Would World of Warcraft have done better or worse if it had launched without a subscription fee?

[Oyster Sauce]

Just the upfront cost. It would have made it more financially accessible, sure, but I have definitely felt the need to put other games on the backburners for months/years because of that "I'm paying $15 so I have to play it" feeling.

[TKVNC]

Just the upfront cost. It would have made it more financially accessible, sure, but I have definitely felt the need to put other games on the backburners for months/years because of that "I'm paying $15 so I have to play it" feeling.

Well, no. Probably.

But it depends on how you define success. It made them a lot of money.

As for content... well, these days it's more profitable to make low cost, highly monetisable slop.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It would depend on whether Blizzard continued doing patches in between box releases, and whether or not their content production process was better.

There are two main issues with WoW's release format:

1. When a new box expansion launches, you do not get a complete satisfying story experience. You go through the intro zones, you go through the levelling zones, you reach level cap, you do the launch raid which is about kill some random villain or lieutenant antagonist, and then the story just ends there unfinished. You have to wait 8 months for a patch that has you fight the next higher up villain of the expansion, and then another 8 months after that to finally go into the climatic final raid and fight the big bad. Contrast that with FF14 and GW2, which provided a satisfying selfcontained story with a beginning, middle, end, and epilogue in the expansion's launch and then have an addendum adventure in the patches.

2. The content release pace is far too slow. You get a new zone and raid once every 8+ months, and a new continent every 2 years. Contrast this with Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail where a new patch releases once every 6 weeks, progressing the story and introducing new zones. Trails, Genshin, and HSR release a new box or expansion once every year. GW2 during the season 3 to 4 era also introduced new zones once every 3 months. 8 months between patches and 2 years between box expansions does not keep fans engaged and causes people to lose interest in WoW. It is common for people to resub, play for a few weeks, and then since there is nothing coming for several months they just quit and go dormant for a few years, and the cycle repeats.

If WoW launched without a sub, then the question is whether or not WoW is just a series of box purchase games/expacs, or if they have some other monetization model to subsidize patches.

If it was a series of expansions one after another, I would imagine that the holistic experience would improve. As a series of one time box purchases, Blizzard as a corporation does not have much financial incentive to do free patch zones and raids in between box releases, so the dev teams would focus on making those boxes as a complete experience as possible. You would finish the zone questlines, do a raid or two, kill the bad guy, and roll credits. See you at the next box purchase in two years. Overall the story experience would be much improved over what we have currently. However, you would still be left with the question of whether or not Blizzard can release the boxes faster than once every 2 years, while Trails and Genshin release new boxes/expansions every year.

If WoW were to adopt some sort of monetization model to subsidize patches (ie have a conveyor belt of new characters or classes to buy like in Warframe or gamble for like in Genshin), then the question then becomes whether or not Blizzard could get their act together and pump out content faster than once every 8 months. The current content cadence is just not acceptable, so the box release format with no patches would be preferable.

[Finarfin]

I'd say it would be good to have Warcraft be Buy to Play and nothing else. Look at Guild Wars 2, it works great for them. Though I suppose the drawback is the fact that you have to buy stuff with real money or grind a lot. But I would say that is acceptable. I'd probably play WOW alot more if it were not sub-based.

[J1M]

Suggest editing the post to define 'better'.

Because remember at launch they were unable to sell more copies despite demand for them due to server limitations and the need to print more discs. Even with the subscription in place.

[rusty_shackleford]

They do updates so infrequently that it struggled to be worth the $15 most of the time

[J1M]

The subscription's primary value was always the comms it facilitated with friends. There are cheaper options for that now.

[Oyster Sauce]

lmao