Some rambling thoughts.
The Numbers:
On average, it’s about $180 a year for the base subscription to WoW, not including paid services and anything bought from the store.
In addition to that, we pay $60 for the new expansion every two years.
In total, that’s about $420 every two years for this game.
This is how it’s always been with WoW, but as the game has progressed, there’s been a great deal of discussion about the quality of the game, and the volume of content made available, including when it is released. From expansion to expansion, we’ve ranged all over the place from as many as 12 patches, down to only 2.
In addition to that, consider the lulls between raid tier releases, the lulls between expansion launches, and any other factors that affect time played, and not to mention to more frequent reality of the story being abominable and not worth playing through.
That’s the lay of the land: inconsistency in content, but predictable costs.
Consideration for the Player
For the casual player who hasn’t jumped into WoW before, or even someone like me (who has played since Classic and has fallen out of love with the game in recent years), this doesn’t sound like the best deal, especially when we may only play for an actual third to half of the total 24 months in this $420 cycle.
As a hypothetical, what if I purchase an expansion, play a few months, and then don’t like it enough to keep playing? Yes, I can cancel the subscription, but I’m still down $60 which I dolled out for the latest expansion. With WoW, it’s not as easy as ‘you get what you pay for’, because there is no way to know what the content the patches will be like. You have to bank on them being worth continuing to play for.
When we buy an expansion, folks will usually buy it with the expectation of playing through it in its entirety (however many patches there are); we like to get our money’s worth, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But that potential loss of time and money on something that turns out rotten? Either way, Blizzard has collected their $60 already, and there’s little impetus for changing if people are unsatisfied.
The Proposal
So, not that they’d ever listen, but I’m curious as to what folks here would think about a shift in the finance structure for the game.
What if, instead of paying $360 every two years in subscription fees, plus $60 for each expansion, they simply upped the base subscription cost to $18 a month.
This way, you get, quite literally, what you pay for. If you only want to play six months out of the two year cycle for whatever reason, then you pay for those six months and nothing more. All the content released during that time is included.
If nothing else, it would be a great metric for them to measure satisfaction with the current slate of content and actually add pressure to make the necessary changes.
I know for a fact that a good number of my friends (who have suffered me rambling on about this game for the past fifteen years), who have some interest but are hesitant due to the costs, would definitely step in if the potential loss of cash wasn’t so big.
Thoughts?