What SHOULD a WOW subscription price be?

[Relapses]

The world has changed and it's not only things like inflation or stagnant game pricing that needs to be factored in. We need to look at how our entertainment content is consumed and paid for to get an idea of what the real value of an MMO could be.

The only difference between the sub in 2004 and the sub in 2021 is that its slightly less profitable in 2021 than it was in 2004. I would say that WoW's subscription is uniquely resistant against inflation as the profit margin on the subscription is so insanely high they could reasonably keep it at $15/mo until the end of time and it'd still be making money.

[Ennalorsilvertongue]

what do you think a WoW subscription should be per month?

$17.50-$18.00 per month, and make all expansions free.

There's a huge downside to having a two year, $60ish dollar expansion roll out, and that is: if you don't like the expansion, you're already out $60.

By increasing the base subscription cost by $2.50ish per month, Blizzard would make the same amount in a two year cycle as they would selling the expacs, IF they make the content worthwhile. It would change their development approach, and force them to do better about really delivering on content on a routine basis, but I think it would also make the game much more accessible.

A major hold up for a number of my friends who'd LIKE to be able to play, is that they don't wanna shell out the cash for new expansions when Blizzard has such a garbage track record as of late with expansions.

[Accendor]

Well not "every" but I assume you mean things like KSM and AotC?

Yeah I mean ok, it does not buy every achievement, but it buys you everything that is doable in a group which is ALMOST everything.
Things that do not work e.g. is Skilling Fishing (lol) or archeology , but even skilling regular professions gets massively easier if you buy tokens, so there is that.

[TheRevenantHero]

Well you should always get what you pay for. So with how terrible the game has become, there really shouldn't be a subscription anymore.

[Goat7]

In the current state of the game, the in game support from GM's and the turn around time for tickets, i would say the game needs to have no sub fee.

Back in the day in vanilla the customer support was awesome, could open a ticket in game and get a GM response in minutes. We had someone using racist hate language in /say waiting to get into WSG outside the entrance, within minutes our ticket was answered, the GM banned the player within minutes from digging up the chat. Loot issues, name issues, or quest issues or pretty much anything was responded to instantly with knowledgeable ppl that were so helpful.

Now the customer support is a joke at best. The community can pretty much say and do whatever they want without any consequence. The game is really bad as well. Why would you want to pay $15 a month or anything a month for this?

[jellmoo]

The only difference between the sub in 2004 and the sub in 2021 is that its slightly less profitable in 2021 than it was in 2004. I would say that WoW's subscription is uniquely resistant against inflation as the profit margin on the subscription is so insanely high they could reasonably keep it at $15/mo until the end of time and it'd still be making money.

I actually wonder how much the profitability has changed. Certainly inflation would need to be factored in, but I'm curious as to how much improved efficiency would have let them reduce costs. I'm sure they are able to leverage added expertise to simplify maintenance, as well as changing their server configuration to keep the system running more cheaply.

Then the question also becomes whether or not we factor in MTX on top of it? It wasn't available when WoW launched, but has become an additional revenue source since, and has been continuously expanded upon.

It's actually possible that their subscription is more profitable today per user than it was when WoW launched. which is incredibly interesting. There really isn't a comparable beast to what WoW is in this regard, so it kind of remains this huge outlier when it comes to monetized gaming content. My big issue is that I think that the entertainment landscape has changed so much since 2004 that it's tough to say that the subscription fee still holds the same value as it once did, which could mean that an adjustment would make sense.

[Drusin]

Well you should always get what you pay for. So with how terrible the game has become, there really shouldn't be a subscription anymore.

Ah, but that is a matter of opinion, if someone thinks wow is the best game in the entire universe then they'll say it's fine if Blizz charges more.

Why would you want to pay $15 a month or anything a month for this?

Easy, gives me an unbeatable game to sink years of time into Wow is an excellent game for collectors.

Yeah I mean ok, it does not buy every achievement, but it buys you everything that is doable in a group which is ALMOST everything.
Things that do not work e.g. is Skilling Fishing (lol) or archeology , but even skilling regular professions gets massively easier if you buy tokens, so there is that.

You know what I was doing in 2002? Playing Morrowind I sank hundreds of hours into that game and the one thing I always wanted was a game I couldn't beat. In my eyes wow can't be beaten, others have a different opinion, some people like to get CE or Glad or KSM and say "I beat the patch" lol. I have a different view on it, I realize others have their views as well which is why my stance is

I still say since there's no agreed upon definition of P2W if you say something is P2W then you're right, for you

[Relapses]

I actually wonder how much the profitability has changed. Certainly inflation would need to be factored in, but I'm curious as to how much improved efficiency would have let them reduce costs. I'm sure they are able to leverage added expertise to simplify maintenance, as well as changing their server configuration to keep the system running more cheaply.

