World of Warcraft has required a $15 month-to-month subscription to play since its launch again in 2004, however in all these years, the worth within the US has by no means gone up. In accordance with ex-Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, it was resulting from not desirous to “agitate” the sport’s playerbase.
In an interview with the Grit podcast, Kotick mirrored on his lengthy historical past because the CEO of Activision and later Activision Blizzard. Alongside the way in which he dove into particulars about developer Blizzard and WoW’s success.
He mentioned the sport over its lifetime has seen over 150 million subscribers, making it the “finest subscription enterprise of all time.” When one of many interviewers instructed the worth of the subscription may have been “priced extra extremely” given WoW’s big success, Kotick pushed again towards the thought.
“We by no means raised the worth,” Kotick mentioned. “My view was we provide you with value-added providers, provide you with new issues to promote, however simply depart the worth. We may work out provide you with different issues to promote them. And it is a prickly viewers, ? You do not wanna do an excessive amount of to agitate them. And even a greenback enhance would’ve been an issue in my opinion.”
Kotick went on to speak about how very important Blizzard veteran Chris Metzen was to the corporate’s success, and mentioned he was, and nonetheless is, “the soul of creativity on the firm.” Metzen retired from Blizzard in 2016 (in accordance with Kotick, resulting from burnout associated to the Warcraft film) however returned in 2022 as a artistic advisor on WoW. He’s now an government artistic director for the Warcraft universe. Previous to returning to Blizzard, Kotick mentioned Metzen believed WoW’s upcoming expansions had been in dangerous form, and Kotick “begged him” to return as a way to repair them.
“Simply come do it, you are the man, come do it,” Kotick mentioned he informed Metzen.
Kotick mentioned Metzen had his “fingerprints” everywhere in the MMORPG’s newest enlargement, The Battle Inside, and that the subsequent enlargement, underneath Metzen’s steering, “goes to be nice.” As soon as Metzen returned to Blizzard, Kotick mentioned he hardly talked with him, as a substitute preferring to let him get to work.
“What am I going to inform Chris Metzen about recreation design?” Kotick mentioned. “I simply wished him to do his factor.”
Kotick served as CEO of Activision, and later Activision Blizzard, from 1991-2023, stepping down after the writer’s sale to Microsoft for $69 billion, which got here after quite a lot of controversies involving the writer.