Seems quite a few players on the WoW forums aren't taking to kindly to it, even none UK players. Mainly due to the fact they've had no content for almost a year +.
Think what caught my eye from what someone said on there was, if you stay subbed you won't get the extra charge, but if you do unsub, when you come back you'll pay the new sub price.
Doesn't seem much of a currency crisis if there allowing people to keep the old price if they stay subbed.
Originally posted by sumdumguy1 This should be interesting if true. I wonder how this will impact other games if its successful.
The Gamasutra website ran the story on the 18th Auguest - community moderator posted that the price was going up for monthly, 90 day and 180 day subscriptions. As I said above I think Blizzard are testing the water on a "small" market segment.
It would make sense to raise prices prior to WoD as well. They will make the assumption that a small subscription rise won't put people off buying WoD and hope that by the time they have played through the xpac - and maybe the first content patch - they will have resigned themselves to the higher sub.
At a time when the question of whether the standard subscription price is worth it and when WoW is losing hundreds of thousands of players this seems a surprising move by Blizzard . I guess if you are still loving the game and have played it for a long time then it wont bother you too much but if you are someone that is been on the fence about leaving or coming back for WoD this may give your pause for thought as to whether you wish to play the game in future . I think this will inevitably lead to some people leaving and some not deciding to play again . The question is will the profits made from such a price rise off set the losses from people who don't renew or cancel their subscription .
I had thought about going back for WoD but I didnt like with the price hike of the expansion itself it seemed greedy this further hike of subscription fees has made me decide not to go back at all . For me its about value for money and if I did return to WoW it would have been a game I would play along side other mmos . I would not have spent as much time in it as I once did so even at the old price it would not have got the same value out of it .
I budget myself to how much money I spend on MMOs each month and that money will be not going to Blizzard in the future . Too many other great games out there that are competing for it .
Seriously? unless you are in the UK you are totally unaffected by this, and if anything the price of the game in the UK has been consistently cheaper than other games, most game subscriptions in the UK cost around £10, WoW was a bit unusual in that they charged a bit less than most other MMO's out there, i don't know if this is because of currency fluctuations, though it wouldn't surprise me as 10 years ago the £ was probably worth quite a bit more than it is now, even so the chances are most players in the UK won't even notice the difference, as its only £1 anyway, the only thing that surprises me is that they are doing this now, and not a couple of years ago, still, i guess for those who keep harping on about how badly WoW is doing this must be something of a smack in the teeth as its just further confirmation that WoW is years away from ever going F2P, if ever
Well thats the thing I am in the UK . Most games I have played have been 9 pounds a month not 10 .As I say I budget the amount of money I spend on mmos because of time constraints that I have to play them. I know some gamers will stay subbed to a game they don't play for months but to me thats a waste of money . The fact is I wouldn't play WoW as much as I once did so its worth less to me now than it was when I would have played it 4-5 hours a day its certainly not worth a pound more .
There are other things I would rather spend the money on as well as mmos , Netlfix ,Audible, Marvel Unlimted and Amazon Prime for a start .And there are other mmos that I am enjoying more these days that I can opt to pay a monthly fee for that don't lock me out when I'm not playing it . Free to play isn't really free but its flexible and I like that flexibility . If I don't want to play so much of a certain game in a month I just will drop the sub for that game and pay for one I do want to play a lot of but I am still able to pop back in and play for an hour or two if I want or simply log in and say hello to friends for a chat . It just suits me better .Also many mmos no longer charge for expansions and in some cases like Guild Wars 2 they offer a lot of new extra content regulary without a monthly fee .
I don't suspect WoW will go free to play at least until Blizzard come up with a successor . They have admitted this week they have been discussing a new mmo set in the WoW universe but whether this is a sequel , prequel or something else entirely ( like advanced Dungeons and Dragons to the original sort of thing) remains to be seen . Its probably in the very early stages of planning so it will be a good 5 years away at least . I can't see rises in subscription fees and expansion pack prices will help to stop the general trend of decline of WoW numbers there is too much competition out there now and like it or not many ( if not the majority of gamers ) prefer free to play because the tens of millions of players that play them world wide dwarf those who are playing the likes of WoW , EvE , TESO and FF14.
Heres a list of game fees from wikipedia you will see only a handful are more cost more than WoW you will see most have a similar fee or less so you really should do your homework before commenting .As you will see the cold hard reality of the facts and figures are somewhat different to what you assume.
I like how everyone uses the internet as a source of facts... I mean, anyone can make a wiki page... anyone. It's why I always say, make a wiki page and it becomes fact, not fiction.
