What SHOULD a WOW subscription price be?

[Osmeric]

since when was the story a big factor in wow ? most people who care deeply about story quit very early and don't matter to blizzard

This reminds me of the story of the boy who killed his parents, then at sentencing asked the court for mercy because he was an orphan.

[RemasteredClassic]

Free tbh, with the constant push for micro transactions they dont need the sub.

Maybe 5 bucks a month for classic.

Classic is free and everywhere on the internet. Pservers are now once again much more popular than official ones. Some pservers are actually very creative with their changes, with some recreating the entire core of how classes work.

Wow can afford to go buy to play including adding a price tag for all its future retail expansions as well as classic releases of old ones. The shop can easily make multiple times the money the sub has been able to bring in. New expansions could change their release cycle in order to better fit the buy to play business model. Also, retail 1-50 going f2p would be a smart move for player retention and slowing down bleeding subs to FF.

The bot issue will never go away or slow down regardless of pay model. They are too big to fail already.

[DarkAmbient]

How are we supposed to judge how much the subscription fee should cost? From a consumer point of view the lower cost is always going to be the preferred one. From Blizzard's point of view it's going to be the cost that maximises revenue.

[starstationprofm]

10$ seems reasonable. It's the standard sub price.

If people are happy paying 10$ to Disney for one new episode a week, 30 days of WoW for 10$ is a damn good deal.

[DookuDookuTree]

5 dollars per month for all the games in the launcher anything else is just greed.

[Teriz]

The current price is fine for the amount of content you get.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Please provide some proofs, that development costs more today. But something beyond devs themselves saying it. They're prejudiced. Because, you know, modern development tools are more advanced, like modern engines (Unreal, etc.) and modern cloud servers are much more cheaper to maintain, than old physical blade servers. Overall it should always boil down to whether game worth this sub fee or not. Even if they invest more money into development of current game - we don't see any results. It really seems like current game is outsourced to some cheap Chinese or Indian developers.

Old Wow servers:
https://images.mmorpg.com/images/new...erverBlade.jpg
New Wow servers:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile...-or-Optron.png

You can look at the operating cost to see that development is costing a a lot more.

For example last quarter operating cost were 42% of a net earning of 2B.

Where in say 2016 it was also 42% but of 1.2b

https://investor.activision.com/stat...9-80fac352bfd8

https://investor.activision.com/stat...9-e7c647d36c03

[Magicon]

maybe 3-4 euro...

[Conbot]

Free if they keep time gating everything so heavily.

$15 if they actually let you play at your chosen pace.

[Jshadowhunter]

It should be free

Pretty much this.

At this point, even Guild Wars 2 is better ESPECIALLY because it's B2P, and the cosmetics are mostly on shop. And the max lvl system has been vastly improved since the expansions started rolling out.

[agentsi]

1) Blizzard's issues are hardly related to money, they are already swimming in it.

2) Are you really expecting people to fork out the equivalent of a fully priced AAA game every two months, on top of the expansion box, just for the privilege of having a decent, steady arrival of new content?

Yes. It isn't very much money. And their issues are 100% money motivated. Having more staff, allows more game development, Q&A, Design, you name it. And betting almost everyone at Blizzard makes $50k-$200k, depending on their job, that is fucking expensive. On top of that, does anyone even understand how much money it costs to RUN WoW for 1 day? The number of servers needed, the networks, the internet, the space, the cooling, the maintenance, the on-site IT staff, etc. Just to run for one day, is probably in the $10,000 range. And honestly, I think that is too low. Now on top of all that, you have to have a design team, a programming team, HR ( apparently ), on and on and on. $25-$30 a month, is nothing, and honestly, if it breaks your budget, you should be figuring other things out in life, but that's a totally different topic. And if they offered a better quality game, more content, fewer bugs, people would happily pay for it. Because again, $15 when WoW first came out, is equal to about $25 today. Even though inflation is hurting everyday folks, Blizzard hasn't increased their prices.

[darklogrus]

Yes. It isn't very much money. And their issues are 100% money motivated. Having more staff, allows more game development, Q&A, Design, you name it. And betting almost everyone at Blizzard makes $50k-$200k, depending on their job, that is fucking expensive. On top of that, does anyone even understand how much money it costs to RUN WoW for 1 day? The number of servers needed, the networks, the internet, the space, the cooling, the maintenance, the on-site IT staff, etc. Just to run for one day, is probably in the $10,000 range. And honestly, I think that is too low. Now on top of all that, you have to have a design team, a programming team, HR ( apparently ), on and on and on. $25-$30 a month, is nothing, and honestly, if it breaks your budget, you should be figuring other things out in life, but that's a totally different topic. And if they offered a better quality game, more content, fewer bugs, people would happily pay for it. Because again, $15 when WoW first came out, is equal to about $25 today. Even though inflation is hurting everyday folks, Blizzard hasn't increased their prices.

Maybe they should figure out how all their other titles which need petty much all of that continue to run free..

[Xorzor]

At the bare minimum, 1 USD. Chinavision-Jizzard could charge that for their monthly sub and they'd still be swimming in it.

[Tziva]

I don't mind a sub fee (even at the current price), if Blizzard put in more effort to maintaining or fixing some of the neglected areas in the game. The two clear examples -- although there are plenty more -- is that there needs to be more server merges and there needs to be cross faction play. Right now the solution to playing on a dead server with no economy is to give Blizzard more real person dollars on top of your sub to server transfer elsewhere. The solution to playing on a faction with severely limited end-game is to give Blizzard more money on top of your sub to faction change. Blizzard has made no effort to address these areas of the game, even to their own financial detriment; for many who have been playing for years and are looking at their army of alts, they'd rather stop playing entirely than have to fork out a shitton more money on top of what we already pay monthly and for expansions. There was a point where Blizzard probably profited from this arrangement, but those days have almost certainly passed. For every day they wait to fix these issues, they risk losing money from remaining players who are tired of waiting and no longer feel they are getting a quality gameplay experience for the money they pay each month.

