansions to two.

As to whether or not they've actually tried to do this, look at MoP and try to imagine all of it crammed into twelve months. It really doesn't work so it seems clear to me that MoP was planned for around 18 months and has gone pretty much according to how they planned it.

Will you get as much in a 12-month expansion as you did in MoP? I doubt it. But I'm not sure it's a fair comparison. I'm not sure I would even want that since I've been busy all expansion and falling behind at this point. But since it really is less, it's fair to want to pay a little less for it as well.

[Deleted]

Not a fan of the theme of WoD - but all this less content talk is ridiculous.

Less new features, sure, there's less of those but that can be a good thing. Blizzard are happy with the game's systems to the point very little was changed.

Content? Raids look to be the same as previous launches, land masses look equal sized for questing. Could have done with more 5 mans, but there's not a noticeable lack of them compared to MoP. They haven't talked about how scenarios and dailies are going to operate this time - or at least not in detail, but you can bet they'll be there and on top of this, Garrisons look to be a large chunk of progression based content.

I don't see a lack of content compared to MoP at all. I think yearly expansions are going to remain the same size, which is why they are increasing team numbers.

I imagine they are likely to have less content patches, but if they can tell the story well in less time, I am all for it. I see patches as the product received for my subscription, not received for the cost of the expansion.

Of course, if you're right and the next expansion comes out in a year as a bare bones product with less content then it will suck and I won't buy it. I don't think you're right though. More regular thematic changes can only be a good thing in keeping us all compelled.

[IzoGray]

Actually that's not really even true at all. Paying $40 a year for an expansion compared to $60 for one game that will last a few weeks is a good deal no matter how you look at it. Hell, if they sold each individual raid for $40 each it would still be a better investment than buying a different game.

Regardless of the amount of content, as long as there's some content, it will be a good use of money. Truly makes no difference what it costs to me, I'll buy it regardless, because I know it'll be worth it. If it's $40 then I'm getting a good deal, if it's $100 per expac I'd still buy it because $100 for one year of entertainment is a good deal.

That's not a good analogy though because I don't pay $60 for a game to play it for a week so the point is kind of moot. Whether you play the game every day or not doesn't change the fact that you are now paying the same for less.

[Acissathar]

I absolutely do. Less development time means less content. Not only are we paying monthly, now they want us to pay yearly just to play end game.


Here's why an annualized COD works every year. It has tons of players who stay in each game every year. Not everyone jumps to the next game every year. Black Ops II still has hundreds of thousands of players online at any given time. Same thing with the first Black Ops.

If WoW did this, you could only play end game for about 11 months out of the year, before you have to buy the new expansion and start leveling again. I don't know about you but I like the fact that I have a long time to pvp in the same bracket or raid at the same level with other people. I can stop playing and pick up the game again without having to level sometimes. All I would have to worry about is gear. Starter gear is easy to get.

In CoD, you don't worry about any of this. There are no levels seperating people and the player base is large enough in each game that you never need to upgrade.

I don't think this is a good analogy. The only reason there is an annualized CoD is because it's made by two alternating studios. Essentially each one gets 2 years to work on their new game, where as Blizz puts all their staff into one.

It all depends on the content provided, it should cost less if it's obviously less content, however if it is similar level of content then the price point is fine.

[IzoGray]

And you're unfortunately rather delusional. The options he gave are "$60 for a few weeks or $40 for over a year" and you're response was "how dare you think $40 for over a year isn't ripping you off?"

No, my response was nothing like that and he knows it, so I don't understand why you're trying to convince us of it. I said that I and many others don't pay $60 on a game to only play it for a few weeks. That's dumb. And if I did do that, I'd make sure to get more than half my money back if I traded it or sold it.

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If they roll out content through patches as fast as they did throughout the duration of MoP, then the price is justified where it currently stands. However, if they start churning out expansion sets every year (which will never happen) the price would most certainly have to come down. I am confused, though, about what the replay value of a yearly offering from the Call of Duty franchise has to do with the price of a WoW expansion.

Because Blizzard is owned by Activision, the same company that makes Call of Duty, and it's pretty obvious that the people in Activision want more from WoW. Activision is a mega corporation. They want $$ and they don't care how they do it. Look how they ran the Tony Hawk franchise into the ground. Annualized it every year and people got sick of it. Same thing is happening to Call of Duty, although it is still huge.

