Is the sub-based monthly model outdated?

[Adamas102]

Sub needs to stay. The F2P crowd is not the people they want in their community. Have you seen what is happening to OW2 going F2P, the toxicity went up tenfold....can you imagine what that would do to WoW's? A lot worse than it is now. That little pay barrier is saving a world of hurt. If you can't afford the $15 for a month's worth of game time, I think this game isn't for you and that's fine. There are other games/things to do and play.

I’d argue that the only community that matters is the one you make for yourself via guilds and in game friends. Saying WoW’s current player base is a “community” is just using the term in its loosest sense. You could take 10 current players who all enjoy the game equally but whose paths would never really cross because they all enjoy different ways of playing the game (and half of them wouldn’t get along or would prefer to just ignore everyone).

There are plenty of decent people and there’s no shortage of assholes. If anything, bringing more players to the game would help increase the pool of decent people that you can actually form a real bond with. Yes, there would also be more assholes, but unlike a game that is predominately queue based, in WoW you have better options for picking and choosing who to play with.

[Gravity2015]

it's better than a battle pass

[Vorkreist]

It weird to still read the same stupid "but you get x hours of gameplay" as if grinding stupid systems for 100 hours = high quality content.
wow stopped being the premium product worth a subscription many years ago. Its a f2p game with all the cash shop vomit included but with a sub as well since enough addicts with no standards are still willing to pay.

[Kokolums]

Another scalding MMO-C take. Wow guys, why hasn't the multi-billion dollar company thought of this before!?

This thread feels especially funny with the one-year sub thing dropping today that they already know will secure x amount of money. This stuff has been analyzed to a science, people

what is your problem?

[Itori]

Is the pay to play method outdated? Take a look at any game that's free to play and tell me if you would play that like you do WoW. If by some miracle they did make the game free to play but then did like every other F2P trash game does and adds in loot boxes, daily login trash, weekly login trash, a plethora of store trash.

The reason other MMO's failed starting with the P2P method is because instead of making their own game they decided to make it the "WoW killer" and all they did was copy the same platform and mechanics. The only game that i can remember that tried to break the mold was Wildstar but due to its elitist fashion it failed. Then the other downside to free to play comes in to play, the most toxic of toxic players, the hackers, the massive influx of botters who flood the market to make and sell gold.

Point of the story. If you can't afford to pay for the sub, then get your finances together, find a better job, know your worth, and reap the rewards.

[Soon-TM]

I have not talked to a single person under 25 years of age that has any interest in this game. And that's a problem. It's a game that only cares about their existing fanbase that is used to the subscription model.

I think that it's a self-perpetuating problem. Blizzard sticks to their older players, because they are usually better off financially than younger people, but in turn they are probably chasing a lot of those young people away with their B2P + fee entry barrier. Thus all of Blizzard's efforts at making the game more welcoming (think Exile's Reach, revamped levelling, mentor system, you name it) are largely negated by their current monetization structure.

Not to mention that, as some people have already mentioned, these days you need a pretty beefy PC to play an almost twenty (!!) years old game. Yet another big entry barrier... I remember the times when Blizzard was rightfully proud of making games that could run decently even on potato machines.

[Roflfaceroll]

Yes it is outdated. And the ingame shop is literally intended for F2P models. But Blizzard is too greedy to turn off the subscription money.

I have not talked to a single person under 25 years of age that has any interest in this game. And that's a problem. It's a game that only cares about their existing fanbase that is used to the subscription model.

The (F2p=free to pay) game models are more expensive then this by gating anything good in a game behind a crappy battlepass and anything worth getting costs money. Have you not seen diablo immortal? Have you been living under a rock? Did you not see their greed as they allowed individuals to spend upwards of $100k USD just to get legendary gems with their f2p model? People did the math too. It would take about 10 years of casual play to
make 1 of those 5 star legendary gems they bought of casual free play. By then the game would have gone through several season changes. So is their f2p model really fun if you are always irrelevant if you don't pay?

