Or “unevil” in regards to certain necessary persona…
That’s crude alright.
I hope I could take ‘soon’ seriously. 
Taken from wowwiki and adjusted to fit into Crate:
“Soon” does not imply any particular date, time, decade, century, or millennia in the past, present, and certainly not the future. “Soon” shall make no contract or warranty between Crate Entertainment and the end user. “Soon” will arrive some day, Crate does guarantee that “soon” will be here before the end of time. Maybe. Do not make plans based on “soon” as Crate will not be liable for any misuse, use, or even casual glancing at “soon.”
Nice. The pain shall continues. 
That’s not so bad. Simple, effective, fits into the look of the site… I think it’s nice.
Nice disclaimer! I always thought “soon” would apply to the present, since anything happening in the present would have no choice but to be soon, since it can’t get any sooner than now!
I’m counting every second. Refreshing the forum new post five time every hour. It’s feel like a needle seep beneath my skin. The pain strike every time the needle crawl.
Well, to save you some button-wear, it won’t be this week and probably not next as anything we post would likely be eclipsed by blizz-con.
btw, anyone notice the thing where you can pay $40! for live video feed of their marketing event… wtf?! I don’t get it? You have to pay for marketing now? Am I missing something? 
lol, to them it’s not marketing, it’s the ability to see all the new latest and greatest stuff.
Obviously, if you’re a fan you’ll pay the amount (Remember you’re also being given in-game items for SC2 and WoW)
But, beyond that, everything will be released to the Media tomorrow, so be prepared for a Blizzard Storm… hahaha.
I can’t understand why people would pay 40 bucks for that… oh well. Blizzard can get away with 25 dollar fluffy pets, and 15 bucks per month for a game which you also have to buy first, so why not?
Blizzard charges what most MMO’s charge per month (including the initial purchase)…I really don’t see what they are getting away with that pay structure was setup many years ago and not by Blizzard. At the time WoW came out that was pretty standard for the genre.
Even today with newer full blown MMO’s it’s pretty standard. There’s quite a few that have dropped that pay structure for F2P with paid options, ect…but considering WoW is wildly successful it’s pretty safe to say most people think the fee is worth it, and millions gladly pay it. I don’t see why they would change.
I don’t have much knowledge of MMO’s, but I think 15 bucks a month is quite a steep price for allowing you to play a game that you already own, wether it’s conform to the market or not. Especially if you have +12 million subscribers…
Oh well, that’s just me and one of the reasons I don’t play WoW.
MMO’s don’t work like most games…you only own* the client. Most of the logic resides on the servers which are fully owned and operated (including all costs) by Blizzard. The $15 a month goes for those costs which include maintenance, ongoing content, support, maintenance, bandwidth, and probably a whole bevy of things I don’t even know about. They have a full staff of developers/artists/designers/ect constantly creating new content for the game, patching it, and stuff like that.
In addition their support includes more than typical games to include billing help, customer support (for millions of people), and other major costs. It is definitely not cheap to run a game like WoW.
Look at Crate/Iron Lore…they couldn’t go with closed server support due to the costs…and that setup in comparison to a MMO with millions of players is peanuts.
*You actually don’t own any of the games you purchase…but thats a different discussion
Uhh, wait, isn’t that what marketing is? Most companies pay for you to see that.
I’m not knocking on Blizzard, I’m just in shock that people would pay $40 for that. I could see maybe $5 or possibly even $10 but you’re paying more money to just see streaming video of what is essentially a marketing show than you would to go see 2-3 movies at an imax theatre.
It is just clear that Blizzard = god.
In terms of their MMO subscription fees, I don’t think they are unreasonable. Other companies established that price-point and clearly people are willing to pay it. However, lets not kid ourselves, they are making a huge profit margin despite the upkeep costs.
People pretty much set the prices though. Companies can only charge as much as a large potential audience will pay. At some point you cross the line where raising the price decreases the audience to the point where it isn’t as profitable. At least WoW subscriptions don’t require some sort of confusing 1-year contract filled with all kinds of hidden fees and surcharges.
then why are there AddOns / Expansions sold by Blizzard ?
The $15 for server maintenance is really steep, and the new content certainly is not always free (not sure if any / how much of it actually is, never played WOW).
I essence I can buy 4 games a year or play WOW. I am not cash strapped, but to me that is just not worth it, I will never play a game with a subscription fee (esp. since I do not necessarily play it on a frequent basis, but may return to it later).
