WoW Editorial: Why Paid Services Are Bad

The "paid services" have to be something. You're narrowing this to "armor/weapons/etc", but that's a strawman...it is not so simple. Up to this point the game has been balanced around being self-sufficient; the monthly fee pays for the world of the game. Now, when paid services come in, they affect that balance - there is the need to balance the need to keep the game world stable, while trying to get more money out of it with paid services. Since people will pay for what they want - such is the nature of money - it stands that for paid services to be profitable, people must want something. This can only mean that whatever is paid for, isn't available within the subscription - yet up to this point, until very recently, the whole content of the game, was paid for by subscription.

Thus, Blizzard will have an incentive to not merely patch in fixes or new content if they believe they can instead charge for it. What will that content be? We don't know, but whatever it is, we will want it, and we know we'll pay more for whatever it is than we paid a year ago...which was just the subscription fee and nothing else.

Most dangerously, we may arrive at a situation where they choose not to balance or fix the game if they believe they can somehow make money by making the "fix" a paid service. After all, isn't it human nature to seek to make a profit where one can? Why would Blizzard be any different?