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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsZarhym talks premium WoW services
by Mathew McCurley 
May 4th 2011 at 2:00PM
Zarhym first makes the point that these features and premium services are in no way made to be needed to play the game. In fact, I'd take things a step forward and say that so far, Blizzard has been exceptionally good at providing only cosmetic and quality-of-life premium services, where other games could have already cashed in on a playerbase like WoW's. These optional services can improve your own personal quality of life, be it race-changing to an obviously superior blood elf or transferring servers to be with a new guild, but they are not tied to the core gameplay experience.
Zarhym's full statement, after the break.
Why do we need to be nickeled and dimed?
These are premium services added to better accommodate the wants and needs of players. They do not factor into what you get for buying the game/expansions and paying monthly for access to the serers. By no means do you need any of these premium services to enjoy World of Warcraft gameplay to the fullest extent. Should you desire to take advantage of some extra services to enhance your enjoyment of the game though, they're certainly there for you... if you feel it's worth the price.
We've made countless quality-of-life improvements to the game in terms of content, UI, data storage, character profiles, etc. We've expanded upon what you get for your monthly subscription by leaps and bounds since the game was first released, but the subscription price has not changed.
Everything we do and every service we add costs more money than you might realize. So, if we do occasionally add some premium services which are purely to give you more options for enjoying the game how you want (changing your realm, faction, race, name, physical appearance, etc.), we need to make sure there is an appropriate value added to those services so we can sustain them, sustain our business, and keep focusing on making this the best game possible. :)
We've made countless quality-of-life improvements to the game in terms of content, UI, data storage, character profiles, etc. We've expanded upon what you get for your monthly subscription by leaps and bounds since the game was first released, but the subscription price has not changed.
Everything we do and every service we add costs more money than you might realize. So, if we do occasionally add some premium services which are purely to give you more options for enjoying the game how you want (changing your realm, faction, race, name, physical appearance, etc.), we need to make sure there is an appropriate value added to those services so we can sustain them, sustain our business, and keep focusing on making this the best game possible. :)
There is always the issue of cost, and Zarhym freely admits that every service costs the company money, from support to implementation and more. Services also need value; otherwise, they would be seen as rights or privileges that you could take advantage of at any point. Also, it seems that the cost associated with name changes, server transfers, and the like force players to keep their attitudes and behavior in check in an online world, lest they totally ruin their reputation and have to change servers and identities. Premium services are about options being optional.
The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!Filed under: Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 4)
joshua.l.miles May 4th 2011 4:08PM
@PodPeople- while your statement about the multi month bundle increase is true, when they say the subscription price has not increased they are talking about the $15 month to month fee since that is the actual subscription price, the lower cost multi-month fees are considered a discount off of the subscription fee so if those prices increase but the $15 stays the same then all they are doing at that point is reducing the discount %, so technically the statement that they have not increased the sub fee can be considered absolutely true. I see where you were coming from but from a legal/business standpoint since they have always advertised the multi-month subs as "discounted" then the month to month would be the only one taken into account when discussing subscription fee flux.
Chetti May 4th 2011 4:27PM
I agree, the cost of the subscription (monthly) is pretty cheap compared to other entertainment avenues. I mean movie tickets are up to $10 in some places, add popcorn and a soda and you're looking at $20 for one person. I admit, I play bingo with my aunt (I'm 30.. going on.. well lets not go there!). The place I go offers a cheap package for $13, BUT its only 3 hours of something to do (and not guaranteed success!). If I play a regular package, its $25, and still the possibility of winning and coming home with anything is low.. Soo, a month of wow, as many hours as I want to/am able to play - with a success rate that is always high depending on what I set out to do (I don't raid, I don't do heroics (yet, i'm leveling another alt for that) is well worth the money for me.
Where faction and server transfers are concerned, I really can't say if its worth it or not. I started fresh on a different server because my main server was having connection issues one weekend and I wanted to play. This second server became the place where my Horde toons live. I've tossed around the idea of server-transferring my horde alts from my main server, but I don't see the point because I haven't played those alts in so long that I forget how they work. For me, its easier to start again. I tend to focus on one thing for a while, or get sidetracked by starting a toon that levels alongside a friend of mine, then that one sits till she can play again. If we're both playing for a while, my 'solo acts' collect dust. When I go back, I forget what I was doing. So for me, I'd probably never use those specific services.. but every player is different.. and it makes sense to have those options available to people who wish to transfer with a guild, or with friends.
I also think bundling is a good idea, and I'm surprised they haven't come up with it. I read something about guild transfers, where your membership in the guild transfers to a new realm as long as you pay your transfer fee. That seems to be a step in the right direction. I think if you've got 3 toons you want to send to another server, for whatever reason, some type of discount could be applied.. kind of like the monthly/3 month/6 month subscriptions. 1 costs x dollars, 3 costs x - 1 dollars, 5 costs x - 2 dollars.. or however they'd work it out to make it make sense to want to send more than one.
