Business, Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, World of WarCraft, Xbox 360
Battle.net theory… Why you will pay to play Starcraft 2 and Diablo III.
The anticipation of Blizzard’s upcoming releases has most gamers restless. With the Starcraft 2 beta on the horizon, one should have high hopes we will see it by year’s end.
But during this time, one should be extremely wary of Blizzard’s latest antics, some of which may have you spending extra amounts of hard earned cash to play the next great release.
In case you have yet to witness the recent move by Blizzard, the company has decided to create and merge all of your previous Battle.net games and your World of Warcraft account in one happy little thing they like to call a Battle.net Account. At the present time it’s not necessary, but in the end you will likely have to do it to continue playing.
Why would Blizzard decide to do such a thing? Everything seemed to be great and happy the way it was.
Because at the end of the day, Blizzard plans to make you “pay to play” your Battle.net account. Don’t believe it? Of course this may just be some crazy theory, but there is a convincing argument that may get you thinking.
Blizzard is profiting immensely from World of Warcraft. Why would Blizzard produce a game that will almost certainly beat World of Warcraft in product sales on its release date? This would sap millions of paying World of Warcraft subscribers and have them playing Starcraft 2 for nothing!
The solution is to make gamers pay monthly for Battle.net service, much like Xbox Live players do now. Back in the late 1990’s, the big push on Battle.net was how “free” it was. Now, no such word exists on Battle.net, which is a big indication you may soon be paying for it.
Theory’s like this could be way off base. However, it is completely within Blizzards grasp to do such a thing. The irony behind this is it easily imaginable that it would cost Blizzard zero players!
With the cost of a Blizzcon ticket increasing every year and an ungodly amount of awful merchandise, pay-to-play subscriptions for all future Blizzard games can only be right around the corner.
Tags: Blizzard
Honestly I think this theory is absolute baloney. It has very little substance, and I HIGHLY doubt that Blizzard is worried about losing WoW subscribers to D3 and SC2, and out of fear of losing revenue, make Battle.net a pay to play service. Making Battle.net a pay to play service would, in my opinion, only cause more people to cancel WoW subscriptions, as they play SC2 and D3. I’d cancel my WoW subscription to play those games if I had to pay for both.
Bottom Line: Your theory needs work.
What this theory is suggesting is that, by merging all games to a battle.net account (including World of Warcraft), you would be paying $15.00 a month or more for all three games. Which in the end that would cause people to buy diablo III, Starcraft II and World of Warcraft because whichever one you have would be a waste to only by one game and not take advantage of all 3 games on your account for the same price monthly.
Put it all into perspective. The average/casual gamer will not and cannot maintain an upkeep of two games, playing and paying for them. Players will play Starcraft 2 OR play World of Warcraft.
Blizzard will be damned if they are not getting that extra dollar from the player choosing to play Starcraft 2. Everyone WILL buy Starcraft 2, even just for the story line. But to play on Bnet you will be paying for it. Blizzard is not loosing any sleep over the fact that they know Starcraft 2 will be the biggest selling game within a month’s time.
Let’s assume 1 million WOW players drop their subscriptions to play Starcraft 2. (1 Million x 12.99) is about 13 million per month to loose. Not Acceptable in the World of Business nor in the World of Warcraft.
Lets Cut that in half and assume only 500,000 players go to play on Bnet, Approximately 6.5 Million per month. Not acceptable. I think is how many Xbox live players there are, but don’t quote me on that. Blizzard can surely do better than Xbox live.
Blizzards big thing is keeping players players playing wow they know that sales are dropping for the series sc2 and d3 are the revenue successors not even equal to wow. They are to assure that the next generation of gamers stay with blizzard. So that when the next MMO comes out the fan base is still there. People are leaving wow everyday. Blizzard is already losing those sales. Besides there is no way that the company thought that the wow subscription money was infinate. It made it’s money let’s move on.
They’ve explicitly stated that the new battle.net will be FREE, you will be able to pay for additional, trivial features that are unrelated to any gameplay experience (name change, and such)
But run with that point “WOW Subscription money is not Infinite”. This is why they need to inject a fresh with the same money.
