WoW is a subscription game - why employ scummy F2P tactics?

[jellmoo]

The price hasn't increased but the amount of people buying games sure has. That's why games are able to stay at 60 dollars without trying to nickle and dime you.

If you think they're doing this because they have to then you're naive. WoW didn't need 10 million subs to be profitable. It's still very profitable right now even without any of the cash shop stuff.

They're doing these things because they want to do what mobile games do and abuse the fuck out of the whales.

Volume helps, but volume hasn't increased exponentially to cover cost. Remember that cost also involves risk, and not every game sells insane numbers of copies. Hugely successful games do, but many games simply don't see the kind of sales that offset the investment, which is why so many games are money losers. Look at literally every other entertainment product and service. Increased sales don't not offset increased cost. Prices go up. Video games are really unique in this regard.

It's not naivety though, it's an understanding of the business. No publisher is putting out games out of the goodness of their hearts. They are driven by profits. They are going to find ways to maximize profits. But they are beholden to shareholders. If shareholders don't like the direction of the company (i.e. they are not getting returns on investment) they replace the board and the board replaces the CEO and the company shifts focus to accomodate.

[exochaft]

I've played a hunter since Vanilla. Feeding your pet has more of an impact than ammo does. Getting hit cap was so stupid easy that it's barely a mechanic of the game. And people are learning now that needing resistance gear wasn't really as big of a necessity as they thought it was back in the day considering how people have been beating MC without fire resist gear.

I think there's an argument to be had that there was different tuning for a different skill level of the player base to some degree, especially when it comes to resistances (later phases of Classic with AQ/Naxx40 will probably make resistances shine more). If anything, I think having the option is perfectly fine since it can be used as a crutch, similar to gear creep over a tier w/o having to increase ilvls. In fact, I'm fairly certain the old resistance system still exists in the game, as it was still active in MoP even though no gear dropped anymore but you could still get 20-40% elemental damage resists if you had the gear from Cata/WotLK. However, I'd say our current damage reduction system is in place today due to the downside of the elemental resist system being random, and nowadays any explicit elemental resist is a fixed percentage... or stats exist that just reduce all damage or types of damage, similar to versatility and avoidance.

Systems aside, I think the mentality of the player base has shifted to some degree on these topics, as the older player base that would strive for survival gear is much smaller than it used to be despite content being much harder. Ask a random DPS what stats to choose and when, and I guarantee for most versatility never comes up unless it's one of their highest damage output stats, let alone stats like leech/avoidance. This is partly a design shift in WoW, as the raid encounter focus always seems to be DPS checks and mechanics checks that are 1-shots, not a unified raid effort of minimizing damage taken to avoid attrition. Even in the current mythic raid tier, almost everything is a DPS check and/or "if one person screws up, they're instantly dead or it's a wipe"... I'd like to see more trends towards you can recover if you screw up.

Anyways... why were we talking about resistances again? Not quite sure how this relates to the OP, unless we're discussing monetary systems and their relationship to the progression/changes of WoW. Assuming the argument was something along the lines of "Blizz is hoarding money, yet the game hasn't change!" or something like that.

[Relapses]

I dont understand why you dont understand this ota, like you said to me in my last post, maybe I am more wary of what the future holds for this store, but im already incredibly unhappy with whats in it. I have ZERO issue with them creating a mount or pet to be sold for cash that is donated to good causes, such as disasters, charities etc. I have ZERO issue with character transfers, realm changes, race changes, and the like being sold for cash as those are additional services to game content.

I have a MASSIVE issue when a game that we pay $15 a month to support the development of then sells the content we are paying to be developed, for additional cash. Why cant you see why that is wrong, I literally dont get it.

What do you think the sub fee is for? Its an MMO, we pay sub fees to keep development going continually and to keep costly servers and the like running and maintained 24/7/365.

MMO's have enormous amounts of content and systems that need to be developed, which is why they take so long to make, and thus why we pay so much more to play them (via our sub fee).

Anyone here that thinks that the sub fee isnt there to pay for development is delusional, because they dont want to accept they are paying a hell of a lot of money, to play a game, that is then asking for even more money for all those cool unique things they make with our money but dont want to give us under the fee we already paid!

Its quite simple. They know they can get away with it, because they do all these things slowly, step by step, and pull back whenever there is too much backlash. Theres well-documented studies into all these things and the numbers talk. For example, artificial scarcity, anyone who denies Blizzard did this with the mounts on the store is yet again just lying to themselves because they dont want to accept Blizzard would do it. Money talks, and its EXACTLY why they did it.