PodPeople May 4th 2011 5:19PM
Loop: thanks for the info, I think you may have nailed it down. I actually wasn't aware of some state gov's had started taxing subscriptions, and I do in fact currently live in one of those states, it really should be officially renamed Taxachussetts. However, I'm quite certain that the multi-month subscription fees did start to increase during the time period before I was living in one of the taxing states.
DarkWalker May 5th 2011 8:50AM
WoW is among the most expensive MMO games to start and continue playing, perhaps the single most expensive. No other game forces you to spend $120 right off the bat just to be current with expansion packs ($40 for a Battle Chest, $40 for WotLK, $40 for Cataclysm, as of today from the Blizzard Store). And most other MMOs offer cheaper payment options (I'm paying $10 per month for a LotRO sub, for example, and I get $5 back to spend on the online store each month)
Besides, in a couple years, I would expect features like Blizzard's Mobile Armory to be standard in other games. It's already starting; EQ2 Mobile is (AFAIK) free and offers for Everquest II players everything WoW players get from WoW's Mobile Armory, and some more. GW2 is also planning mobile access to, at least, guild chat and AH, also for free. Which basically means that, when comparing with those games, you need to look at WoW's subscription as if it was $18 per month ($15 for the game, $3 for the mobile access other games are granting for free).
As for value added services, while I agree that there's a cost for setting them up, if properly planned and implemented they can be virtually cost free to operate. Take server transfer, for example; GW lets me transfer my character between any two servers (say, a US one and a Korean one), for free, in less than 10 seconds; I just pick the server I want to go from a list and I'm there. And it's not the only game letting players do this for free. Most other services could be the same, it's just a matter of setting them properly in a way that minimizes operational costs.
I do think it's already bitting WoW back. The player base has been mostly stagnant for the last couple years (11.5 million players at the start of 2009, 12 million players at the start of 2011); WoW has been losing market share, due to it growing much slower than the MMO market, for a few years already. Seems like it's having a somewhat hard time drawing more players than it loses.
BTW, just to get it out of the way: I don't think WoW will die, or even reach irrelevancy, in the next few years, barring some really bad moves from Activision-Blizzard. No other MMO should be able to kill it (surpassing it in key markets might be feasible in a year or two, depending on market conditions and new releases, although beating it's total number of subscribers worldwide will not be so easy a task and actually making WoW close should be as likely as finding a snowman in hell). But I do think WoW will decline in market share to less than half the subscription market in the next year or two.
Butts May 4th 2011 2:17PM
@Aenorn
I very much agree.
steffc May 4th 2011 2:36PM
Although I've been playing since late bc this is the first time that I've realised that the monthly subscription has stayed the same as it was in vanilla. Think respect has to be given there.
If we're asked to pay a bit extra for faction changes etc then I think that's fine and if Blizzard make a little extra by selling vanity pets/mounts then I that is fine also.
Paulduchesne1337 May 4th 2011 2:33PM
I, my brother and his Wife all recently moved to another realm to play with friends on the opposite faction. I spent $50 doing this and my brother and his wife each spent $100... since then 2 friends and another brother have brought characters to our new realm and each of them paid $50 to do so. I think there should be a group discount for things like this. In total the 6 of us spent $400 to transfer our characters :O
Matthew May 4th 2011 3:37PM
The fact that you did this shows the company "people will do this - why lower the price?"
I sold an epic for 9k. I thought the price was crazy, someone bought it. It taught me - people will pay 9k for an epic.
Think I'll lower the price if I get another one? Nope.
katie.tiedeman May 4th 2011 2:33PM
I feel the same way about character transfers as well.
Myself and 5 of my friends were in a conundrum. We were on a dead server. If you did /who during peak weeknight hours, there were 400 level 85 players. Trying to fill out a 10 man raid, even with members of our own guild, was like pulling teeth. So we scouted out some servers and transferred all our mains over to a new guild on a new server.
$150 for Blizzard later. And that was just our mains, hoping that the new server will work out. That won't include transferring our other max level alts if we decide to stay.
I was initially kind of upset with Blizzard about this. During release, our server was THE most populated server. Queues to get on the server up to the 600's. Now I'm not saying that I want the queues back, not at all. But Blizzard over-handled free server transfers away from our realm, over and over again, and over the years left us with a super imbalanced, super underpopulated realm we felt stuck on unless we wanted to shell out cash to fix the problem ourselves.
This is why Zarhym's statement kind of irks me a bit: Because of BIizzard's mishandling of their free realm transfers, the players who wanted to stay on our realm now suffer, and now WE were the ones paying the literal price.
Is being able to fill a 10 man raid in under an hour considered a "premium service" in Blizzard's mind?
Sols May 4th 2011 2:49PM
All the above statements are valid points and I agree that the cost is very unbalanced especially for someone seeking to transfer or change more than one character or have more than one service applied to the same character.
