Blizzard Entertainment’s MMO has been running for two decades, taking up weeks of some people’s time, but it’s coming of age (21 years in the US), and yet one particular element hasn’t changed at all since its launch!

What was more important then is now slowly becoming negligible. That is the World of Warcraft subscription fee. It started out at $15 per month, and it is still $15 per month. Despite the enormous inflation since then, Blizzard has never raised the subscription fee, making the veteran MMO, which is still expanding, accessible to a wider audience.

John Hight, senior vice president and general manager of Warcraft, gave an interview to PCGamer at the GDC (Game Developers Conference) and explained why they don’t want to raise the monthly fee for World of Warcraft by a single cent: “As of yesterday, we have three games you can play under the same subscription that hasn’t changed in price in over 20 years. Take that, inflation. A price increase comes up in discussions from time to time. I’m kind of proud of the fact that we’ve been able to maintain that price point. I’d rather have a big, healthy, happy audience than risk the audience getting smaller but the subscription [fee] going up.

The wonderful thing about a subscription model is that we can really double down on the gameplay itself. We don’t have to create a way to get people to engage and give us extra money or unlock things, everyone has access to everything. We have some parts of the game that a small percentage of players actually engage with on a regular basis, but they engage with it all the time. They love it. And I think having that variety of things to do adds to the diversity of the player base, and that diversity when you bring people together, especially in guilds and communities, is what makes the game special,” Hight said.

WoW tokens give you in-game currency, and there’s local pricing (US and UK are unchanged), but Blizzard is trying to keep everything under control. With a subscription, you get WoW, WoW Classic, Season of Discovery, and a limited-time Battle Royale mode. Dragonflight costs $30, which will be replaced later this year by The War Within (which will cost $50 at launch).

Others could take a page from this book.

Source: PCGamer