What SHOULD a WOW subscription price be?

[Darsithis]

the token wouldnt be affected to much,people would still buy it with money to turn in to ingame gold,and other people would want to use their gold to buy shop stuff,or other blizzard stuff,if wow became f2p they would fill the shop atleast with cosmetics,making the token even more valuables as you would have far more shop options

I doubt many would buy it.

A subscription is a mindless thing...it just happens, at least for most of us. We either do a 6 month or a month-to-month. No one pays close attention to it. Buying a token, though, that's an active thing. You think about the cost. You think about the benefits. It requires you to purposely buy it, sell it, and wait for gold...and what do you do when you have little need for yet more gold?

[Julmara]

5 bucks with what we getting currently right now

[Triceron]

the token wouldnt be affected to much,people would still buy it with money to turn in to ingame gold,and other people would want to use their gold to buy shop stuff,or other blizzard stuff,if wow became f2p they would fill the shop atleast with cosmetics,making the token even more valuables as you would have far more shop options

On paper, in theory, you're 100% correct.

But we don't live in a paper world. We live in a reality formed by chemicals in our brains telling us how things are perceived. The system you present would not work well when people would rather just not buy a token and horde their gold while complaining about all the people who buy stuff off shops. And the people who already have stuff they want on the shops? They'll just straight up pay money for it.

Time and money are relative. When it's game time, it makes sense for a F2P gamer to spend gold on a Token because they're buying something they otherwise do not have cash to spend. If the gametime is free, then there is no urgency to buy tokens, since their gold is more valuable in-game than some cosmetic shop items. I tend to come from that F2P mindset, and I hold ingame currency way higher priority than cosmetics, whereas any friends I know who value cosmetics over gametime or gold are absolutely willing to drop real money in a heartbeat.

[deenman]

On paper, in theory, you're 100% correct.

But we don't live in a paper world. We live in a reality formed by chemicals in our brains telling us how things are perceived. The system you present would not work well when people would rather just not buy a token and horde their gold while complaining about all the people who buy stuff off shops. And the people who already have stuff they want on the shops? They'll just straight up pay money for it.

Time and money are relative. When it's game time, it makes sense for a F2P gamer to spend gold on a Token because they're buying something they otherwise do not have cash to spend. If the gametime is free, then there is no urgency to buy tokens, since their gold is more valuable in-game than some cosmetic shop items. I tend to come from that F2P mindset, and I hold ingame currency way higher priority than cosmetics, whereas any friends I know who value cosmetics over gametime or gold are absolutely willing to drop real money in a heartbeat.

idk about you but why in the world would you pay money for the shop stuff,when you can make milions of gold weekly or even daily if your serious with just doing boosts?thats how i got everything i wanted from shop or blizzard games

[Rayshaun]

You all talk like $15 a month is such a huge price. I’m super casual nowadays and feel it’s totally worth $15/month for the 10-12 hours a month that I tool around.

[Nerph-]

You all talk like $15 a month is such a huge price. I’m super casual nowadays and feel it’s totally worth $15/month for the 10-12 hours a month that I tool around.

This. And as Darsithis already pointed out, a cinema ticket in most places is the same price, if not more.

You get a whole months worth of access to both retail and classic, I really don't consider WoW to be an expensive hobby at all.

[gobarj]

I'm not even an active sub since Legion but the price is fine as it is, you also have to option to buy a token...

[aceperson]

i'm perfectly fine with the wow sub being at $15 a month. a sub to me is justified IF the quality of the game is good. though i would not be happy about it being anymore expensive than the $15 a month because they have the in-game store. that store makes them more money than the subs. i'd prefer if the sub price was lowered because of that fact but i'm not going to ask for something that is never going to happen.

[hulkgor]

Considering the price hasn't increased in 17 years, and was well worth it from the get go, it seems perfectly fine.

Bit upset you can no longer buy 6 months time with balance (1 month free on the deal), but hey, they've wisen up about it.

Compared to other forms of entertainment, AAA titles with limited enjoyment, price of a movie ticket, a meal out, it's extremely worth the price. Add Classic to it... even more so.

[Darkeon]

As long as they change their development behaviour, I'll go with F2P, with purchasable DLCs.

Paying retail price plus monthly subscription for a game that seems to only care about the player activity spikes is simply predatory.

[darklogrus]

This. And as Darsithis already pointed out, a cinema ticket in most places is the same price, if not more.

You get a whole months worth of access to both retail and classic, I really don't consider WoW to be an expensive hobby at all.

My ticket was only 8$ for the evening showing, its about 6$ for an early bird ticket.

[arkanon]

Free considering the quality last few years

So for me, its not worth $15 so i stopped paying. That doesnt mean its not worth $15 a month to someone else, but its terrible value for money for me. Let me explain a little - if i like the product, $15 is fine. If i dont like the product, $1 a month is not ok, because i wont be playing it.

[darklogrus]

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.

[Kauko]

Sub >>> f2play and store from other games

Maybe they could implement a partial f2play. Like being able to do everything but AH, Mythic and Ranked Arena/RBG...

[Nerph-]

My ticket was only 8$ for the evening showing, its about 6$ for an early bird ticket.

Lucky you. Cinema tickets are approx. €15 for an adult where I live, even more if you pay for IMAX or 3D rubbish

[Yeetmyfeet]

The main reason I believe wow is so succesful and has been able to put out content like it has been for almost 20 years is because of the sub fee, which hasn't changed at all, the price is fine and it seems like many people are more then willing to pay for it.

[RemasteredClassic]

For two and a half months sub you can get a whole new fresh and exciting game with no sub. Actually, for the same price of a WoW expansion, without the two and half months sub. WoW would need to be 10 times more interesting to be worth the sub fee.

[Usernameforforums]

If we consider inflation, $22USD. Its fine as is, they have money coming from other sources like mounts and transfers. $15USD is what it should be.

[schwarzkopf]

I'd say about double that of something like Netflix at least.

[exochaft]

I'd also still submit that it's completely possible that Blizz just pumps out WoW tokens independent of the player creation rate via buying WoW tokens with their in-game gold. For all we know, the amount of people buying WoW tokens with in-game gold is much less than those buying WoW tokens to turn into gold. We already know Blizz can do this and has done this in WoD, and I wouldn't put it past them at this point to have their gold economy be damned for probably the biggest money-maker they have right now. The unfortunate reality is that we'll never know, because Blizz would never give us the actual volume and transaction numbers for WoW tokens. However, I doubt it would shock anyone that their monthly sub money pales in comparison to their MTX/WoW token money.

Here's how I see it playing out (especially if the above is true): Blizz could get rid of the monthly fee and keep the WoW token, but buying a WoW token with in-game gold only gives you B.net balance instead of game time. At that point, they'd just increase the amount of MTX's available in the store... although with the servers the way they are, I can only imagine how much they already make in server/faction transfers. Beyond services, they would just start adding store-only xmogs and mounts and pets in higher volume, maybe add some in-store only cosmetics and features. Basically, with the need of buying subscription gone, they would just push people into spending more money elsewhere.

If they got rid of the ability to pay real money for a WoW token to get in-game gold, then I'd be more receptive to keeping the monthly subscription. However, they're trying to milk the players from two different fronts right now, and the quality of the content does not reflect the amount of money they're trying to make. I'm one of those players who hadn't paid their subscription fee in years due to the amount of in-game gold I was making, and I still don't think it's worth the time anymore.