Then the question also becomes whether or not we factor in MTX on top of it? It wasn't available when WoW launched, but has become an additional revenue source since, and has been continuously expanded upon.

It's actually possible that their subscription is more profitable today per user than it was when WoW launched. which is incredibly interesting. There really isn't a comparable beast to what WoW is in this regard, so it kind of remains this huge outlier when it comes to monetized gaming content. My big issue is that I think that the entertainment landscape has changed so much since 2004 that it's tough to say that the subscription fee still holds the same value as it once did, which could mean that an adjustment would make sense.

That's an interesting thought. At the time WoW was released, $15/mo was the standard subscription fee so I'm not sure if Blizzard really did a whole lot of cost evaluation since it was the going price for a number of different MMOs at the time. (EQ/DAoC being the primary examples.) Technology has certainly improved leaps and bounds since then so it's quite realistic to reason that the technical overhead cost is smaller today then it was then. You're also right about the MTX stuff, too. It's really hard to know exactly how profitable these are when compared to subscriptions, especially given the fact that you can convert in-game currency into Blizzard balance these days. I'd say with a fair amount of certainty they're more profitable than their first iteration, the TCG stuff. Suffice to say, given all these factors it's no surprise Blizzard no longer releases subscriber numbers.

[Chumahki]

I've been paying a sub (or more than one sub) since I started paying $9.89/mo for EverQuest in 1999. $15/mo today is a bargain. That's only an increase of $5.11/mo over 22 years. The sub price should increase, imo.

[Ikza]

With what we're currently getting, 5€ would be the fairest price.

Back in the day, the subscription had some strong selling points

1- Managing of the game/servers: Nowadays everyone does it for free, although most games opt for skins and shit for revenue. Blizzard has the overpriced cash shop, and although it doesn't compare to lets say skins in league, its still a strong source of income.

2- Personalized and attentive customer support. We went from this to having one of the hardest times actually getting something out of the GMs. Everything is automated to tell you to F off with your problems. You're no longer treated like a valued customer, only as a profit generating entity out of your mistakes.
- "Oh you f*cked up something? Oh thats a shame, you'll have to spend 1 month correcting it? Oh no, look at you, poor guy with 13€ less... We're so bummed but we cant do sh*t about it"
*insert southpark cable company meme"

3- Streamlined and scheduled quality content. I dont think I need to talk about any of this, its no surprise to anyone. Changes not being made out of stubborness, patches taking ages to be deployed, P2 in classic ONLY being released in an apologetic way for the player base to "calm down" with the scandals

4- Bot policing was MUCH better before. Nowadays bots just run rampant in every server and version of the games, and blizzard takes no action just for the small revenue they can milk out of it. Before being banned, a bot can make SO MUCH MORE money out of Wow than blizzard can make out of them. Its ridiculous.



WoW lost all of these "virtues", so there's actually no good selling points for the monthly 13€ anymore. Only reason I dont want it free to play is that I genuinely think that f2p will attract toxic players and many more bots to an already heavily monetized pixel economy.

[Soon-TM]

In the current state of the game, the in game support from GM's and the turn around time for tickets, i would say the game needs to have no sub fee.

Back in the day in vanilla the customer support was awesome, could open a ticket in game and get a GM response in minutes. We had someone using racist hate language in /say waiting to get into WSG outside the entrance, within minutes our ticket was answered, the GM banned the player within minutes from digging up the chat. Loot issues, name issues, or quest issues or pretty much anything was responded to instantly with knowledgeable ppl that were so helpful.

Now the customer support is a joke at best. The community can pretty much say and do whatever they want without any consequence. The game is really bad as well. Why would you want to pay $15 a month or anything a month for this?

Even during Legion, CS was at least decent in my experience. But now, all you get is an understaffed roster of GMs who tell you to look up stuff on Wowhead, when you never asked them for Wowhead info in the first place. Sometimes, it's as if they plainly don't understand good ol' English LOL

Therefore, $15/mo + box tag during Legion may have been OK, but now it doesn't cut it anymore. Besides, devs are hellbent on timegating the everliving #$&% out of the game, so it is only reasonable to timegate my money.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I know that everyone here is willing to pay $15/month. (Aside from the gold token subscriptions.)

