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WOW F2P with paid monthly updates.
MMOVet74
Member UncommonPosts: 76
When WOD came out people were enjoying it. Positive reviews with most people saying the leveling was the best yet, great dungeons and raids, etc... A few months later, seems everyone had a change of heart and subs go down by the millions.
The problem is not the game or the expansion. The problem is that content doesn't last forever. And when a player runs out of things to do, and he or she is paying 15 bucks a month, they feel like they're getting ripped off. So he or she unsubs. Bad for Blizz, bad for business.
Now Blizzard has a horrible track record for releasing patches. Why? Well cause they don't make a cent off them. Well let's change that then.
Think of this. You make WOW F2P with restrictions that they have to unlock. Maybe 20 bucks to unlock everythng for a full experience. You got the game, everything unlocked, purchase Legion for 40-60 bucks, enjoy the content. 2 months later you've done it all, sitting in Dalaran bored talking to your guild, nothing to do. Well not so fast.
Blizzard starts rolling out monthly content patches, anything from a new raid, instance, zone/quests, bg/arena maps, challenges, rewards, items, etc.. ranging from 5-10 bucks in price. Your bored, and this monthly patch will hold you off till next months patch. It's cheap and doesn't put a dent in your wallet and fixes and issue with the game. A steady stream of content every month to keep players hooked. Blizzard makes money, players happy. The End.
Comments
8 years and counting addicted to
Avalon: The Legend Lives - the longest running online RPG in history
Op.....
tsk tsk...
You think that when Wow had 16 million that was not incentive enough to really improve the game?I said that from the first year i saw those giant numbers,that they were a money grinding operation that does NOT put back a FAIR amount into the game what gamer's gave to them.
Wow NEVER deserved 16+ million,it was never a better game than EQ2,matter of fact it came out of the gates a lesser game missing ideas they blatantly copied from SOE.Sure as time went buy SOE became cheap and both started to copy each other ,none the less when your making massive amounts of cash,you would THINK Blizzard would do everything in their power to keep those numbers.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Yes the sub is the problem. What are you paying 15 bucks a month for? 2 content patches? Achievements, professions, reputation, etc... come with the purchase price of the game and expansion. That 15 bucks you're paying every month is going somewhere, but not where it should be going, towards content and updates.
WoW was a giant powerhouse getting more than 1billion yearly.
SWTOR was by far the most expensive MMORPG to date and costed barely $200 millions.
That just proves that Blizzard wasn't putting more than $50 millions back into development of their expansions. Hell Even $25 millions is reaching it, considering there is almost zero voice acting.
The OPs reasons are sound on why there has been a decline. It really doesn't matter how many people there were at it's peek, it ran it's course and still has a huge population. Sure they got money out of it...thats what companies do.
Sorry, your opinion of EQ2 is just that and the numbers show it.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
do you even know what you're talking about.... WoW never had 16m at it's peak it had 12 million and it didnt even get massive until 4 years after release.. so i mean, sure thing bruh
don't know where you're getting your info but it's wrong...
Source - mmo-champion
Yup! It shouldn't be difficult for people to understand that you are paying for access. The have to twist it to make their point.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Originally we got many zones, 60 levels and lots of interesting features. Dugeons with blue sets and a couple of raids.
All which lasted a decent amount of time.
Today we get 10 levels of story we work thru in 3 days and 12 months of pathetic content (pet battles, garrions, dailies, rep grinds, etc.) to re-grind thru.
That's the problem.
If its a cost issue I just wish they would charge us more - I'd rather pay more for engaging entertainment than pay peanuts to sync my life away.
Just like I pay $20 (inc food, drinks etc.) to see a new movie each week I'd easily pay the same for a MMO that gave me the same entertainment.
But why are they paying for access? Jesus Christ man, where does this 15 bucks a month go? When WOW first came out server technology wasn't like it is now. Maintenance was every week. A chunk of that $15 dollars went to maintaining the servers. Today WOW does server maintenance every few weeks, with rolling restarts every other week.
What is Blizzard going to say. "Hey guys ,OK look that 15$ a month you pay, used to go mostly to server stability and maintenance. But we have better servers now that require less man power. So we are reducing the sub price to $4.99 to accommodate for that.
Gimme a break. They are robbing the consumer.
Reminds me of Sears up here in Canada in the 80s. Sears was the place everyone went to. It was the only big retail chain, and they knew that, so everything was overpriced. You needed a washer/dryer, you went to Sears. You needed jeans, you went to Sears. A barbeque, Sears ! Then other retail chains began to open up and people said, screw that, I can get a Sony Television for 150 bucks less at this other place and guess what, Sears went byebye.
You can get away with charging people 15$ a month when your the only triple AAA MMO on the market , but not anymore, and if you do you better pump out content , because there are games out there that offer way more for much less.
