“Yay expansion!” Or depending on where you are on the roller coaster of ANETs info dump, “Meh, expansion.”
One rebuttal some players have leveraged at players dissatisfied with ANETs marketing campaign is that they should quit complaining about money because GW2 famously has no subscription fee. But because people are still yo-yoing their enthusiasm for HoT because of pricing dissatisfaction, I thought I’d break that discussion out into a new thread so the community can discuss what a subscription (perhaps an OPTIONAL subscription) would mean for the game and could mean for the expansion.
The “no subscription” line is a shield thrown up over ANET and aimed at price dissatisfied (price sensitive) players. But it’s worth pointing out that not having a subscription is not ANET doing you a favor; it’s a business decision.
In fact, were it not for the fact that many of you would be less likely to play GW2 if it had a subscription, I bet many of you would actually prefer to be given that option. Yea, a subscription could meet your needs very nicely and appeal to you as a customer, even though you have an aversion to them and prefer not to pay them. (People are fickle.)
And when they step into expanding their game it would be a little remiss of ANET to not at least consider an optional subscription…not to mention smart given a lot of people HATE the price of HoT.
Consider this, at the cheapest gem store price a transfiguration charge costs $.30. So a monthly $15 would in theory get you 50/month. If—by handing over the subscription—ONE of the benefits was unlimited transfigures, does that appeal to you? How would your relationship to the game change if you could dress yourself each day to your heart’s desire?
Changing your hairstyle is going to cost you what in real $$$? How many more would be converted by endless make over kits thrown on?
Recovering your runes and sigils?
A black lion key (cheapest) is $1.05? If a $15 subscription got you one/day along with your other login rewards, you’d save a ton even if that was the only benefit of subscribing.
Each person might not be swayed to part with their money by any individual subscriber benefit, but would enjoy that benefit none the less as part of a persuasive package they were swayed by.
What’s more, because ANET probably doesn’t sell very many people 50 transfiguration charges a month, nor 30 markover kits, nor 30 black lion keys (every month) the large discount of the subscription would flatten out their revenue (good) without cannibalizing very many gem store purchases. What % of the play base consume gems that heavily?
And an EXPANSION is a great opportunity to add more creative benefits of subscribing, maybe some the community has been asking for for a while, like more kitten bank space!
I bet many of you would prefer that! We should be less quick to say “but there’s no subscription” when others say the price of HoT is too kitten high, because all we’re saying is “ANET has withheld an option for enjoying this game from us and given us fewer choices so they can sell overpriced gems.”
And it’s an option ANET should consider in this and future expansions, because what is the next expansion price plans going to be? Vets pay $60 for the expansion while newbies get vanilla AND HoT thrown in free at the same price? That’s not going to go over any better!