What SHOULD a WOW subscription price be?

[Dracullus]

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.

Aah, nostalgialand. Times when game was perfect and devs listened to every fart of community.

These times don't exist. Game always had major problems and mechanics to keep you sub, sometimes by grind, sometimes timegates, usually both. Token and shop didn't exist cause simply no one figured out yet some people are willing to pay waaay more if they had some benefit.

[Th3Scourge]

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.

Because the decision to waste time on this garbage is purely driven by politics. And I'm paying for this bullshit, instead of them fixing the game. Much like how they removed the original Kael Thas voice actor, despite not actually doing anything wrong. But they still wasted time doing it, because it's better to show how virtuous you are than actually deliver a product worth paying a sub fee for.

They are full of shit, you don't need to turn women into fruit to prove that you can't abuse women in the workplace. I'm pretty sure those two are mutually exclusive.

[Kalocy Jim]

Because the decision to waste time on this garbage is purely driven by politics. And I'm paying for this bullshit, instead of them fixing the game. Much like how they removed the original Kael Thas voice actor, despite not actually doing anything wrong. But they still wasted time doing it, because it's better to show how virtuous you are than actually deliver a product worth paying a sub fee for.

They are full of shit, you don't need to turn women into fruit to prove that you can't abuse women in the workplace. I'm pretty sure those two are mutually exclusive.

I'm going to have to agree with you on this one.

Although I don't fully agree with you that the game is terrible, so "in need of fixing" is a bit of a stretch, I'd agree with you that there is no need for them to bring their progressive politics into the game. Thats a waste of game development resources imo. Many other games have murals of women and men that show some skin. That has nothing to do with treating women and men right in the workplace, but somehow they think that doing a little virtue signaling in their game is supposed to show the world how sorry they are, or that they are changing. Its just straight up non-sense.

I'm not playing a game to be influenced by real world politics. I'm playing a game to escape that crap, hence a high fantasy MMO. Just like I don't watch sports to hear Lebron James give his 2 cents on political issues. I watch sports to see him dribble the ball.

Anyway I digress. Getting back to the topic of the post, I honestly think the price of the subscription is fine. No need to change what is working just because a vocal minority still want to play the game but think the value of $15 is not there for some reason.

[Beefhammer]

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

Just like most games. What's your point?

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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.

That's not how things work.

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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.

Still, regardless of how you feel, I only raid. I'll level my character, raid log, and do some WQ/expansion system content to progress the story only, and I still play 100s of more hours than I do a typical start to end JRPG.

Just because a select few do thus doesn't mean 1, everyone does and 2, it still doesn't effect the price per day. Which is cheap as hell for entertainment

[Rustykeyboard]

game should be free

[Kralljin]

Just because a select few do thus doesn't mean 1, everyone does and 2, it still doesn't effect the price per day. Which is cheap as hell for entertainment

A select few?

Mate, they're designing a huge portion of the game around them, they're not a "select few", disregarding that "price per day" is a damn stupid measurement for a subscription that works on a monthly basis - you're still paying even if you don't play everyday.

[dope_danny]

I pay like £7.99 or something for FFXIV and i can't really say what part of WoW's "everything outside the current patch may as well not exist unless you solo old shit for cosmetics" seasonal fomo live service design is worth paying more than that regularly. I get the same experience from live service f2p games like Destiny nowadays. its way more in the 'pay for a month during a interesting patch or at the end of an expansion' for me nowadays. Its not worth paying every month anymore when its the most expensive mmo sub fee out of the games i've played.

[Syegfryed]

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.

it is for a lot of countries

I know wow is full of elitists but come on now, other people have other reality, there is no more localized prices so the game is dead in a lot of places, if people think is fine well, not much can do with a dead game with few people playing it.

[M1r4g3]

0 if they want to keep the store/token, i'd just make having more than 2 payment methods illegal.

[Doffen]

FF14 has a sub as well lol

But FF14 is good remember, so worth it.

Its the logic we go with. Instead of seeing what the game offers, people let their opinions about said game cloud their judgement.