$15 a month for this is way better that any f2p model. People keep lying and saying,"but you don't have to pay". Ok then, how much does it cost in the f2p when you want relevant shit and you still have to pay? Right now lego skins in ow2 are $20usd/each and their new ones look like crap. There is a video of someone spending i believe over $30k to get a 5star lego gem in diablo immortal. Lol, and $15 is expensive.....

Also of course you usually won't see 25 and under in these games. I call that the doordash gen. $30+ to have 1 meal delivered to them. 3 meals a day so upwards of $90+ a day. Don't forget starbucks.( The only way i can even surmise how they are doing this is probably a lot of creditcard debt or only eating 1 meal a day. Yes, i am saying they are too broke or are too occupied trying to get out of debt to play these games.)(edit: it isn't creditcard debt turns out it is the short term loan apps which are just as bad https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/othe...dUZ?li=BBnbfcL ) Lol, what about you? Do you have a netflix, hulu, espn subscription? How would you like it if they took the route of f2p. They would provide a bunch of freeshows gated behind a bunch of ads, but anything worth watching would be $20 an episode or $40 per movie because hey that is now a premium product.

People that want f2p are full of it. You can tell they never stop to think about what they are actually getting/losing out of it.

[Lolites]

you can literally pay for mythic raid final boss

as you always could... well since existence of mythic difficulty, before it was heroic or normal, or whatever was the highest at the time, and it could be bought since vanila... token changed nothing about that...

[Lochton]

The WoW token is pay to win. You can literally buy currency from Blizzard so pay to win is a thing.

Please don't spread false information. You literally cannot buy currency from Blizzard, you buy it from another person. You don't buy a house from the real estate agent, but from another person, and just like Blizzard, the agent takes a fee.

WoW doesn't QA test, they let players do that, so again what are you paying for?

Blizzard DO operate with Quality Assurance teams, no company its size would run without its own QA. Whether they focus on the same as you, or not, is a different thing, but we know they are WAY less than the player base. You are paying to rent access to the game, and you have it.

You have no justification other than your emotions and WoW is my favorite game stop hating on it waaaaaaa

That is a justification, though? Playing something you enjoy is a fair point? Seeing the investment as being worth it, is a fair point?

- - - Updated - - -

Yes it is outdated. And the ingame shop is literally intended for F2P models. But Blizzard is too greedy to turn off the subscription money.

*shrugs* Maybe in your view correct but it is the lesser evil among its competitors, and not that expensive, nor is the shop built out for F2P but promotional stuff (Except for the damn Token).

I have not talked to a single person under 25 years of age that has any interest in this game. And that's a problem. It's a game that only cares about their existing fanbase that is used to the subscription model.

Hmm, you don't talk to many, do you? As a guide, I've seen a huge influx of new and returning players, ages varying from 15 to 65.

[rrayy]

Of course I don't have a scientificly valid evindence base of over 1000 people with another 1000 people of a control group that was not influenced by my question, prove my statement.

It's still my experience and opinion.

But you presented it as fact. ANd you also climed because the 5 people you talked to have no interest, that it is a problem. 5 people having no interest does not mean there is a problem. You can't prove it, therefore it is not fact nor the problem you claim it to be.

[Mask]

. 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.

No way. Buy to play and sub models are much better for the players than F2P nonsense. The only argument for wanting a game to be F2P is from the perspective of the company who can fleece more money out of people with predatory microtransactions. I vastly prefer paying a subscription than having to deal with a shop full of stuff making the game p2w.

There's more money to be had in a F2P model with battle passes and microtransactions. Whether that means more value for players is another matter entirely.

Yup, F2P might be good for the company. It's terrible for players.

[Dilbon]

I wish you could at least play the world content without paying a sub. Instanced content (raids, dungeons, battlegrounds/arena) for subscribers only, the rest f2p.

