Are you going to play WoW?

[bertie]

Now that we know WoW will be coming out sooner rather than later (end of this month in USA/Asia - Europe "shortly thereafter") will you be playing?


I have been looking forward to this game for a long time, spent the whole day playing it at Gamestars Live, yet now I know the pricing for it I feel i'm going to have to cancel my preorders.

They currently have it set at $14.99 a month, $12.99 if you pay in 6 month blocks. This is bad enough - but I am sure that they will have UK pricing even higher!


What do you guys think? Is this a fair price for an MMORPG. I used to play UO at about 5-6 quid a month, but just went on to free servers after that.



UPDATE: Blizz released prices.

The month-to-month subscription plan will cost €12.99* per month (£8.99 in the UK), the three-month plan will cost €11.99 per month (£8.39 in the UK), and the six-month plan will cost €10.99 per month (£7.69 in the UK).

[Lee H]

14.99 a month

Jeez - I never thought that PTP would take off but obviously I was wrong. That price is a hefty increase really and they really need to lower it before people go and find cheaper (read cheaper as free) alternatives.

[MAS]

I really dont think it's that much money if you play the game a lot and enjoy it. It costs over £5 to go to the cinema these days and for that you only get 2 hours entertainment.

So have they set a date? I was surprised when I heard EQ2 is being released this month, so I assume WoW are reacting to that.

[skuzgib]

It would be a good Idea if you could buy, say, 6 months and get the game free, like they do with mobile contracts.

[bertie]

It's on shelves on the 23rd November in US, Australia and New Zealand.

No date for Europe yet

[overlord_stu]

I think considering most people in the UK pay around £15-30 for ADSL, and £16-30 for things like Sky, plus £27.99 for most PC games, asking almost £10 a month for a PC game is not going to ring well with most people.

After four months, it would become the most expensive game I have ever bought. I would consider £20-30 a year reasonable if I was shelling out £30 for the game initially.

If they really want a hefty monthly subscription as proposed, what warrants it? new lands, characters, weapons, skills etc added monthly? always available tech support, cust services?

I think I'll wait until this kind of pc game genre has matured - or when the severe lack of customers forces them to either pull the plug or drop the cost....then again it may be the future...and maybe we don't realize how good a deal we are getting on broadband and stuff. Doesnt seem so expensive when I think two local take away meals are more expensive than my ADSL connection each month!!

[bertie]

I agree with you Stu - with broadband and sky etc services costing us enough already, and providing far greater amounts of entertainment, £10 a month for a single PC game which you may not have THAT much time to play seems a bit much.

However, I still think the game will be a roaring success, unless all those who had anticipated it so greatly are like me and now unsure about shelling out all that moolah..

[Mesce]

Having to pay for broadband means that we shouldn't have to pay for subscription. If you buy the game for how ever much it costs then there should be no added cost. I hate it when people start to get greedy. The bad thing is there will be a small minority that will pay this

[bertie]

http://www.blizzard.co.uk/insider/insider-020.html


Apparently PRE-ORDERS starting on 26th November for Europe!
We probably won't get it til February or so after all

[Paul Adams]

Definitely going to try this out

MMORPGs have been charging $10 per month from around 1996, this has gradually gone up to the $13-15 per month over the last couple of years.

The servers you play on have running costs, and there are support staff & developer wages to pay.
The games that thrive have to get regular updates to keep peoples' interest.

I'd rather subscribe to 2 games at a tenner a month than pay for something like the movie package from a cable/satellite provider.


What I do find annoying is that you pay for the software itself - I believe that should be at cost if you get a boxed set from a high street store, and free (or a nominal fee of say $5) to download it.

City of Heroes cost me $50 to download - exactly the same price as the game would cost in the stores in the US.


Paying for your broadband connection has no bearing on paying to use an online service put up by a company who have setup and operational costs.

[MAS]

What he said ^^

Anyone who thinks a decent MMORPG could run without a monthly fee either has a) no idea how the MMORPG business model works, or b) is living in cloud cuckoo land. They have to charge, whether it's $1 or $15; servers cost money, as does tech support, development, etc.

Yes, over a year an MMORPG would be the most expensive game you've bought in total....but how many other games do you play regularly for 12 months? Most games from the shops are £25-35, and last you a month or two tops. Compares pretty favourably with MMORPGs IMO. If you're only going to play them the odd hour a week, yes, they're not good value, but then they're not aimed at you as a player either.

There's no way MMORPGs will ever get to the stage where they have to abandon monthly fees. Economically it couldnt happen, and more to the point, MMORPGS are still growing as a genre and most people can and do pay the fees. At the same time, I agree that if the fees get much more expensive then people wont bother.

[klarrix]

Same.
I'm a student, unemployed (well OFFICIALLY i have a job, but there isn't much business for plant nurseries this time of year ^^). i would not certainly not consider 15 dollars a month as being ripped off. I think that on average i spend about 15 quid per month on games anyway (one every 8 weks or so) and that just because i'm spending the dough on the same source of entertainment doesn't imply i'm having any less fun. I've been waiting for this with with too much anticipation and i am only too aware of blizzards capabilities to have any worries about the quality of the product they are offering.

MMORPGs require a monthly fee for obvious purposes and 10GBP doesnt act as a deterrent to me at all- as long as i can rely on the developers to continue patching, adding content and providing events for the community to the standard they have achieved in warcraft 3 for 3 or so years, then i'll be happy to feed their efforts at the monthly rate they're asking for.

[edit: sp sp sp.... getting rusty with the whole forums business ]

[Allen]

I'm downloading this now (BETA of course) and will hopefully get to try it out tonight.

Head over to FilePlanet to subscribe for the BETA if you can. Not many left now, I would presume.

[klarrix]

Do you have to subscribe to FilePlanet for that?

[Allen]

Yup. Only something like £3 a month, but I've been on the BETA for Matrix Online and Tribes: Vengance already. Also get super fast downloads of demo's and such.

[klarrix]

Thanks, al. Bout time i subscribed anyway, considering all the hours i've left my pc idling in queues for downloads there

EDIT: Some of my friends tell me that it's a US-only thing and that they will be checking IP addys and (more importantly) subscription adresses via Fileplanet