Every 'World of Warcraft' expansion is now free

[amstech]

So the WoW expansion Legion is free? That's what "Every World of Warcraft expansion now free" means, right? Come on guys, hire an actual journalist;

Yes thats right, they are referring to an Expansion that doesn't release for several more months.

those "expansions" aren't expansions anymore, and haven't been for some time.

Your good!!

 

[Soneca]

its almost 50k gold just for the token thats a lot of gold.

50k? That's easy to do as a veteran player with a few alts.
Depending on how many alts you have you can do that even in one week without even using the auction house.
If you farm all the cataclysm raids in 25 man heroic, you can do around 8k a week per alt....
And it takes something between 1 hour and 45 minutes and 2 hours to do them all if your character is somewhere between level 90 and 100(at least that's the time my level 90 alts take to do it including the monk healer that does them without even switching spec) and somewhere between 1 hour and 15 minutes and 1 hour and a half to do in a level 100.
On Europe the token is fluctuating between 85 and 92k and we manage to have more than enough gold.

 

[Darth Shiv]

Even if new contents are free, the WOW game franchise is still expensive, subscription-wise.

15 a month is less than what most people spend on free to play games...that are free to play.

That's a single large pizza, I mean come on, if you find that expensive you need to find a hobby outside of video gaming

Yeah ppl go out to night clubs and spend that much on like 2 drinks. You're spending many hours on an entertainment service. Looking from that perspective it is quite cheap.

 

[Darth Shiv]

So the WoW expansion Legion is free? That's what "Every World of Warcraft expansion now free" means, right?

Come on guys, hire an actual journalist; those "expansions" aren't expansions anymore, and haven't been for some time. That's the regular activity right before an actual expansion, which is not free, launches.

Oh, and try to fix your broken captcha. The number between 35 and 60 that comes right before 55 is 54.9, not 54. And the one between 35 and 60 that is right after 55 is 55.1, not 56.

LOL ...Um what? How does that make any sense? Why 1 decimal place?

 

[art336]

So the WoW expansion Legion is free? That's what "Every World of Warcraft expansion now free" means, right?

Come on guys, hire an actual journalist; those "expansions" aren't expansions anymore, and haven't been for some time. That's the regular activity right before an actual expansion, which is not free, launches.

Oh, and try to fix your broken captcha. The number between 35 and 60 that comes right before 55 is 54.9, not 54. And the one between 35 and 60 that is right after 55 is 55.1, not 56.

LOL ...Um what? How does that make any sense? Why 1 decimal place?

It doesn't make sense, it is sarcasm. Someone pointed out that I could, and should have, tried the WHOLE number, but that is not the wording of the captcha at all.
This is a tech site; they are absolutely incorrect about whether or not the expansions are free, which is pretty weak, techwise. Also, they could work on their captcha; either allow for the next number, or work on their grammar skills and say the next whole number.

It makes no sense at all, just like what I pointed out about their journalism.
It makes no sense to me that you don't automatically understand that, why do you need obvious things pointed out to you?

 

[Darth Shiv]

It doesn't make sense, it is sarcasm. Someone pointed out that I could, and should have, tried the WHOLE number, but that is not the wording of the captcha at all.
This is a tech site; they are absolutely incorrect about whether or not the expansions are free, which is pretty weak, techwise. Also, they could work on their captcha; either allow for the next number, or work on their grammar skills and say the next whole number.

It makes no sense at all, just like what I pointed out about their journalism.
It makes no sense to me that you don't automatically understand that, why do you need obvious things pointed out to you?

Actually it is pretty common sense if you are asked to type in "the number before 55" it CLEARLY means 54. Sorry but no explaining or arguing here is going to help you there.

 

[Ascaris]

15 a month is less than what most people spend on free to play games...that are free to play.

Yeah. I never really found the free to play model appealing-- in fact, I have serious doubts that a game can remain free to play for any length of time and not destroy itself.

With a monthly fee type like WoW, the incentive is for the devs to make the game the best it can be in order to gain new subs and retain the old ones. They miss that target quite often, but at least that's where the pressure is. They don't need to worry about the finances in anything but an abstract way-- if they make a great game, the finances will follow. They can just work on making the game great and let the business end of the company worry about the finances.

A free to play, though, isn't meant to be all that good for the free player... it's meant to give a glimpse of some fun you might have if you pay, but to kinda suck if you don't. Instead of trying to think of ways to make the game fun and interesting, the devs are trying to work in all these little ways to nickel and dime you, and to make sure the gaming experience is inferior if you don't pay.

