MMOs in the Era of Subscription Everything

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You’re you, in the current year, and you like to enjoy things. You listen to music, you watch your shows, you tune into your favorite podcasts. Maybe you also have some kind of cloud service where you store all of your photos and important files, just in case. Maybe you also subscribe to an online news feed, such as Apple News. Perhaps you just subscribe to the one big Apple service that bundles all of this together? Whatever you do, you probably have at least 3-4 subscriptions running, per month, at minimum.

But, don’t forget, you also have bills to pay. Car payments, insurance for your car, rent, or a mortgage, home owners insurance (if you own a home), credit card payments, phone service payments (because just about everyone has a phone), utilities, taxes, and so on and so forth. We may as well consider these things subscriptions, too. Subscriptions for some things we don’t enjoy having to pay for, but we just kind of … do.

Ah, what life would be if you could just have a roof over your head and food in your stomach, for your whole entire life, as if being alive entitled you to the right to just kinda not die!

Oh! That’s right! You gotta buy food, and gas for your car, and you have to buy these things, frequently.

But you’re lonely, and you aren’t seeing anyone. Well, do I have news for you. There’s an app for that! Go on, download one! Now swipe. Okay, now swipe again. Oh, you liked them? Alright, maybe they like you. Who wants to know? You? Alright, so that’ll be 34.99 USD per month. I’m runnin’ a business here, ay, come on.

Have I summed up the life of a generally average person? Have I summed up my own life?

Probably more the latter, than the former, because I don’t know you. But I do know me.

You get home from work, you slap your keyboard and your PC flicks awake, and what do you do? Do you feel like gaming, son? Are ya winning? Are you enjoying those subscriptions? Because, if you wanna play World of Warcraft, get ready to whip out that credit card, numerous times. Oh, you’d rather play a free to play MMO? Keep that card out. At least, if you wanna have any chance of actually enjoying yourself once you catch up with the rest of the players.

Back in 2004, when World of Warcraft launched, the thought of paying for a game, monthly, was almost completely alien to the general public. In 2004, we bought our music one CD at a time, we loaded songs onto our iPods, and we enjoyed it. I ain’t got no time to shovel cash into an ongoing game, what the HECK? Sell that thing for 30 bucks and leave me alone!

Come to think of it, subscriptions weren’t really all that much of a thing back then. I mean, sure, you had to pay for internet service. But we kind of just saw that as another utility. You know, in the days when some of us were graduating high school, and entering jobs that paid 7 dollars an hour.

In 2004, you had to work at minimum wage for 3 hours before you could afford a month of World of Warcraft … both ways, in the snow, up hill!

All of this kind of makes me wonder, though: Is World of Warcraft the reason companies like Logitech want to charge monthly in order to click your mouse? Is World of Warcraft the reason I can’t watch Dexter and Doctor Who on the same subscription service? Is this game the reason why everything is pay to use?

I mean, think about it. World of Warcraft launches, subscriptions aren’t some kind of corporate craze during this period of time, and then the game reaches 12 million concurrent players. I don’t know about you, but I think that sent a signal to much of corporate America.

People … en masse, are willing to pay monthly to enjoy things? Hmm.

But the real point of this post isn’t really to tell you, the reader, that things are out of control, and everything’s trying to steal all of your money. We all dun already knowed that.

My problem is … I find myself kind of, unable to enjoy MMOs anymore. It was my favorite genre for the better half of 20 years. And … now?

Bro, do you see my blog posts? I’m playing Gacha games on my phone that circle back to my PC, that I can put money into if I feel like it, or not. Expansive experiences from the likes of Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves, at the very conservative price of zero dollars. Forever. Expansions, updates, new characters, open world, endless gameplay. FOR ABSOLUTELY NO MONEY WHATSOEVER.

It’s pretty refreshing. Sure, Gacha games are kind of like gambling, but for people who like anime girls and gaming at the same time. But we’re now in an age where a mother frikken’ gacha game is, and this is going to be a very controversial thing to say, better than World of Warcraft.

The other day I had off of work, and I spent six hours playing Wuthering Waves.

The heck?

I haven’t played any game for more than an hour, at all, period, for the past three years.

Needless to say, it all circles back to this subscription hell we’re all in. I gotta subscribe to the shows I wanna watch, the music I wanna hear, the podcasts I wanna listen to, and literally everything else in-between, and then some more. The thought of also paying monthly for a game that has expansions you have to pay for, and a fuggin’ cash shop on top of all of that! No.

No.

Nuh uh.

It’s 2004 all over again, and I think this might be the end of my love for MMOs.