Fandom doesn't pay the bills or shareholders.
Most of us will glady pay. The rest will stay on pirate servers I guess.
You do you.
They already paid there bills and shareholders. Now its time for them to pay back to there community instead of spitting on them by asking for even more money for something that cost practically no effort or money to push out and it will also indirectly generate them money through advertising there game to a new audience that doesn't want to pay fee's.
If most of us are fine with paying montly fee's and high start prices then blizzards world of warcraft would sure as hell be doing far better then it's doing right now. Guess what most people play free to play games and they also make most of the money. So no most of us don't want montly fee's and specially not for something they already paid a massive fee for to start with back in the day.
It's not hard to understand.
This is nuts. Why would or should it be free? How many other companies do you see putting out free games that aren't infested with microtransactions and lootboxes? Why is it okay for Sony and Nintendo to charge for games from the 80s and 90s but Blizzard can't charge for a game from the 2000s?
Private servers do not run for free, I don't know where you've got this information from. Servers, web hosts, sometimes moderation, etc. cost money. It's why so many servers shut down constantly. Private servers either rely on donations, private funding, or gold/item shops which ruin servers. To claim they "put the game up in a day without issues" is bonkers. Have you actually played any private servers? NONE of them have ever worked 100% correctly. None of them have ever used the 100% accurate 1.12 data because they don't have it.
But what's more bonkers is to say there's zero effort involved on Blizzard's end. If you'd taken the time to actually look at what they're doing behind the scenes you'd know that this isn't just another private server, it's taking the original game data and running it in a modern client, which is unprecedented and will bring about a whole new range of bugs that need fixing. Do you really think if it was that easy they wouldn't already have released it? Why would they be turning down free money..?
Sorry, but the idea that you should be able to play an official WoW server for free forever is ludicrously entitled. 15 bucks a month is a drop in the ocean for the hours an average player will put in, especially considering you can also access the core game with the same subscription.
1) Loads of company's put games out for free, its called free to play something that completely took over blizzards market dominance on the PC sector for a reason in profits and user base. People flee from blizzard maybe you didn't noticed it yet, but even devs are bailing out ( they already did ). And it's all because of there attitude.
2) Wow is already pay to win, ever saw there gold tokens? last time i played was wow legion and frankly it was totally pay to win. There is absolute no reason to ask a montly fee anymore to start with. So that argument is also void. U wanted to do content fast? get taken into raids? pay gold tokens. Want gear fast? pay gold tokens. It was far more pay to win then most free, free to play games have in the current landscape. So let's not ride that chicken.
3) What sony and nintendo do i have zero interest in, what blizzard does i have.
But if you want to argue about it, maybe blizzard should honestly ask you to pay a second fee for internet access towards blizzard shop. I guess you would be all for it. Because some other console company's also do it.
I could go on about nintendo and there rom scam all day long but won't now.
I paid in total 2000 euro's for wow and loads of people did to support the game, i aspect to be served at this point. But frankly they have nothing to show for it. They did nothing with the money and there inefficiency of a absolute joke with classic is showing there true face.
If they cared the game would run already a year ago and costed you nothing.
4) Loads of people that would want to run those servers for blizzard for free or a tiny fee and create all the infrastructure from zero if needed. But they could easily pay with the billions they leeched of there playerbase good faith over the years and already have the infrastructure in place to start with. But they won't because they rather fuel there golden ferari's then invest into the games with it. Guess why everybody just slammed them at there last bliz "con" as even the die hard fans started to see through there bullshit at this point.
And if they really needed a investment ( lol ) , they could start a kickstarter or ask the community straight up for the money they need to run those servers. And then people would honestly be shocked at how inefficient those clowns operate there company.
I can already see there list with total cost for all materials being only 1% with salary of the ceo being 90%.
5) Did you even play world of warcraft? the game has never worked for a 100%. There game is always riddled with bugs. Vanilla will also contain bugs that will have to be fixed, but if they fix those it's no longer vanilla. So that basically means vanilla can be launched with bugs without issue's to start with which can be worked on over time like any private server does really.
And the 1.12 wasn't the holy grail to start with, its just a patch they decide on because it's the most " up to date version" with needed stuff to make things work.
6) Why does anybody care if they run it on a new client? they just want to play wow vanilla. They could slam that engine way later in and replace it with the private server data if they cared. Players won't care even remotely.
Private servers have servers running with up to 13k players while the original engine would be killed already at 1k players. All excuses for them to validate there prices.
It's just blizzard being special at this point. And what else are they adding? new content? yea that's going to fly well with those classic purists.
7) 15 bucks a month is not a drop in the ocean. It's a barrier of greed that will prevent most people from playing the game. There is zero reason this has to cost any money to start with. It keeps people on there platform, gets new people into wow that maybe wouldn't be interested into it and eventually will maybe try out there flag ship wow version with pay to win content in it.
It's basically how free to play company's operate and even single player games by giving away there first game in order for people to get interested into there second game.
The fact they have the guts to even ask a monthly fee for vanilla, showcases you why there game is dying and why devs and community's are bailing on it. Totally disconnected with there audiences.
I follow wow already for a while and frankly even there community manager got axed because it actually tried to communicate in a half normal manner with there audience. Obviously that toxic shill of a company doesn't like that and axes him which created a second wave of outrage.
The company is a joke and anybody that supports them shilling for even more money " because share holders, toxic ceo's" should honestly reflect on why they play or support company's in the video game industry to start with.
At this point the company needs a full blown reboot or simple just sell off vanilla IP or give a license out towards private server owners to get anything half decent going.
Because it's clear they are not even capable to run something as simple as a vanilla server for the masses in any decent time. I wouldn't be shocked if they only got 2 people working on it in the weekend that are interns. Go watch some interviews with the original wow vanilla creators. You will have a laugh.
If you pay the 15 bucks a month, u are the problem.
