How do "seasons" work, profit-wise?

[Thrif]

I'd probably be the end of my WoW tenure at least. Never saw the point of seasonal characters in games like Diablo 3 personally, starting at absolute scratch is only fun for me when it's brand new. Scraping together gold to buy riding at 40 is just annoying if I AVE thousands of gold sitting on a toon but I'm artificially locked from accessing it.

Every season in D3 has its own thing though, last season were super powerful ethereal weapons and the upcoming will have soul stones with their own unique abilities. So there is always something, and sets are sometimes reworked and stuff like that. Pretty good for a game without microtransactions, I'm really surprised blizz keeps it going for no profit outside of MAUs.

That said, the fun thing with it is to play for like a week or two every 3 months. It's a quick intense experience for almost everyone who plays it.

It will be interesting to see how it works out in wow but I'm sceptical. The quick and easy concept doesn't really work here. I'm guessing people will play it for one and maaaaybe two season but not more than that.

[Resheph]

Hell yeah, keep naming the past... it helps the case of where we were to where we are.

Where we are is the same spot we were 3 years ago,or 6 years ago:

An insignificant amount of "serious" players (maybe 60 in all, not even a blip on the edge of statistics of player numbers) on MMO Champ parroting each other how everything is gone to shit in WOW, how Vanilla/TBC/Wotlk was the Golden Grail of Gaming, how there's no social interactions when in the "old" says complete strangers would shower you in gold and spend a day boosting you through all content for free.
Quests were the best in history of fiction, and the stories and characters were so rich and vibrant that you honestly wonder why they did not create a Nobelprize for gameliterature just for Warcraft.
Oh, and everybody left of course, to play FlavorOfTheMonthWOWKiller(tm), and they know that because all their friends (all 5? Yes, all five of them) don't play anymore. So they must be playing the other game, right. Everybody is required to play a MMO, it's the law.
And of course none of the industry veterans working at Blizzard know anything about game design, not the way these couch potatoes know by throwing away their studies spending nights behind the computer gaming.

[WowIsDead64]

So in infamous "4chan" leak mentioned that WoW is going to something called "seasons".

Ignore for the moment whether that leak is true or not.

If WoW went to seasons, how would that work? Instead of charging for an epac every two years, do they charge for a season every three months or something?

Someone mentioned "battle passes". I don't know what those are.

Like Diablo 3 and Classic, I guess. No new content. Just focusing on creating alts to replay existing one for artificial reasons, like seasonal rewards.

[Gigantique]

Every season in D3 has its own thing though, last season were super powerful ethereal weapons and the upcoming will have soul stones with their own unique abilities. So there is always something, and sets are sometimes reworked and stuff like that. Pretty good for a game without microtransactions, I'm really surprised blizz keeps it going for no profit outside of MAUs.

That said, the fun thing with it is to play for like a week or two every 3 months. It's a quick intense experience for almost everyone who plays it.

It will be interesting to see how it works out in wow but I'm sceptical. The quick and easy concept doesn't really work here. I'm guessing people will play it for one and maaaaybe two season but not more than that.

Super fair and of course people enjoy seasonal things, otherwise D3 wouldn't chug along this long. Personally it's not for me, even the thought of starting fresh on a new server in WoW is never happening to me.

I made a few seasonal toons in D3, they never got very far.

[Deadite]

So in infamous "4chan" leak mentioned that WoW is going to something called "seasons".

Wow content has been seasonal for year now. You get a patch in the Spring and possibly one in the Autumn if you are lucky.

[Nyel]

There are several routes to go.

Take Elder Scrolls Online as an example. They release 4 content "DLCs" per year. One of those DLCs is called "Chapter", which is basically an expansion with a new zone, new raid and a new gameplay feature (class, new profession etc.). Then they release one additional smaller zone half a year later and two dungeon DLCs that contain system tweaks / changes and introduce two dungeons each.

WoW could do something similar. Release smaller expansions once a year and those are supported by one major and one minor content patch. It would look like this:

1. January: Expansion release (expansion with 2-3 zones, 2-3 dungeons and a raid, one new system or gameplay feature) ~ $40, $60 for CE
1. April: Minor patch, akin to the x.x.5 patches (system tweaks, maybe one new dungeon or a questline)
1. July: Major patch, akin to x.1, x.2 etc. (new zone, new raid, new dungeon, new smaller system)

Rinse and repeat. Now it boils down to if they keep the sub as a requirement or if they make the sub fee only an addition. If they remove the mandatory sub, the major patch would have its own pricetag, like $15. If you are subbed, you get it for free.

Elder Scrolls Online seems to be very successful with this model and I don't see any reason why WoW couldn't pull it off.

