The monetization of World of Warcraft has evolved significantly since I played during Burning Crusade over 10 years ago. Back then, the model was straightforward - you bought the expansion and paid a subscription fee. That was all you needed to access 100% of the game’s content.

Today, I’m noticing through my friends’ Discord group that the purchasing model has become much more complex. Beyond the base expansion packs and subscriptions, there are now early access passes, limited-time mounts (like a $90 dinosaur mount), and promotional tie-ins with products like Mountain Dew and Doritos that offer exclusive cosmetic items. Some players are even buying these promotional codes in bulk to resell online.

Example above, someone paid over $200 just to get some of the mountain dew codes… This shift in monetization strategy raises interesting questions about the direction of the game and MMOs in general. While additional cosmetic options can add variety and personal expression to the game, I wonder about the impact on the player experience and community. Does having these exclusive items create a divide between players who can afford them and those who can’t? Or is it simply offering more choices for those who want them?

I’m particularly curious about the psychological aspect of limited-time offers. The “fear of missing out” seems to be a powerful motivator, especially with items that are advertised as never being available again. But is this enhancing the game experience or just creating artificial scarcity?

Looking forward to hearing different perspectives on this, especially from others who’ve witnessed this evolution firsthand. What do you think about the current monetization approach compared to the simpler model of the past? Has it affected how you engage with the game?

TLDR: WoW’s monetization has changed dramatically from the simple expansion + subscription model of the past to include various limited-time purchases and promotions. People today are scalping and reselling thousand of dollars of mountain dew for in game codes

  • Aielman15@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    My man. Half your post history is about shit-talking MMOs and modern gaming, including repeated posts and contradictory claims.

    It’s irritating how low effort AA+ games are these days

    Not trying to sound like I have rose tinted glasses or whatever but lots of my favorite AA+ games, including AAA, are so low effort now. My favorite game ever is World of Warcraft, and it’s just shocking seeing how little content you get for your $15 a month. […]

    How did Call of Duty get to this point?

    Since I’m a WoW addict, naturally I’m a Blizzard fan, of sorts. But my mind is blown every time I see anything from Call of Duty on the launcher. I’ve been really out of the loop, and recently saw this… and I’m shocked. You have to BUY the game for “open beta access”, like how does that make any sense? Also, the general look of the game and its marketing now looks like a $5 ripoff FPS game on Steam… What the heck happened?

    Is Elder Scrolls 6 doomed to fail? I can’t see how it will work

    After the massive blunder of Starfield, I cannot see how Elder scrolls 6 could possibly be successful. […] But this has not been the first time that Bethesda as a whole has failed, and is in fact the third strike. […]

    Why Do People Still Play Destiny 2?

    With the release of “The Final Shape,” the main storyline has concluded, and it seems like the developers are now just churning out random content and seasonal passes without a clear direction for the game’s future. I’m genuinely curious about what motivates players to stick around. Are there aspects of the game that still offer value or enjoyment, or are players simply holding on in hopes of something more substantial? What keeps them engaged with Destiny 2 despite its apparent lack of a clear path forward?

    Is overwatch 2 really that bad?

    I’ve played maybe 10 hours total of Overwatch 2 and it is incredibly boring (to me). […]

    Do people actually starve themselves to play games like World of Warcraft?

    This is definitely one of the strangest cash grabs I’ve ever seen

    Honkai Star Rail, a free-to-play gacha game (basically, gambling game of chance) in which players spend anywhere from $5 to $10,000 to get characters, gear, equipment… […]

    Gacha games are out of control. Gambling shouldn’t be so widespread

    As someone who grew up playing games like World of Warcraft and other AAA titles, I’ve seen how the gaming industry has evolved over the years—and not always for the better. One of the most disturbing trends is the rise of gacha games, which are, at their core, thinly veiled gambling systems targeting younger players. And I think it’s time we have a serious conversation about why this form of gaming needs to be heavily restricted, if not outright regulated.

    People seem to really dislike Destiny 2. Why haven’t they ended it yet?

    I think Sims is a dead franchise now

    After being incredibly disappointed by the release of Sims 4, I was someone holding out hope for Sims 5 that they would have realized, “Hey, people really didn’t want us to do anything multiplayer in Sims 4. Maybe that means we should go back and make an actual good Sims game?” But instead, we get this awful news that Sims will be just like Fortnite, heavily monetized with its own store, basically following the model of Fallout games with creation club, in a sense. Completely the opposite of what players asked for, and crushing all of our hopes and dreams of playing a new Sims game that’s just like Sims 3… […]

    Starfield’s first DLC is one of the worst Bethesda DLCs of all time

    Starfield steam page for the DLC currently shows eight user review score of 41%, making this one of the worst Bethesda DLC’s released of all time. This is so horribly, shockingly bad for Bethesda, because it shows as a gaming company, they are no longer capable of delivering a really good gaming experience as they had in the past. […]

    Corporate greed is killing RuneScape. What do people play instead?

