Game should stop costing 15$ a month to play. Should be pay once, you own forever

Community General Discussion
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Before you say ‘‘b-but how are they gonna keep their servers running??’’

That may have been true in 2004 when the game first launched in an era where the internet was still growing and having millions of people in a server in a large world was considered a huge thing.

This is 2020 and on a 2004 game, despite all the engine updates at it’s core from a technical perspective, WoW isn’t that computationally intense.

More importantly is Blizzard Activision we’re talking about. A multi-billion dollar company, greedy one at that too. According to estimates WoW as a whole costs around 4,000,000$ a month to run(They’ll never actually release how much it costs for obvious reasons, once people do the math…). Probably far far lower, servers arent even stable anyway despite all those 15$ a month when they could easily afford too.

That may seem like a lot of money, but that’s nothing compared to the amount of money Blizz/Activision make a month casually. They make 10 times that amount of money a month(and that’s if we remove all the subs out of the equation), and not only that, according to WoW SL sales, if the numbers are true

They already made enough money in sales TO AFFORD YEARS WORTH OF RUNNING THE SERVERS.

15$ a month is greed at it’s worst, it’s unacceptable and it’s downright criminal and money hoarding. Even 5$ isn’t justified. The only acceptable ‘15$ a month’ is if it’s yearly. You pay 15$, you get 12 months. And even then, 15$ a year is STILL a lot of money from a lot of players especially if it’s the 1m mark.

There is no excuses here, WoW and especially as it is right now, is anything but worth 15$ a month.

Of course, this is money we’re talking about and lots they’re making they’re not gonna remove that just because people say so. I have no power in the say nor any of us no matter how much we expose it. But you know what WOULD make it happen, or at least price reduction, subs going downhill near game’s death.

WoW would GREATLY benefit and have a higher population of people trying it out if it didn’t have subs. Subs drag the game down especially on a mediocre expac, but the 15$ a month from the dwindling playerbase, still makes enough money, more than you can imagine so from Blizz/Activision’s point of view, everything is justified, And that’s why blizz is the way it is to WoW.
Monthly subs are quite lucrative, ever heard of Xbox Game Pass?

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servers cost money to maintain.
some of the 15 goes to developing content.
id loath to see a free to play version where devs scrape our wallets like… genshen impact or the other free mmos

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WoW has actually gotten cheaper over the years, considering the price has not changed or been adjusted for inflation. Ever.

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F2P would be terrible. Pay once, you own the game. that’s how it should be. no catch, you buy you own.

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Needs two options.

  1. Current monthly sub
  2. $600 (worth around 4 years of sub) Life time purchase (% discount upon history of subscription)

New players won’t dump hundreds into a game they have never played.

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Firstly, and with all due respect, unless you work at Activision or a similar gaming company, you don’t know what their costs are, what their overhead is, or what they make in profit. So your entire post is making assumptions and guesses.

Second, most Buy 2 Play MMOs are loaded down with so much pay to win nonsense to make them practically un-playable. If they aren’t getting $15 a month sub, they will inject other way to get that money. Loot boxes, or paywalls to content, DLCs. Ready for each expansion to cost $50 still but for each patch to be a separate DLC that costs money? Ready for paying for Raid passes or PVP passes to be able to play? Because that’s what you will be getting.

However, there are a couple of successful Buy to Play models. ESO handles it pretty well by offering perk incentives to a sub that isn’t needed to progress, and a very robust cash shop that doesn’t have any pay to win stuff (yet). So it is possible, but they would 100% end up adding other avenues to get us to pay $15 a month (or more) if they went this route.

I for one like paying $15 a month to get access to everything.

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Are you dense? You obviously do not understand business 101. You failed that class with a big fat F.

It is still true today. I don’t care if the year is 3098. The year has nothing to do with it.

The year does not matter. Period. Stop pretending it does.

Oh…well since you have all the answers, why aren’t you an employee at Blizzard? Why aren’t you the CEO of Blizzard or in charge of any department at Blizzard for that matter?

Oh that’s right. You have no clue. If you cannot afford the monthly subscription cost, you have bigger problems to worry about – like resolving your own financial troubles.

You’re just trolling. Sunday was yesterday.

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People paid $15 per month just to watch Game of Thrones on HBO. Wow is a great value at $15 for unlimited playtime during the month.

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Nope and no thanks. $15 a month is nothing. Don’t like it then play something else. Plenty of f2p mmos there for ya. Quality of the game will go down a lot. I played all the main stream mmos when they all started as subs then after they went f2p and they all went downhill fast in quality in both the servers and the content.

If you can’t afford $15 a month which has never gone up then you really should be focusing on other real life priorities. And no, there is nothing wrong with not being able to afford it. Life is tough for a lot of people but you have to give up some of your hobbies then and focus on life.

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Just farm for the wow token. Learn to make gold, keep the economy healthy. While I agree that $15 is too much for a monthly subscription to a game, some money given at least keeps good content flowing. And I really have liked the content they gave us this expansion lol.

Speaking from a gamedev position I know how hard it is to paint, sculpt, and animate 3d assets. It’s not easy and takes a long time to do especially without any programming used to do it. What’s harder than those two is coming up with mechanics for raid bosses, level design, designing modular game assets, It’s all difficult and that’s actually what you are paying for.

I’d say $5 a month is a fair price to pay for this game considering its reputation and health. But at this point the $15 is just a loyalty gesture. Be more loyal by keeping the economy healthy.

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I don’t mind the sub fee but if Blizz is going to give us a gutted expansion with promised features that may or may not be added, then cut the expansion price in half

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They can charge $15 a month because players agree that it is a reasonable price by paying it.

When players start unsubbing in large enough numbers they will probably reconsider thier position…but right now they are still making a ton of money

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if you think the game sucks right now - youre not prepared for how bad it’d suck without the monthly cashflow incentive :wink:

take away monthly fee and wow goes the way of HOTS faster than you’d think.

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XP scrolls/shortcuts to crafting to bypass the wait times on profession enhancement isn’t pay to win??

XP scrolls impact your ability to accumulate…experience…to get to max CP…which you absolutely need to compete in PVP.

Crafting shortcuts allow you to bypass LONG research times required to craft superior+ gear needed to…compete.

Tell me again how it’s not pay to win? Also, nearly every single good mount is locked behind not just the cash shop…but loot boxes. Gross.

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Found your trouble.

Because YOU don’t put this value into WoW, you think the entire game should be F2P.

Sorry, that’s not how it works.

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Yeah, ESO crafting research wait times and being able to pay real money to skip them really broke that game for me.

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The game will stop being 15 dollars a month when people stop paying it. Until then…nothing is going to change.

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Its 2021.

They need a tiered “Acti-vision Subscription”

Give you access to games, (where you buy the tokens to get gold etc. )
Cosmetics
Portraits
Beta-Access

Other promos etc.

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So you want WOW to adopt ESO’s method. That’s a hard NO from me!!!

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you think i want this game flooded with free to play players?

have you seen what f2p players do to their communities? think Sylvannas running Twitter…that’s how toxic

i’ll pay my 15 and be on my way :slight_smile: (yes i’ll continue to pay as well. i don’t care) :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: