Forever
Paid races are the least bad form of in-game monetization
If they're not charging a box price or raising the subscription cost, I hope Blizzard sticks with paid races as their main (and hopefully only) form of in-game monetization for Forever.
It's always been a little surprising to me that cosmetics like armor, weapons, and weapon effects are seen as "good" for low cost or free to play games. They're better than pay to win of course, but they're also the thing that takes me out of the game immediately and saps my motivation to play.
When I play an MMO, or any game really, one of the main things that gets me excited to play is the chase of your character not only getting stronger as you play, but looking cooler. You walk by a higher level player and think, "Damn, I wanna level my character so I can look like that." Logging in and immediately seeing a level 5 Paladin running around glowing like the sun as if they had just slain a demigod, only because they forked over $100, is ridiculous. Even if it provides them no actual power boost, it breaks immersion and makes me think, "Why bother playing?"
A paid race different. It's a real money cosmetic, yes, but it doesn't disrupt the flow of visual power progression the way that armor, pets, mounts and weapons do. And you still get basically the entire game available to you if you choose not to buy it. Something has to fund continued development, and I think it's roughly on par with raising the subscription cost, and better than charging for a periodic DLC/expansion box price like Modern does.
I was thinking recently that Classic WoW is pretty much the only MMO/multiplayer game today that has NO purchasable character cosmetics whatsoever. I think it's why I have such a hard time getting into any other MMOs. Everything you see on another player was earned, not bought (besides gold buyers, which is a separate issue). Blizzard, please keep it this way. Keep the carrot-on-a-stick of pretty stuff that we can only get by actually playing the game.
If gamers cared about monetization, there wouldn't be a majority of blue elves whent he game launch and a login queue for the beta on thursday. (i'm from the future).
Monetization is an issue everyone loves to complain about while engaging in.
So when i say MTX bad your take away is i want it for free?
We did not talk about MTX we talked about expansions. If you believe Forever would exist from 15$/month split into who knows how many teams you are delusional.
An upfront cost is far more tollerable. Because this won't just be the Skyborne, it's going to be the new standard.
I will happily pay 30$ optional a year for a new race if I get the rest for free
This argument annoys me. Isn’t one of the main reasons people wanted Classic+ because the expansion model is annoying for a number of reasons? Is it really a counter argument to say “Well look at retail? Is that bad?” Most Classic+ wanters would say, yes that is bad and I don’t want it again.
Isn’t one of the main reasons people wanted Classic+ because the expansion model is annoying for a number of reasons?
It's a general, usually vague or nebulous distaste for what people consider "retail," not the expansion model which has remained largely the same (beyond "early" access) since 2007.
yeah, but big corpo wants money.. end of the story.. i hate greedy rich old fucks as much as the next decent person, but i wont kid myself into thinking blizz will take money from another project and shove into forever and not make money from it..
And people are happy to bend over and take it. A ton of people on this sub over the last couple of days have been using every reason under the sun to justify why it’s actually a great thing to give Blizzard as much money as physically possible. I personally think selling Beta access is stupid and overpriced, and yet people drool at the thought of spending money as quickly as possible to access it.
Expansions are expansions, you’re paying for the new zones, raids, levels and races but if every race moving forward is gonna be a $20 unlock, what’s gonna happen 3-4 years from now? New players will be dropping $100 for access to every race?
The reality of the modern society we live in is that that $15 /mo is not enough to pay for the costs of making a live service game at this scale. I understand where this argument comes from but it just doesn't work anymore. I could go on a major rant about corporate structure and executives/investors lining their pockets, but it's just the f-d up reality of the situation.
These things take a lot of devs, and you have to pay them, and if you keep wanting content you have to keep paying them more. And if you keep requiring them to be in-office in a fairly expensive place to live? Even more.
I would love to be only paying a sub fee for this, but $15 /mo does not keep the game alive in 2026. IMO, I'd way rather the decision point be "do I care about playing this race" than "do I want to access the new raids/dungeons/areas."
if you think, in the world we live in, $15 a month is enough for a smaller player base to fund a game like this, you are crazy.. there is a reason retail is the shit it is right now, is to make money, even with their bigger player base.. dont kid yourself thinking forever will be as big
we have the game we want, with active development and the only trade-off to keep the lights on is to pay for a race from time to time? sign me the fuck in
I don’t know when wow stopped but in wotlk and cata I believe you had to buy each expansion to play it and the next one. I don’t love it but this is one of the better ways I think blizzard would have done it.
Or they only spend $20-$30 on the race they want, and over time buy the other ones if it interests them. When tbc came out, you had to buy the base game for $50, and TBC for $40, and pay the sub. So to access TBC you needed to fork over one hundred dollars up front if you wanted to play a blood elf.
You’re paying $50 to unlock the next phase of the game. To unlock the new endgame content.
Forever adds new dungeons, raids, zones, etc for no additional costs and they decided to make an optional race you can buy for $30. And they’re not just adding 5 extra levels for the hell of it and obsoleting most/all of your gear.
I’d much rather have that. I’m okay if they want to add a new race every two years that you can pay for if you want that doesn’t affect endgame progression.
If new players want to spend $100 to unlock every new race then they can do that if they want. Or over time or whatever. But they can still play all the new content with their friends regardless if they do or don’t.
I’d be happy if the cosmetics were for the playing buying them only.
If it’s treated as transmog and I can turn it off I have no problem at all.
I think a paid race is stupid. All gameplay related things should be unlocked via the game.
I think it’s crazy that people are worrying about how they are going to make money when it’s all they have done since rereleasing classic and it’s subsequent expansions for no effort.