I wrote it should be 25 euros now cause of inflation. Because thats the reality when we look at it from a bigger point of view than our opinions. I disliked a lot in BfA, but from the amount of content that came, with classic, 13 euros was and is a bargain. Compare it to Vanilla, TBC etc compared to last 5 years, but still the fee didnt increase, in so many years.

Just because I disliked lots of it, Classic included, there are good reasons why the sub fee was and is more than allright.

[Lolites]

This is a fair point, not all currency is created equal and people who live in countries who has a lower value currency shouldn't be gouged for some entertainment.

true, but this would be quite problematic with euro

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

which is besides the point, unless you consider doing everything once being done with MMORPG...
and if you do WHY ON EARTH would you play mmorpg rather than any SP game?!

[VinylScratch]

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?

It should be relative to the quality of the content. If they're going to drop another BFA/Shadowlands on our heads the cost of the game should drop to 7.50 a month because these expansions are half-baked. If they ever decide to release another Cataclysm I might pay 15 dollars for it, it wasn't great but it also wasn't this. TBC and Wrath though I'd pay 25 a month for easily. Alternatively, during extended content droughts they should cut the sub cost. If people bought time have the remaining time held to the new standard and adjust the days remaining accordingly. I think the worst thing about Shadowlands was people spending 7 months of sub fee (105 dollars) for a game that was getting almost nothing added to it then 9.1 was a raid of reused assets, and a new daily hub the size of an island expedition. Like where is the money going because it sure as hell doesn't feel like it goes back into the game. At this point I'd rather they just pull an ESO and sell content updates as DLC with a cost on it and negate the sub fee.

Shadowlands I'd struggle to justify paying 5 dollars a month for. I think as of late playing WoW I'm more inclined to spend my subscription money on therapy because I have very dark thoughts when I play the game and am just hating my very existence.

Problem is they won't do this because dropping the sub fee cuts into shareholder profits so a big no-no. Similarly if the developers set it below 15 it gives the impression the developers are endorsing the idea the expansion is shit so people are probably more inclined to quit. When a lot of games that were subscription games like ESO went Free to Play a lot of players quit assuming the game was now dead. People regarded Fallout 76 going on sale a week after launch as Bethesda acknowledging the game clearly was not worth its original price. Some stores to dump their stock of the game were just giving it away free attached to other things as a bundle.

[Raelbo]

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.

This idea that the devs are no longer invested in making a quality game because of the shop is a fallacy. Aside from the fact that they still derive a significant portion of their total revenue from subs and sales of the game itself, cash shop sales depend on having an active playerbase. And the bigger that playerbase is, the more revenue the shop will generate.

If anything, the existence of the shop and its potential revenue stream should give them more motivation to continue to invest the game.

This is a classic case of correlation vs causality fallacy.

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.

Yeah, beware that slippery slope.

[Accendor]

Given all the shit the is on the shop and thats coming to the shop, f2p.

[WinningOne]

Except that that's just the one service, total costs are a lot higher due to hardware costs and service fees for i.e. internet and electricity.

Additionally what's cheap is decided by the market (=both black and white markets) and given the prices there... well it would be highly unrealistic and dishonest to say that 50 cents per day is cheap next to things like steam. Or pirate bay (or whatever spinoff name currently in vogue). Or private servers.

So yes, judging WoW's price by the merits of its product is certainly a valid way of determining its acceptable price - from a consumer perspective, of course.

Personally i do not find it worth paying fir at all nowadays, and as such i do not. Though that has less to do with the price and more to do with the subscription-basis (subscriptions tug at the mind so to speak; i'd much prefer prepaid or paying upfront) of the game, as well as its presently lacking content.

Are you saying that, if you cancelled your WoW account, you would also cancel your internet, electricity, and sell your computer?

[Osmeric]

It should be whatever the market will bear. Attachment to the game is something Blizzard can and must monetize.

[trapmaster]

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?

4.99 dollars a month and allows harsh comments and feedbacks to blizzard company to forcefully read them all. Why not?

[muto]

5 bucks with what we getting currently right now

Yeah what this person said.

[Uoyredrum]

With all the MTX shoved into the game it should be free to play. If they removed the MTX, $5/mo for the amount of content they put out, tops.

[Drusin]

Given all the shit the is on the shop and thats coming to the shop, f2p.

All what shit? The token, services and cosmetics?