[deenman]

Hell yeah, keep naming the past... it helps the case of where we were to where we are.

you said that its not what it used to be?WHEN?almost every expansion broke the previous ones content ammount,yeah,its in the past...thats how time works

[Low Hanging Fruit]

you said that its not what it used to be?WHEN?almost every expansion broke the previous ones content ammount,yeah,its in the past...thats how time works

Since this is the first season...

check the thread title

[dope_danny]

The way the supposed leaks suggest is the Destiny 2 model. Instead of buying an expansion and thats that you pay for 'battlepasses' which for the "i only play wow" crowd is like a renown 1-80 thing but its got two tracks of progress not one. One being free for everyone but another below it that you pay the battlepass fee for which gives more or additional unique rewards. Usually with some way to pay real money to unlock further stuff.

The way this reads is you would still pay 15 a month for your sub to the game for raids, dungeons, pvp and whatever but then there would be an optional additional 15 every 3 months or so where you get this second track on this renown style progress bar that acts like post cap xp.

Basically a hustle so instead of selling one 60 dollar box every two years they would make around 250 in the same amount of time. After games like Warzone made a lot of money on this activision said they wanted to put this in other games so i wouldn't be shocked. We all know theres a gigawhale portion of the WoW audience that will pay for any shiny dangled in front of them.

[Lady Atia]

The way the supposed leaks suggest is the Destiny 2 model. Instead of buying an expansion and thats that you pay for 'battlepasses' which for the "i only play wow" crowd is like a renown 1-80 thing but its got two tracks of progress not one. One being free for everyone but another below it that you pay the battlepass fee for which gives more or additional unique rewards. Usually with some way to pay real money to unlock further stuff.

The way this reads is you would still pay 15 a month for your sub to the game for raids, dungeons, pvp and whatever but then there would be an optional additional 15 every 3 months or so where you get this second track on this renown style progress bar that acts like post cap xp.

Basically a hustle so instead of selling one 60 dollar box every two years they would make around 250 in the same amount of time. After games like Warzone made a lot of money on this activision said they wanted to put this in other games so i wouldn't be shocked. We all know theres a gigawhale portion of the WoW audience that will pay for any shiny dangled in front of them.

I would love that, especially if it's themed after the raid season. Basically a version of AP/Azerite/Renown that's not bound to player power but cosmetics. But then again I also love the Hearthstone Tavern Pass as long as it gives nice looking portraits *shrugs*.

- - - Updated - - -

Many games have seasons with finite content and achievements that are only valid for that season. Usually this has a free scale and a paid scale with the paid scale having extras like transmog items, recolors of gears etc. If they moved to an f2p kind of game this seasonal content would make sense like "buy battle pass for this season" instead of buy sub. But sub + battle pass = one more cheap money grab scheme. Hopefully it will be either or.

Why? You would only have to pay the battle pass once per season (which usually lasts ~6 months in WoW). I would rather pay one battle pass per season and get access to consmetics than having to pay for single stuff on the shop.

[shise]

Season of Mastery is already a thing... It's like Progression servers on Everquest & its the entire reason that game still makes money. We should worry about classic seasons because its one step closer to a WoW business model that doesn't involve being updated.

Unless it doesn´t work out at all, which will happen.

I doubt people will paly it, maybe a small percentage of people. And even if you want the classic experience you would not play that.. it is not classic, and it is a short lived thing.

[Lady Atia]

What I mean is Id rather have a system where you can choose a sub or a battle pass or simply f2p at this point. To me, the game can't justify the monthly fee as it stands.

Well for me it gives more entertainment than my Disney+ and Netflix subscriptions together, so I don't mind the fee. A 3 month's reward track would be a premium rewards feature for cosmetics and a better alternative to the shop model we currently have. They even have a working infrastructure for it thanks to renown.

That said, I wouldn't mind either if they would turn the sub fee into the reward track system as long they keep the rewards unique and plenty.

[sunxsera]

Could be possible.
If they do it, they'll probably do it like Warframe.
You get small addons / regular content upgrades - but a big part is fomo gameplay. Also a lot of store items.

[Lady Atia]

I just started playing some Neverwinter a few days ago and found out it has all of these options. It's F2P, but you can buy a sub for some benefits if you'd like, you can also buy the battle pass if you'd like that as well. And it looks like the battle pass lasts for about 6 months so it's not as time-sensitive as many.

The more I think about it, the more I like it. They could give each battle pass an unifying theme for it's rewards and give us stuff outside of the current Expansion. Imagine getting f.e. one that's Nazmir themed - bloodtroll customizations, a nice troll transmog set, mounts themed after G'huun and Hi'reek or a Bwonsamdi inspired back-item. Use the same base principle of the renown system and you have FOMO-goodies that are actually not as stressful to get as current pvp/m+ stuff.

[Log Cabin]

It makes sense for classic,tbc, and older revived expansions. I can't see a system like that working on live though.