What SHOULD a WOW subscription price be?

[The Stormbringer]

I'd be willing to leave the price of subscriptions as they are... if Blizzard removed the cost of expansions. Or, you only pay for the expansion and don't have a sub cost. Having both has always been double-dipping and annoying.

[Exkrementor]

Pick 2 or better just 1:
- Full price expansions
- monthly subscription
- real money microtransactions

If you do them all you are just a greedy greedy piglet.

Also maybe dont make the life of your employees a living hell.

[MeTaL GuArD]

Keep everything as is... And get rid of the goddamn Token(or maybe remove the option to buy it with real money). Can't express in words just how hard the game was fucked by the option to officially buy gold with $$$.

[khazmodan]

Keep everything as is... And get rid of the goddamn Token(or maybe remove the option to buy it with real money). Can't express in words just how hard the game was fucked by the option to officially buy gold with $$$.

Completely agree, it really opened a can of worms as far as influencing the design of the game and further eroded the social experience because people can just buy runs instead of building relationships.

- - - Updated - - -

$20 a month flat with no cash shop, or as it is now with cash shop and tokens.

Personally I prefer the latter, since it gives it options to people to choose how much they want to spend. I just don't get this wanting to have your cake and eat it attitude when it comes to the cash shop.

If the developers are focused on creating a better game experience for all players because there entire income is based on players continuing to pay monthly instead of selling to whales then the game would be more fun overall. Look at "free" to play mobile games and tell me how much fun it is to have them annoying the shit out of you to buy there crappy currency, this is the future of WoW.

[Beefhammer]

And you have to pay for expansion.

And there's an even bigger cash shop.

You. So not sure what their point was.

[khazmodan]

Pick 2 or better just 1:
- Full price expansions
- monthly subscription
- real money microtransactions

If you do them all you are just a greedy greedy piglet.

Also maybe dont make the life of your employees a living hell.

Absolutely correct, the game may not have been perfect many years ago but at least you knew the developers were designing the game around fun for as many people as possible instead of milking whales as much as possible while ignoring the game play, immersion and warnings that players have about major problems in beta.

[Beefhammer]

Doesn't change the fact that we're now talking about a number that makes it abundantly clear what sort of alternatives you can also afford with this sort of money.
With that sort of money, you can easily buy a ton of games as alternatives, especially if you don't purchase them right on release day.

WoW is not very cheap in comparison to other games, you don't usually spend 300-400 bucks on a single game unless you're a whale that goes neckdeep on MTX.

You need to factor in the time played. And most games are a one and done while an MMO is meant to be played long term. Even so, most games run. 30 hours for $60. $2/hour played. I'm sure the average investment is a few hundred hours over at a minimum a 3-6 months. So figure $90 for the sub, $40 for the cheap version of the expansion(since you don't even need to buy the base game anymore). $130 over 6 months is just over $1 a day. Even less when factoring the amount of hours played. The value for WoW, or any subbed MMO is really not beat by any game unless it's free.

Whether one enjoys the game is another story. WoW is cheap to sub to.

[Kralljin]

You need to factor in the time played. And most games are a one and done while an MMO is meant to be played long term.

That's not how modern WoW is designed, modern WoW very much caters towards an audience that is only willing to invest very little time.

Hence there is a soft reset with each patch, it's pretty much designed for people to hardly any time to see all the content and be easily to catch up to other players, hence it's actually not very smart to play WoW continously.
Disregarding that obvious QoL improvements are held back for artificial reasons for months on end, making it even smarter to just wait until a given patch is out to play then an objectively improved version.

Your argument might fly in a design such as Classic or TBC, where playing long term has some lasting rewards but not a game that presses the reset button every 6 months.

[lockblock]

You need to factor in the time played. And most games are a one and done while an MMO is meant to be played long term. Even so, most games run. 30 hours for $60. $2/hour played. I'm sure the average investment is a few hundred hours over at a minimum a 3-6 months. So figure $90 for the sub, $40 for the cheap version of the expansion(since you don't even need to buy the base game anymore). $130 over 6 months is just over $1 a day. Even less when factoring the amount of hours played. The value for WoW, or any subbed MMO is really not beat by any game unless it's free.

