Cata at what cost?

[Daeri]

As I'm in the processing of setting up a 3rd account, I just bought wow+bc+wolt for less than 35 € total (no additional freight charges, according to google that's about £ 29) from Amazon.fr Might be worth checking the price for other european countries and US

[Dramoth]

Currently from amazon.co.uk:

World of Warcraft £4.99
The Burning Crusade £6.47
Wrath of the Lich King £17.99
Cataclysm (Pre-Order) £17.91

Wow Battlechest £12.41

[kate]

Blizzard knows that getting new players into the game is key to its long-term survival; they've made tons of changes to the early game to keep new players interested and make it easier for them to get into the game. There is absolutely no way they aren't going to continue to do this with Cataclysm - in fact, I kind of see Cataclysm as one big "lets get people to try the game again, or for the first time" as the overarching goal.

So here are my predictions:

- Existing players will have to buy Cataclysm in order to play Goblins, Worgen, or level up to 85.
- People with vanilla will get the revamped Azeroth, but not be able to be Goblins, Worgen, or level to 85.
- New players can either buy Cataclysm, which will let them play Goblins, Worgen, and level to 85 BUT
- If people who bought Cata but not TBC&WotLK want to play draeni, blood elves and death knights, they'll have to buy those expansions or maybe the Blizzard store will sell the ability to play those races/class.

I think they're going to change the way the game and getting new content is gonna happen. I think they've been testing out that micro-transaction stuff a lot, and I think we'll see things like "Oh, hey, next month on the store we're gonna be selling, for $25, the ability to play as a Pandaren." "We added a new heroic class, and for $25, you can play as them". Then when they do actual new areas, they can sell those individually, too. "$10 to unlock this new zone" and so on.

I think this would have the potential for a LOT more revenue for them. If they come out with an expansion every 2 years that sells for $50, that's not bad. But if they come out with a new race every year for $25, a new class every other year for $25, a new zone every 6 months for $10 - they wind up having a much more dynamic game that is always giving players something new AND they win up charging more for it AND their content development team can focus on making the new stuff as good as possible.

Just something I feel in my bones. If Blizzard doesn't do it I'll be surprised, but SOMEBODY is going to take this approach to MMO expansions, that I'm sure of. Blizzard just has the fanbase to pull it off.

[MiRai]

So here are my predictions:

- Existing players will have to buy Cataclysm in order to play Goblins, Worgen, or level up to 85.
- People with vanilla will get the revamped Azeroth, but not be able to be Goblins, Worgen, or level to 85.

No need to predict, it has been this way with the last 2 expansions and Blizzard already said it's the same for Cataclysm.

- New players can either buy Cataclysm, which will let them play Goblins, Worgen, and level to 85 BUT
- If people who bought Cata but not TBC&WotLK want to play draeni, blood elves and death knights, they'll have to buy those expansions or maybe the Blizzard store will sell the ability to play those races/class.

Not sure how you're expecting to fill the 60-70 gap of Outland or 70-80 gap of Northrend, both which require their own expansions, unless you're planning on grinding boars in Elwynn Forest. The expansions will need to be bought and applied to any new users account.

I think they're going to change the way the game and getting new content is gonna happen. I think they've been testing out that micro-transaction stuff a lot, and I think we'll see things like "Oh, hey, next month on the store we're gonna be selling, for $25, the ability to play as a Pandaren." "We added a new heroic class, and for $25, you can play as them". Then when they do actual new areas, they can sell those individually, too. "$10 to unlock this new zone" and so on.

I think this would have the potential for a LOT more revenue for them. If they come out with an expansion every 2 years that sells for $50, that's not bad. But if they come out with a new race every year for $25, a new class every other year for $25, a new zone every 6 months for $10 - they wind up having a much more dynamic game that is always giving players something new AND they win up charging more for it AND their content development team can focus on making the new stuff as good as possible.

Just something I feel in my bones. If Blizzard doesn't do it I'll be surprised, but SOMEBODY is going to take this approach to MMO expansions, that I'm sure of. Blizzard just has the fanbase to pull it off.

A fan base that they'd quickly lose. I can't imagine how many people would quit this game if they had to pay money to access classes or zones. I would guess that more people would quit the game than would be paying to access this content, in turn, Blizzard would be losing money for taking such a route.

Also, they've said before they don't want to flood Azeroth with new races and classes every expansion, It's hard enough to balance what they've got. There is lore and history to this game that they've been [semi] sticking to. And how would Blizzard just whip up another class that would fit nicely every year? Do you think that all the ideas and programming for an expansion are done in 6 months and the other 18 months their programmers and writers are just on vacation? Probably before Wrath was released they were already working on Cataclysm, and the way it's looking... they might not even hit the released date they had planned in their heads.

[DLoweinc]

I think the micro transaction thing, as you said, is going to be appealing for Blizzard.

One thing you can't count out though is all of the PR generated that having hundreds of thousands of people standing outside a store at midnight to get a copy of the expansion will bring them.

[kate]

No need to predict, it has been this way with the last 2 expansions and Blizzard already said it's the same for Cataclysm.

Not sure how you're expecting to fill the 60-70 gap of Outland or 70-80 gap of Northrend, both which require their own expansions, unless you're planning on grinding boars in Elwynn Forest. The expansions will need to be bought and applied to any new users account.

