What SHOULD a WOW subscription price be?

[agentsi]

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

What gave do they have, that is 100% free? No cash shop, no cost to purchase the game outright. Nothing, just 100% free. What games are those?

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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.

Where is the strawman?

And you're analogy, like... what the fuck did I just read? Are you legit retarded? Like, that makes zero sense to what we were talking about. Zero.

Also, wrong. The minimum wage has increased all over the place. In fact, the minimum wage in my state has increased almost every single year for the last 20 years. Is it still too low? Sure. But that isn't what we're talking about. Talk about a fucking strawman. And if you think Blizzard is keeping their prices down, because of "minimum wage", you're really fucking stupid. You need a $500 PC and at least a $100 monitor to even play wow, most PC gamers have some disposable income. God, you're fucking dumb. Jesus christ. Anyone only earning minimum wage, shouldn't be concerned about Blizzard and how much they charge per month, as I imagine that person has much bigger issues they should be focusing on.

[Polyxo]

I think $10 should be the max if this is the amount of content being produced, and the rate its being produced at. Maybe not even that. It's especially problematic when it seems the efforts towards making cool stuff has gone more and more towards the cash shop. I have no problem paying $15 a month if we're getting like, Legion levels of stuff to do and things to get.

[OrangeJuice]

WoW has so few subs that they aren't really making much money from them, but on the other hand, Blizzard isn't making that much money so they need all they can. It would also be hard to recover from the optics of "the mighty WoW has gone F2P", especially from an investor PoV. I understand it never will, but it SHOULD be f2p in all seriousness.

[Ezyah]

High enough to keep the kids away

[Klingers]

After paying for three months continuously without any content updates, the game should be free until the next major patch.

Might convince them to stop dicking around with fruit pictures and voicelines, pull their fingers out of their arses and get some fucking content out once in a blue moon.

[baseballfan]

free. yep mhm

[WowIsDead64]

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

Can you be sure, that all this money goes into development and not into, let's say, marketing? How can you be sure, that this money goes into development of Wow and not some other new projects, that will be sold separately?

Overall I would agree, that development of new AAA projects can cost more, than in the past, due to all that photo-realistic graphics and improved level of detail. Of course it this things aren't fully automated by game engines. But Wow is old-style project. It still fully relies on diffuse textures only. How can it's development cost more?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Can you be sure, that all this money goes into development and not into, let's say, marketing? How can you be sure, that this money goes into development of Wow and not some other new projects, that will be sold separately?

Overall I would agree, that development of new AAA projects can cost more, than in the past, due to all that photo-realistic graphics and improved level of detail. Of course it this things aren't fully automated by game engines. But Wow is old-style project. It still fully relies on diffuse textures only. How can it's development cost more?

Well we of course don’t have a break down of what money goes where another thing you can look at instead of just operating cost is things like the number of people who worked on the game In one way or another which you can see in the credits are all of these people would need to be paid.

For example the bfs credits and the legion ones.

Bfa 5705 people (5696 developers, 9 thanks) https://www.mobygames.com/game/windo...zeroth/credits

Legion 4772 people (4763 developers, 9 thanks) https://www.mobygames.com/game/windo...legion/credits

We will never have a actual amount given on the dev cost but every thing we can point to leads to it going up quite a bit over the years.

[Menog]

I reckon they should change the sub to 20 dollars! We have to pay the woke tax now. But no worries they will revert 1 dollar to the 18m fund they settled for.

[Gaaz]

It should not cost more than a AAA title. Assuming that AAA games take 2 years to develop (which is on a conservative side to build things from ground up), and then sold for $80, subs for WoW should not cost more than 80/24 = $3.33 per month. Throw in a generous $1 on top for data centers (which is a robbery at that price point). As of right now, Activision Blizzard drains subscribers at triple the rate of what it should cost financially for them. If their internal expenses justify this bloat, then this is on them, and a customer should not be expected to pay for their inefficiency. Not only that, but we pay for each expansion separately as well. This is ridiculous if you actually compare what we pay and what we get compared to AAA titles like RDR2 or Witcher 3 and their price point.

[Soon-TM]

High enough to keep the kids away

Kids these days are playing Fortnite, Apex or something like that. Chances are that it's been quite some time since actual kids were interested in a raid boss simulator.

[ImpalerEU]

no it don't, both cases

Then don’t pay and don’t play. Also, kindly take people similar to you with you and go pollute another community.

People like you think that because they pay $15 a month the entire game should bow before them upon login. If $15 is too much for you, then it’s your problem, not the game.

[VinylScratch]

I think $10 should be the max if this is the amount of content being produced, and the rate its being produced at. Maybe not even that. It's especially problematic when it seems the efforts towards making cool stuff has gone more and more towards the cash shop. I have no problem paying $15 a month if we're getting like, Legion levels of stuff to do and things to get.

Pretty much my exact same mentality. The game is not delivering a product worth 15 dollars, I think if they lowered it to like 10 or something that feels a lot easier for players to stomach they'd prop their numbers up a lot more. Issue is that the game to most is not worth 15 dollars a month. Especially when all the new content they do add is boring and done in a month because of how little there is and you're expected at this point now to wait 6 months or more until the next actual content patch.

