The new WoW expansion is priced at $50 for the regular edition. I can't believe there hasn't been a bigger stink about this price. Maybe people haven't realized it yet; I didn't until I went to pre-order/pre-load just now.

$50 is too much, especially with the monthly fees holding steady as they are. This sucks, maybe I won't buy it. Dollar-voting and whatnot.

I dunno, Rorie plans to put in like 500 hours. Seems like you get plenty of bang for your buck.

@indieslaw: it'll be on sale for $20 at some point.

That seems a fair price, given the potential longevity of the game with the expansion. Garrisons, man. Garrisons.

That is indeed the most appropriate course of action. Don't buy it. If you want it later when it's the right price for you, buy it.

yeah, 50 bucks sounds like 50 bucks more than I'd be willing to pay on anything WoW related...

It's fine. It actually comes with a free level 90 as well, which typically is priced higher than what this expansion costs. Not a bad deal all things considered.

More importantly: the majority of people who play WoW will play it, regardless of what you think.

You thought an optional mount for $25 was hard to swallow?

Everyone has their own personal metric for what is an appropriate price and what isn't, just as they should. So, OP, if you feel it's too much, definitely don't buy it or just wait 6 months or so and get it for a little less.

However, the most common gauge that folks seem to use to suss out value is the price/the amount of "game" you get. So looking at it through that lens, $50 is actually completely appropriate. From the few things I've read about WoD, beta folks have said that the new PvE content is about 15 - 20 hours. (probably at least double that if you're a completionist weirdo like me who also spends the time reading all the quest text and exploring) Then you have all of the Garrison stuff, dungeons, raids, higher level crafting, and the new PvP island thing. That's more pure content than a typical AAA game, even including multiplayer.

$50 is a lot of money no matter what you're getting, but I think it's the simple fact that this is just technically an "expansion" that puts people off. Content wise, it's much more of another sequel to WoW than something like horse armor.

It should be 40 I totally agree but what are you gonna do.

WoW has so much content its kind of insane and I am sure this expansion will have fuck tons of content so I can't get to mad about it.

Beats the hell out of $20 for one dungeon, one raid, and a few multiplayer maps.

To be fair, this one expansion probably has more content than Destiny.

It's an appropriate amount of money if you're big into WoW, like others have said. Even if I buy it, level to 100, level up all of my professions, mess around with the garrison stuff, do some light raiding for a few weeks and quit again, that's still a few dozen hours. I wouldn't make a fuss about the price but yeah, if you think it's too much money, don't buy it.

The fifty dollar price point for expansions hasn't been an issue in like twenty years of PC gaming, unless said expansion ends up being utter crap

It's pretty safe to say that won't be the case with this one

I was surprised it wasn't a full $60 when they announced the price. I'll get my 50 out of it no problem.

really 50$ bothers you? not like they make expansions every few months.

this isnt a mass appeal expansion, its for the people who already put a million hours into this thing who are going to buy any expansion no matter what at this point.

The only game that I can say 100% without a doubt was worth my money to spend on was WoW. In actuality I've been thinking about how much support Blizzard has done over the years in comparison to Destiny's DLC plan. 15$ a month plus some expansions was a steal.

When it comes to world of warcraft expansions, you might as well just remove the 'expansion' from the name and classify it as the next sequel. It has more changes than a yearly CoD yet people pay full price for that every year. You are looking at a game many people spend hundreds of hours on each expansion if not more, the metric for hours played vs price paid for people actively playing the game actually makes it a very high value.

::EDIT:: I just did the math for total hours played in the last 10 years with how much the monthly has cost, I am currently at $1.8 an hour. So its REAAAAAAAALLLLLLYYYYY now way near as bad as it sounds.

It's not just that this is an "expansion", its that Blizzard is defying the price expectations for "expansion" level content without sufficient explanation, at least as far as I can see. I don't know, I don't look at WoD and see more content than BC and Wrath, the last two expansions that gave us a 10 level hike. Maybe Cata and Mists lulled us into lowered expectations with it's 5 level jumps. In each of these previous expansions, $40 was the price point.

To those asking, I'm bothered by this because I don't see a thing I can point to in this expansion that explains the price increase to me. It's a gut check, mostly.

Also, I've always felt that the best time to play these expansions are at the very beginning, when everything's new and no one (mostly) knows anything, and then at the very end of the cycle, when I can faceroll through the high end stuff. I'm a content tourist, and those are the tourist seasons. So if I decide to hold back until it's cheaper, it really is giving up a good portion of what I enjoy.

I may end up paying the premium to participate, but it kinda sucks. I don't feel like a case has been made to me for the increase, so I feel a little blindsided by it.

Also, @giantstalker, I'd very much like to hear about the 20 year history of $50 PC expansions if you have the time. Unless we're talking about other currency than dollars, that's a new one on me.

Both the last 2 'expansions' Blizz released were $50 too (I assume anyway, they were like £40 which converts to closer to $70) so it doesn't surprise me at all. I imagine there is way more in this than in the Diablo 3 expansion.

To be fair, the last 2 expansions were 40$ each but had level content for 5 levels only, this one has 10. They may be just numbers but I'm hoping they are charging a bit more because they are giving more with the expansion in terms of overall content. I guess we'll see soon enough.