The real reason is that monthly sub was $15/month in 2004 and is still $15/month in 2023. Just based on inflation it should be closer to $25/month.
If they were charging $25/month, they’d have the revenue to sustain a far higher staff of artists, writers and creators, pay them more, and have a more successful game.
I’m just saying, they never increased that and people wonder why they no longer afford to pay competitive salaries like they did back then.
It’s obviously a big part of the issue no one seems to want to talk about.
You mean like every other MMORPG sub that I pay for? Why do you feel the sub needs to raise when we have the WoW Token and cash shop? How do those things not add to their profit?
No one would pay it. $25 sub would crater the game to not even being able to support the size of team they have now. Profits would probably go up if they dropped it to $10 a month. Inflation changed what 2004 $15 is worth, but also datacenter prices are much reduced. WoW can run on 2023 dumpster tier servers, back in the day that same level of hardware cost hundreds of times more and used 25x more electricity. Early development is much more expensive than post launch development as well. In 2004 they were recouping the extreme costs of writing a game engine from scratch and making the whole base layer of assets. Vanilla WoW was like 12 expansions of content to make all at once. Those costs are recouped now for well over a decade. And even if Activision could greatly increase the profitability of WoW, they would not reinvest it into expanding WoW team.
I’d have no problem paying 25 a month for my account. I’m frankly surprised they haven’t raised prices.
Maybe they feel sorry for those who are still using windows xp on their AMD sempron’s, and for those who’s parent’s are still paying for their subs.
If anything, what WoW suffers most from is a glut of resources. WoW team is too big, too unweidly, too unfocused. Left hand can’t see what right hand is doing half the time. They market the game one way but design it another. WoW would probably improve if they cut it down to a Broadsword sized team like EA is doing with TOR, and did with DAoC and UO lol
What would a bigger WoW team even accomplish? Expansions are 8 zones instead of 6? 60 raid bosses instead of 45? Two extra quest line in each zone? What difference does that stuff make? WoW’s problems are mostly caused by conflicts between what Activision leads want, what the players want, and what WoW team leads want. Of all the MMOs, WoW has kept that three way tug of war going the longest, and it’s not healthy.
Yes but every single time a Blizzard scout comes onto these forums to suggest the sub be raised in price, people flip out so they stopped doing it and don’t make that suggestion anymore. Part of the reason why we have so many micro transactions is because Blizzard is not making enough money off of subs anymore.
They are actually making more money now than before because of all the microtransactions. So the money excuse is pretty weak. Also with the declining subs raising subs price doesn’t make much sense.
If we had the 25$ a month before the cash shop we wouldn’t have a WoW token problem lol
Or at the very least with more staff/artists etc thanks to more sub money the cash shop cosmetics would be good but wouldn’t outclass ingame rewarded cosmetics and they’d be decently priced at 2-10$ like they should be.
It’s true in that it would help the game quality-wise, but imo if they charged that much, people would just quit entirely.
I knew a lot of people growing up that never got into WoW, just because most games were just the box price, but WoW charged that along with a subscription fee. I was one of the lucky few that had family willing to help me pay for it, before I had a job of my own.
The cost barrier is a real thing.
It would also be too expensive of a game to play on a regular basis, it would have to be the perfectgame to justify such a cost.
WoW barely manages to get by with $15 a month, and I think that’s why they’ve left it alone for the most part. And MMO’s can’t really offer that much in the way of other genres, because they’re limited in scope- they are MMO’s, lol.
When WoW tries to do something else, it’s just not as good. I love the pet battle system, but it’s not nearly as in-depth as an actual creature-battler game. Same deal with the dragon-riding compared to a real racing game.
They are nice additions and I greatly appreciate them, but they are mini-games at best, not actual ‘pillars’ unfortunately, and don’t get the same attention and resources.
Under the hood, WoW is still a good game, I just think the potential is just harder to reach in the modern era compared to when WoW was fresh.
It wouldn’t actually, and that’s the problem. WoW and other Activision games make plenty of money, mainly as pointed out in microtransactions, not necessarily subs and people paying to play. The biggest problem is that despite making MORE money than ever before, they’re simply not reinvesting said money into the game/workers… it all goes, as the meme suggests… to Bobby’s yacht fund.
It’s just good basic business practice to reinvest money into making the product better and thus keep the customer happy with it, unfortunately alot of businesses don’t do this currently.