Free-to-Play works for me, even if I have to pay for some stuff / convenience but I clearly prefer to own the game (and by that I mean install it locally and not need a server to play).
In addition their support includes more than typical games to include billing help, customer support (for millions of people), and other major costs. It is definitely not cheap to run a game like WoW.
Billing help would not be needed if there were no subscription fee, customer support and patches are provided for every game out there, subscription or not.
I’d wager about 70% of their income from operating WOW servers and community is profit. As medierra said, this does not mean I say it is overpriced. Clearly it costs the public more to buy the service than it costs Blizzard to provide it, but that is the nature of business. As long as people are willing to pay that price in such large numbers it by definition is not overpriced.
Reminds me of Wirt :p… Only with this situation if you wait a little while you’ll get the information for free.
This kind of thing shows when a company is getting obscenely powerful. They can slap a price on almost anything, and “loyal fans” will buy it. Not saying I would do anything different if I was running Blizzard.
Isn’t overpriced usually a matter of personal opinion since it’s based on cost & value, and value is a variable that changes from person to person.
If I bought WoW and played it here and there along with all the other games I have going, I would consider it overpriced. If, like a lot of people, I played it as a main game over an extended period of time and consistently sank a lot of time into it, I doubt I would find it overpriced.
What really irks me about WoW is that, last I heard (which was a long time ago), if you don’t play every so often you lose your characters. If I’m wrong on that, please let me know. If that is true, I think it’s completely absurd. If a person continues paying the subscription fee, they should keep the saves safe forever!
I stopped playing for like 2 years at one point, signed back up, and all my characters were still there. I didn’t make it past that first month though…was pretty much wow’d out I guess. Wether or not that has changed I have no idea…I played waaaaay back when before there were any expansion packs (maybe 4-5 months after release).
I don’t get into MMO’s like most people…I think the longest I ever played one was for 6 months and I played it pretty casually.
Yeah but I think there’s two context’s to look at the term…there’s the personal view that of course varies greatly from person to person, then there’s a more business/wide angle view that values a product or service.
It’s very hard to make the claim that WoW is overpriced considering it’s very successful (ie many millions think it’s worth it), is priced competitively against it’s competition, and has maintained it’s base for many years now.
It’s also an entire Blizzard Convention, you get to see a lot of the shows they put on for you, like the comedian and rock band. Beyond even that, there’s in-game items that you get for WoW and for SC2, these items would normally cost 20$ each but also they would otherwise not be available.
Also, this year people who purchased the 40$ Virtual Ticket also had a chance to purchase exclusive BlizzCon Swag items, which can fetch a fair price to any Blizzard Merch Collector.
I have to admit, as a gamer I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around most f2p games. I could see myself paying into League of Legends had I more time to play but I don’t really understand why people spend money on facebook games that seem to basically be pay-to-win.
I do, however, think that this model could have some positive side-effects for the game industry. It is a model where you try before you buy and, to some degree, the amount of money you spend is commensurate with how much you’re enjoying the game (hypothetically). I think the more recent trend of making a large and, in most cases, unrecoverable upfront investment, puts more emphasis on marketing than building a great game.
I think it will also be beneficial if payment models can allow more niche titles to be supported by smaller audiences who are willing to pay a little more to support a game that is catering directly to them, as opposed to many mainstream games that seem to become “watered down” trying to appeal to everyone.
yeah, I have alot of trouble calling a Zynga game a “game.” I mean, when you can pay-to-win, it’s more like gambling without any real pay-offs. Gambling can be a game because of the chance for a pay-off, but Zynga’s “games” are all about paying to get ahead, I just have trouble calling that a game. If it is a game, then it’s a very very bad game that is not balanced for fun in any respects.
I think that’s why Blizzard has saved a lot of face by forcing their games to be balanced even if you don’t pay more then what’s required to play them.
Providing I’m reading your post correctly, isn’t this the case with Grim Dawn, and the fans who have already pitched in money for it?
All of Dwarf Fortress’s development is basically funded by donation now.
Cliff over at Positech Games was running an experiment also, selling an expansion for his latest game at two different price points.
http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/registernomads.php
Unsuprisingly, most people went for the more expensive purchase. While the difference was only a few dollars, it showed me that people are willing to pay as much as their “value” system allows.
Mainstream games are harder of course, but by the examples listed above, electing to give some power of the purchase to the consumer, to decide on the value, I think most people will opt to be somewhat generous with the pricing. Obviously, there are also those who are beyond help and believe they are entitled to whatever they want for no cost…