Im a working man that works 4 days a week at 12 hour shifts each day its sad that the game time keeps on ticking while im at work ,,plus being married and have to take care of the house so i dont get to much time to play , each time i play is only a couple of hours a week so at 15 dollars a month i spend about 5 dollars each time i play, iget to realy play about 3 or 4 times a month but the wow time keeps flying by.

and yet blizzard knows we spend a lot of money to play the game and still they make the game so time consuming on purpose ,they at least could make the flight path riders a bit faster,or stop making delivery quest that make you travel from 1 place to another that takes a few hours to make

It is your choice to play. If you try to stick to one zone at a time, and only do delivery quests if you happen to be in the area, you can get a lot done in a short amount of time.

If you don't like it, play an offline game like a FPS or sim game.

I agree with the original poster.  A lot of sites charge a flat rate per month for access to their online resources, be those games, research or educational to, etc. and do not cripple said tools by making them ridiculously slow and intentionally tedious.

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, plus many online news and entertainment sources charge nothing at all for access and generally provide more accessible (if not always better) user suppert than Blizzard does for World of (Slow Motion) Warcraft.

I'm hoping some generally savvy company such as Google will figure out the attraction of MMOLRPGs have for users and provide better ones than WoW for free.  Google certainly has far more talented people than Blizzard ever has.

I think there are several online game companies that could come out with WoW clones (maybe something in the SciFi genre?) and bill at a flat rate of $.50 day and put Blizzard out of the business by not artificially degrading the online game experience by a variety of bogus methods designed to keep players online for more months.

With the Blizzards history of screwing up WoW more with so many  obviously under-tested patches that cause the game to be unusable (such as the "disappearing mount/NPC/terrain elements bug that came with the recent patch of about 2008-01-09) until the sluggards at Blizzard get around to correcting the bug while continuing to charge non-refundable payments to users who can't play, I don't think Blizzards success is going to last more than a couple more years.  Some competitor will come out with something better, faster, and less buggy.

I agree with 2nd post by Ileeeen. It's your choice to play WOW. I've got pretty much same schedule as first poster guy and a family to tend to but i must have better time managment skills cuz i still find time to play an hour or so per day. So if u don't have time for WOW and don't want to pay the price, play something like Runescape (chuckle). But don't trash WOW just because u say u don't have time to play it and they charge too much.

No offence but when you purchased the game it's in plain writing that there's an online gaming fee, it's not Blizz's fault that you don't play more regularly....that was a choice you made.  However; if you want to play online games that are free and slightly similar to WoW then maybe Guild Wars or Metin2 would be more suitable.  You'll need to purchase the different GW games though in order to play the different zones.  Metin2 is free to download and free to play.

on the other hand
when you work that much you probably can afford to pay the fee


but seriously. its part of the game. if you dont like it. dont play wow, pay a free mmorpg


or play on a *cough* pri*cough*vate re*cough*alm*cough* ... but you didnt get this from me

I  kinda agree about the whole price thing the could lower it to aroung 5 dollars a month. I have more than eneough time to play for in 3 monthe have 4 lvcl 20+ characters and one lvl 38. But I think the fact you spen about $55 for the game then have to pay $15 monthly is a little absurd. The only positive thing is they update the site weekly and keep iddiot hackers off so they don't ruin the game or gameplay like diablo 1,2 and starcraft. But that is the only plus. They are going to make a couple billion dollars within a 5 year span. Ummm can you say wal-mart-esk. Figure 5 million players paying an average of $13 month , $65,000,000.00 a month profit which comes to $780,000,000.00 a year. I love the game but do they really need all that money it's bs. Need I say more

My concern is the fact that you cannot solo. When I bought the game it was not mentioned that you have to group or join a guild if you want to get somewhere. I prefer playing on my own. But to do some quests you have to come back when you about 5 levels higher then the xp and items you get is worth nothing

I have been playing for awhile and do most of my playing solo. I have children and a wife and don't have alot of time to play myself.  As far as I am concerned I think that a pay per day option would be nice. I would even be willing to pay a small bit more on average. To break that down you play for about .50 cents per day now. I would pay .60 each time I played if it was possible.  On the other hand I have meet alot of helpful people online to help me advance. My advice is join or create a guild that is built around players that might not be on much and help each other when your on. 