[cptaylor38]

I think wod should be because it's just a big content patch.

BC gave two new races with starting zones and end game content.

Wrath gave a new class and end game content.

Cata have two new races with starting zones and end game content.

Pandaria have a new race class and end game content.

The only expansion purchase exclusive content in wod is end game content and garrisons. So, if you really think about it all of this could have been a very large content patch or several different patches. The maintenance features especially. Aside from the extra 10 levels.

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So to make my point clearer, aside from death knights being level 60, all of the previous content gave you content for all levels upon purchase. The only thing wod is locking you out of is level 90 and above content. Which to me seems like less content and content that has a short lifespan of only this expansion cycle. Even garrisons may have short term appeal or use unless proven successful enough to be incorporated into other expansions and will still only be accessible at higher level.

[Barnabas]

A new expansion every year with 2 raids each released 3 months apart? For $29.95 each I can play along with it.

[JoeShmo]

I think all of the expansions should have been cheaper, or free. The amount of double dipping blizzard has done over the years is silly. Charging over $50 for an expansion not finished yet, charging 15 a month while they finish the expansion, and then charge us for the next expansion that includes fixes and improvements that should have been in patches during the last expansion; you know, when those issues were relevant.

Back in TBC is was "ok" because they didnt have time to finish, so Black Temple wasnt done and ready. Then they started to get comfortable with the idea that they can just space out the content, hence wrath shipped with Naxx revamp and all the big chunks of content that were suppose to be there came drizzled out over the '2' years. After this point it just became a mainstay for blizzard (and other mmos) to just treat any content as a "patch" , and just use expansions to justify overhauls of systems that they didnt want to have to balance with the previous content (their way of swiping the slate clean again...for 59.99).

One has to wonder what the difference is between 60 for an expansion, and 15 a month to pay for service upkeep and development, when the development happens during the off-season of an expansion release. Is the 60 a pre-order fee? or a Season Pass? In either case, whats the point of 15 a month then? Shouldnt it be lower like 5 or 10 to cover server fees and 'non existant customer service / in game gms'? It seems like their development cycle doesnt coincide with the cost of the expansions. Everything in an expansion should release with said expansion and its purchase, and then the time between expansions can be used to develop the next expansion. That is a proper development and cost of the content.

Why this doesnt work for blizzard? People get to see all of the content (if they blitz through it, like server first guilds) within the first few months and then they can quit if they so choose. The ones that are slower to absorb the content will stick around, or ones that like to replay the content. A company wants you to stick around month after month, so that model doesnt fit well with them. Its the only reason why the content would be spaced out like it is, to draw out subs. It has nothing to do with how fast it takes to make content, as that is covered in the space between expansions, which usually takes 2 years; that is plenty of time (as shown by the current model) to make enough content for an entire expansion.

So either blizzard gives us all the content with the box, or they get rid of the box and continue to charge us the monthly fees for gradual content releases. The double dipping has always been a farce, and a turnoff for 99% of mmos in the last years. (Case and point, every 'wow killer' that has died off or fell flat). However corrupted the f2p models are, at least they have a model that is structured in the right direction; and models like Guild Wars are a prime example of how it should be on one side of the choice. You get the game with the box, you pay monthly feeds for the gradual content, or you play for free with unlocked content ( or have some sort of in game store incentives to help fund the game ).

[Deleted]

"Less development time" doesn't mean "less content."

you may think that, but i guarantee you if blizzard stick to this annual expansion idea, the content will seem less than expansions that lasted 2 years.

[Steampunk]

I don't feel the expansions have been unfair; especially for the amount of content you get. WoW's been very "par the course" for a real AAA MMORPG.

I'd pay it yearly for an annualized expansion, even if that meant slightly less content.

[Immitis]

I actually agree with you, I do not see that we are getting the same amount of content, not like wotlk level atleast.

i dont see why people seem to think this. other than a race and class we are getting more content then ever before in wod

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you may think that, but i guarantee you if blizzard stick to this annual expansion idea, the content will seem less than expansions that lasted 2 years.

if we get patches every 3 months instead of every 6 months how is that less content? they didnt JUST say yearly expansions they also said 2 to 3 month patches