I thought I established this in my last post to you on this subject but it's clear you and I do not agree on the seriousness of this perceived issue. You see the cash shop as a slippery slope and envisage Blizzard becoming increasingly predatory unless we take a stand as consumers. I don't see it that way. The cash shop doesn't bother me and until Blizzard begins employing actual predatory tactics, I fail to see the purpose of complaining about something which obviously works in favor of the developers. You're free to have your moral repugnance towards its existence but please do not misunderstand my ambivalence towards its current incarnation as carte blanche support for abuse on Blizzard's part.

[Digitalspork]

It doesn't hurt the game directly - it hurts the players.

Nothing makes me want to play WoW less than seeing friends neglect their real lives to chase limited time achievements just because Blizzard arbitrarily (and without a warning) decided to nuke Deepwind Gorge.

They have been doing this since pre-Activision Involvement though... hello? BC Titles, OG Epic Mounts, etc etc

Don't act like this is a new practice just because you're upset about it.

I don't agree with it completely but if it allows them to allocate resources elsewhere to create new content I'm totally fine with it.

[TheRevenantHero]

I think there's an argument to be had that there was different tuning for a different skill level of the player base to some degree, especially when it comes to resistances (later phases of Classic with AQ/Naxx40 will probably make resistances shine more). If anything, I think having the option is perfectly fine since it can be used as a crutch, similar to gear creep over a tier w/o having to increase ilvls. In fact, I'm fairly certain the old resistance system still exists in the game, as it was still active in MoP even though no gear dropped anymore but you could still get 20-40% elemental damage resists if you had the gear from Cata/WotLK. However, I'd say our current damage reduction system is in place today due to the downside of the elemental resist system being random, and nowadays any explicit elemental resist is a fixed percentage... or stats exist that just reduce all damage or types of damage, similar to versatility and avoidance.

Systems aside, I think the mentality of the player base has shifted to some degree on these topics, as the older player base that would strive for survival gear is much smaller than it used to be despite content being much harder. Ask a random DPS what stats to choose and when, and I guarantee for most versatility never comes up unless it's one of their highest damage output stats, let alone stats like leech/avoidance. This is partly a design shift in WoW, as the raid encounter focus always seems to be DPS checks and mechanics checks that are 1-shots, not a unified raid effort of minimizing damage taken to avoid attrition. Even in the current mythic raid tier, almost everything is a DPS check and/or "if one person screws up, they're instantly dead or it's a wipe"... I'd like to see more trends towards you can recover if you screw up.

Anyways... why were we talking about resistances again? Not quite sure how this relates to the OP, unless we're discussing monetary systems and their relationship to the progression/changes of WoW. Assuming the argument was something along the lines of "Blizz is hoarding money, yet the game hasn't change!" or something like that.

The argument was they were trying to say Classic is a completely different game so right now Blizzard is offering two games for the price of one right now. Which is just ridiculous and it's the kind of mentality that empowers game companies to keep releasing remasters of games at full price, claiming it's a different game.

[Monoxide]

Cause he can i guess. Until the playerbase just stops playing because they get tired of the outright greed of companies like Activision they have no reason to stop milking their playerbase.

You're 100% right and for the life of me I can't understand why a massive boycott hasn't happened yet. I can't imagine there's anyone out there who looks at game releases and think it's being done well.

What I mean is, in the past, you bought a game, and you owned the game. That was it. You owned every aspect of it. You could sell it if you wanted, loan it to a friend, whatever, but the entire thing was yours. Now? You pay more for the game, but if you want all the cool stuff, you have to buy it before it comes out, and then you also need to buy the day 1 DLC, and all the future DLC, and all the microtransactions.

I'm 30 and even I can remember when games used to be $40. Then $50. Then $60. I understand inflation, this isn't inflation, it's greed. If you want to have everything in a new CoD release you're spending upwards of $120 and that's BEFORE you do any micro transactions for loot boxes just to be able to get all the available guns.

Why is this just accepted? If a new game came and and there was a real backlash against this kind of shit things would change. Could you imagine if a new CoD was released and it didn't break 100k sales? They would shit themselves just thinking about the massive losses it would cause them.

I'm not even going to get into a rant about how some games feel the need to have a release every single fucking year, with little to no changes (look at any sports title). I also feel like because it's such a cash grab, and people will reliably buy the games no matter how shitty they are, they keep this yearly release schedule intact.