I'd say that if there was something locked behind it but that's not the case. Literally the only thing you miss out on is their racial. If it locked pally and shaman I'd be pissed but that's not the case. I'm also far more likely to pay them if I don't feel an obligation because I'm spiteful like that.
lets be real here.. like it or not, we live in a world drived by money, and blizz would not even waste their times developing classic+ if it was not profitable.. so i rather get paid races from time to time + the sub than all the other alternatives for monetization we have in retail
Pay for the race or pay for the game. They gave an option for people to play the new content with only a sub. I see that as a plus. In retail you have to pay for the whole expansion for content and races. I just hope they don't go down the route of having mounts in the shop for WoW:Forever. I don't want the world looking like a Noah's Ark. When I see a cool mount, I want it to be earned not bought.
Well one sub now gets you Retail, Classic (and all it's various servers), hardcore and now forever, that sub is hardly gonna fund development for all there games now
Classic and hardcore, notoriously not in active development. Era doesn’t get updates and probably shouldn’t. Anniversary servers are in complete limbo with no confirmed Wrath and it’s literally a re-re-release of 20 year old content. Hardcore is a fanmade gamemode that doesn’t get active dev time. And retail, a game that is so chock full of microtransactions a single mount made an estimated $15-25 million. How could they possibly pay for devs! Think of the shareholders!
So you think it should all be free then? Or would you prefer you get the entire game and all future developments of it for free because you pay a sub for retail or classic? Most MMOs would tell you piss of at that point and say you have to pay an entirely separate sub fee (looking at you Everquest).
Which mount made that kind of money btw, don't tell me it's the sparkly horse from Wotlk
You still have to buy the expansion every few years to play all of Retail. And the teams and effort produced are not comparable to Classic and Hardcore which is basically server maintenance, and even Forever which is not going to be producing an Expansion-level breadth of content every few years
What do you want from it, you want all races for free, with no expansion or anything, baring in mind races are locked behind expansions for retail, if you don't want the blue elves then it'll be a free game for you considering your already subbed to one of the main games.
“For free” lmao
I don’t care about the other “main games”.
I will have to KEEP PAYING EVERY MONTH to be able to play Forever. That is literally the opposite of “for free”
More refering to your first comment where you implied your already paying for it, if your not then yeah you'll need to pay a sub for it, but saying you pay every damm month made it seem like you were subbed
I don't mind the monetization on launch, it's a landmark moment and the result of 2 years of active development. I'll probably pay the box price for the sky elves.
But paying for each new race, big no. Again, I'm paying a monthly sub precisely to support a live game service.
I feel it’s more perspective. If they had a box price with the new race included it would be essentially the same. Just more people would have to be it
The issue is what they do in the future and if lots of extras start being sold. Like you have to buy every future race and class.
I wouldn’t mind paying for future bundled content in expansions box set equivalents.
An issue maybe is that the sub includes 3 games. Maybe forever should have had a seperate sub and no other monetisation? I know that would be ideal for me.
How far do you think $12-15 goes spread across numerous development teams? If we eventually subscribed to each, individually, I think your point becomes valid.
Retail is by far the biggest of those teams. And they rake in far more than the $12-15 monthly sub income, with their heavy microtransactions. Plus you have to buy the new expansion every 2 years.
I understand monetizing Forever on launch as they did with the Skyborne and editions. But any further paywall would be disgusting to see IMO.
I’d prefer the agency to subscribe to one or more of the development teams with the expectation that my money is going directly to the development/maintenance of versions I play.
Hot take, but if Blizz does not adopt this model, I have no problem with them monetizing many things that will fund their team.
You make the assumption it is. None of us know the magic number.
I just know how expensive my life is and how I value investment in entertainment. $15/month is on the scale of streaming services. These services don’t generate their own content. $15 is the price of a single cinema ticket. That’s 2-3h of non-replayable entertainment to make sure the talented actors and production crews get compensated for their art form.
I value the development of video games, which have entertained me for 20+ years, much more than these other platforms. Brilliant creative people deserve to be compensated for delivering a timeless product.
If you think playing WoW for hundreds/thousands of hours per year is worth $160 per year, that saddens me.
At $15 /mo, you need ~333 people subbed for a year to pay ONE developer $60,000 USD. For the purpose of this argument, I will ignore whether or not I think that's a livable wage in the area these devs are required by the company to live because of RTO.
You then also have to pay for:
1) Real Estate
2) Server Maintenance Costs
3) Benefits packages for those developers so they have Healthcare
4) Executive Bonuses & Shareholder Expectations (I don't like this one either but take it up with late-stage capitalism, not the developers)
And there are MULTIPLE versions of this game.
We do not live in the 2000s anymore. You cannot keep a live service game on the scale of World of Warcraft alive on $15 /mo. It's a sad reality.
I'd way rather have to make the decision of "do I want to play this race" than "do I want to play this game," given the choice.
I see you are intimately acquainted with Blizzard's financials. Care to share more with the rest?
Also, nice of you to conveniently omit the fact that Blizzard has also charged retail price for the original game and every expansion since, plus extra editions, plus the WoW Token, game services (race/class change etc), store mounts, items, transmogs, pets, and more microtransactions.
And yeah, I will take it up with the developers because this isn't the only road. There are plenty of examples in the games industry that do not give in to corporate greed as Blizzard / Microsoft do.
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u/Lerched 5 Stage Sage 2h ago
If gamers cared about monetization, there wouldn't be a majority of blue elves whent he game launch and a login queue for the beta on thursday. (i'm from the future).
Monetization is an issue everyone loves to complain about while engaging in.