Yearly Expansions, price point?

[Chickat]

soon enough we will we paying for patches. it's only a matter of time.

That wont happen.

[Chirri]

Geez. That's hard to really answer. If they actually managed to push out an expansion per year, with consistent updates and no huge lag in between final content and the next expansion ... I'd probably be willing to pay $45-50 for CE, $35 normal.

Yes, that means I'd be paying more "per year" for an expansion. It also means I'd (hopefully) remain interested in the game and have something to look forward to on a more consistent basis than the current 2 year cycle. I would be willing to pay for that, so long as I enjoyed what they were putting out, and they didn't increase the subscription cost, either.

EDIT: if it's crap they're putting out, though, it's crap. I won't stick around if that's all they have to offer.

[Chickat]

I wonder if a no expansion model but pay per patch model could work?

15 dollars a month.
5 dollars for minor patches.
9.99 for large patches.

Large patch would come every 6 months and include one or two new zones, a new raid, and occasionally a new or improved feature. Small patches would come every 2 months and would include new dungeons, scenarios or battlegrounds. Instanced content non raid content.

[Marrilaife]

Wait a minute, what does how fast it comes out have to do with the price? I mean, if it contains the same amount of features, why would it be cheaper because it's faster?

If it contains only 2 raid tiers instead of 3-4 then yes, it's less content. Doesn't matter that content is not launch content as long as you can access it after paying for expansion no. X.

Protesting doesn't mean anything for them anyway, if you want to play, you will pay, so far 7 million people said "yes, I will pay" and 5 million said "no I won't" since the sub peak times. Only time will tell how much they can gouge the price before people go "no, really, I do like WOW, but not THAT much" and just quit.

[theWocky]

My personal opinion is that this is a very slippery slope for Blizzard.

I will wait and see, but if you're only going to get 2 tiers of raid in this expansion - and that lasts a year - and you paid US$60 for it, then... who's to say you're going to pay that for the next one.

Also, US$15 per month + a conservative US$30 per year may be a bit too much for some of the player base - they may start thinking...

"wait a minute, I'm paying US$210 per year for one game?"

It's just too soon - even though you are already paying that, I think the shorter time period may prompt people to question things.

Heck, do you know how many games you could buy on steam for US$410 for 2 years + an expansion - especially taking sales into account?

[IIamaKing]

I wonder if a no expansion model but pay per patch model could work?

15 dollars a month.
5 dollars for minor patches.
9.99 for large patches.

Large patch would come every 6 months and include one or two new zones, a new raid, and occasionally a new or improved feature. Small patches would come every 2 months and would include new dungeons, scenarios or battlegrounds. Instanced content non raid content.

This wont work because blizzard will not want that much separation in the player base and the headache of balancing around people running a million different patch versions.

[TheTaurenOrc]

This is actually pretty telling of Activision's influence on Blizzard.

So they increased their team capacity significantly, they could then keep a steady flow of patch content without hindering the next expansions development. The whole 'it would cost a raid tier' is no longer a problem right? But noooo they decided it would be better to load it all on getting an expansions out faster.

The whole thing smacks of Activision and its CoD business model.

[Haytham]

30 / 35 dollars imo at most.

[K i s u]

I would happily pay $20-30 yearly for an expansion. I appreciate the fact they're trying to give us "content faster" but I simply personally wouldn't be able to justify giving $50 a year in addition to my sub fee.

That being said I don't expect the price to actually dip below $40.

[Kelimbror]

If my feet were to the fire, I'd say $15 for regular and $30 for CE's if they went yearly. Most of their revenue should be made from subscriptions anyways. I think this would also be a good time to go the route of SOE and have a Blizzard subscription. Maybe it's $25-$30/month, but it includes all expansions for all games for free as well as additional perks/items like one character service a month, one pack of HS cards, XP boost for Diablo, etc and account rewards for certain lengths of time. IE 6 months gets you a free mount and pet, transmog item or wings for D3, etc.