@crere

it is totally possible to get to 70 without doing instances,group quests, be in a guild, do bg's/ pvp / get all the reputation for all the factions .. etcetc

also keep in mind you dont NEED to complete a quest, you can always discard something and do a other quest.. typically there are at least 2 , usually 3 or 4 zones for one level group per faction! . so you can always for example do the 40-43 quests in one zone then do the 40-43 quests in a other zone . by the time your done your 46 and you still have loads of easy quests

also keep in mind a loooot of group quest got turned to solo quests in the 2.3 patch

i realise its often easyer to get gear with groups in instances. but with solo play you will have more time to gather ores/herbs/leather to sell to buy the gear you (think you) need.  - for solo pve its hardly needed to get the best gear for your level - in fact you can probably manage with crap gear 10 levels lower as you are but you will need to take a bit more care

wow is very well designed imho .. you can level in a lot of ways, in a lot of places, you can drop quests and take on others if they take too long or whatever.. but indeed doing quest chains and doing hard quests are more rewarding - a bit of a challenge is ok right ?

WoW is very well designed.  It has a moderation between keeping players in general satisfied enough to come back and to earn money for its shareholders. 

Like some, I agree with 2nd poster.  Did you not know that you had to pay $14.95/mo to play WoW?  After playing for X amount of weeks and months, did you not expect FP's to be 'slow'?  Did you not expect there are some quests that require you to do certain things?

Simply put:  if you don't agree to it, don't play it.  There are tons of other games online.  I play EVE Online from time to time, and have accounts with others like Maple Story, Tales of Pirates, D&D Stormreach, Guildwars Nightfall, and dozens of others that I go back from time to time.  If you can't afford the payment or the time, then again, don't play.

As a dad with a full blown family life, I suggest WII or some easy hack & slash grinder like PSO or FFXI.  Maybe even Guildwars if you don't have the money.

your time should be used when you log on not while your off

that would b good but neva happen think a guy stops playin for years he can come bak with like a month left and serios if u play only bout 1 2 hrs at a time it would take ages for u to hav to pay again not fair for blizz

To be honest the system is clear. You pay a monthly subscribtion and you get full access to the site. Its much like a sky or internet or contract mobile phone subscription. You pay a flat fee and get access. If you disagree with it dont pay and play something else. I dont really think this is an issue with Bliz more an issue with flat subscription charges

Considering the options Blizzard have to market their product, a monthly subscription is the fairest and most profitable. Unfortunatley for people who - for whatever reasons - play infrequently, it costs them more per hour of play than someone who plays more often. But that is the essence of subscriptions, you need to make the most of it.

Personally I think Blizzard have done a fantsatic job with this game and it feels like it will carry on for years. I have a family and a full-time job but I still think the game is worth the money. For example: A brand new 1 player game like Crysis will cost you around £30 (in the UK) which is more than 3 months of subscription to WoW. Now If I played Crysis, it would be complete within 1 month maximum, so with WoW im getting better value for my money. Also, some added value is involved with all the offline content. I can spend happy hours idley browsing thottbot and the armory planning the next adventure or battle. Or finding the path to that epic item which will look/be amazing. For what you are getting, this game is cheap!

Maybe this thread should be called 'Blizzard Scams the working man(if you let them)'

Man, if you think you cant solo in WoW, then pity the poor players who "use" to play EQ... yes I know its an old and outdated game... but it was once the king of online games... I played it for 5yrs....

Trust me this game is so easy to solo and lvl... it was impossible in EQ... hence the mass exodus from the Sony game to this one...

Man, if you think you cant solo in WoW, then pity the poor players who "use" to play EQ... yes I know its an old and outdated game... but it was once the king of online games... I played it for 5yrs....

Trust me this game is so easy to solo and lvl... it was impossible in EQ... hence the mass exodus from the Sony game to this one...

I agree that they make a lot of money, but if you actually have a look at how many people Blizzard employ and the cost of running the servers would not be cheap. 

I think there is enough players now that are addicted to the game that they could change it to actuall time online rather than just monthly and they would still make a bucketload of money. 

