Is the sub-based monthly model outdated?

[Just Passing through]

The monthly sub stopped making sense once new content releases for WoW slowed to a drip after MoP.

GW2 doesn't have a $15 monthly subscription fee, and that has saved me hundreds of dollars. Yes, it has a cash shop where you buy solutions to problems engineered by the devs, but you're looking at dropping about $200 to get all of the content and all of the necessary utilities unlocked forever. Whereas with WoW or FF14 you have to pay $2,000+ to play for ten years. Playing a cash shop game like GW2 is 10x cheaper than playing a sub based MMO.

I take your word for it.

Then again...how many MMOs that are F2P are as "fair" as you explain to us that GW2 is? Pretty much every F2P MMO in Josh Hayes you tube videos "Worst MMO ever?" have a crazy cash shop...and yeah....if WoW would go F2P we know what Blizzard is capable of...looking at you Diablo Immortal.

But ofc we are also talking different player habits here

[Beefhammer]

This would make them more money their financial analysts would have already done it lmao.

Exactly. This is why forum goers don't run billion dollar companies.

[Toppy]

Its weird how many arguments in this thread are essentially going "It would be more lucrative for blizzard to drop it". While ignoring that it being more lucrative for for blizzard also makes it far less player friendly. The means by which blizz would make that new money is by cutting even more content out of the game and putting it in a cash shop.

I'd rather not go the path of GW2. Which gets bare bones patches with any new gear and mount skins being only cash shop. GW2 is such a bad example to use. Everything ends up in the cash shop and their patches are just grind zones with little to no reward structure other than "Grind for a few weeks or months for a single piece of new cosmetic " and no new gameplay features, pvp anything, dungeon anything, raid anything.

Imagine if every patch in WoW was them releasing a new zone and a little ongoing questline. The zone has nothing unique that drops in it, just achievements for a new pair of gloves. However the cash shop did get two new cosmetic gear and weapon sets as well as mount skins with the patch. And thats litterally the entire patch, and every patch. No dungeon, no raid, no new systems. Just the zone where you can grind for a new pair of gloves (or boots, or a chest, just the one item).

Thats the GW2 system. Its geared towards charging you more than you'd pay for a sub and also is very FOMO as the new gear is cheaper to get at first, but more expensive later.

[Unlimited Power]

A monthly subscription is an outdated model in terms of monetization. It could frankly be so much worse.

God forbid WoW ever adds a battle pass. People already complain that "all the cool mounts and armors are restricted to the store". Wave goodbye to the rest of them if WoW doesn't have a subscription.

Besides, players are generally already fairly toxic in this game. Removing the investment of a subscription cost and inviting the f2p crowd in would only serve to worsen the situation.

[Toppy]

A monthly subscription is an outdated model in terms of monetization. It could frankly be so much worse.

God forbid WoW ever adds a battle pass. People already complain that "all the cool mounts and armors are restricted to the store". Wave goodbye to the rest of them if WoW doesn't have a subscription.

Besides, players are generally already fairly toxic in this game. Removing the investment of a subscription cost and inviting the f2p crowd in would only serve to worsen the situation.

Not to mention that f2p games dont get any more content any faster. If anything they tend to be even slower.

[Accendor]

F2P could be an alternative, as long as everything that is available in the shop is also automatically added to accounts that have an active subscription.

[Eosia]

Considering how bad F2P games are along with the bad communities, I prefer games to have a bar for entry.

Amen to that.

Not that the WoW "Community" is not toxic or anything though. Just look at what happens when Blizzard adds a cosmetic, optional mount to the store. People fly off the handle. And they're openly hypocritical about it too. When Blizzard added the last one, a certain YouTuber threw a fit about it in a video. They were well known for also driving people to Final Fantasy XIV... which also released a new mount on their store at the same time. Not a single peep about it

Blizzard has only ever once offered a mount on the store that had an advantage, the "Crack Pony". The "advantage" was it functioned as both a ground mount and a flying one. This was back when you had speeds attached to the mount, not the riding skill level. So you saved a little gold not having to buy 3-4 mounts on a character (40% Ground, 100% ground, 60% Flying, 280% flying). That was it. The only other advantage it would have offered had already been eliminated in 3.0, having only one mount to carry in your bags rather than 2. And the system changes that came in Cataclysm removed the any advantage since mount speed was moved to the riding skill and all mounts moved at the maximum speed for your skill level.

Fun fact: ~40% of people who subscribe to those forget they are subscribed and get charged for one, but don't bother cancelling. I guarantee Blizzard is making a huge amount of revenue from people who forget they are subscribed.

Well, that's the fault of the person for not actually keeping track of their money. No one who actually looks at their monthly banking statements "forgets" they're subscribed to something.

The monthly sub stopped making sense once new content releases for WoW slowed to a drip after MoP.

Legion and its 77 Day patch cadence says Hi!

Not to mention that f2p games dont get any more content any faster. If anything they tend to be even slower.