A server change and faction change should not just be faction change $ + server change $. First off, there should be some kind of discount to alleviate that price for people seeking more than one service at a time, and secondly its just a couple notches too expensive in the first place.
And 15 dollars a month = $180 a year. My wife and I both play so $360 a year...add on to that the cost of the games and expansions (digital costing the same as box) and to me it sounds like enough to expect some of these services to be either free (but perhaps limited) or a good deal cheaper.
eyeball2452 May 4th 2011 3:09PM
I always felt like character transfers should be free, but have a timed cool down. By adding a cost that does make it prohibitive to move, it keeps friends from playing together and people like above from having the ability to move to more populated realms.
Personally, I'd pay a little more a month to have these services included. The reason it isn't done this way is so that people don't realize how much money they're spending and in turn spend more money than they were initially intending.
Kunikenwad! May 4th 2011 3:13PM
And you have the option of rolling a fresh character on a new realm and leveling the old-fashioned way. None of these services is mandatory; it's up to you to decide if the monetary amount is worth the amount of time you will save by taking advantage of them.
The sense of entitlement in this comment thread is astounding. Prices are what prices are. Deal.
(And I've race-changed 2 times, faction-changed 3 times, fyi)
Sols May 4th 2011 4:28PM
Entitlement is not the issue here - its monetary value of an added service to a subscription-based game.
Once Blizzard offers a service that it views as outside of the scope of the subscription fee, we have a right to question the fee that they are imposing. Should server/faction/name changes be free with subscription? I believe so. But even though Blizzard does not agree - 25$ for a single service, and stacking charges on top of one another the way that they do, just shows they think more along the lines of "What will the players pay" rather than "What price is fair to the players".
Sintraedrien May 4th 2011 7:48PM
So . . . if you think the price is too high, why purchase the offered service? But if you think that because Blizzard can offer a service for a price, they should grant it to you for free, then entitlement is precisely what we are discussing.
Sintra E'Drien of the Ebon Blade (on my stupid phone)
Eridian May 4th 2011 2:51PM
But the whole point of these premium services is that you never *have* to use them, ever. Sure if you want to change realms you can pay £20 for a transfer or £15 for a race change or what have you. Or you can always roll a fresh character (different server/different faction/different race) and level it up. What you're paying for is effectively the value of your time in not having to reroll, the value of those hard-to-get achievements/mounts/pets that you have on your current main, that kind of thing.
In terms of the actual cost I imagine there's a pretty hefty profit margin in place. BUT if it were cheaper, more people would be doing it, and I honestly don't think that Blizzard want to encourage frequent server changes etc. because of the impact it would have on PVP balance, server community etc.
ubergrendle May 4th 2011 4:22PM
The faction transfer and realm transfer have an insidious underside -- they provide a release valve for the most frustrated and angry players, who are 'stuck' on an underpopulated realm, or a realm where the faction imbalance is ridiculous.
What's worse, is the revenue stream also removes incentive for Blizzard to drive either realm consolidation, or realm transfers in all but the worst case scenarios. This is doubly so since the most frustrated players will most likely pay their own way out (or quit) -- a problem that was not their making in the first place.
WoW's population peaked one or two years ago, and has seen a steady decline in recent months. If you are on a low population realm, tools like LFD and LFBG help offset the balance, but your economy is crap; your raid progression is crap; and world pvp might be a suicide mission.
jfofla May 4th 2011 2:53PM
If you feel prices on Optional Services are unfair, don't buy them.
Issue solved.
AROD May 4th 2011 2:56PM
RACE CHANGE!!!!! Man would I buy a race change... I have a hunter sitting @ 80 that I dislike (he is my banker) and would love to class change him to a priest... wish Blizzard implements something like this some day...
Brett Porter May 4th 2011 3:13PM
While I think it would be interesting to implement a class change option, it's not very likely.
That being said, I would say to only have it available if you have a character of the class you are wanting to change to of that level or higher. The whole reason not to have class changes is because you are missing out on many levels of learning your class and whatnot. My two cents.
Chetti May 4th 2011 4:39PM
@Brett, I totally agree. I kind of thought the same thing about paid class changes. You learn new spells pretty often at low levels and learn to use them and set up a rotation. Jumping in at 80, you may read the tooltip and think you get it, but until you use the ability it might not make complete sense in terms of how/when to use it and in what order. I kind of feel that way about race changes too, learning racial abilities of some races and making them useful/fitting them in within the chosen class. Like arcane blast (I think thats what its called) for blood elves, useful for everyone, but I can see how a mage would make extra use of it as part of their frequently used spells. Shadowmeld for night elves is helpful, my druid enjoys having it.. but NE Hunters get feign death anyway so, while its nice if feign death is on cooldown, not having a different useful racial may stop some players from race changing a dwarf hunter to a night elf. I'm not saying race changing is bad or anything, a little research goes a long way and I'm sure players that make use of those changes have done their homework before doing so. For me, personally, its easier to start new.