[Vynestra]

Why would they cut the price in half, to release it every year? If they provide the same content as other xpacs it should be full price, there is no point in making the same amount of xpac revenue in 2 years, yearly just cut in half, with more work being poured into it.

If the xpac has as much content as other xpacs, it should be full price.

[Kelimbror]

If the xpac has as much content as other xpacs, it should be full price.

I find it mildly amusing that you think yearly expansions will equal the same content as current models. I also find it amusing that you think the price is acceptable for current expansions even though 1+ years of it is on nothing. Blizzard will ultimately agree with you however since they've already raised the price with nothing showing it's worth it.

[Deadite]

Pretty sure it will be the 50 bucks from here out.

Have to agree with that. Why would they charge less when people will buy it at $50?

[Abysal]

How about allowing year round subs with a reward of getting upgraded when a new expansion comes out for free?

IMO it'd be a good way to stop from bleeding subs, which ultimately offsets the loss of revenue from less people paying for expansions.

[Jtbrig7390]

Half the content half the time to make it = half the price.

Bad enough there is a good chance WOD is going to only have 2 raid tiers and yet is costing $10 more. Funny thing is I just said this in another thread. Its really starting to look like blizzard wants to do 1 year to 1 and half year xpac release's.

To be clear there is no fucking way I am paying $50 for a year release of the game on top of $15 a month. If blizzard wants to do yearly xpac release's at $50 or even $60 they have to drop the sub fee in order for me to play personally.

There is ZERO chance yearly xpac release's will have the same content as ones done longer like Wrath/MOP or even Cata for that matter.

[TheTaurenOrc]

Half the content half the time to make it = half the price.

Yeeehhhh...except its doesnt really work that way. Its the old classic:

[Jtbrig7390]

Yeeehhhh...except its doesnt really work that way. Its the old classic:

Sorry but in a lot of places that graph is BS. There is a difference in a decent amount of time to make something and it taking way to long.

Also to add in my opinion WOD isn't even meeting two of those. At most it may be good but its sure as hell isn't fast or cheap. Sorry this is 2014 I want all 3 call it greed or whatever.

FFXIV content patchs meets all 3 marks for me. Why can't a WoW xpac do the same.

[Thetruth1400]

I'm fine with them keeping the sub fee, if their expansions are dropped in price.

This is Blizzard though, so I'd guess that their expansions are going to continue to be $50 from here on out, and the rest of the world might also see a price inflation in the sub fees as well.

They will milk this cow until it's a dried up corpse, and even then Blizzard will kick it a few times to get those last bits of change out from inside.

For me, WoD is nowhere near worth the $50 price point, let alone if they're turning around yearly expansions, which means even less per expansion than usual. This game used to give four plus raids, tons of dungeons and tons more content then we've seen since Cata, where it's slowly dropped down, to MoP which had even less, to WoD which has by far the least and most pathetic showing so far.

If we're going to be seeing yearly expansions, we can expect WoD to be on the high end of expectations for what they'll deliver which sure as hell isn't worth $50, let alone the $30 which is where you'd expect such a low amount of content xpac to be.

[TheTaurenOrc]

Sorry but in a lot of places that graph is BS. There is a difference in a decent amount of time to make something and it taking way to long.

Also to add in my opinion WOD isn't even meeting two of those. At most it may be good but its sure as hell isn't fast or cheap. Sorry this is 2014 I want all 3 call it greed or whatever.

FFXIV content patchs meets all 3 marks for me. Why can't a WoW xpac do the same.

It is reality. It being 2014 has nothing to do with it. You might believe that FFXIX managed to meet 3 from your perspective, but I can guarantee it did not. Somewhere in development someone had to make a compromise.

Perhaps it wasn't as fast as you believe and it was in development longer than you thought.
Perhaps it wasn't cheap but you as the consumer didn't have to eat the cost.
Perhaps it was good but not as good as it could have been.

[Kelimbror]

*snip*

The problem of course being that you posted a development chart when he's talking about the consumer side. You're essentially arguing over different topics.