If you could wave a magic wand, what do you think a WoW subscription should be per month?

I don't have a problem with subsidizing a company so they can produce more content. The problem is that I don't get bang for my buck staying subscribed year long to WoW as compared to its competitors.

For retail WoW, $15 a month would be worth it if I actually got $180 of content out of the game every year (ontop of the $50 expansion every 2 years). Alas, you pay $50 for the expansion and $120 a year but you barely get 20-30 hours of quality content every 2 years. It's rather sad that private server deliver more new maps and new classes for free than retail does.

Contrast that with FFXIV, where you pay a $13 subscription fee (about $156 per year), and the expansions cost $40. The expansion brings about 50 hours of quality content, AND you get about another 20-30 hours of quality content in the post-launch patches.

Also contrast with GW2. A new content update comes out about once every 4 months, and costs $2.50. A content patch takes about 2 hours to complete. There are 28 content updates, so that translates to about $70 you need to drop to get all of the content patches. A new expansion costs $30. So you need to drop $100 to get all of the content in the game. Paying for content in GW2 is cheaper than WoW, but you're just getting far, far less content than if you subscribe to FFXIV. Also, GW2 has an incredibly predatory cash shop model that makes the actual cost of being a GW2 player much higher.

For the Trails series, they release about one 100+ hour long game per year. No subscription fees, no expansion DLC, etc. Only extras you can buy for are silly costumes. The game costs $60. Being a Trails fan gives you the most bang for your buck.

So, in order of most bang for your buck: Trails > FFXIV >>>>> GW2 >>> retail WoW

[BetrayedOf52]

Cheaper than my game pass, because that covers my xbox, my gfs xbox my PC and her PC. for 16.99 a month and its way fucking better then wow and its droughts.

[fruitbasket102]

Its not worth it, its a couple hrs of story stretched out over 6 weeks, its a raid which length is dependent on how competent your grp is.

since when was the story a big factor in wow ? most people who care deeply about story quit very early and don't matter to blizzard

[BetrayedOf52]

since when was the story a big factor in wow ? most people who care deeply about story quit very early and don't matter to blizzard

Well it sounds worse when you say what they offer in terms of none story content, 6 month wait for the current raid and who knows how long until the next raid. A recoloured mythic + mount reward and a new pvp season.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

since when was the story a big factor in wow ? most people who care deeply about story quit very early and don't matter to blizzard

Story was always a big a deal. TFT ended on a cliffhanger and lots of fans joined WoW eager to find out what happened next. It was around Wrath that story started we started getting drama cutscenes. By MoP the story was absolutely one of the big selling points of a WoW expansion.

- - - Updated - - -

I also wouldn't say that "people who care deeply about story quit very early". I'd say it was the opposite. As WoW became an increasingly less social game, it was the story players and the raiders who remained. Lots of people came back for Legion because they wanted to see the conclusion that plot thread, and lots of people came back for BFA because they were excited to see that plot thread.

[Awfulist]

I'd be fine with it being the same.... IF playing on ONLY tourney realm was an option. Tired of having to RP and grind for 6 months to be able to que real games.

[agentsi]

I know that everyone here is willing to pay $15/month. (Aside from the gold token subscriptions.)

If you could wave a magic wand, what do you think a WoW subscription should be per month?

Not even kidding, at all.

$25-$30 a month ( if you take inflation from 2004, until now, it would be around $25 or more)


With that kind of revenue, there would be ZERO reasons they'd ever have issues meeting deadlines and delivering new content every 2-3 months. Each expansion could have 4-5 major patches. IE X.1 thru X.5, with more mini patches between them. They could explore all the side stories and everything they ever wanted to do with the game. And it isn't very much money at all.

[Askyl]

Free tbh, with the constant push for micro transactions they dont need the sub.

Maybe 5 bucks a month for classic.

[Soon-TM]

Not even kidding, at all.

$25-$30 a month ( if you take inflation from 2004, until now, it would be around $25 or more)


With that kind of revenue, there would be ZERO reasons they'd ever have issues meeting deadlines and delivering new content every 2-3 months. Each expansion could have 4-5 major patches. IE X.1 thru X.5, with more mini patches between them. They could explore all the side stories and everything they ever wanted to do with the game. And it isn't very much money at all.

1) Blizzard's issues are hardly related to money, they are already swimming in it.

2) Are you really expecting people to fork out the equivalent of a fully priced AAA game every two months, on top of the expansion box, just for the privilege of having a decent, steady arrival of new content?