“They’ve explicitly stated that the new battle.net will be FREE”
I can’t mine every blue post, I do recall something to this effect for trivial features. However I would like to see one. Still, wouldn’t imply that things cannot change.
To be more clear, even though it would tick you off and you would be reluctant to pay it, you would still pay it and play it!
Blizzard know what they’re doing, and they know that certain concepts won’t work. One of the main reasons Blizzard makes money publishing PC games, while every other company is terrified to even touch the platform, is that you can’t pirate their titles AND play online.
I’ve been playing Warcraft 3 for years, I’m very involved in the community and I can tell you, for a fact, very few WC3/SC players would pay to play RTS online.
It’s just the way things are, there’s nothing Blizzard’s going to do to change that. Not unlike the fact that the internet has spawned this notion that everyone’s opinions are equally valid and should be regurgitated over and over again. See, you’re a moron, if you’d spent even a fraction of the time writing your trash as we all did reading it, you’d know what you were writing was as well founded as let’s say… the satanic panic.
Very few WoW players will quit the game to play Starcraft, they’re two very different games that attract very different kinds of people. That’s why most Warcraft 3 and Starcraft players can’t stand WoW.
Presenting a theory that directly contradicts several Blizzard announcements just because you kind of, maybe, sort of think that it could be possible isn’t good enough.
I’d have been more pleasant, but given I’m subjected to this tripe time and time again my patience for it has worn paper thin.
“Blizzard looks to control the world… and we lose” Apparently someone’s tapped into the age old method of vomiting baseless scaremongering bullshit about the biggest name they can find to build a career on.
I’ve been playing Warcraft 3 for years, I’m very involved in the community and I can tell you, for a fact, very few WC3/SC players would pay to play RTS online.
Would you pay to play a FPS online? How about a Fighting game or all the above? Thousands of people are doing just that including myself for Xbox live. The idea is to charge for Battle.Net, not just the individual game.
Presenting a theory that directly contradicts several Blizzard announcements just because you kind of, maybe, sort of think that it could be possible isn’t good enough.
Yet, no one can produce that contradiction! Like I said I cannot mine the Blue posts daily but as we have known from past experience, Blue posts can be rather volatile. So if the information exists, it is still subject to change.
“Blizzard looks to control the world… and we lose” Apparently someone’s tapped into the age old method of vomiting baseless scaremongering bullshit about the biggest name they can find to build a career on.
Actually I do this for fun. My Career is actually Software Engineering and Computer science.
But I recall Blizzcon tickets the first year starting at $60 each. Now $120 I think. Direct TV will cost you $40!! Senseless playing cards, dopey merchandise I cannot see money train, I must be Blind.
If there is a monthly subscription for Battle.Net, YOU will pay it!! Just like I will and everyone else will.
Why? Because Blizzard can get away with it!!
I am a devoted fan (check the news daily), but I would not buy the game if I knew I had to pay to play multiplayer. Maybe in my hayday, but like many starcraft fans, that time is past. I also played WOW, but after 8 months I couldn’t rationalize the 15 dollars to myself, or, more importantly, to my wife. I am not worried, it will be free.
I highly doubt that blizzard would make anybody pay for Starcraft 2 or even Diablo 3. The Battle.net account is actually a nice little service that lets you log on to multiple accounts using the same username and pass word. The Worst thing that blizzard could do would be Charge probably 20-30 USD for a monthly feee, for you to add several accounts to your battle net account. i would imagine, as long as the account is under the same name as the Battle net account. you could probably add 5 world of warcraft accounts and only pay the 30 bucks. and play diablo and starcraft. but then again that also sounds 2 good. Blizzard would be the only company that charges a monthly fee for an RTS game That being the case. they would probably lose some RTS customers to EA for Red Alert. since their games are free and just as equally as bad ass.
“Would you pay to play a FPS online? How about a Fighting game or all the above? Thousands of people are doing just that including myself for Xbox live. The idea is to charge for Battle.Net, not just the individual game.”
No, I wouldn’t. I’ve been playing Counter-Strike for free for years.
