Today I decided to drop my subscription, and I will not be returning until at least one of the wow payment models is dropped.
I decided this upon realizing that wow has three whole payment models.
A expansion, the cost of which is a reoccurring 2-yearly and is the price at minimum of which is equal to most other full AAA video game with no subscription model, but also has “better” versions that more than double it’s price.
A subscription which adds $360 to that cost for only those two years, meaning for this game you are now paying $400… for 2 years… minimum.
And as if this wasn’t enough money you can also buy in-game progress and aesthetics.
This is too greedy, and as such I won’t be playing or paying for this game any more.
To be fair. 15 dollars a month is pretty damn affordable for the time spent in game even as a filthy casual. I play WoW way more than any other single player title.
It had not occurred to me, this payments were so separated I didn’t think about it. The 15 a month was “what I payed to play the game” and for some reason I never linked that to the expansion which I always treated as if it was me buying a whole new game, but only recently did I realize both of these were paying for the exact same content through both payments.
You can earn in game gold to buy tokens to buy all of those things. So technically. If you were good enough and had the resources you would legitimately only need to spend $15 ONCE for a 1 month sub and then you could support your entire gaming habit by simply continuing to play the game.
Sure technically “other” people would be paying for you. But it wouldn’t be you. I bought the epic version of SL with in game gold, a couple of mounts, and game time.
Not everyone can do that… like literally not everyone, someone would always have to be the one to buy the tokens off the store.
That’s still super greedy on the companies behalf, especially since there is actually a difference in cost to buying the token and redeeming it, not to mention I don’t have that much of an addiction to this game, hence why I (unlike some other people) can drop it, and as such will.
The last time I spent money on a WoW subscription was in early 2014, the WoW token came out and haven’t paid for a subscription since then. The last thing I bought with my own money on Blizzard was the basic Legion expansion as the token only applied to game time.
When the WoW Token opened up to Blizzard Balance, I have bought all other game titles this way and haven’t spend of my actual money on anything they put out since then. I went back and hit up every deluxe edition of every game title, all paid with Blizzard Balance. I continue to buy up WoW tokens via gold and currently have 18+ months of subscription time paid in advance and around $200+ in Blizzard Balance.