KovacsC wrote:
I think you missed the point by a country mile.....
EVE has a monthly charge but the game is free to play. If I remember most MMos have that model.
it is a bit cheeky to charge £35 for an expansion as well as a monthly charge
What you have to remember with WoW is that they don't just push an expansion out of the door and then leave the game alone for two years, with everyone on the WoW team immediately starting to work on the next expansion.
The current expansion, Legion, was released at the end of the August, and has already received its first major content update, with many more in the pipeline over the life-cycle of the expansion, before the next full expansion is released (this is usually a two-year cycle, or thereabouts).
As well as these major updates, each expansion receives constant tweaks, patches, hotfixes, minor content updates, seasonal events, and so on.
If you don't mind being an expansion behind, the game is damn near free to play ('buy') (the £5 deal above is a drop from £10, so it was hardly mega-expensive beforehand), and the only ongoing charges are indeed the subscription. If you want the latest expansion then yes they do cost £35 at launch and usually for the first year or so, after which point they generally drop down to £20 and then lower as the expansion gets older.
It's hard to over-emphasise just how vast WoW really is, this is perhaps unsurprising considering the game is now over twelve years and six expansions old, but nonetheless it's a massive world to explore with a huge variety of things to do, and all of it actively and constantly curated, maintained, and improved.
I can completely understand folks looking at the headline numbers and baulking, '£35 for an expansion AND a tenner a month? Fuck off!', and that's fine, hence my suggestion that the £5 for the full game up to Draenor and including a month's subscription, might be a good way for people to investigate without a large commitment of cash, and then subsequently decide if they think it's worth continuing or not.
I've lost count of the AAA games me and my mates have tried over the years, MMOs and otherwise, with and without monthly subscriptions, and in terms of a game you can play on a long-term basis and continue to get enjoyment and satisfaction out of - nothing has ever come close to WoW.