BFA alone had 8.1 out within 4 months. But 8.2 after that took them 6 months and they admitted they had not properly tested it just to get the patch out of the door, while also divorcing the raid release until an entire month after the launch date and it wouldn't happen again. Then 8.3 took them 7 months (so much for that "won't happen again" promise). 9.1 took 7 months or so to get out the door, no information on 9.2 at all yet, only for 9.1.5 which isn't even a huge patch, just a bunch of woke changes and adjustments to the systems based on beta feedback almost four months into 9.1 and even that's looking like it'll take about an additional month to get shipped.

At this rate 9.2 might unironically be about 8-9 months after 9.1 dropped. The bulk of the changes being made with 9.1.5 aren't even gameplay related so much as soapboxing which is my other problem with the sub fee at the moment. I kind of play video games to escape the harsh reality that the current world is going downhill fast. Video games are my escape from the invasive and divisive political landscape that's prevalent in almost everything. So the last thing I feel inclined to do is give 15 dollars a month to a game that increasingly feels like less of a source of entertainment and more of a pay 15 dollars a month so developers can soapbox and lecture me on politics that I'm specifically trying to avoid by escaping into video games thing and give me a list of weekly chores to do since there is a game associated with this lecture.

[Polyxo]

Pretty much my exact same mentality. The game is not delivering a product worth 15 dollars, I think if they lowered it to like 10 or something that feels a lot easier for players to stomach they'd prop their numbers up a lot more. Issue is that the game to most is not worth 15 dollars a month. Especially when all the new content they do add is boring and done in a month because of how little there is and you're expected at this point now to wait 6 months or more until the next actual content patch.

BFA alone had 8.1 out within 4 months. But 8.2 after that took them 6 months and they admitted they had not properly tested it just to get the patch out of the door, while also divorcing the raid release until an entire month after the launch date and it wouldn't happen again. Then 8.3 took them 7 months (so much for that "won't happen again" promise). 9.1 took 7 months or so to get out the door, no information on 9.2 at all yet, only for 9.1.5 which isn't even a huge patch, just a bunch of woke changes and adjustments to the systems based on beta feedback almost four months into 9.1 and even that's looking like it'll take about an additional month to get shipped.

At this rate 9.2 might unironically be about 8-9 months after 9.1 dropped. The bulk of the changes being made with 9.1.5 aren't even gameplay related so much as soapboxing which is my other problem with the sub fee at the moment. I kind of play video games to escape the harsh reality that the current world is going downhill fast. Video games are my escape from the invasive and divisive political landscape that's prevalent in almost everything. So the last thing I feel inclined to do is give 15 dollars a month to a game that increasingly feels like less of a source of entertainment and more of a pay 15 dollars a month so developers can soapbox and lecture me on politics that I'm specifically trying to avoid by escaping into video games thing and give me a list of weekly chores to do since there is a game associated with this lecture.

Eh, I don't really have a problem with the changes made. I mean, I didn't need them changed necessarily, and I particularly understand it if it was Afrasiabi and those other assholes giggling through writing them in the first place.

I also don't mind the gap in the raids IF we also have a big backlog of general stuff to do from the expansion. However, it just doesn't seem like there's very much going on. Legion was great that way: we had a whole new campaign for each class, we had lots of artifact appearances to chase around, we had all kinds of mounts and armor and things like that to collect (I remember Nighthold shaman having like a different spell effect on shoulders for every difficulty level), and they made professions new and interesting. Suramar had different kinds of activites too.

Shadowlands doesn't even have archaeology

[FossilFree]

It should just be zero now. They make plenty from token sales.

[Menog]

Then don’t pay and don’t play. Also, kindly take people similar to you with you and go pollute another community.

People like you think that because they pay $15 a month the entire game should bow before them upon login. If $15 is too much for you, then it’s your problem, not the game.

One might say the same about you. You look pretty toxic to me

[Syegfryed]

Then don’t pay and don’t play. Also, kindly take people similar to you with you and go pollute another community.

People like you think that because they pay $15 a month the entire game should bow before them upon login. If $15 is too much for you, then it’s your problem, not the game.

i am already not playing, just like many other people, and i do not think like that, you are distorting what i said

stay with your elitist thinking that only rich people are entitled to play the game right now, and enjoy the desert the game became.

[Relapses]

i am already not playing, just like many other people, and i do not think like that, you are distorting what i said

stay with your elitist thinking that only rich people are entitled to play the game right now, and enjoy the desert the game became.

$15/mo is not expensive my dude. You're free to not see value in it but you don't get to decide whether it's worth it for anybody else who disagrees with you.

[Syegfryed]

$15/mo is not expensive my dude. You're free to not see value in it but you don't get to decide whether it's worth it for anybody else who disagrees with you.

world is not just EUA friend, world is a big place and different countries have different realities.

And im not saying what is worth or not for people.

[Candy Cough]

I’ve quit WoW over the subscription

Not that I mind paying it but you’d think that with expansion price and subscription they’d be able to dedicate more resources to the game instead of financing another fucking yatch for boby

I’ve kissed their asses for 10 years. What did it get me? A narrative designer so desperate he self inserts himself to wife his undead waifu and a game director that refuses to listen to Feedback