“With Battle.Net we’re definitely looking at possible different features that we might be able to do for additional money. We’re not talking about Hellgate or anything like that. We’re not going to tack things on. I think World of Warcraft is a great example to look at. We charge people if they want to switch servers or if they want name changes, things that aren’t core to the game experience, they’re really just optional things that some people want. It takes us some development work to do it, so it makes sense to charge for it. We would never do something like say to get the full game experience, you’ll have to pay extra,” said Blizzard VP Rob Pardo.
“Actually I do this for fun. My Career is actually Software Engineering and Computer science. ”
Well, that’s that theory out the window. I guess your concern is legitimate now that you have no intention of profiting from it.
“But I recall Blizzcon tickets the first year starting at $60 each. Now $120 I think. Direct TV will cost you $40!! Senseless playing cards, dopey merchandise I cannot see money train, I must be Blind. ”
What’s that, the price of a ticket went up, my god! It’s not like they might have additional overheads to account for give the event gets increasingly more grandiose every year, is it? Yeah, they televise it on DirecTV and give people hours upon hours of content like any other PPV, what a bunch of bastards? That’s if you want the whole package, which surprisingly, has high production costs that need to be recouped, plus a little something for the effort.
You can still watch all of the Starcraft and Warcraft matches broadcast live with fantastic broadcast announcers for free, at Blizzard’s expense.
My point stands, you’re a moron.
Fernando:
The Worst thing that blizzard could do would be Charge probably 20-30 USD for a monthly feee
I don’t think a fee of $20-30 is realistic by any means, in that price range I wouldn’t pay for it either. But I think where Xbox live sits around $8 per month getting cheaper for the more months you buy is the right price.
I think it will also encompass all Blizzard games. You pay $8 per month you get Starcraft 2, Diablo III and other things that you can buy much much like the DLC.
MHK :
No, I wouldn’t. I’ve been playing Counter-Strike for free for years.
Assume there was a subscription fee, you would have purchased it and perhaps dabbled with a subscription fee for a couple months, that all Blizzard and these companies really want.
My point stands, you’re a moron.
If you going to continue making personal attacks, I have no reason to address your comments. I have ex girl-friends for that.
“Assume there was a subscription fee, you would have purchased it and perhaps dabbled with a subscription fee for a couple months”
Assuming there was a subscription fee, I’d have stuck with Red Faction and never bothered switching games. I’d appreciate it if you’d stop telling me and everyone else what we would do if situation A, B or C ever presented itself.
MMO’s have huge overheads, costs that need to be covered, Counter-Strike, Warcraft III and Starcraft II do not, they can be managed rather cheaply. If Blizzard ran WoW and let everyone play for free they would be operating at a loss, that’s not the case for Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2 or Counter-Strike. Get that through your skull.
“that all Blizzard and these companies really want.”
Really? So Blizzard still hosting Warcraft III and even Starcraft competitions is what exactly? Why are they spending all of this money hosting these events if all they want to do is get you to buy a disk?
You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, so stop talking about it. It’s that simple.
I for one find this not as absur as it sounds.
How I would see it, is you can play single player free, but you need to pay for a bnet account. once you login, if you have paid and still have days left, you can click on game you have installed to enter the multiplayer mode of that game.
I also believe the chat rooms and patches would still be free (so you only need to pay to actually PLAY, but you can hang around)
Of course I have no reason nor proof that any of this will happen, it’s just how I think they might do it if they do it
A recurrent fee will greatly impact map-development. Map coders would become volunteer workers instead of community developers. (Seriously, your created content would be just another source of revenue for Blizzard instead of a donation to the community.)
This would deter a fair amount of skillful map-makers from even bothering with it. The fan-base, compromised between a new recurrent fee and a decrease in average custom maps quality, will be affected as well.
For non-league players, everyone knows custom maps are the end-game on SC/WC3.
“But run with that point ‘WOW Subscription money is not Infinite’. This is why they need to inject a fresh with the same money.”
Blizzard is currently developing a new MMO, so they may be hoping to shore up any slump in WoW income with it:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/next-blizzard-mmo-is-new-ip
I very much doubt they would attempt to force a subscription model onto all Battle.net accounts. The inevitable result would be giving players a greater incentive to modify the game and play on non-Blizzard servers.
