Through The Eyes of a WoW Addict: A Top-Down View of WoW’s Rhetoric…

In a nutshell, any game which takes in subscription fees as its main source of profit (including WoW) instills within its players a desire to keep forking over those fees on a monthly basis. Most of this is accomplished through rudimentary pathos. A store copy of WoW currently retails for $20 and, after the first month, requires $15 a month to continue playing. During that first “free” month, a typical player will make swift progress “leveling up” (becoming more powerful). Then, once the month is over and the subscription fee rears its ugly head, the player will typically recall the fun he had, and how quickly he progressed. The game creates pressure upon the continuing player to keep playing in a number of ways, which I can sum up (fortunately, for the sake of brevity), with a few pictures and captions (click on any picture in this blog to enlarge it):

(Left: A low-level character with typical “newbie” gear. Center: A high-level character with “end-game” gear. A semi-serious player will take upwards of a year and a half to obtain such gear, but you can’t deny it looks better than the “newbie” stuff, huh? New players will see these guys running around and want to continue playing to be just like them! Sounds corny, but it’s truer than you think. Right: The more powerful pieces of equipment in the game have level requirements, which further pressure the player into continuing his subscription. (Level 70, the requirement for the item shown above, will typically take a year of casual play from a first-timer.)