I like how you talk about stuf you don't know about. YOu don't live in the UK so how would you know how much we are paying. Are you going to tell us that YOU know better than us who pay subs for MMOs? I can tell you that all the MMOs I have played have charged me £8.99. Let's have a look:
WoW - £8.99
SWTOR - £8.99
Age of Conan (when it was p2p) - £8.99
LOTRO (when it was p2p, and after it went f2p) - £8.99
Rift - £8.99
ESO - £8.99
Wildstar - £8.99
EQ 1 and EQ 2 - £8.99
DDO (when it was p2p) - £8.99
FFXIV - basic sub - £7.99, full sub - £8.99
And wikipedia is as accurate as Britannica. Wikipedia is very reliable. You would be hard pressed to find a more reliable source for these kinds of things. I know you can't use wikipedia as a source at uni but the reason is not because of its factual accuracy.
Originally posted by Vrika
Originally posted by greatskys
Originally posted by Pepeq
Originally posted by greatskys
Heres a list of game fees from wikipedia you will see only a handful are more cost more than WoW you will see most have a similar fee or less so you really should do your homework before commenting .As you will see the cold hard reality of the facts and figures are somewhat different to what you assume.
I like how everyone uses the internet as a source of facts... I mean, anyone can make a wiki page... anyone. It's why I always say, make a wiki page and it becomes fact, not fiction.
Well if you doubt those prices then your free to check them against the individual homepages of the games listed . I can vouch that several of those games are have the it right because I pay a subscription to those games .
I challenge you or anyone else out there to find one that is wrong and post it on here . If you are so certain they are fiction and not fact you will be able to prove it .
Challenge accepted:
Tibia's subscription price on official homepage is listed as 8.45€/month, source:
Great. You picked a game which no one has heard of. Is that all you could find? Every single major MMO I have played charged me £8.99. How would YOU know though? Have you ever been billed in the UK? Or are you trying to convince UK people that we were paying different prices. The ONLY MMO I could think of that charged £9.99 was EVE Online. That was the exception to the rule though. And through timecards you could take it down to £8.50-£8.99.
It's again a case of US people being arrogant and ignorant. £8.99 is exactly $15. £9.99 is $16.60. I am sure that if the sub fee for the US was bumped to $16-17, we would hear the outrage.
I don't care anyway as I don't play WoW. It's an ancient game which at this point has run its course. How can BLizzard justify charging you £9.99 where games like FFXIV charge £7.99 or £8.99 monthly and they release 10 times more content than BLizzard. I guess the only thing is that it might set a precedent. I don't want all MMOs to start charging us extra. £9.99 is not $15. £8.99 is $15. But how can we have the injustice of the UK paying the same sub as the US.
EU people already get **** as they pay the equivalent of $17. So why not throw the UK into the mix.
A sub for Eve online costs £9.95, although that is a reduction from what it used to be
End of the day if people want to play the games they will pay the price, its up to them to determine if its worth it or not, and i wouldn't mind betting that most will likely barely notice the difference. And as a UK player myself, the fact that it costs £10 to play is really a none issue, its the equivalent of $16 after all (exchange rates vary but the £/$ rate is roughly £1.00 = $1.64 +/- 2 cents.)
Personally i think the people most complaining about it, are the ones not actually playing anyway, so why does it matter so much, and anyone who would rather pay for netflix than for an MMO
Comments
Seems quite a few players on the WoW forums aren't taking to kindly to it, even none UK players. Mainly due to the fact they've had no content for almost a year +.
Think what caught my eye from what someone said on there was, if you stay subbed you won't get the extra charge, but if you do unsub, when you come back you'll pay the new sub price.
Doesn't seem much of a currency crisis if there allowing people to keep the old price if they stay subbed.
The Gamasutra website ran the story on the 18th Auguest - community moderator posted that the price was going up for monthly, 90 day and 180 day subscriptions. As I said above I think Blizzard are testing the water on a "small" market segment.
It would make sense to raise prices prior to WoD as well. They will make the assumption that a small subscription rise won't put people off buying WoD and hope that by the time they have played through the xpac - and maybe the first content patch - they will have resigned themselves to the higher sub.
A sub for Eve online costs £9.95, although that is a reduction from what it used to be
End of the day if people want to play the games they will pay the price, its up to them to determine if its worth it or not, and i wouldn't mind betting that most will likely barely notice the difference. And as a UK player myself, the fact that it costs £10 to play is really a none issue, its the equivalent of $16 after all (exchange rates vary but the £/$ rate is roughly £1.00 = $1.64 +/- 2 cents.)
Personally i think the people most complaining about it, are the ones not actually playing anyway, so why does it matter so much, and anyone who would rather pay for netflix than for an MMO
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