In a vacuum the sub fee is reasonable to me, but in a sixteen year old game with a dwindling population, there needs to be some changes if Blizzard wants current subscribers to feel like they are getting value out of their money IMO.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I don't mind a sub fee (even at the current price), if Blizzard put in more effort to maintaining or fixing some of the neglected areas in the game. The two clear examples -- although there are plenty more -- is that there needs to be more server merges and there needs to be cross faction play. Right now the solution to playing on a dead server with no economy is to give Blizzard more real person dollars on top of your sub to server transfer elsewhere. The solution to playing on a faction with severely limited end-game is to give Blizzard more money on top of your sub to faction change. Blizzard has made no effort to address these areas of the game, even to their own financial detriment; for many who have been playing for years and are looking at their army of alts, they'd rather stop playing entirely than have to fork out a shitton more money on top of what we already pay monthly and for expansions. There was a point where Blizzard probably profited from this arrangement, but those days have almost certainly passed. For every day they wait to fix these issues, they risk losing money from remaining players who are tired of waiting and no longer feel they are getting a quality gameplay experience for the money they pay each month.

In a vacuum the sub fee is reasonable to me, but in a sixteen year old game with a dwindling population, there needs to be some changes if Blizzard wants current subscribers to feel like they are getting value out of their money IMO.

Those services should absolutely be free, ESPECIALLY considering the issues you brought up, but I have always thought this considering we pay subs.

[Tziva]

Those services should absolutely be free, ESPECIALLY considering the issues you brought up, but I have always thought this considering we pay subs.

If I had to choose between them making character services free or fixing the problems that made them necessary, I'd rather they be fixed. Paying for a character service is fine IMO if you're like "hey I want to try out being an orc" kind of thing. Paying for a character service because there are no legendary blanks on the auction house on your dead server and haven't been for over a month (true story) and its the only way you can get one is absolutely not okay.

Just making the services free rather than addressing the disease itself would honestly be a shitty bandaide. The solution to not being able to find pve pugs on Alliance in end-game shouldn't be making it free for everyone to become Horde, because presumably some of the people who have stubbornly stuck with it this long have a reason for doing so, and would rather just simply not have a disadvantage in getting into group content because of what is essentially an aesthetic/story choice. I imagine Blizzard also would like people to play Alliance since that is 50% of their game.

But hey if they want to make that shit free and fix it, I won't complain.

[DarkAmbient]

The current price is fine for the amount of content you get.

I think that depends on how much time you spend playing the game. To buy the expansion, level from 50-60 and complete all the quests and instanced content that's relevant to you in a relatively short space of time and then quit, maybe the cost isn't unreasonable. But to pay a subscription to repeat the same content for up to two years is a bit like paying Netflix every month to keep rewatching Breaking Bad over the same time frame. The longer you pay to play it, the less you get for your money in terms of unique content per dollar.

[Soon-TM]

$25-$30 a month, is nothing, and honestly, if it breaks your budget, you should be figuring other things out in life, but that's a totally different topic. And if they offered a better quality game, more content, fewer bugs, people would happily pay for it. Because again, $15 when WoW first came out, is equal to about $25 today. Even though inflation is hurting everyday folks, Blizzard hasn't increased their prices.

Ah, the good ol' strawman. Of course there is little difference between $15 and $30, after all what is $15? We could pay $40 per month as well, the difference between $15 and $40 isn't that bigger now, is it?

Btw, Blizzard hasn't increased their nominal prices because the minimum wage hasn't increased in the US since !#$%ing 2009 ffs. And Blizzard isn't adjusting their fees not out of the kindness of their hearts, but probably because they aren't dumb enough something that could outprice a lot of potential customers.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

If I had to choose between them making character services free or fixing the problems that made them necessary, I'd rather they be fixed. Paying for a character service is fine IMO if you're like "hey I want to try out being an orc" kind of thing. Paying for a character service because there are no legendary blanks on the auction house on your dead server and haven't been for over a month (true story) and its the only way you can get one is absolutely not okay.

Just making the services free rather than addressing the disease itself would honestly be a shitty bandaide. The solution to not being able to find pve pugs on Alliance in end-game shouldn't be making it free for everyone to become Horde, because presumably some of the people who have stubbornly stuck with it this long have a reason for doing so, and would rather just simply not have a disadvantage in getting into group content because of what is essentially an aesthetic/story choice. I imagine Blizzard also would like people to play Alliance since that is 50% of their game.

But hey if they want to make that shit free and fix it, I won't complain.

I really meant server transfers - I've had similar issues on dying realms, and paying the fee per character I have is insane. This kind of service I should not have to pay for in a sub based game, and the merges they have done and CRZ etc did not really fix the issue. Faction transfers are a different story, but if you really wanted that you could just buy a boost anyway, so I feel like most people who have jump ship probably already have.

[Mojo03]

The sub pays for access to the game.

It does not pay for content updates like people assume it does. Those exist to get people to continue to pay for access to the game.

They use "some" of the money you gave them to fund more content development that they will in turn charge you to access. Either with a box sale, sub fee, or cash shop.

So you're funding the development of the content and then paying them for it when its finished, while they also have no legal obligations to actually make it with your funding.

Pretty sweet deal for them.

Knowing I'm just paying to access it, putting personal opinions aside about how bullshit the sub fee is, I honestly wouldn't even play it if it was free sub right now.

If I felt like it was actually going towards making the game better and it showed, I'd be okay paying $5-10, depending on how much it showed.

But I genuinely don't think its existence does much more than pay for Bobbys next yacht.