Exactly. Take a look at Fallout 76. It's buy once and then free to play like Guild Wars. In April of 2020, they revamped the game with Wastelanders which added the main plot that starts with The Duchess at the Wayward. It would be 7 months later before "Steel Dawn", which saw the return of the Brotherhood of Steel to Appalachia. This new content was a quest line that literally would take you an hour or so to complete and then it was back to exactly what you were doing before it. The only difference was the addition of "Seasons" back in June that added daily/weekly chores to do in game to earn SCORE that unlocked FOMO items (Some have returned as purchasable in the Atom Shop) and a new world boss, Earl Williams as a Wendigo Colossus triggered by dropping a nuke on Monongah Mine.

The next content release was "Steel Reign" which was released in July of 2021 and was the last release prior to Microsoft's purchase of Zenimax which included Bethesda. This picked up where "Steel Dawn" left off and was, again, content that could be finished in about an hour or so. And then it was back to earning SCORE and whatever else you did be it CAMP building, dropping Nukes on Fissure Site Prime to spawn the Scorchbeast Queen or Monongah Mine to go fight Earl Williams, etc.

Before September 13th's "Expeditions: The Pitt" update from this year, the only new "content" added were hourly events that last a week or two, "Invaders from Beyond" and "Night of the Moth". The Expeditions system allows us to leave Appalachia and head to the ruins of Pittsburgh. We have a choice to complete one of two objectives that you cannot really farm regularly because you're dependant on other people launching them or the Vertibird fuel you can earn to launch one yourself.

But there are tons of areas not even being used anywhere in the game right now as well as plot lines that could be expanded on like the missing survivors of the Palace of the Wandering Path.

[Final Verdict]

technically WoW already is f2p, like it has been p2w (boosts) since Vanilla (ofc by a strict definition its not).

since WoDs token introduction i exclusively paid (RC) for RAF rewards (Explorers set), but understand btw essentially sub via token is double fee.
although FOMO, hidden p2w and overall grind gamedesign is per definition predatory, in comparision to MMO genre standards WoW feels PEGI 12+.

basically a change to open f2p (although it already is until lvl20 btw) via removal of sub would escalate WoWs gamedesigns basic issues, as the compensation of former sub revenue would exclusively inspire a more direct predatory approach.

[Lochton]

F2P could be an alternative, as long as everything that is available in the shop is also automatically added to accounts that have an active subscription.

Would never happen, no other game do it. Heh.

[Echo of Soul]

If you get a lot of content to go with that sub fee OR a non existent cash shop then I think that it's fine to have a sub fee. In the case of WoW specifically I don't think that the current team should ask for a sub fee since they put out way too little content and on top of that run a pretty disgusting cash shop with the WoW Token being the worst service they offer since it makes the game P2W.

[Gimlix]

Of course it is outdated. F2P games earn way more money from cosmetics and utilities like boosts than a sub. You also don't lose players simply because they don't want to risk the initial cost of entry B2P+sub games have. On the other hand, you also miss out on the initial revenue boost at launch and we've had a ton of MMORPGs crash and burn right after launch, barely paying off or not even. But then that's because most of them sucked. So if your game is bad and you know it, you want to do some hardcore marketing right before launch and cash out with B2P+sub model. If your game is good and you have a long-term plan to keep the players playing, F2P is better both for the company and the players.

Yeah because having a mass amount of fortnite kids or LoL kids around sure will help the game out.

[loras]

Yeah because having a mass amount of fortnite kids or LoL kids around sure will help the game out.

They'd hardly be more detrimental than the limitless whiners and cheerleaders we have.
Also a lot better than those that whine about their raid rewards not being special enough and thus fucking over other game modes.

[Relapses]

This would make them more money their financial analysts would have already done it lmao.

On a personal level, I don't like what F2p does to games. They change in incentives is bad

I think it's less what the analysts say and more that the ship already sailed way, way too long ago. It's not OW2 where they can just layer in F2P microtransactions in lieu of loot boxes and reduce the box cost to nil. There's no question of whether WoW could be successful with a F2P model. It absolutely could. And it likely would be more successful than it is now with its subscription fee (at least insofar as the analysts are concerned). The problem is that a playerbase cultivated by two decades of a subscription model would revolt heavily against a full-on F2P transition and they likely stand to lose more than its worth even attempting it. If Riot's MMO uses a F2P model and begins to significantly siphon away WoW players I'm sure we'll see Blizzard begrudgingly change its mind but that's likely not for another five to ten years, imo.

[Orange Joe]

Greg Street, one of wow's ex developers who left WoW after the MoP expansion (i think) has said the sub based model is outdated for mmo's. It's a barrier for entry for new players because there are some days when you only want to play WoW for few hours but in order to do that, you are forced to pay 15 bucks for a sub. There are times where you are not playing wow for weeks so that's money ends up being wasted.

He's working on the new mmo game for Riot so we have to see how successful that game is but do you agree with his statement?. He plans to mainly make money from cosmetic items from the ingame shop e.g. weapon skins, hero skins, mounts etc while the game stays Free to Play.

no $15 a month is cheap as fuck for entertainment.

[mrgreenthump]

Both have their places. Sub in itself isn't bad, but in the case of WoW, they still have cosmetics, mounts and gold from the shop. I'm happy to pay a sub for a game that doesn't sell power though, because that is a finite amount of money I have to spend to keep my character the best it can be and I know the amount before commiting.

Now sure the Riot MMO will probably only sell cosmetics in their shop, but I wouldn't trust Blizzard to do the same if WoW was to go F2P. Other thing about F2P games is that they almost always have a daily login bonus or season pass that requires you to log in daily. Sub games rarely have that. Even WoW is finally seeming to go to a 3 day WQ rotation.

In the end both have their places and both can be done badly. Where F2P usually goes sour on me is when you don't sell power, but convenience and time skips. I've been playing Undecember lately for example and frankly, you can clearly see that stuff in the end game have been made to be as cumbersome as they can be for you to buy stash stabs for inventory management. It's to a point where the game has been made worse to sell convinience.

In my mind F2P is only good for testing a game if you want to commit to playing it for a longer time. In the end, the game is going to ask you to pay anyways.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

I think it's less what the analysts say and more that the ship already sailed way, way too long ago. It's not OW2 where they can just layer in F2P microtransactions in lieu of loot boxes and reduce the box cost to nil. There's no question of whether WoW could be successful with a F2P model. It absolutely could. And it likely would be more successful than it is now with its subscription fee (at least insofar as the analysts are concerned). The problem is that a playerbase cultivated by two decades of a subscription model would revolt heavily against a full-on F2P transition and they likely stand to lose more than its worth even attempting it. If Riot's MMO uses a F2P model and begins to significantly siphon away WoW players I'm sure we'll see Blizzard begrudgingly change its mind but that's likely not for another five to ten years, imo.

Sure but that's basically the point, ya? It's not worth doing right now or they would have already done it, no matter what random posters here say or think lol

- - - Updated - - -

Its weird how many arguments in this thread are essentially going "It would be more lucrative for blizzard to drop it". While ignoring that it being more lucrative for for blizzard also makes it far less player friendly. The means by which blizz would make that new money is by cutting even more content out of the game and putting it in a cash shop.

I'd rather not go the path of GW2. Which gets bare bones patches with any new gear and mount skins being only cash shop. GW2 is such a bad example to use. Everything ends up in the cash shop and their patches are just grind zones with little to no reward structure other than "Grind for a few weeks or months for a single piece of new cosmetic " and no new gameplay features, pvp anything, dungeon anything, raid anything.

Yeah also this is a huge good point, but remember that GW2 style of endless grinds and almost no other content probably overappeals to this forum which is full of that "solo player who logs in 6 ours a day" type. And there's nothing wrong with that if it's your jam, but to those of us that enjoy multiplayer content and gear progression, GW2 is insanely barebones. So is every other mmo with an f2p model. Even ESO, which has a pretty aggressive content release schedule, sells "expansions" that are smaller than WoW patches in terms of meaty content. Unless your idea of fresh content is running around the world murdering trivial enemies for hours, it doesn't offer much.

[loras]

no $15 a month is cheap as fuck for entertainment.

...Assuming you play a month.

[Airlick]

Yeah because having a mass amount of fortnite kids or LoL kids around sure will help the game out.

Sure it will, from financial standpoint at least. Will the community be a toxic cesspool? Also yes, but this is no different from any sub game whenever you get into any PUG/LFG. Toxicity is something you sign up for the moment you enter into a group with random people, which is one of the main reasons why guilds exist.

[Chilela]

I mean... they can't really get much more aggressive. The most they could do now is simply increase the quantity of cosmetics they release.

I believe blizzard knows how utterly disastrous it would be for them to sell power. The shell game they play with the token already pushes the limits of what players will accept.

Ego plays a big role in the wow community more so then most other games.

I don't think you're thinking big enough here. Even if they didn't directly sell power, they could certainly sell other things. Offhandedly:

-They could put a hard time-gated limit on the number of legacy raids you can run per account. Want to farm out that one mog/pet/mount from that one dungeon back in Cata? Pony up.
-Want to play a certain race/class combo outside of a very limited free roster? Better throw Blizz a few bucks for that.
-Want more than a handful of characters on your account? That's gonna cost ya.
-Like the occasional bonus XP events Blizzard puts out? Well, now you can access those anytime you want... For a cost. Even though this is technically power, this is little different from character boosts. Could also be applied to legacy rep bonuses too.
-Like having space in your bank? Well, that could be throttled and re-implemented as a microtransaction too.

Basically, if they were to nix the sub model, they'd have to recoup the costs somewhere. And that would likely creep into QoL stuff people take for granted.

[vian]

The monthly sub is the reason I haven't bothered playing in years.