On the other hand I am not overly fussed paying the monthly fee, but understand some poeples frustration that they cannot get their monies worth from the game they love.

If you dont have the time to play, then dont. we pay 50 to 100 amonth for cable and other luxuries.  I think blizzard has lost alot of money to other online games and is hoping for a rebirth when the expansion hits. This will be the case at first, but 10 levels will have people serching for greener pastors. the faithful will remain and tuff out this great game that is a shell of its former self. If blizzard truely cared about the quality of this game they would allow you to play any blizzard game for that same monthly fee we are paying now.

We all know the are all about the benjamins so that isnt like to happen.

p.s Shammies rules but we need a few more upgrades for pvp

Exactly like the poster above about the employment of Blizzard staff and in response to the person quoted here...

Blizzard has a financial duty to three groups - from most important to least important:

1) the shareholders
2) the staff
3) the subscribers

---

1) Running a corporation is for two main purposes - a) to fulfill a vision and b) to make money.

2) Blizzard like Google, maintains a working environment in which its staff can work and have fun in.  Blizzard staff have great benefits and its pay keeps their people satisfied enough.

3) They can't charge too much or they will get little players, but they can't charge too little which will disatisfy its investors and owners, as well as keeping the expenses balanced.

/sigh

Don't forget that Blizzard is NOT a non-profit charity.  If they are, most of us wouldn't be here right now playing this game.  Since it most likely be a shitty game if Blizzard was this type of company.

$15/mo is fabulous.  If you think $15/mo is 'too expensive', like I said elsewhere, uninstall WoW and go play Guildwars or Maple Story or Pirates Tale, etc.  The game is luxury.  If you can't afford, don't buy it.  $15/mo is barely a lunch with a drink.

Think of it this way, if blizzard made it so game time didn't tick over while you weren't playing it wouldn't be 60 day game cards, they would be 10 day game cards. Because anyone who plays as much as i do, know exactly how long it takes to rack up 10 days played time.

To be honest if it was a pay as you go type game, i for one would not play so much and i am sure there are others like that too. I feel it would be much less profitable if you had a pay as you go system and that is why it does not happen.

i agree u shouldnt have to pay 4 time u dont use or u shouldnt have to pay at all like buying a new 360 game u pay 50 bucks for it and thats it no monthly payment.

Uhm... Here's a thought: Do you only pay for the time you have your tv turned on? No, you pay per month like with WoW, so actually, if your unhappy with paying for wow, you should be unhappy with paying for your tv aswell... And the most of us would get far higher bills if we should par per min cause we play hours a day, so it wouldnt benefit us.

I only get to play WoW for maybe 4-5 days a month (literally).

I don't mind shelling out $15/month just for that amount of time.

I just have to give up eating at McDonald's about 3 times and....voila!!....approximately $15!!!

$15 is not alot of money....just make a little sacrafice (skip that next beer/drink; smoke one less cigarette a day; etc.) if you wanna play....if not....than don't play....plain and simple.

Just buy a Playstation or something....but then again....$450 (or whatever they run)for the Playstation plus the cost of EACH game (dunno what they run $50-$75 apiece?).

$180/year plus the cost of the game itself......to me.....well worth it for the extreme fun I have on the game.

Even though it's only a few days a month.

Just my opinion.  =)

My boys were bugging me about wow for months before I could get over the 15$ a month, just did not seem right.

But now wow has been the best entertainment dollars ever spent between the 4 of us sharing the account there is 4-6 hours of play a day. 15$ is a movie and a snack that 2 hours of entertainment.

and yes some quest are dumb and should never be done and some are just dumb and long and have to be done (shaman water totem quest) first time through you get suckered into doing the dumb quests second characters always level faster.

The addon quest helper is a great thing for keeping your questing efficient.

Leave my monthly subscription alone..I like that i can jump on whenever i like  no matter time of day,,, if you dont want to play this way thats OK..there is an alternative  Neverwinter nights has alot of the same playability without having to be online to play  "Something to think about"

What? 'Can solo or party if you want'?

No. No, you can't - unless you're going directly to an instance, there is absolutely NO reason to party. Playing a Priest? Your own damn fault you went Discipline to level - you can easily go Shadow spec to level.

