The surest way to kill Classic outside of the Asian market will be to add the WoW game token. ActiBlizz, you have been warned. Add the token at your own peril.
That being said; it IS a business, unlike many of my fellow GenXBoomers and MillennialZoomers I accept that at some point you will NEED to make more money on this game than you do now. For that reason I am not against monetizing Classic. Here are some of the best ways you can achieve that goal in a way that will NOT cause the death of this “Love Letter to the Fans”
Make us PAY for expansions. Give us the later CONTENT to explore at level 60. Changes will need to be made (that is different discussion for another thread). Maintain 20/40 man raids. Perhaps find a way to slide in TBC talent trees and points. You made a MASSIVE financial blunder when you did NOT sell this game in boxes at game stores. Millions of units that you could have sold in excess of $50 ware just handed out for free. Don’t make that mistake again, even if it is available for digital purchase only. You know who is here and and who have played since launch. Do the math. This will have the most impact on the game. I do not ignore that fact. But the WoW Tokens inclusion in Classic will be a purely negative.
Make transmog user side only and sell it as a one time paid option. Easy Money. People will buy it and might never use it. People will yell at the clouds about transmog even if they CANNOT see who is using transmog in-game, ignore those people. This will have zero impact on the game world and a mild impact on the economy (unlike tokens).
Sell the Pet battle system, free money. Again ignore the boomers yelling at clouds about how this is not Classic. Pet Battles will have almost ZERO impact on the game world, and very little impact on the economy (unlike tokens). Just make sure that it is the original version where players could not escape combat indefinitely by going into a pet battle. Don’t listen to anyone cry about this.
Mount/Pet store. Yes the addition of expansion content, would need to accompanied by one of the few GOOD changes that was made over the years. Moving the cost of riding from the mount to the training. People will complain don’t listen to them. There is nothing more stupid than complaining about a store mount or pet. The reason these should not be hidden is because they have NO impact on the game unlike armor. Seeing armor is important when you are playing the game. Seeing someone on a store mount is literally meaningless and you should ignore the people who will complain about it. Store mounts and pets will have zero impact on the game world and the economy (unlike tokens).
Consider this… how many people have quit the game over store mounts/pets, pet battles, new fun and challenging content? Almost none. How many people have quit because your new loot systems are horrendous, wow tokens and character boosts are literal pay to win? The answer is almost everyone playing Classic. Blizzard do yourselves a favor and find OTHER ways to monetize this game. Or your “Love letter to the fans” will end up becoming just one more in a long line of terrible choices you have made.
I’m quite certain that the people in charge do not read forums. They don’t even listen to their subordinates who do the work or the community advisers who interact with the community. They certainly don’t pay attention to PTR feedback.
Another way to monetize Classic would be to have build-your-own-class, for a fee! So, you can select 3 talent trees, such as (Holy Paladin, Frost Mage, Arms Warrior).
Can also add BoA trinket of respec which can be used to respec once every 24 hours, and retail for $150.
tbh adding Appearance change for a few bucks, since people seem to dislike the barbershop, would be okay with me, i would kill to change my character and its not like even my closest of friends would notice the change
Have the Barbershop in game but pay with real money. A nominal fee. Like $1 and display a running total of how much has been spent on appearance changes.
According to Superdata, subs are down 64% since August when Classic was released. That’s across the entire game, excluding China.
They’re probably more worried about the game just dying from not doing anything at this point. If the sub is just not worth it to enough people to keep the player base up they have to do something to try to get more people to play. A Classic token may bring back Classic players that want to play, but don’t think it’s worth $15 a month out of pocket.
If that doesn’t work and Shadowlands doesn’t bring back enough retail players, you might even see them adjust the sub price or add more to it to try to make it more attractive. In the industry, $15 a month for a single game is actually kind of crazy when you consider what you could get at that price from EA’s sub or a streaming service etc. Blizzard wouldn’t have been able to hold onto that sub price just for WoW this long without the token. I certainly would not have paid $15 a month all these years. I only stay subbed because of the token.
Until Blizz starts dropping numbers again nothing is known for sure. I would like them to tell us the Average someone spends on the game all costs included. The percentage of people who only sub, who sub and use cash shop, who only use in-game gold to pay for game time. My assumption is that the last category is the smallest. I play the game almost no one I play with buys tokens with gold. But I am sure that everyone you play with pays for game time with tokens.
flag as trolling and move on, seriously.
you should go back to bfa with that mentality
you may aswell work at actiblizz atm and make decisions for retail
Not gonna read that wall of text but…
I doubt I would have paid for the game not knowing if I would still enjoy it. It being free gives a much lower barrier to entry and makes sense considering it’s a 15 year old game and most people have probably already bought it at some point in the past
Fair point. That being said the wave of enthusiasm for people who want to play it was massive. They did not capitalize on it. Now they should. People will buy it.
make classic its own standalone game and not just a side addition to retail wow
and make the sub cost 5$ everyone wins classic only fans get a better deal and retail players have to pay up moore if they want to come here
