I think MMO-C is the best proof that subscription should be a thing in WoW.
I think MMO-C is the best proof that subscription should be a thing in WoW.
like spammers, cheaters and dickheads aren't already a problem. The day wow goes free to play is the instant i uninstall and never look back
Blood Elves were based on a STRONG request from a poll of Asian players where many remarked on the Horde side that they and their girlfriends wanted a non-creepy femme race to play (Source)
People have made the point before that it keeps toxic players away. I tend to agree with that.
Check out the shop on the AoC website. They are selling the game with alpha/beta access in different packages including one that is $375 that includes 9 months of game time with a $135 value. That is a $15 a month of game time. It also has $125 in cash shop currency. Even if it was free to play it is clear they are having a subscription as part of the core model
"Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."
I've never felt as though the game itself ever had any type of pay to win item for sale or whatever. The sub we pay, in my own opinion, has been the preventing force behind this.
Subscription models are miles beyond the not-free-to-play ones. There's no comparison.
Of course, WoW isn't helped by the fact that they, too, have pay-for "prestige" items.
If you don't earn them in game, other people just roll their eyes when they see you riding around on or dressed in something you just threw money at.
Thanks to the WoW Token everything can be earned in Game, and trust me the cash shop is nowhere near as bad as ESO or Guild Wars 2, starting with Bag slots (ESO and GW2), to one sub only crafting bag (Sub only!) the huge account of money for DLC and chapters... there is nothing free about having fun in those two games!
No, if anything I'd rather they upped the sub by a few dollars and hired a bunch more people.
I think a lot of people would happily pay 50c more per month to hire one person whose fulltime job was adding RPG, or immersive elements into the game. Or another 50c to constantly develop new customisation options.
No sub - lower quality product.
fuck f2p. absolutely no .thank the fuck the game has sub therefore blizz cannot open an item shop thatdirectly sells mythic level stuff for 99 dollars.
"Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."
While I agree with your point of view... my definition of pay-to-win is when you are able to buy !performance enhancing! items that dont actually exist, and the act of buying them "creates them".... on the other hand, buying boosts and items off the AH, you still need to have ppl selling an actual item drop, or willing/skilled enough to boost you even if you do not contribute during the boost run
If the queues are already an issue, I can't imagine how much worse it will be if wow went F2P. There would probably be 10x the amount of players as there is now, so they would need to open a load of new servers, which is something they try to avoid if possible.
Queues are high has nothing to do with size of playerbase.
For PvE there is simply no reason at all to go LFR and this is pretty ok, especially this far in patch. Once LFR was first released queues were relatively short.
Same goes for HC dungeons, no reason at all, and again, not bad because it doesn't force players that far outgear the content to run easiest content.
For PvP it's simply faction imbalance. Make a mode FFA where you are jus being clumped with other people regardless of faction and queue times literally disappear.
Nah, i would not like WoW turned to F2P model. Especially when it's led by a greedy company like Activision-Blizzard.
You wouldn't pay for subscription, sure. But you would need a premium account to play this game without losing your mind.
Example premium account features, routinely encountered in other MMO-s:
-Queue priority. Non-premium users suffer long waiting times. Given that we can already experience long waits on large servers, on F2P it would be nearly impossible to play without a PACC
-Limited bag space. Imagine that you only have your backpack and one bag slot in bank and inventory. Premium account users get full access equivalent to today capacity. They could even go beyond that and implement POE model, in which you can buy additonal bag slots on top of regular Premium membership, eg extending your inventory to 10 bag slots for a price (priced like $5 per bag slot)
-Significantly increased leveling times, heirlooms locked behind premium membership. Paid XP boost to max remains, also paid XP potions could pop up. Eg $5 for +100%XP for 24h potion.
-Paid reputation boosts, return of time-consuming dungeon attunements, but unlike TBC, with paid items available to completely skip them
-Queueing systems locked behind premium membership. You still could enter LFR or LFG with premade groups and walk there... yeah, right.
-Addon support locked behind premium membership. Non premium account just wouldn't load them, you press enter world and you see generic UI with all addons turned off.
Technically you could still see all the content in the game without paying anything. But that would be made significantly harder and more inconvinient. Sure, it's not a big deal if you are completely new to the game and just want to try it out without having to overcome a large financial entry barrier, but once you cap and start playing endgame it would be unbearably annoying to not pay for PACC and paid features. You'd end up paying more money for this game than you currently do. That's how they are designed in the first place - draw you in, hook you up and then milk you hard.
It would help if you could cite where you're pulling your numbers from.
Anyhow, according to Gamepedia, in 2014, Blizzard divided it's development staff into teams of 100-300 people. Which means WoW had a development team consisting of between 100-300 people (likely being on the bigger end of that scale being one of their bigger IPs.
This picture here was taken in 2017 and is of the entire development team. Which by my estimation puts the team somewhere in the region of 200-250 people.
You'll notice that I italicised the word development. The development team isn't everyone who works on WoW. Nor does it include the company executive. If I were to guess, I'd say that sales, marketing, finance, legal, customer support are probably at least double, probably even more, the number of developers (hence why Blizzard has 5K employees).
Firstly, the cost of employing someone is a lot more than just their salary. There is rent, furniture, utilities, computer equipment, software licences etc etc etc.
Secondly, your estimate of what they earn is massive off.
https://www.payscale.com/research/US...ainment/Salary
https://www.zippia.com/activision-bl...rs-155/salary/
On average they are earning around 90K. Even their lowliest employees are earning close to 60K. And you were guessing 48K as the upper end?
Even if you're being extremely conservative, there is no way that WoW costs less than around $50M a year in salaries alone. Once you add other expenses it's likely well of $100M.
So to get it to survive on less than $20M of income would require them to chop between 60 and 80% of their staff. It would also mean a similar reduction in their ability to deliver content.
If you start to consider what the real numbers are (instead of making up fantastical numbers that fit your narrative), it makes a lot of sense that Blizzard need to use the shop to boost their revenue. If they didn't, they'd either need to cut costs (which means less development) or tell their shareholders to accept less profits (which means no more WoW).