I have very strong opinions about the video game industry, it's just disheartening.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

The argument was they were trying to say Classic is a completely different game so right now Blizzard is offering two games for the price of one right now. Which is just ridiculous and it's the kind of mentality that empowers game companies to keep releasing remasters of games at full price, claiming it's a different game.

Except that classic isn’t a remaster, wasn’t released at any extra cost, and no one has claimed it’s a different game then 2004 wow.

But hey if you can bend reality and make all the post cata changes non existent why not bend it a bit more.

[Relapses]

I have very strong opinions about the video game industry, it's just disheartening.

Yeah, why isn't it still the year 1997 anymore??? Why can't the video game industry not adapt to become more profitable? Why did all these fucking NORMIES have to start playing video games and spending all their money in ways I'm morally apposed to for reasons I can only vaguely define as an apprehension towards capitalism??? Grr! EA bad, praise Geraldo!

[apples]

You're 100% right and for the life of me I can't understand why a massive boycott hasn't happened yet. I can't imagine there's anyone out there who looks at game releases and think it's being done well.

What I mean is, in the past, you bought a game, and you owned the game. That was it. You owned every aspect of it. You could sell it if you wanted, loan it to a friend, whatever, but the entire thing was yours. Now? You pay more for the game, but if you want all the cool stuff, you have to buy it before it comes out, and then you also need to buy the day 1 DLC, and all the future DLC, and all the microtransactions.

I'm 30 and even I can remember when games used to be $40. Then $50. Then $60. I understand inflation, this isn't inflation, it's greed. If you want to have everything in a new CoD release you're spending upwards of $120 and that's BEFORE you do any micro transactions for loot boxes just to be able to get all the available guns.

Why is this just accepted? If a new game came and and there was a real backlash against this kind of shit things would change. Could you imagine if a new CoD was released and it didn't break 100k sales? They would shit themselves just thinking about the massive losses it would cause them.

I'm not even going to get into a rant about how some games feel the need to have a release every single fucking year, with little to no changes (look at any sports title). I also feel like because it's such a cash grab, and people will reliably buy the games no matter how shitty they are, they keep this yearly release schedule intact.

I have very strong opinions about the video game industry, it's just disheartening.

ok lets go back to the old system. now games can only be sold for $40 and theyll be something a team of 5 people can make in 6 months.

and everyone was happy for ever and ever

[Relapses]

ok lets go back to the old system. now games can only be sold for $40 and theyll be something a team of 5 people can make in 6 months.

and everyone was happy for ever and ever

And that system's name? Albert Einstein.

::loud applause::

[Beefkow]

Wow was losing subscribers little by little after cata, to compensate for losing monthly subscribers, they offered cosmetic garbage or perks with money.

Thinking of all of those allied races in BFA, I would imagine that's where blizz made their profits.

[Wilian]

Because they can get away with it. Threads like these are great example of this as people flock to defend their double dipping shit practices.

[Seranthor]

You're 100% right and for the life of me I can't understand why a massive boycott hasn't happened yet.

Why? I believe the answer can be found in 'All hat, no cattle'

[Schattenlied]

I'm talking about utter crap like:
-store mounts
-character boosts
-"get this now before it's too late and we arbitrarily remove it"
-purchasable cosmetics
-whale targeting
-cute fox people

I mean yeah sure it allows Activi$$ion Bill$$ard to rake in more money but it damages the integrity of the game. You'd expect to see crap like this in games like League of Legends and all of those billions of mobile "clash of clashes" clones. Not a monthly-sub based game like WoW.

Listen up, Kotick. If you want to suck $$$ out of your hapless victims then by all means do so but do it in a separate mobile game that is clearly designed to bleed the whales dry. Leave WoW alone and let us have our fantasy RPG.

There are no scummy f2p tactics here, because there is no pay to win. There is no problem with any of this, you're being obtuse.

[jellmoo]

I'm 30 and even I can remember when games used to be $40. Then $50. Then $60. I understand inflation, this isn't inflation, it's greed. If you want to have everything in a new CoD release you're spending upwards of $120 and that's BEFORE you do any micro transactions for loot boxes just to be able to get all the available guns.

Here's the thing though. You really don't. The last time games cost in the area of $40 was during the NES days. And if you account for inflation, those $40 back then is more than the $60 we pay now.

SNES games went upwards of $80 in some cases. Again, adjusting for inflation we are wayyy higher than the current prices.

