Why WOW subscription prices never rise – “It's a thorny audience”

World of Warcraft Since its launch in 2004, a $15 monthly subscription has been required, but prices in the U.S. have never risen over the years. According to former Radical Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, this is due to the player base who doesn't want to “incite” the game.

In an interview Gravel PodcastKotick reflects on his long history as Activision CEO and later Activision Blizzard. In the process, he detailed the success of developers Blizzard and WOW.

He said that the game has exceeded 150 million subscribers in his lifetime, making it the “best subscription business ever”. When an interviewer suggested that the price of ordering could be “highly high”, Kotick delayed the idea given WOW's huge success.

“We never raised the price,” Kotick said. “My point is that we came up with value-added services and came up with new things to sell, but just leave the price. We can figure out how to come up with something else to sell. In my opinion, you don't want to do much.

Kotick continues to talk about the success of important Blizzard veteran Chris Metzen and says he has and remains the “soul of the company's creativity.” Metzen retired from Blizzard in 2016 (according to Kotick, Burnout related to Warcraft movies) but Creative consultant back to Wow in 2022. He's a Executive Creative Director, World of Warcraft. Before returning to the snowstorm, Kotick said Metzen thought Wow's upcoming expansion was in poor condition, while Kotick “pleaded him” to return to fix them.

“Come on, you're that guy, come and do it,” Kotick said, telling Mason.

Kotick said Metzen had his “fingerprint” in MMORPG’s latest expansion “Internal War” and the next expansion will be great under Metzen’s guidance. “After Metzen returned to the snowstorm, Kotick said he almost never talked to him, but rather let him go to work.

“What am I going to tell Chris Mason about game design?” Cotic said. “I just want him to do his thing.”

Kotick resigned as CEO of Activision and later served as Activision Blizzard from 1991 to 2023 Publisher sells to Microsoft for $69 billionThis happened after various controversies involving publishers.