A lot of game devs say they're aware of that problem, and they promise to be diligent in making sure the game doesn't go in that direction... maybe they say the benefits of paying won't make your character more powerful, but will grant you things like special mounts or vanity items, or to make travel faster and easier, etc. while leaving combat and competitive gameplay alone. As time passes, though, the thought of all that extra money they could be making if the free version was just a little bit less useful, if the paid version gave you just a little bit of a power-up... and then you're on the road to "pay to win," which doesn't make anyone happy.

If a person pays and wins, people will carp at him for buying his victory; if he manages to win without paying, people will assume he bought it and still carp at him for buying victory. If he loses, he resents the people who beat him, which he assumes happened because they bought their victory, which he tells himself a REAL player would never do. This could be in PVP, in dungeons or raids on DPS or HPS meters, you name it. Gaming is competitive, and anytime you have the option buy an edge against the competition, it's going to cause resentment, whether or not you actually make use of that option.

Anything short of pay to win is unlikely to bring in enough money to make the game profitable. There will be some sales, certainly, but if it doesn't affect competition, that will be the exception rather than the rule.

Put another way: The more usable the game is for free players, the more of them there will be, naturally; the idea would be that having lots of free players will bring in the subset who will pay. On the other hand, the more usable the game is for free players, the less likely they are to ever become paid players. If the devs see a great percentage of players don't pay, that's bound to cause resentment against the "freeloaders," and the odds that the devs will end up trying to shaft the free players (who are seen as parasites that it would not be a bad thing to drive away, if they don't pay up) to make them pay up will increase. When you're trying to shaft the majority of your player base, it's not good for the long-term survival of the game. If all of your in-game friends leave, you're more likely to leave. The freeloader that gets run off may have several paying friends who don't want to play without him.

That's why I don't involve myself in any free to play games. I don't see how it can work, and I know that even if the developer promises never to let the game devolve into pay to win, that could change tomorrow-- and I don't want to waste my time with it if the odds are that it will change into a game I never would have started if I'd known what it was going to become.

It's unfortunate that the entire MMO market has fallen for free to play. Now people expect it; the idea of paying a sub fee offends them, even if it is, as you mentioned, cheaper than what they would have spent on it otherwise.

 

[Darth Shiv]

Iirc the HotS world champs MVP Black don't pay for anything.

 

[Ziffel]

WoW's has probably been stripped down to it's dedicated fanbase now. Subscribers will fluctuate with the release and that as they always do but eventually it boils down to the same group continuing playing likely until support stops.

I'm not sure it's quite to that point yet. WoW, at this low point in its history, still has more subscribers than most MMO's had at their peak. In fact you could probably pick any two MMO's at their peak and not equal WoW's current base.

 

[9Nails]

I got a trial week email recently and logged in. So much has changed that I didn't even know how to go about using basic skills as I used mods back in the day. And the talent tree was such a basic thing now that seemed like very little customisation to your character. While it was as nice to pop on for an hour or so and wander around it just doesn't have the same apppeal anymore. I think that it's had its time in the sun. If they charged for the expansion and made it subscription free and leaned more on a micro transaction model I might have stuck around for a bit longer.

I know what you mean here. I'd wish that mods weren't necessary to use basic skills, but the game no longer has a combat spell rotation as it once did. Gone is the 1 button to win Arcane Mage. (A personal favorite to this very casual player.) Instead it seems that all combat classes use a few filler skills in attempt to trigger/proc a more effective skill. It's all beyond my willing to learn a class and customize my armor around it's role.

The talent tree was always garbage. Even when it was extensive, people simply followed a cookie cutter design on the Internet, and raid leaders would think that you're a newb if you didn't follow that tree. Now it's a selection of several annoyances, but you at least pick how you want to be annoyed.

Micro transactions might be the way to go. I might pay to dig myself out of those holes I often found myself stuck in preventing progress. That could be an alternative to betting on random drops for that thing you're desperately wanting.

- - -
On point of this news, I'm not surprised that they're offering the expansions in this way. For limited times they used to have their $4.99 battle chests with all previous expansions. Now that trivial fee is waved. But I'm curious if this is also for a limited time.

 

[DAOWAce]

Yew arr nawt pre-peared!

But seriously, cool of them to do this.. too bad the game is ancient and many people don't care about it anymore.

How about them vanilla servers? I'd like to go back and experience the game again, then realize the industry moved on and the auto-attack, tab target based crap is just archaic as hell.