I agree with most of that stuff about Sears.
Can't say I agree with this though. If you are saying that lots of F2P games offer similar content for free I don't think that is a valid comparison. Sure most people might be getting lots of free content, but that is paid for by small numbers of people that actually pay much much more than a WoW subscription to play.
Plus what I mostly hear these days is " why can't I find a game to replace WoW?" Obviously not much else out there compares to what they remember as the WoW experience.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Monetization wouldn't change my interaction with WoW. Nor have I ever had problems with lack of new content.
Cataclysm was appropriately named. The "improvements" left me cold. Enough so that I left and never came back.
They won't ever offer me what I want, which is the old game back. But someone else did. So now I have what I want. I have no reason to go back.
What I'm trying to say is that WOW should not have a sub fee. There was a time when a sub fee was warranted because like I said technology wasn't as good, servers required more maintenance, more manpower, so costs were higher. Server technology is so much better now that
if a couple dudes in Northern France can run a server that holds three times as many players as the original game and for free, what the hell is that sub fee for.
no one is getting robbed, they arent holding a gun to your head and forcing you to sub to the game... players choose to do so if they wish. they know what they are getting and they have a choice... pick your words more carefully.
at the end of the day i pay my $15 a month because i enjoy playing with my guild, they're good people, we get shit down.. we have laughs and we know when to get serious and thats enough for me... i waste tonnes more money on more frivilous things so paying $15 a month for unlimited entertainment.. is the same as the $15 a month i pay for netflix for unlimited entertainment.. completely worth it in my eyes.
if you dont feel it's worth it.. dont pay, dont play... easy.
if you feel that strongly that WoW should be free... and $15 a month for you is out of your budget... you have some seriously life choices to make and some hard thinking todo with where your life is headed. WoW is the least of your concerns at this point.
You don't have to like it, You don't have to pay or play, but millions of other people consider it worth it, so thats fine... also you can play for free with WoW tokens... and yeah there are plenty of other games that have plenty of content for free, just not as much or as good
Literally robbed no. It's called a figure of speech. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=robbed
Oh big surprise, a subscriber. And you sir is why this game is in the state it is in. It's funny how fanboys always justify the sub with "Oh it's only 15 a month, that's nothing... it's like a movie and a popcorn". The sub price is not the issue. The issue is you bought the base game, you bought the expansion, but you have to pay to play what you bought! If your getting no frequent content updates with that sub fee, then sir I'm sorry to say but you are getting robbed.
I never said 15$ is out of my budget. I never said anything about that. Where do you get this information from? If your going to insult me based on lies then just don't respond.
you're insulting WoW saying it's not worth $15 a month... isnt that the same thing?
it's an issue to you.. not to me.. it's your issue with the game.. not THE issue with the game. i'm not a fanboy either, i've quit WoW for long periods of time.. i played literally 2 weeks of MoP just before it ended, i left just before dragon soul came out... i play because i enjoy playing with the people i play with.. less todo with the game, that to me is worth the money....
again to clarify... In YOUR opinion, the game IS NOT worth $15 a month. it's NOT the games problem... it is YOUR problem.
ALSO a figure of speech does not warrant the context you used it in, because you were alledging that they rob they customer, if you wanted to use it in context of being a figure of speech it should have been worded more like
WoW's $15 a month subscription is highway robbery... not WoW's $15 a month subscription is robbing the customer
Robbing the customer makes a direct allegation.
Well, I kinda think it should but I also think that in this case they should sell zero things for real money (and that includes mounts) and that they should re-invest 5-10% of the earnings back into the game.
I fear that if it went F2P the only more content you would get would be the gear in the itemshop.
The thing is that there is no way Activision would let Wow be free, they want every cent out of it with as small investment as possibly.
Frankly was bandwidth and sever technology already pretty cheap when Wow came out, Guildwars launched the year after and earned plenty of money without monthly fees that were needed in 1996 & '97 for games like Meridian 59, The Realm and Ultima Online.
Companies will take every penny they can, you should instead look on Garriots Shards online that encourage user run servers with custom content. It is far from out yet (early alpha) but it is a kickstarter project which seems far less money focused.
The day EA, Activision, Ubisoft or similar companies would let you play slightly older MMOs for free is the day pigs will fly.
Almost all modern mmo's (and later WOW expansions) have followed an opposite pattern. Overhyped, big numbers at the start, a rapid initial population drop and then a slow decline into obscurity.
Maybe devs should once again focus on growing and developing an MMO over several years, rather than pre-release hype and marketing, expensive promotional videos, celebrity voice actors and initial box sales.
i agree with your sentiment... blizzard didn't know what they were getting into they focused on making the game they wanted to make based on one of their beloved IPs, and it grew.. it wasnt an instant success it took a good 4 years to reach it's peak.