Why do MMORPG still sell old expansions at full price?

[Don]

Saw 75% off on WoW core game + expansion up to Cataclysm for 75% presumably because there might be some guy out there who has never played WoW that will pick up Mists of Pandaria and then want to pick up rest of the game (yeah right). Why do games on a sub model still try to do this? For $60 you can buy a promise into gaming nirvarna these days (Guild Wars 2, or whatever game you believe is going to be "The Game"). For $60 you can buy Mists of Pandaria which is... more of the same old.

This isn't really an issue of how good (or not) the game is. If you played WoW you figure it's more or less the same thing you've played before, which may or may not be worth $50 or whatever they go for but why spend money on the game that is definitely not cutting edge compared to the promise of gaming immortality elsewhere? Usually the worst you can do is that the game that promises gaming immortailty turns out to be more of the same thing, which is what you'd have gotten if you bought more of the same thing to begin with.

Actually I think it'd be better if they package games like phone deals, like $40 for 3 month sub of WoW gets you everything including Cataclysm for free. I think the Scroll of Resurrection probably works out to be around that range anyway if you already have a WoW account (and everyone has one), and in theory these promotions are for people who do not have a WoW account, as unbelievable as that might be. I mean, you go through all these efforts to get people who quit to come back, who most likely won't care because they moved on, and on the other hand you've a 75% off on all WoW games up to Cataclysm which presumably is only meaningful for someone who hasn't played the game (if he did, he'd already have those), and yet you lowball them here and don't even give them a great deal? Even SoE gives you a month of sub + all the previous expansions for buying their newest expansion if you're a new guy, and SoE isn't exactly known for having good deals, but that seems like the minimum you got to do if you're actually trying to sell this to new people.

[Shrinweck]

Hardly anyone new can be getting into WoW at this point, right? I think it comes down to the idea that they can charge the people who come back for more basically anything they want to and they'll pay just so they can keep playing with their friends/guild. SoE can't really afford to do that in the same way. I will say there was a point where I had nothing to do after my latest surgery where I honestly looked at getting back into WoW, saw that they were still charging WAY, WAY too much for the expansions and just gave up. The barrier to entry to play that game was like over a fucking hundred dollars. Yeah, fucking, right.

I wonder what has happened to the SW:TOR expansion. They said that based off pre-orders and sales of the first month they had the capital to develop a full expansion, but I wonder if the drop in subscriber base has hindered this effort. It'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

[Don]

If you're a returning player I think you can usually get a better deal via the Scroll of Resurrection? Assuming you knew anyone who still played the game (shouldn't be too hard), though I'm not up to date on the latest deal they're offering. Seems like % off expansions especially expansions that are way old can only be designed for people who never actually played the game because otherwise you'd already own it and won't care how cheap it is.

And shouldn't you still try harder to get people who never played the game compared to someone who quit? I found that once people quit they usually don't come back unless you've made huge changes to the game and honestly, that's not happening in WoW. Why would you expect to get anybody into a game that's obviously old and still try to gauge them on prices? This isn't the era when WoW ruled everything. WoW is obviously now on the decline now. What can possibly go wrong if you just offer something like the 6 month or 3 month sub also comes with the game for free? Is someone going to start a new account to take advantage of this? Usually people do consider their characters as a valuable commodity so if someone's going to drop an account just to save the cost of the box cost (and remember most people already have the box anyway) they're probably on the way out already so maybe you should feel lucky to even get another 3 or 6 months of sub out of them.

[Shrinweck]

Me having interest in resuming WoW was just a momentary lapse of judgment that was cured when I got into the Secret World closed beta several months before its release. Now there's so much on my gaming plate that the thought just seems silly. The idea behind re-hauling a bunch of zones in Cataclysm is one that still interests me but if it cost me more than $40 and a subscription fee I will never put the gears in motion for getting a new account.

I don't think Blizzard cares about getting new blood into the game any more. In a world where selling a million copies means it's a successful franchise, having a player base several million strong that's buying up expansions and paying a subscription fee has to negate the lack of new blood. I'm sure they've looked into what making things affordable/cheaper and adopting a Valve/Steam approach would get them and they're just not interested. This would probably shift if one of the games that's branded a "WoW killer" actually made a long-term and major dent in their population.

LOTRO has the only expansion I've paid for since EverQuest and the biggest reason I bought that was to keep playing with Sine, Sera, and Tessian. I assume people are typically only willing to continue their odyssey in any given MMORPG through a paid-for expansion pack that is full price if they have people keeping them in the game.

[Don]

WoW's revenue declined significantly this quarter (by about 40%, far more than the 1 million number would suggest by itself) and I'm guessing WoW is responsible for covering for other games under the same company that may not do too well so it takes more than just profitable for WoW in terms of its place in Blizzard.

I'm saying that with the current pricing scheme there is virtually no chance you'll buy WoW even in a spur of the moment thing because if you add the price all together it's going to be like $100 + sub fee to play a game that you know is outdated. Like I said, why play an obviously outdated game when every other MMORPG promises at best gaming nirvana and at worst probably exactly the same thing as WoW for less money? And just because a bad business model worked when you had control of the market doesn't mean it'll always work.

EverQuest adapted this 'buy the latest expansion and get everything else for free'. Sure, it was easier to come to this conclusion when you have 16 expansions so even if you sold each at $5 it'd be like $120 (and they usually cost more than $5) to see the absurdity of charging full price, but the same idea still applies. I don't know if EQ managed to get any new people with the the latest expansion covering all previous one deal, but I can say almost for sure it was getting no new blood when you had to shell out $20-$30 per expansion consider EQ had 10+ expansions for a while and you got to be out of your mind to pay $200+ and a sub for an outdated game.

I guess it just happens most MMORPG flop quickly enough before it can have multiple expansions, but this ought to be a recurring theme with any game that managed to have more than one expansion. This isn't about fair. The guy who was with the game all along sure paid full price for each expansion, but it's always cost more money to get a new subscriber compared to retaining an old one, so you got to be prepared to give up more to get the new guy unless you plan to just shut down your game soon. It's no different than how your Cable TV invariably offers you a very good deal for switching to them initially that you won't get if you're a long time subscriber. In MMORPG, it's more like the other way around, you get an extra bad deal for being the new guy because you get to pay full for every expansion but you clearly didn't have those expansions back when they were still meaningful content. You can say expansion X was well worth $20 5 years ago, but it sure isn't likely to be worth anything now to a newcomer.