The cost of making AAA games has skyrocketed, but the outright price has, if anything, actually gone down. Companies are using MTX to make up the difference. And when done well (cosmetic items that don't impact gameplay) allows for them to spend the money to ddevelop games people enjoy, whilst supplementing the shortfall with extra income by people who want those (non-essential) extras.

Is every company doing MTX well? Absolutely not. There are some shitty practices. But companies are also seeing a lot of backlash from it and adjusting. Look at the shitstorm that Battlefront caused for EA. They are being considerably more careful with how they handle MTX now.

[kappalol]

Imagine a company ignoring inflation of money in the world and asking same price for a subscription for the last 15 years and having a 100% optimal cosmetic shop which has zero impact on game as whole for people to donate more because they love the game instead of increasing the price player must play to have access into the game.

[jellmoo]

You don't have an understanding of business. Yes everyone knows why they're doing it. I spelled it out for you. Money. Also "Increased sales don't not offset increased cost" is your logic? Because that's so hilariously wrong it's funny. Using that logic there'd be no discount for selling products in bulk. The price of an item can be lower when more of it are being sold.

Dude, I've worked in the video game business for more than 15 years. Yes, I know it. And you need to read what I said: Increased sales do not offset increased costs because the volume of sales are not at the level needed to offset it. Because the price of games has not gone up, yet every single attributable cost absolutely has skyrocketed, volume is not a solution. Your profit per unit is constantly going down, to the point that many games simply are not profitable outside of outliers. Where do you make more money: If you sell 2.5 million copies at $30 profit per unit, or if you sell 5 million copies at $10 profit per unit? Even doubling your sales (which isn't what's happening anyway) will leave you with less profit because your costs have gone up so dramatically.

Here's the reality. Diablo 2 sold 4 million copies in its first year of release. Diablo 3 reached 3.5 million sold in the first day of its release and had 4.7 million players on the first day when you also combine the people that got the WoW annual pass for it. The market has become a behemoth compared to what it once was. To suggest inflation has become a problem for them is nonsensical. Same for costs to make a game. The only reason they're investing huge budgets into making triple A games is because there's a lot of money to be made off of sales alone. You want to know how people manage to make a profit of less popular games? They don't give the game a triple A budget. Triple A games are the exception not the rule when it comes to costs of making a game.

This... This is just flat out wrong. If we're talking about big publishers (which we have been) we're talking about AAA games. And even if we move away from AAA, the budgets of lower tiered games from large publishers is still monumental. The industry languishes in development for year after year, with development life cycles continuing to get longer and longer. Every day that a game is not released is a day it is costing a company money. And this time is growing. And yet the cost to the user has stayed the same, or actually gone down when you factor in inflation. This is the reason that small studios are dying. They take upfronts from publishers to keep them floating, but development becomes so massive and bloated that they cannot possibly survive so they rush products out.

What you're doing is making excuses for why they're doing it. They don't need to do any of this to cover the costs. They're still the most popular subscription based MMO and make a lot of money off of selling expansions and subs. WoW never needed to become as successful as it did to be profitable so even when it has declined severely it's still making loads of money. Do the math and realize how much money WoW makes off just selling expansions which attract a much larger amount of people than those who stay subbed to them. Battle for Azeroth sold over 3.4 million copies in the first day. They aren't hurting when it comes to money.

I'm not making excuses. That's the thing. I'm explaining the reasons they are doing this. You are just plugging your ears going "lalala no it's because they're greedy!".You don't seem to understand that:

a) They are making less money per unit sold than they did before
b) Their costs are continuing to increase
c) They are always, *always* going to look at the best way to maximize revenue.

People are 100% allowed and should be encouraged to be pissed off at Blizzard for doing tactics that try to prey on the whales for more money. That's mobile game tactics and they've always been scummy. Hell at least the mobile games actually have a reason for doing so because their game is free.

And I'm not saying don't complain. Complain to your hearts content. I would encourage you to speak with your wallet if you believe so strongly about it. But at the same time using misinformation or faulty premises to make your point doesn't do you any favours. I just happen to know the other side of the equation. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but this is the approach that game companies are taking. They will always seek ways to maximize profit. That's why they exist. This is their chosen strategy. It could change in the future. Enacting new laws may very well force them to abandon this strategy. But if that happens, I can guarantee that we will see an increase in price or some other strategy to offset that loss of revenue.

[TheRevenantHero]

Except that classic isn’t a remaster, wasn’t released at any extra cost, and no one has claimed it’s a different game then 2004 wow.

