World of Warcraft: Current Year

spronk

spronk

FPS noob
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only ~3-4m wow accounts pay a monthly sub, the rest are in china and pay pennies by the hour (so essentially f2p). but yeah any possible revenue they could get from selling vanity items or even gear/slots/etc would not even come close to the money they get from subs, probably 50% of which are just people who barely/never play wow anymore but are too lazy to bother cancelling. They get around 100m a month from subs, down from 200-300m/month from their better years when they had more western players and less asian.

they are on this weird thing where they never want to rock the boat too much. its like netflix or your cable, mobile, etc bill where its an optional service you pay monthly for, may not use much, but don't really think about it unless something happens that makes you spend the 10 minutes to alter it. I'm sure most of us here have paid for months and months of wow and never logged in during those times, and it took something like a big patch or xpac for us to login or cancel.
 
Crone

Crone

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
9,709
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I don't get why people won't pay a subscription but if it was free they'd play. Dude in this thread, and I have another friend that are the same way. My friend played on PTR from 1-90, for free of course. Likes the game, we talk about it pretty often, but he refuses to pay a subscription.

It's like this built in hate for WoW or subscriptions or something. I don't get it. If you like the game, why not pay for it?
 
Falstaff

Falstaff

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
8,312
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for a lot of people, $15 a month isn't worth the (lack of) content and slow pace to release things, on top of paying $60 or $40 or whatever for an expansion when it comes out.
 
spronk

spronk

FPS noob
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its not 2008 anymore with the billions of sales nowadays for $15 you can get like a dozen really high quality games in 2-3 weekly bundle sales. for example $4 today will get you the indie gala, 11 small indie games that are each good for probably 20 or more hours of play:
The Indie Gala

its really become more a time vs money thing, instead of wasting $15/mo on a sub and then feel kinda forced to spend your few gaming hours on wow (because you paid for it!) you can have netflix + a few dozen new games every month off humble, steam, amazon, gmg, etc sales and one or two AAA titles at 50% discounts every now and then. thats why f2p / b2p is nice for me, get a lot more variety and I can jump in for a few hours and then not play for months. I haven't even touched tera, rift, swtor, or tsw in months and each has probably 100+ hours of content I haven't seen.
 
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Fingz_sl

shitlord
238
0
That bump in sub numbers really drives WoW haters up the wall. They can't lie, the FEC would arrest them. I think the bump is due in part to the weather, MMOs being a winter thing and there being a lack of alternatives.
 
Crone

Crone

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
9,709
3,211
spronk_sl said:
its not 2008 anymore with the billions of sales nowadays for $15 you can get like a dozen really high quality games in 2-3 weekly bundle sales. for example $4 today will get you the indie gala, 11 small indie games that are each good for probably 20 or more hours of play:
The Indie Gala

its really become more a time vs money thing, instead of wasting $15/mo on a sub and then feel kinda forced to spend your few gaming hours on wow (because you paid for it!) you can have netflix + a few dozen new games every month off humble, steam, amazon, gmg, etc sales and one or two AAA titles at 50% discounts every now and then. thats why f2p / b2p is nice for me, get a lot more variety and I can jump in for a few hours and then not play for months. I haven't even touched tera, rift, swtor, or tsw in months and each has probably 100+ hours of content I haven't seen.
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And I guess I'm just not that type of person. $15 a month doesn't motivate me to do shit. If I don't' want to play it, I won't play it. I'm also one of those people that has had my WOW sub active for many months where I didn't play at all. I go in phases, and might be on a TV kick where I'm watching a lot more TV, then I go on a video game kick and watch hardly any TV.

You are right, $15 can go a lot further these days than in the past, but if any of those games has 100+ hours of content in it for you, and you enjoy the game, why not sub for a month, and play it? Instead though, my friend complains about the sub fee, and goes and spends his $15 elsewhere. Makes no sense. lol
 
mkopec

mkopec

<Gold Donor>
25,422
37,538
Caeden_sl said:
Over a year. Whereas Blizz makes that a month in subs. The economics don't support f2p for wow. Yet.
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Well, sure, because the game is not set up to fully take advantage of F2P. You could do it like SWTOR where they hide so much shit behind the paywall you're almost better off paying for the sub. and most of your regulars would pay the sub anyway. So its a win/win in the long run because it gets people back to check shit out playing for nothing and then gets them to sub if they stick around. But the key there being it gets people back because its free.
 
Malakriss

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
12,360
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There's practically no difference between a F2P w/ Shop versus a F2P+Sub option w/ Shop as SWTOR has shown. Requiring a subscription is actually the only thing holding companies back from going batshit crazy with their cash shops.
 
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Gecko_sl

shitlord
1,482
0
Fingz_sl said:
That bump in sub numbers really drives WoW haters up the wall. They can't lie, the FEC would arrest them. I think the bump is due in part to the weather, MMOs being a winter thing and there being a lack of alternatives.
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Except it's meaningless. They may have overquoted the prior sub losses. They may have a spike due to a promotion <I get my free quarterly week and that's counted towards their subs>. The bump in subs could be China, Korea, or Western or something else. Nobody knows as Blizzard does not post which are paying subs and which are not. The only way to really see is to look at their year to year profits, and even that is dodgy due to the cash shop.

SWTOR has a lot of subbed people playing, so I'm sure Blizz is watching them and copying the things that make sense and $$$. Blizz can sell. That was never in doubt. Eventually they'll go F2P but when they still have at least 1 to 2 million NA Subs then it probably still isn't time.
 
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Fingz_sl

shitlord
238
0
Gecko_sl said:
Except it's meaningless. They may have overquoted the prior sub losses. They may have a spike due to a promotion <I get my free quarterly week and that's counted towards their subs>. The bump in subs could be China, Korea, or Western or something else. Nobody knows as Blizzard does not post which are paying subs and which are not. The only way to really see is to look at their year to year profits, and even that is dodgy due to the cash shop.

SWTOR has a lot of subbed people playing, so I'm sure Blizz is watching them and copying the things that make sense and $$$. Blizz can sell. That was never in doubt. Eventually they'll go F2P but when they still have at least 1 to 2 million NA Subs then it probably still isn't time.
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Two million at $15 a month is a lot of money. I say they'll go f2p when they hit 200k, but by then World of Warcraft II, Wrath of Gamon will be out.
 
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Devnull_sl

shitlord
94
0
With the removal of the Scroll of Resurrection has Blizzard stated what they intend to replace it with? Is it possible they might add an extremely limited F2P mode that allows you to at least login for chat and other limited functionality without a sub? Similar to their Starter Edition but integrated with existing accounts. One of the few benefits I get out of a F2P game over a sub game is being able to login to see some changes without having to drop $15.
 
alavaz

alavaz

Trakanon Raider
2,001
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The aren't necessarily replacing scroll of rez with the free WoD 90, but I'm sure it's removal is related.
 
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