Is the sub-based monthly model outdated?

[Malkiah]

...Assuming you play a month.

why in god's name would you purchase a subscription to a live game service and then not play it and then complain that the subscription isn't worth it?

[Cracked]

I think the sub works just fine being as established as it is in WoW.

The alternatives all suck in different ways.

That said, I don't think a new game could afford to implement it with great success.

[davesurfer]

As the acquisition matures, count on seeing season patches that must be bought. The sub will be dropped, but you will pay for patches this or next expansion.

Yep. They are doing that in Diablo next go around. At least it looks that way by the survey they sent me that had 7 pages of which premium version would I buy

[Divada]

Do people really want WoW to end up like Overwatch 2?

[Celement]

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.

I mean what they can do before people just fuck off...

PC players are not quite the hopeless addicts of cellphone users the barrier to entry helps.

I think a lot of people hate looking at successful free to play games as well. There is a reason why league of legends makes bank as others are seething.

Making a pay trap just doesn't work. Sure you will get some people but not nearly the same amount as a well thought out system.

[Coldkil]

Adding a small detail to the discussion about "15 bucks is not a lot".

In US the whole region is conposed by a single country with a single currency and relatively similar wages through all the territory. So, 15$ is more or less a common ground for everyone.

In EU things are very much different. We all pay the same 13€ sub fee, but even in the euro zone median wages widly vary, not counting all the countries where euro isnt used and are generally the ones with the lowest income (and i mean like one third or less than a generic euro country) so you cannot really say 13€ is low/high because it changes a lot depending on where you play from.

Side note: because of this bots are rampart and people selling gold/boosts can literally make more money than by having a job - it's been from Vanilla that EU asks for russian/east europe servers to be a separate region exactly for this reason. There's a reason why token in EU was just slightly higher than US at start and now is at the same level of korea.

[Lordofbelbol]

Cause its not about the money in the long sense.

These are just entitled man-kids that think their irrelevant opinion has any matter, screaming about WoW this, negative that, but deep down they know they are gonna play again, or want to play again, and its an inner struggle for them that they cant deal with cause they are not actual adults, or even if they are, they are special entitled snowflake syndrome people that somehow think their existence holds any value.

They need an excuse to play in order to "Not go against" their ownselves "Well if i only payed for 15 hours since i am only gonna play that CAUSE FUCK BLIZZARD AND THEIR BOOSTING, FFXIV IS SO GOOD, but yeah, i would totally play again it if it wasnt for the sub".

Maybe a few that live in countries that have turned into shit holes with the inflation (Like mine, but i can afford it easily) and cant really afford playing anymore cause life caught up and those have a legit reason, but those arent on mmo-champion, the average poster here wanting this is the above.

This is the best comment i've seen in these forums in years lol, describes how most ppl around here are xDD
i like the "they need an excuse to play in order to "not go against" by ownselves" 100% true

[VMSmith]

hell spend more money than month worth of sub when i go to movies... so 2-3h of fun versus however much you play during the month, if you play 5h A MONTH or more its actualy cheap as hell... pricy my ass...

Going to the movie is an experience, an outing, something special for many people. Grinding out M+ is just the same drudgery you did yesterday and the day before that and the day before that and ...

I think what has changed is I have a lot of subscription services now and they are all less $ than wow and way more value for me, so I look at wow and think why in gods name would I spend that much just to play one game from time to time? Very poor value

This is what people like the previous poster I've quoted don't get - hours played does not equal fun had. Just because you could play WoW for 500 hours a month does not mean you had more fun or a better experience than the 10 hours you spent watching some new show on Netflix.

The value is just not there in WoW unless you are die-hard into the three pillar activities. And the reality is that fewer and fewer people are die-hard into those things and they are shedding players who look for more variety every single day, without attracting many new players because there are just better alternatives for people who aren't already heavily invested into WoW.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh lord, don't even get me going there.


Yeah, I'm confused about this as well. I don't hate the man but he wasn't wearing the cleanest cloak.

Different people have held different opinions about Street ever since the first moment we heard his name. Just like everything else under the sun.

Why is it so surprising that the voices currently speaking of him have held a different opinion than those who were speaking back during Wrath? I mean, I understood this concept before High School, what's so hard about it?

- - - Updated - - -

Sure it's a barrier for new players but WoW is so niche that hardly any new players stick around for more than a few weeks.

This is the most likely reason WoW will never go f2p. They understand they're not going to really be attracting many new players ever again so why bother changing the monetization model in hopes of pursuing those players?

[FlubberPuddy]

Adding a small detail to the discussion about "15 bucks is not a lot".

In US the whole region is conposed by a single country with a single currency and relatively similar wages through all the territory. So, 15$ is more or less a common ground for everyone.

In EU things are very much different. We all pay the same 13€ sub fee, but even in the euro zone median wages widly vary, not counting all the countries where euro isnt used and are generally the ones with the lowest income (and i mean like one third or less than a generic euro country) so you cannot really say 13€ is low/high because it changes a lot depending on where you play from.