You're misunderstanding, or I wasn't super clear. The 1-60 stuff will not be the "old" Azeroth - it'll be the Cataclysm Azeroth. However, unless they pay for the expansion, they won't be able to play goblins or worgen, and won't be able to access draeni, blood elves, and deathknights. I can see Blizzard allowing people to go to outland and northrend without buying the expansions - they just won't be able to be the races or classes that were introduced unless they pay for those.

A fan base that they'd quickly lose. I can't imagine how many people would quit this game if they had to pay money to access classes or zones. I would guess that more people would quit the game than would be paying to access this content, in turn, Blizzard would be losing money for taking such a route.

I wouldn't be so sure. They sold millions of panda vanity pets and those dumb celestial winged horse mounts. I absolutely see them saying "hey, we want to introduce entire new races or classes or zones, but we don't want to put it in an expansion because it's not that big, so you can buy them ala carte instead for less money, and we can get them out to you more frequently so the game stays fresh." The only time I could see microtransactions causing a massive fanbase revolt like you suggest would be if they offered actual *advantages* ingame. In this case, it would simply be offering distributed expansions over time rather than just these big, huge, every-2-years deals.

Also, they've said before they don't want to flood Azeroth with new races and classes every expansion, It's hard enough to balance what they've got. There is lore and history to this game that they've been [semi] sticking to. And how would Blizzard just whip up another class that would fit nicely every year? Do you think that all the ideas and programming for an expansion are done in 6 months and the other 18 months their programmers and writers are just on vacation? Probably before Wrath was released they were already working on Cataclysm, and the way it's looking... they might not even hit the released date they had planned in their heads.

They've changed lore when it's convenient, going the full-on retcon route to just minor tweaks (it wasn't Zalzin or whatever his name is, but a cleverly disguised set of coconuts! It wasn't mechengineer whoozit, but a construct!)

Balancing new races is easy, but the class part is, I agree, tricky. And I think, actually, that they have a lot of stuff that is going on simultaneously, not "whipped up" over the course of 6 months. They've said repeatedly that they began work on cataclysm before WotLK came out. However, given that it presumably takes fewer resources to make a new race than it does to make an entire new expansion, yes, I actually do think it would be easier for them to release those regularly separate from an expansion. If they released individual zones, again, being able to focus on just that is probably a lot easier than trying to manage the development of an expansion, and takes fewer resources and less time.

Frequent, smaller releases of paid content that is easier to develop is where I see the game going - I may be wrong, but I think it absolutely makes sense given what they've been doing so far (testing out the microtransactions going from a useless vanity pet to something bigger that has an actual in-game effect, albeit a small one) and given how the marketplace is changing.

Heck, just take a look at how many people cancel subscriptions between content patches, or cancel for a few months before the launch of an expansion, to resubscribe when new things come out? If they did a schedule of having *something* new coming out every 3 months (content patches, new race, new class, new zone - any one of those) they would keep people paying and interested rather than have people say "I'm taking a break until (whatever) comes out..." How many people say "such and such a game just launched, I'm going to try that until (whatever) WoW thing comes out..."? If there's *always* something near release that's more incentive for those people to stay with WoW.

I don't see the massive revolt because I don't really see that paying, say, $10-25 every 3-6-9 months or so (if they do a free content patch followed by a paid one, followed by a free, etc.) and always getting something new to try in game is bad compared to only paying $50 every 2 years, but having to wait longer for new things. Personally I'd rather pay slightly more for a more dynamic game then less but have to wait.

Anyway, I may be wrong, I may be right, it's not particularly important to me either way. I'll just say that if there is any company that can make such massive changes to the MMO marketplace, it's Blizzard, and they have a pretty good incentive to do it - more money, a richer game offering than any competitor, and an even larger playerbase certainly wouldn't be disincentives to them!

[Owltoid]

I wouldn't be so sure. They sold millions of panda vanity pets and those dumb celestial winged horse mounts. I absolutely see them saying "hey, we want to introduce entire new races or classes or zones, but we don't want to put it in an expansion because it's not that big, so you can buy them ala carte instead for less money, and we can get them out to you more frequently so the game stays fresh." The only time I could see microtransactions causing a massive fanbase revolt like you suggest would be if they offered actual *advantages* ingame. In this case, it would simply be offering distributed expansions over time rather than just these big, huge, every-2-years deals.

Unless they did away with racials, offering new races for money is the same as offering actual *advantages* ingame. I'm not disagreeing with the prediction that Blizzard will eventually go to microtransactions, I'm just clarifying that vanity pets is still a long way off from races for sale.

[kate]

Unless they did away with racials, offering new races for money is the same as offering actual *advantages* ingame. I'm not disagreeing with the prediction that Blizzard will eventually go to microtransactions, I'm just clarifying that vanity pets is still a long way off from races for sale.

Good point! Though racials are kind of a mixed bag - some are better than others, but everyone seems to find different ones to be good/bad for the situation. I guess when I was saying actual advantages it might be something like "buy rep with x faction for $y" or "buy heirlooms" or stuff like that. I was actually a little iffy about the celestial mount because it basically means that you never have to spend however much gold ever again on other mounts on any other alts you make - technically, it could be considered buying gold for money, albeit very, very slowly