One of the primary functions of Battle.net now is as an anti-piracy tool. Want to play the game online with a large pool of potential opponents? Buy the game legitimately. Otherwise, you have to modify the server list and find a bnetd or PvPGN server to play on. Most gamers are not going to bother under the current system. If Blizzard were to start charging for Battle.net, however, more players would move to unofficial servers. This would, in turn, give those servers more exposure and value resulting in more players, resulting in more exposure and value… etc. Before you know it, a huge percentage of gamers would be playing on non-Blizzard servers, making the pirated copies that *can’t* play on Blizzard’s servers more appealing than they would have been otherwise.
This is not a path Blizzard wants to go down - and perhaps I’m being foolishly optimistic here, but I think they know that.
Rob:
There are three ways to tackle your argument..
1) Map-development community does not matter to Blizzard. They could care less. At least the Blizzard post WOW Blizzard. It does not generate a dime to them.
2) Assume for the moment it does matter to them… How about UI and interface addon community for WOW? $15 a month does not slow them down. There are a ton of great UI’s out there for nothing.
3) Assume 1 and 2 are false. It doesn’t matter at all. The game will be big, people will buy it, people will play it! Pro Gamer or Casual Gamer. Ya ya I know that argument lacks in substance but its true. Same thing happened with WOW, players revolted, players whined, ultimately everyone plays it and everyone pays it. It is a Blizzard game and it is the most anticipated Blizzard game of all time.
If a subscription fee is required to play your Battle.net account, we will learn about it mid-way through the beta. Players will revolt, Blizzard will say …
“Requirements for maintenance have increased dramatically and this allows us give the community more updated content for our upcoming release ‘Starcraft 2′ and in the future ‘Diablo III’. Thank you for your understanding”.
Then you will buy it, pay for it, and either continue to pay and play or move on. Either way you will buy Starcraft 2.
“1) Map-development community does not matter to Blizzard. They could care less. At least the Blizzard post WOW Blizzard. It does not generate a dime to them.”
I personally know several people who bought Warcraft III, years after it was released, only to play DotA, a stupidly popular custom map for Warcraft 3. Warcraft 3’s map editor was a revolutionary tool that was a lot of effort on Blizzard’s part, as will be the Starcraft 2 map editor. I can’t begin to explain to you how stupid that statement was, and I won’t even bother wasting my time trying.
Even in the face of mountains of contradictory evidence you manage to stick by your guns and defend this joke of an article, kudos. Rarely outside of mental health clinics do you see people this reliant on fantasy.
It genuinely blows my mind to see how oblivious you are.
I personally know several people who bought Warcraft III, years after it was released
I’m sure Blizzard could do without the extra $10,000 people contributed to WOW because of DOTA. Years after it was released puts it at a $20 price tag, $30 with the expansion. If Blizzard truly showed more interest they would support DOTA in some way.
Warcraft 3’s map editor was a revolutionary tool that was a lot of effort on Blizzard’s part
Not Really, these tools are hardly revolutionary, included with nearly every game. Id Software has been doing them for a long time before Blizzard was on the map. These are the tools the dev’s use to make the maps! They must be made as abstract as possible so that….
1) other non programmers can use them.
2) so they are reusable.
The same tool that made War 3 maps is going to be the same tool that will make Starcraft 2 maps. Maybe some tweaks to accommodate new features and requests. Nothing special here. Oh wait, it’s “Special” because we say so, wink wink….
But we have begun to stray off topic a tad here. Bottom line, I still feel it is inherently possible for Blizzard to spring Battle.net subscriptions fee’s upon us. There are valid points made against the idea however I really don’t think subscriptions fees for Battle.net are going to hurt Blizzard in the long run.
If we see more maps, avatars, better tournament support like I see happening, then I’m all for paying it.
Blizzard flat out abandoned Warcraft III in my eyes. They did so because WOW was to be the cash cow brain child and Starcraft 2 is going to be the pro-gaming cash cow. Starcraft 2 took so long because WOW took off at an unpredictable rate.
In fact YOU BETTER HOPE you pay to play Starcraft 2 or Blizzard will flat out abandon that game as well. Blizzard must ask why continue to support a game with massive updates and content that cost money that is hardly generate any more? We can simply start a new MMO project and not waste time.