Otherwise, having two people in a party - I daresay even two Discipline priests - makes EVERYTHING RIDICULOUSLY EASY. Quests are no challenge, monsters drop stupidly fast, and nothing at your level is a threat.

The game is made to solo. If you want to party, you can go run the same goddamn instance a bajillion times until you get enough experience from it to move up to the next level bracket and run *those* instances a bajillion times.

1: You are comparing a major online gaming community to search engines and entertainment sites? umm, we're talking about two COMPLETELY different worlds here.

2: Google, yahoo, ect. are all promoters. they have companies that pay them to advertise for said companies. Blizzard is an actually independant company. So yahoo doesn't charge, because they get their money through other means. and you know as well as I do that if blizzard went that direction and started advertizing for other companies, a LOT of people would stop playing their games (I know I would).

3: Do you have any idea how servers work? a search engine takes information (key words) that you offer, and compares it to the database availible, and then loads a page full of related topics containing said key words. Then the search engine is done until you search for something else.
A massive online game sends and recieves a CONSTANT stream of data with constantly changing perameters. That kind of constant data stream is INCREADIBLY taxing on all involved technologies, and therefore is expensive to maintain. Key Word there, MAINTAIN. The original purchase of the game is not enough to sustain the server needed to support said game over  a long period of time.

4: pay per use versus pay per month....look at how many companies have pay per use. Cell phones, some internet, things like that. Let's take cell phones. Pay per use. You prepay, and then time is deducted from the amount that you payed. Makes sence, right? so why don't they do that with wow? THEY DO! except it's a flat 15 dollars! you can't go over minutes, you don't have to pay MORE if you play a lot, ect.
Guess what the minimum is for pay as you go phones...15 dollars. Odd, eh? and guess what else.....It expires after a month!
sounds an awfull lot like wow.

5: Bugs.....umm, yeah, you are not a programer, are you? I must confess that I do not understand the level of programming involved with wow, but I do understand programing.
There is ZERO room for error. if there is so much as a SINGLE key letter missing from one of the millions of lines of code, the program does not function as expected. and sometimes there are MAJOR bugs that cause system failures. But that is programing. and it is a simple fact of life that the more moving parts equals the more room for failure. I personally am amazed at blizzard. if a major bug appears (like things with the 3.1 patch, several realms were down for pretty much the whole day), they fix it ASAP. it's not like they're sitting around the office saying "well, rexxar relm is down, but let's grab some lunch and take a break first."
They fixed it, and got all the relms up and running within 24 hours. what other company does that every time? Now, I'm not saying that it was perfect, but they at least got all the selfish 'don't want the world to have errors because it messes with my life' players back up and running. and then, over the course of regular maintanence, worked out the remaining bugs which were not severe.

6: on the topic of programming.....the day that google comes out with a game equivilent in function and design to wow will be the day that they sell that game for 40 bucks a game with subscription fee for the google website of aproximately 15 dollars a month. but guess what, that game will have bugs...

Sit in your towers above the clouds, and look down over the grey. think with distain how your tower is not high enough, without seeing the people on the ground, wondering if they built the tower a touch too high.

You didn't create wow, and do not know what is involved in it, and therefore have no right to determine what they should charge for said service.

If you don't like it, don't play it. simple.

i for one appreciate the fact that you can not play for a year and come back to the game and still have all your characters still there. Not too many games can offer that and they don't charge you to maintain the char information..so when you can afford to play you can jump right back into the game as if the last time you played was yesterday. i also admire the gms who are very patient and helpful with in game support..and no a gm will not reveal any wow secrets or tell you step by step how to do a quest line so don't even bother asking..they will only make  helpful suggestions; they are mostly there to fill requests with bugs anyway putting that aside if you can't put the time to play and get your dollars worth don't play the game..there are plenty of free MMORPGS that don't charge you a cent to play and some only require you to download the software which is also provided for free..in fact they sometimes advertise for some of them on this website...ones that I have played include Adventure Quest, Dragon Fable, Mabinogi, Fusion Fall, and Free Realms. While these aren't up to par with WOW they are free so you really can't complain...so if you don't have the time don't spend a dime