But hey if you can bend reality and make all the post cata changes non existent why not bend it a bit more.

The point I was making is that with Classic included in the subscription, you're not getting an extra game. You're basically getting a dumbed down version of the game you're paying for. Is it a different experience? To a degree, sure. But it's not a completely different game.

[Garymorilix]

As with anything on the free market the shop only exists because there is enough demand for it.

If you are the type of person who bitches and moans about it but still buy the shit from there then why do you act surprised?

Nobody cares what you think. As long as you buy that shit you approve of it. Simple af.

So start putting your money where your mouth is.

[jellmoo]

100% agree, its so SAD to see people defend them for using business tactics that are so predatory and obvious! You can literally google this stuff, everyone, go on youtube and google GDC Mobile game monetization and watch the videos there and you will see how they use the 80:20 rule and talk about whales, artificial scarcity and everything, they talk about this at public game conferences! Why are you defending Blizzard for doing this!

I was working at EA in their mobile department when they developed their mobile MTX strategy. It was terrible, especially in the first incarnation and it backfired horribly. People hated it. Reviews were killer and it broke multiple franchise games. They've adjusted since then, but the damage was bad.

But, the situation between mobile and console is definitely not apples to apples, and the practices have some pretty stark differences even if they both use MTX. There are methods to execute a solid MTX strategy that aren't onerous and don't make the customer feel cheated. It's important for companies to find that line.

Well I too work in the gaming industry and I call total baloney on some of the things you're saying here!

a) Blizzard is making more money than ever before PER unit sold, because of microtransactions, in the past they earned a flat out expansion purchase plus subscription fees monthly, over the years they introduced extremely expensive character services, then character boosts, then mounts and pets in a store, then transmog, then cash tokens. You're also forgetting the fact that Blizzard priced the game at $15 a month expecting way less sales than they did, and to offset expensive development costs with a small playerbase they needed more expensive subscription fees. Blizzard makes a huge profit at current subscription numbers let alone historic ones. The only way you can argue they are making less per unit would have been pre-store, pre-services, when inflation at like freaking 2% would have eaten into their profits, and thats nothing.

That's my point though. Blizzard is supplementing lower revenue with those additional revenue streams. They sell cosmetic items and services in order to offset the increased costs and smaller playerbase. Also remember that WoW is an utterly unique product. There is no other title out there with the same longevity and traction. It is a massive outlier in the industry. You also have to look at all of the MMOs that tried and failed to cash in on the craze.

b) Their costs are continuing to increase, what you mean after they reduced their team size to the lowest ever amount during Cata, or the fact that they cut hundreds of employees this year, making customer support slower for everyone. Of course they increase, that happens with inflation, but again, they were already making huge profits per player so whats the excuse here?

Costs are *always* rising. Salaries go up. Rent goes up. Utilities go up. Maintenance is always a thing. The dollar of today is not the same thing as the dollar of 15 years ago. The development time needed to accomplish something today is not the same as it was 15 years ago. The excuse is that shareholders expect a return on investment. They expect to see share value to go up and for them to make money. If they don't, whether it's because costs go up or revenue goes down, then there is a problem. There is no magic thing such as "enough profit".

c) And here you answered point A and B, this all comes down to excessive, extreme corporate greed. You are 100% right, they are always looking for MORE. Its a treadmill, they make the company run as fast as possible to just about be able to keep pace to meet goals, then they make it run faster to reach a greater goal, until they fall over, its the same for any sales person on earth, their targets are never ever going any direction except upwards.

Yes? Companies are greedy. Are you sure you work in the gaming industry? This is the nature of our corporate capitalistic society. They expect growth. They expect that if you made 1.3% additional profit last year, you should make 1.5% this year. This really shouldn't be surprising. If they make less money per unit sold of a game, they need to offset that. They look for additional revenue streams to do just that. This isn't limited to gaming. Lool at every entertainment company under the sun developing their own streaming service. They don't do it because it's fun, thy do it because they are looking to capitalize on their content and monetize it to the best of their ability. It isn't always great for consumers. But it's reality.

Once a company goes public, they enter this corporate world of desire for never ending increasing profits, and this is what we are seeing. To put it bluntly, I will say lalalala to all arguments, except the truth, which is that Blizzard is on the leash of greed, which is being held by investors, and that is as simple as it gets.

And this is the way the business world works. If you don't like it, let them know by not supporting their products.