[T-34]

you can literally pay for mythic raid final boss my guy and you know what they will tell you to do,
"Kill your self so you don't wipe us"

You can pay better players than yourself to carry you if you are one of the wilfully unwilling.
Those better players cleared the content by themselves without any help.

There is no "pay to win" in WoW, at best you can pay your way to prove that you are lazy, bad and socially inept.

- - - Updated - - -

I read through this thread.

None of the posts in support of the sub demonstrate why the sub is useful. None. They're all speculative nonsense.

The sub doesn't justify anything to be frank. It's dated and we all know it.

In my view on FFXIV should continue to charge a sub largely because playtesting is done in house and that's the only justifiable cost the sub pays for. Every other argument is emotional as a means to prop up your favorite MMORPG.

There is no such thing as "useful" in a market model.
If a company can make its customers pay for its goods in a particular way then the customers value said good or service enough to accept those conditions.
If the customers would think otherwise then they would shop somewhere else.

The concept of "objective" or "justified" value is pure Marxism.

[Airlick]

No way. Buy to play and sub models are much better for the players than F2P nonsense. The only argument for wanting a game to be F2P is from the perspective of the company who can fleece more money out of people with predatory microtransactions. I vastly prefer paying a subscription than having to deal with a shop full of stuff making the game p2w.

F2P doesn't automatically mean "predatory" and "P2W". It often does in case of MMORPGs because they suck and the companies are pretty much forced to rely on being able to leech as much money as possible from a limited number of whales, and going P2W is the best way to guarantee that. But there's nothing inherently wrong with F2P systems, it's about how greedy companies get. There's plenty of non-MMORPG F2P games that are earning money mostly or entirely off entirely skippable cosmetics and they are making a killing. You just need a good game and enticing cosmetics to get your players to pay for optional stuff, and it's not at all impossible in case of MMORPGs, we just never got one good enough to sustain its playerbase.

[Sciborg]

The updated form of the subscription model is the battle pass, so I think I'm glad it's outdated.

[mbit2]

I vastly prefer paying a subscription than having to deal with a shop full of stuff making the game p2w.

You're just paying a sub on top of dealing with p2w mechanics. And that's precisely why people laugh at the those still defending paying a sub. All the supposed benefits of paying a sub are long gone.

[Hambo94]

Of course I don't have a scientificly valid evindence base of over 1000 people with another 1000 people of a control group that was not influenced by my question, prove my statement.

It's still my experience and opinion.

Just for the record I totally understood exactly what you were saying about your own personal experience. I am not surprised hearing it either, I think its probably more common to have your experience than not and the game is certainly far less appealing to new/younger players than it was back 10 years ago. Obviously we cant know 100% what the new player intake looks like but exactly that, all we have to go off is our own experiences and I understood what you meant.

Some people on this forum have serious problems being able to interpret and understand what others are saying, and it almost always seems to be centered around their inability to separate someones subjective opinion/personal experience, anecdotal evidence etc, from fact. They equate everything to a fact, and imply that everything you said was meant as a fact and or literally, even if they know that facts (such as in this case) are impossible to obtain and it should be an automatic given that we're talking about personal experience, let alone the fact that it was absolutely crystal clear from your wording that it was that anyway

I totally understood what you were throwing out there though, nothing unreasonable about what you said.

[Roflfaceroll]

I'm gonna use pizza as an example for this.

Sub = 1 whole pizza with condiments = $15

F2p= condiments(ranch dressing) is free ,but the pizza is cut into 6 slices and each slice is $20. (You also don't get to pick the toppings)

Now imagine the people wanting to play for free in a pizza restuarant eating nothing but ranch dressing....

[ifrah]

Looking around at the games in general, what would be the alternative method to get the revenue should the subscription model be ditched? Paid loot boxes? Being drowned in ads? Pay $ for item level increments when you loot an item? All of the aforementioned? I can't think of anything that would not make me feel nauseous, so I'm quite happy with the "outdated model."

[Stormwolf64]

The model stopped making sense the day they added a cash shop