Original poster may or may not be trolling. As a family guy I too have issues with WOW being very enjoyable, but far too time consuming to justify the cost.
Just tried some of the private servers.Is this why Blizzard keeps doing endless patches? There are Godmodes, SP Raidmodes, full epic drops and max level start modes. They are buggy at times which can only be expected and you get all this donate to get gear stuff.
Why don't Blizzard do Uber servers?? I want to solo Naxx and go back and try it INM.
Can't see many ppl buying into next expansion unless Blizzard wipe out the private servers with their own set of no limits realms.
Would Blizz be shooting themselves in the foot by giving a player more freedom, or giving them more of the same??
 

I always thought that you should pay for WoW every minute you are logged on, or something.  This way it only charges you while you are playing.  When you play a cetain amount,  your account freezes and you need to pay for more minutes .. at least something like that.  Of course Blizzard would make way less money, so that's crazy D-:

lets do the math.
lets say on the lowest end possible, 1 cent per minute.

60 minutes in an hour. I play, on average, about 7 hours a week (two days out of the week I play about 3 and 1/2 hours).

that brings the total up to $4.20 for one week

times 4.2 (weeks in a month) and you come up with $17.64.

I'm a very casual player. I would venture a guess that the average wow player (like, for example, one of my friends) plays on average about two hours per day
simple way to calculate that is 2(hours)x60(cents per hour)x30(days per month).

= $36.00

so, how would blizzard loose money?

and you know for a fact that if they did charge per minute, it wouldn't be 1 cent. more like 5-10 cents. let's take five, put it in the equation above. 2(hours)x60(minutes per hour)x.05(cents per minute)x30(days per month)=$180
$180 dollars per month for the normal, raiding and heroics player, on the low end.

blizzard would be much, MUCH better off charger per minute. thankfully, they have a flat rate. I like that.

They will never charge by time played because it would punish the ones who play more ie hardcore raiders, pvpers and altaholics like myself.  Even as much as I play I still wish I paid less for it.  It's just human nature to want to get things for cheaper.

I was just assuming it would be less...  I didnt do the math, but say if you go on vacation for a week... thats some money wasted when you werent playing for that whole time.

in retrospect of going on vacation...

maybe you have a week off work, but due to your wife recently being laid off, you choose to not go anywhere to save money...

now you have 9 days of nothing but WOW time...

the flat rate is fair. pay 6 months in advance and save a few bucks.

whats up with having both subscription plans? for thouse who don't play much its per minute and thouse who do play much pay monthly and who ever likes which service better uses it... this way blizzard will make money .... why? they are making it cheaper... well then thouse player who couldn't afoord the game before will join back in making the game more popular and the profits are likley to rise

sorry for bad english

that could potentially work. but then they'd have to write up a whole different program for payment. not saying it's a bad idea, simply that the program they currently have is "non-variable". it has a set amount, one month, two months, ect. charging per minute requires a program to calculate amount of money to amount of minutes, and then track those minutes for each account. higher maintanence. their current program just has to keep track of "they paid $15.00 on the 23rd. on the 23rd, service will be discontinued unless added too" it never has to adjust itself. it can do mass shutdowns every midnight (or whenever it does it)

but if they could figure that part out, then yes, that would be ideal.

[edit]just thought of something. what if you only plan for a 4 hour raid on naxx, and it takes six? your game would freeze in the middle of it, and that would potentially be catastrophic for the raid.
what if the healer froze? lol

"dang it JIMMY! you STINGY BASTERD!"

Go Mabinogi!

On the concept of the monthly fee:  IMO, there should be some way to get some kind of refund for the time you don't play.  Being a 12-year old kid with no fiscal responsibilities, I'm probably not one to speak, but if you can only get on an hour a day, and sometimes not even, you shouldn't have to pay as much as fanatics that play much more.  Of course, creating a system that can actually balance out costs that much would be difficult, and possibly a waste of time and resources.  That time and resources could have been used to, say, make new patches and expansions for all players to enjoy.  So, in the end, mostly everything balances out.  I think.  I was typing this as I was thinking, so it probably doesn't make sense.