The Once-king of the MMO genre appears to be struggling, or at least that’s what its recent business moves seem to suggest.
For a while, World of Warcraft had been among the most premium of MMO’s, and was one of the few that required both an initial product purchase and a monthly subscription fee of $15 per month to gain entry to. However, the MMO sphere has long since moved away from that model, save for a few hyper-premium titles such as Final Fantasy XIV Online. And it looks like World of Warcraft is finally bending to market trends, as recent announcements suggest plans to drastically alter the game’s monetization model.
According to the recently altered subscription page, the game will now require users to commit only to a monthly subscription in order to play. This subscription starts at $15 / month if users with to pay and play month by month, but goes down to $13 / month if users commit to a six-month package.
“Get access to World of Warcraft and every expansion through Legion with your subscription—no additional purchase required. Begin your journey today and play up to level 110 through six expansions of adventure!”
That means every expansion – except for the latest upcoming Battle for Azeroth expansion – is now included in the base model. That’s a big deal, and a big boon for new players, who will be able to access loads and loads of additional content for prices that will likely make veteran gamers very jealous.
Battle for Azeroth is set to launch on August 14th, and will allow players to experience the titled battle for themselves, which was one of the most important and historic events in all of Warcraft’s expansive lore. The expansion will also include four new playable races for players to choose from, as well as an all-new area and dozens of new objectives to complete and events to participate in.
As for the change to the game’s pricing model, it is fairly unusual to see Blizzard make this big of a shift without warnings of the change prior, but there did not seem to be much in the way of letting players know about the upcoming adjustments. Due to this, there is likely a large number of players who recently paid full price for the game and will be quite angry with the knowledge that they could have saved $30 had they only waited one or two extra days. Blizzard, a company known for the excellent response times to consumers and good relationship with their fan base, may offer some players their money back or set up some kind of benefit system in game for players who had paid for the base version as well as the monthly subscription.
Featured Image Via pressakey.com
Maya Asregadoo
July 27, 2018 at 11:33 pm
This sounds like a much better deal; games are much too expensive these days, online MMOs included.