I completely agree with JB’s post, by making pay to play battle.net - would just encourage players to pirate and play on unofficial server. (there is many many free server for games that are pay to play)
Blizzard do support DotA, DotA was one of the first highlighted map on battle.net (the site). (which is a form of advertisement). There is a special version of DotA in blizzcon (whIch blizzard asked icefrog to take out the first blood, killing spree etc sounds so they won’t get copyright lawsuit, basicly..having a blizzcon version of DotA in is supporting, you don’t see other random wc3 maps there do you?).
you don’t play wc3, so please don’t talk about what you don’t know. Blizzard and their sponsors like intell still run tournaments on wc3. DotA community is still unbelievably huge. Community is still big, seasonal ladder still have many players playing. You wouldn’t abandon a game when you are paying money for players to compete.
I guess it just sounds to me that you have trouble accepting others opinion (which is fine, i have that problem too). I think majority of the people do believe that battle.net will be free, so leave it for now and time will tell.
As for battle.net account? I think of it more like “steam” accounts. You can buy game, download the game you’ve purchased from the past (which is what they are doing btw).
Bryan doesn’t play WC3?
I got a hint of that from the comparison of Blizzards development tools to those from Id Software.
Most likely scenario is that Blizzard will use Starcraft 2 to reel users in and then export them to the new MMORPG. That’s pretty much what happened with WC3/WoW, huh?
Most likely scenario is that Blizzard will use Starcraft 2 to reel users in and then export them to the new MMORPG. That’s pretty much what happened with WC3/WoW, huh?
That would be a valid point with the exception that if you ask almost any gamer that played both SC and
Warcraft III, SC was a more addictive game and is STILL more widely played. This causes the expectation level from Starcraft 2 to be significantly larger than it was for Warcraft III.
So creating a sub-par unit system and significantly weaker races and I shutter to use the word “Balance” problems will not be tolerated. Much like classes WOW, players will want their races fine tuned, fun and an even playing field.
I think at least half (an excellent poll question) of the people that own or play wow have never even touched Warcraft III.
But I am not trying to make a point for having only a subscription for Starcraft 2. I’m talking about Battle.net.
But Bryan, one can hardly compare Warcraft 3 to SC.
One is about micro managing a hero and few units while the other is about CTRL + A hundreds of units around. Stating that SC is more addictive is biased on opinion. As for SC being more widely played, I am almost certain that there are more online users on WC3 servers that on SC on B.net (pretty much the only factual statistics we can get on the subject.)
I found WC3 to be as balanced as four different races could allow.
” But I am not trying to make a point for having only a subscription for Starcraft 2. I’m talking about Battle.net. ”
Battle.net WILL be Starcraft 2 upon release. Relatively, that is.
“When a player buys the StarCraft II box at retail, they will have the ability to play on the new Battle.net for free.
For those listening to the latest Activision Blizzard conference call, Mike Morhaime also mentions it there as well.”
And that’s the end of that.
I think there is some grounding in this theory. Blizzard has announced that no LAN play feature will be included in Starcraft 2. It seems they are slowly locking everyone in. I guess time will tell.
Here’s why i think you will not pay to play starcraft2 online:
IF battle.net will become pay-per-play for sc2 as well as WoW a bunch of “non-legit” servers will pop up like mushrooms after a week of rain. there will be tons of relatively easy ways to connect to tons of relatively safe and cheater-free “indipendent” servers.
the beauty of internet is it’s free… and it’s free because there have always been people that sacrifice their own time and sometimes money in order to provide free ways to do stuff, be it news, games etc.
xbox is a platform, you can’t “fiddle” with the settings of a game as easily as you can with a pc using the simple “regedit” command or stuf like that.
In WoW you earn experience and new items and quests… if you play an unstable server you loose stuff so it’s actually worth paying so your charachter’s perks won’t be lost. In starcraft every game you play you start from zero. there is no need to have a “special” server holding all your information. this means you could play any server creating a new account every time and your gameplay would not be affected (except for lag maybe).
If you can play a free server it means you don’t connect to battle net… if you don’t connect to battle net BLIZZARD EARNS LESS MONEY because less people see the adds in the battle net banners. I don’t think blizzard would be so stupid to make you pay for battle net on an rts pc game.
any thoughts ?