Whether one enjoys the game is another story. WoW is cheap to sub to.

I think you should only count the time where you are engaging with new content and not just blanket count any time logged in. If you add that up it will be far closer to how much time you spend in other games.

[Nohara]

Well, not free, as it would mean the game would be filled with microtransaction shit. I do feel the game has become too expensive for what it offers. And I don’t mean a lack of content, but a lack of full servers. $156-$180 a year is just too much. I feel the sub should be offered at $5.99 (6 months), $6.99 (3 months) and $7.99 (1 month).

And I agree with above, the token should retire. There are too many gold payed runs thanks to the token, and the token is just an easy way for people to clear a raid and high M+ keys.

[TheRevenantHero]

With the kind of quality the game has become, it should be free.

[Th3Scourge]

I like how people are acting as if that took more than probably like, 15-30 minutes of work. Like it's some sort of grave injustice.

Meanwhile, if there's a mount that dares to be a reskin, it's cried about how "lazy" that is, and how they probably just slapped it together.

And yet, they decided that something so punitive as removing women and replacing them with fruit was worthy of their time.

They just let everyone know what their stance is on women who are comfortable with showing their bodies. Clearly any display of sexuality is not acceptable.

[Azmoden]

Blizzard should be paying ME to test their shit, cause that's basically what retail has become, a huge beta test for things no one likes.

[Osmeric]

And yet, they decided that something so punitive as removing women and replacing them with fruit was worthy of their time.

Every potentially incriminating game element is something that could be brought out at a trial as something that could produce a "hostile work environment". Of course they're going in with a scrub brush. They want to at least say these things have been removed.

[darklogrus]

You need to factor in the time played. And most games are a one and done while an MMO is meant to be played long term. Even so, most games run. 30 hours for $60. $2/hour played. I'm sure the average investment is a few hundred hours over at a minimum a 3-6 months. So figure $90 for the sub, $40 for the cheap version of the expansion(since you don't even need to buy the base game anymore). $130 over 6 months is just over $1 a day. Even less when factoring the amount of hours played. The value for WoW, or any subbed MMO is really not beat by any game unless it's free.

Whether one enjoys the game is another story. WoW is cheap to sub to.

After the first few days its pretty much recycling what you have already done.

[Th3Scourge]

Every potentially incriminating game element is something that could be brought out at a trial as something that could produce a "hostile work environment". Of course they're going in with a scrub brush. They want to at least say these things have been removed.

That is quite the overreach.

Oh how wonderful the world of militant progressive politics is in a fantasy game

[Morgaith]

Free if they keep shoveling out the same trash as the last 2 expansions. I'd be more than happy to continue with the current sub if the in game store was removed and they returned to making legion-grade amazing expansions.

[Jester Joe]

And yet, they decided that something so punitive as removing women and replacing them with fruit was worthy of their time.

They just let everyone know what their stance is on women who are comfortable with showing their bodies. Clearly any display of sexuality is not acceptable.

Except we're talking about a fictional universe here. It isn't about a "woman who's comfortable showing their body". It's about that they decided to make a halfnaked character on a wall.

There is no consent or anything at that level, it's just shoved in there.

[Th3Scourge]

Except we're talking about a fictional universe here. It isn't about a "woman who's comfortable showing their body". It's about that they decided to make a halfnaked character on a wall.

There is no consent or anything at that level, it's just shoved in there.

So what? No pixels were exploited.

This doesn't seem to be an issue in ffxiv because they don't let cancerous progressive politics dictate how a fantasy game should be perceived

[Jester Joe]

So what? No pixels were exploited.

This doesn't seem to be an issue in ffxiv because they don't let cancerous progressive politics dictate how a fantasy game should be perceived

I'm not sure why you feel the need to shove in politics, but this is getting pretty far from the original point either way.

Whether or not you agree with it, it was minimal work that was done due to the current situation of trying to clean up ends that do not align with the current standard Blizzard is trying to set for themselves in the wake of everything that's happened.