And Rainbow Dash I love that you need to pay monthly because that means that Blizzard will keep focusing on what players want instead of what they're making most money from. If we take a look at League of Legends for example many players wants to see new maps since there is only one you can play 5 v 5. But Riot Games don't intend to make more maps because they wount make any money out of it.
1) If subscriber fees brought the Dungeon Journal, than screw subscribing.
2) Uhm, hello? There is Summoner's Rift (in 3 season versions: summer, autumn, winter, also it was revamped with better graphics). There is Twisted Treeline for 3v3, there is the Crystal Scar a 5v5 Arathi Basin type, and there is the Proving Grounds a 5v5 one lane map.
Also content doesn't mean only maps and different game modes. It means characters, skins, they also revise their old content and update it graphically. They introduced the Spectator Mode, Colorblind Mode, they are currently working to update the UI. In anyway are Riot not updating the entirety of the game.
And to mention this,
League of Legends, Free-to-play with micro-transactions.
World of Warcraft, initial payment for game + all expansions, with subscription, with micro-transactions.
Btw, have Blizzard stated when they update the character bones, meshes, skins and animations for the old races from Classic yet? Or are they on soon™?\
Edit: And I also think that subscribing brought that terrible, terrible last fight with Deathwing? So subscribing brought pokebattles? That's what the players really wanted? Pokemon? If I subscribe to WoW will I get Kael'thalas alive again with Illidan as his summoned minion?
Edit#2: And FYI, Rainbow_Dash didn't say he doesn't want a subscription fee anymore. He said he doesn't want to have to pay for every expansion which is out every 1-2 years or so. Picture this, you want to start playing WoW, or you want to introduce a friend to WoW. He would need to pay how much ? 85 dollars for the game + all the expansions? And that's on Amazon. Not all countries are graced with Amazon. In Romania if you want to get into this game, it costs you about 100 dollars which is more than 1/3 of the lowest salary here. But okay, let's not take these countries into consideration. Let's talk about WoW as a game.
So WoW as a game, costs between 85 and 100 US dollars. Games cost mostly 60 US dollars. WoW costs 85$-100$. Well, what do you get for your money? You get specific content for two factions. You get a leveling experience from 1 to 90, which in itself is more than you can chew on, in the idea that you will never want to do all the quests. But hey, they are there, they are available right? You won't get to access Netherstorm quests from BC anyway because you will be off to Northrend, but hey, they do exist right? One day when you are bored you can do those silly quests from Netherstorm for... Achievements! Than in this money you have the first tier of raiding in MoP available. You also have the... BGs and Arenas. You have the 3D intros. You have Proffesions... the Auction House! The LFR system, and idk what else, you should remind/update me please.
Anyway, you read this package and say "that's so great, so much cool stuff for only 85$-100$". And than you need to pay 15$ each month to access the servers and for the content updates. For 6 months subscription, you pay 80$, so that whole package again. And what do you get out of those extra 80$? Well besides the server stability side and stuff, you get content! A patch content.... one.... which includes the next tier of raiding, next tier of sets for both pve and pvp, maybe an Arena? and balances. Until you see the end of the expansion it will take about an year and a half? So that means 18 months, which mean 240$ on subscription + 85$-100$ = 325$-340$ cost. This is friggin expensive.
But let's say you're smarter, and you only pay for the months you decided to play. There are about 3 content patches each expansion. Let's say you take an interest in each and you want to play for 2 months. So 3 sessions of two months each mean a total of 90$. That lowers the total price to 175$-190$. That still is expensive. Even in the USA, with 200$ you could do other things.
Okay, now let's compare WoW with another game to which DSG is mostly opposed to. Torchlight 2.
Torchlight 2 costs 20$. No micro-transactions, no subscriptions. I will admit that TL2 is inferior in graphics to WoW. Although the cartoon graphic style is the same. Okay so what do we pay 20$ for?
We pay for leveling from 1 to 100. In one walkthrough though, you won't reach 100. You will reach about 50ish (on your first). Than the content simply repeats. So what we have between 1 to 50? well we have 4 major acts, which you would really want to explore and complete them all. But these acts are random. The randomness of the terrain is so well made, that you never know how it will look. It's always feels different. Sure it's the same tree model, but everything else changes. Your pattern, the mobs locations, they change because of the randomization. You have single player, you have LAN, you have cool bossfights. You don't have proffesions like in WoW, but you have the gains of those proffesions. And it will be highly modable once the tools are released. Oh and also, dungeons are random too, and once you finish your first playthrough you have the option to go to an area called the Map Works, where a vendor sells you a map which gives you access to a random generated dungeon. What happens after your initial purchase? Well you play and even without subscriptions, the devs take care of bugs and balancing.
I am really not against WoW as a game, but I am against Blizz policy around WoW and all their newest games.
That's one interesting story and prediction mate. Well, if you ask me, the "Emerald Dream" is somewhat an interesting story. It holds a lot of mysteries that light has not yet shed on, and there are many unanswered questions and unexplained events in that are in that story and it's events.
