Let’s consider two players: Amy Addict and Ursula Unsub.
Amy Addict stays subbed all the time. She plays all the time. She’s addicted. She runs up against time gates constantly. They frustrate her, but she stays subbed regardless.
Ursula Unsub plays for a while, gets done what she can, then unsubs 'til more content comes out. Then - thanks to copius catch-up mechanics - she comes back some months later (months she wasn’t subbed for), has tons of stuff to do, without the frustration of bumping up against time gates, and catches up to Amy Addict in a couple weeks.
So Ursula pays less money, plays less time, endures less frustration, and gets more fun.
Explain to me now, how time-gating stuff is actually profitable and doesn’tincentivize people to unsub.
If I was a share-holder, I’d be pretty annoyed at you incentivizing your players to unsub. But I’m not so what do I know of fiduciary duties, eh wot?
They make money the same way gyms make money. It’s based on the simple fact that some people just can’t be bothered to unsub. How many people make their New Years resolution to join a gym, pay the subscription for a year, then go 3 to 5 times and never go again?
Then there are the people that pay for a year but don’t go as many times. Maybe they get in shape for a marathon, looking good at the beach of fitting into last falls clothes but the rest of the time they don’t go and don’t bother with the subscription.
It’s human nature. That’s how companies with subscriptions make money. The disorganization of the human species.
The reason time gates are more profitable is they keep people from rushing through content and unsubbing until new content is available. I don’t necessarily like it, but that’s the way it works.
The problem in your explanation seems more that catchup is a problem than timegating is to me when I read it. But to be fair, people want to play the new content now and the experience is often much better if you want to find groups when you do content early.
The only reason I’m not unsubbed 'til 11.1 is because I have a friend I want to be able to play with. Considering the social deterioration of the game, I’m positive there are plenty of people like me who are, in fact, unsubbed because they don’t have such a friend(s).
If one person would do all they can and then unsub, the stretch of content being gated arbitrarily pads out how long it takes to do ‘everything’ in a content patch. Gear upgrades make hard things easier, so they use the vault as a means to get gear upgrades on a consistent basis which makes some goals more attainable.
The gear power curve is pretty much linear until people reach the peak so if they want to hit max item level, they will have to be subbed for pretty much the entire thing or else they will fall behind and gearing only gets harder to catch up with compared to staying at the curve, regardless of the catchup mechanics simply because of how LFG works, easier to get an invite for more gear when already mostly geared.
If there was no time-gating on crest/conquest caps, you get people who burn themselves out grinding as much as they can from the beginning and someone who burns out is less likely to return than someone who plays until they are satisfied with the current amount of content, so there’s more than just two types of players when it comes to subbing and engaging in content.
People really underestimate how much people LOVE the idea of earning things over time more so if they can’t earn it from being skillful.
Take crafting. There are tons of people who love the new crafting system solely because they feel like they are getting better over time. Even if they don’t afk in trade they will grind out those dailies again,and again, and again.
Because you created two extreme examples that doesn’t represent the average player.
There’s no reason for a person who unsubscribed to come back unless they want to, and they should want to come back because the game is good. Whereas most people on the other side aren’t addicts but simply enjoy the game and want to play it because the game is good.
Timegates always exist in MMOs because time is an intrinsic component of all MMOs. Since MMOs are built on being living breathing worlds, in different ways yes, but all MMOs require that aspect for them to feel right.
WoW’s case with timegates is that due to how unhealthily players play the game, enforced timegates is the only real way to maintain a healthy gameplay experience… which is needed for the gameplay experience to feel good as well on average. So… WoW add timegates to make the game literally feel better to play - because content draughts are really good at killing people’s enjoyment of something.
Nothing about this has anything to do with FOMO…
Quit it.
I think an easy way is to classify every type of player (ALL names are used for alliteration and are not meant to be calling out individuals who may share that name)
RP Rachel: Will play the game forever as long as they can scratch their RP itch in the game, so until Moon Guard and Wyrmrest Accord cease to exist, effectively.
Social Simon: They play because their friends play, if their friends stop playing without other friends to play with, they disappear too.
Trade Troll Tabitha: There’s always at least one that found that they prefer negative interaction more than no interaction. Much like RP Rachel, they will exist as long as Trade Chat exists which spans their reach beyond just RP servers.
Casual Calvin: Just plays the game because they find something in it fun, will play as long as it’s fun. The timegates usually don’t matter to them.
No-Life Norbert: ONLY plays the game and if it wasn’t for the time-gates, they’d be max item level Week 1 then have nothing to do for the rest of the season so those timegates generally keep them going for longer.
Tryhard Timmy: Really competitive and keeps trying to be the best in whatever they are doing.
Burnout Bill: Possibly a former Tryhard Timmy or No-Life Norbert that broke under the crushing weight of existence and repetition or disappointment when others don’t reach their standards, likely unsubs for expansions or several expansions at a time.
E-Girl Emily: Still trying to make it streaming and may or may not be a one-game streamer but might stop trying to build popularity from WoW whenever trends shift or when they don’t get any traction.
Collector Colin: Collecting mounts/battle pets/transmog is like a drug to them, so each bit of content that brings anything nice and new from the art team is likely to keep them hooked.
Binary Bart: Bots, doing bot things.
Shady Sam: While they could be any other person, they also fund Bart’s existenence intentionally or unintentionally by buying ‘cheap’ gold.
Sunk-Cost Samantha: They will keep playing because they played a lot and probably not far from Addict Amy.
Tourist Tom: They show up, see what there is to do, do a little bit of it, then quit only to show up again later.
Penny-Pencher Patrick: Someone who plays sometimes when they feel like it but never uses a subscription and just uses 30-day game time codes or tokens to pay for their game time.
That’s not even starting to divide them down into subcategories of the kind of content they enjoy because PvP, Solo, Delve, M+, and Raid players have versions of each of those. There are probably more that I missed but those are more for types of players that sub or unsub dependent on different factors and time gates generally only affect two types of the players.
Subs haven’t mattered since WoD, they’ve admitted around BFA or little after that the big whale money comes from cash shop RTX and character services and realm transfers. By this logic, it actually makes them minimally MORE money to break things, so people get unhappy and race change or want to realm transfer due to empty unfun realms.
The names tell the whole story. Amy is going to play regardless, she is an addict and the timegates don’t matter.
Ursula is going to unsub regardless if the timegate is there or not. Since she knows there will be catch up mechanics there is more incentive for her to sub for patches than just when an xpac comes out.
There will be more $90 mounts. I am just waiting for a Howl’s Moving Castle style one to whale out on.
I’m REALLY hoping that next expansion or so we see some turn around in how the business is run, at least in the financial department. Less cutting corners and putting the developers in arm restraints.