You also bring up another point in that a lot of people here are looking at it only from a mostly Western ish viewpoint. A lot of Riot's fans are made up from Eastern/Asian territories who are a lot more used to F2P and, imo, make up a far larger playerbase than the typical playerbase for Western MMOs.

I think just on the nature of virtually every online game by Riot being F2P with paid cosmetics, then their MMO is most likely to follow suit given their huge audience is already accustomed to it.

As for whether the sub based model is out-dated, I don't think it is out-dated but it's definitely lost it's value. Before the idea behind a sub was that virtually everything collectible in-game can be done by playing the game, but now with so many shop cosmetics in WoW that makes having the sub itself lose relative value to these F2P games.

I think the way games likes Lost Ark do a subscription works, where you get convenience quality of life goodies and monthly currency to spend in the shop, let alone having full access to the game itself.

[glowpipe]

Considering the riffraff and all the undesireables the sub fee keeps out, i gladly pay it.

Without a paywall to stop unwanted people. Griefers, exploiters, hackers etc would flood the game. When you can create endless new accounts with no downside of losing said account, nothing is stopping people with bad intentions


And another major issue with free to play. Is that we would get so much less content in the game. Every mount we now can farm easily in patches, would be put in the store. Transmogs and other shit. I have no idea why people want f2p games as it is the biggest trash that ever existed. Entire game being locked behind the ingame store. Fuck that and keep the sub. Blizzard is only allowing you to play wow so they can make money. If they wouldn't make money from subs, they would need to get that money elsewhere. Rememember that.

The game would be trash for people who wouldn't want to pay, and to make it good, you would more than likely pay more than you now do for the sub

[Swnem]

I disagree. But i guess that Riot is very much in the F2P market.

That info alone tells me i likely will not enjoy the game and it will be riddled with shop cosmetics and possibly pay to win or at least pay for baseline convenience.

[Neotart]

Shocked after 15 years they didnt up the price at all. lol rather have a sub than more microtransactions,

[Blinkheals]

I play here and there, i dont sub every mobth just when i get a itch to play (usually until heroic raid isndone or so) then im off until new content. $15 sucks because some months i may not play enough to warrent it and a f2p game with cash cosmetics would be perfect. I dont buy cosmetics in any f2p or battle passes.

[Jinpachi]

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.

This business model is proven superior. Fuck yeah im okay with it.

[Chilela]

I mean what they can do before people just fuck off...

Given the nature of WoW's playerbase, as seen over the past couple of years, it will apparently take a lot to get people to truly quit in droves. Plus, swapping to F2P would be more about attracting new players and losing some old than retaining more old, but having more difficulty attracting new. If anything is holding it back, it's the core design and general genre of the game.

PC players are not quite the hopeless addicts of cellphone users the barrier to entry helps.

Some can still be pretty bad. IIRC Battlefront 2, which was Console/PC, ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of governments looking more into lootbox mechanics. Even on the Blizz front, OW and Hearthstone staked their respective claims largely on this front. Dopamine hits, unfortunately, are fairly universal among people, and making addictive games borders on being a science at this point.

I think a lot of people hate looking at successful free to play games as well. There is a reason why league of legends makes bank as others are seething.

Usually BECAUSE they have predatory business models, and them succeeding means that they'll become more commonplace within the industry as a whole.

Making a pay trap just doesn't work. Sure you will get some people but not nearly the same amount as a well thought out system.

It's not always guaranteed to work, but whaling's a very lucrative business. Hell, the WoW token's probably single-handedly made Blizzard bank, and a lot of that probably comes from whales.

[tomten]

I keep seeing these silly threads pop up here about this or that being ''outdated''

What criteria exactly are you people looking at to be able to call something ''outdated'' or not? Do we just find these we don't like and label them that so we can sound smart when we complain? What's the deal?

Its outdated because the concept for the subscription model doesn't even exist anymore.
Which was that back in the day, each realm was a physical server, which obviously added lots of cost upfront and maintained, specially with some realms dying and still needing to be kept alive, thus, the sub model was actually warranted and felt legit.

That hasn't been the case for over a decade and thus? it's outdated and certainly feels like it.
We're not really getting anything for our 15 bucks a month, doesn't matter how little some people deem that fee to be.
It's literally all profit for them.

[Bee76]

$15 a month is outrageous!!!!

Indeed, it shoulb be $30 a month. That would reduce the amount of whining in the community a lot. And maybe we get more and better dontent in the long run.

[qoozy]

If you want wow to become overwatch 2/diablo immortal, then yes - month sub outdated.

[liyroot]

I quit wow after seeing that it takes 2 months of grinding the same quests to unlock a race skin. That's what the subscription model gets you. Time gate after time gate. Enjoy trading 2 months if your human existence for a skin. AND you have to pay for it!

[tomten]

Indeed, it shoulb be $30 a month. That would reduce the amount of whining in the community a lot. And maybe we get more and better dontent in the long run.

You would effectively get a game with a fraction of the playerbase while getting even LESS AND WORSE content in the long run because they know the only ones left are the suckers still willing to pay...