    RuneScape was my favorite game of all time when I was a kid. I’d play it for at least 8 hours a day every day, and never get bored. Now, RuneScape is RuneScape 3, terribly infested gambling microtransaction mess that looks like a really bad early access game, or Oldschool RuneScape, which is really fun, but is infested with bots. […]

    I’m tired of every game being live service

    I’m really frustrated with how almost every new game these days is being forced into this “live service” model. It seems like no matter what type of game you want to play—whether it’s an RPG, shooter, or even something traditionally single-player—you’re stuck with always-online requirements. And for what? It adds nothing to the experience for most players and, if anything, it makes the game worse. […]

    My mental health has improved after deleting games that have microtransactions in them

    After playing World of Warcraft for 15 years, I started becoming increasingly bored and disgruntled with the game. The game being grindy and repetitive is no real surprise, I mean it’s an MMO. But the one thing that was really frustrating was paying monthly for a subscription and a huge chunk of cash for an expansion, but still having extra stuff flashed in my face all the time that was simply not possible to earn in-game. […] So I ditched every game that had any element of an in-game purchase. This is honestly helped my mental health a huge, huge amount. Now, I only play games that either have no microtransactions in them at all, or are completely free and 100% possible to play with no purchase required at all. So games like team fortress, deadlocked, Stardew Valley, and many other indie games that you can purchase and then never have to worry about getting suckered into the microtransaction cycle for

    Corporate greed is killing RuneScape

    Out of my friends list of 45 people, I know that’s not a lot but still, small list of friends that I have that have played this game actively since the very beginning, two of them still play the game and one of them does not even subscribe full-time. Only when there’s a major update… When I asked every single one of my friends why they no longer play anymore the same exact reason was said. “They were taking over by an investment company, and now it just seems like a silly cash grab. They keep raising the prices, keep missing the mark, don’t listen to players.” <<< One of my friends said this to me… […]

    7 days to die is no longer Early Access, but still looks like this

    Why is World of Warcraft so goofy looking? (deleted)

    And also my personal favourite:

    Fields of Mistria is one of the most impressive games I’ve ever played

    As a long-time Stardew Valley fan, I never thought I’d find a game that could capture my heart quite the same way. Fields of Mistria has done just that. I’m honestly blown away by how good this game is
    note: just a random fan, have nothing to do with this game at all. It kinda saddens me that it hasn’t gotten as much attention though, there are so many mediocre games with soooo many reviews… this game is legit insane. it’s gorgeous!!

    Fields of Mistria review: A boring, soulless Stardew reskin

    BEFORE DOWNVOTING ME, PLEASE READ: This is my opinion, you can disagree with it all you want, but it would be really nice to at least respect what I have to say just the same as I respect that people really enjoy this game I played this game before I started Stardew Valley, I have never played either of them, the look and feel of Stardew did not really appeal to me. So I decided to try this game. Instantly love the anime style characters and graphics of the game, love the color palette, love the world design. It’s beautiful. So that was what really drew me in…

    What a change of heart! You seemed to really enjoy Fields of Mistria the 7th of October, because it clicked with you as a “long-time Stardew fan”. Yet the 11th of November you said that you played Mistria BEFORE Stardew, and that you never played either of them because the look of them didn’t appeal to you, and you gave Mistria a 4/10.

    And yet the 10th October you said that:

    I only play games that either have no microtransactions in them at all, or are completely free and 100% possible to play with no purchase required at all. So games like […] Stardew Valley

    The two posts are choke full of contradictory claims, so I’m just stopping here… For this one.

    [continues]

    • Dremor@lemmy.worldMEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      I’ll ask you to refrain from throwing a random witch hunt on random posts just because you don’t like it. That would fall under rule 2 (harassement).

      Il you feel like an user may be a bot, please report it to a mod so we can put said user under observation in order to access its behavior.

    • Aielman15@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 days ago

      But there are other examples as well! 16th of August:

      Another game that I have really come to enjoy lately is Genshin impact from Hoyo. This is a gacha game, But it’s still relatively fun to play with no monetary investment at all because of how generous they are with being able to obtain the in-game currency, the entire storyline basically is available without any paywall. Cannot say this for a lot of games.

      And 15th of September:

      It’s funny that you mentioned Genshin because it’s probably one of the most predatory of all. Star rail isn’t really that bad, has much more generous pity. The new game that Hoyo just put out, however, zenless, is fucking terrifyingly predatory.

      There’s also the fact that you “accidentally” used AI to slip in wrong misinformation in your posts, such as Monthly subscription costs are no longer affordable (deleted, but can still be seen in your profile history)

      Thanks for pointing that out. My math was horribly off here. That’s what I get for using Google sheets to try and work this out myself :( I corrected it. I was accidentally multiplying by something without realizing it.

      Was it Google Sheets or Google’s Gemini shit? Oh, wait, it was not Gemini. It was Claude.

      Are you sure about that? This is a huge amount of information. I put all the facts into Claude and asked it who was correct, you or me. It told me I’m correct based on the facts provided to it. So even a multi million dollar language learning model came to the same conclusion I did.

      It honestly seems to me that you are either trolling, or using an AI to generate catchy rage-bait posts. To what purpose, I don’t know, but you certainly are not engaging in good faith with the community.

      • Buttflapper@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        Thanks for contributing in unneccessary witch hunting. You’ve shown that Lemmy can be just as petulant and inhospitable as reddit. Nothing I have ever written is AI generated, such a weird criticism and hilarious to lob that at someone considering that even million dollar tech companies who have made “ai detectors” have failed spectacularly with false positives. But you dislike what I say so you’re 100% correct, right? yea that makes sense dude sure.