During his World of Warcraft Plunderstorm stream, Asmongold praised WoW’s new battle royale mode but said the mandatory subscription is holding it back.
On March 19, Asmongold tried WoW Plunderstorm. He played a few matches and even managed to win one game, and seemed to enjoy the experience.
Asmongold praised Plunderstorm’s more action-oriented combat. Contrary to WoW’s slower tab-target combat, Plunderstorm mostly uses area-of-effect abilities, so there’s almost no need to tab-target enemies or opponents. Asmongold also liked the new spell upgrade system which lets players upgrade spells by collecting new copies scattered around the map.
“I think it’s good. I’m gonna be honest guys, I think it’s good,” Asmongold said after playing a couple of Plunderstorm matches.
While he clearly thinks the new game mode has potential, Asmongold said he believes WoW Plunderstorm is held back by its need for players to have an active WoW Subscription, which costs $14.99 a month.
“I think they should make it free to get all the random players to try it out. Right now, this is only appealing to WoW players because this only for people who are playing WoW,” he explained.
With most popular battle royale games being free to play, it’s easy to see where Asmongold is coming from. Making WoW Plunderstorm free to play would definitely attract more players, but the question is whether Blizzard is willing to take that chance.
Currently, World of Warcraft has a loyal fanbase but isn’t drawing in new players. It’s safe to assume that the mandatory subscription, not to mention the upfront cost of buying the game, might be what’s stopping many potential players from trying the game out. Perhaps it’s finally time to bring World of Warcraft to PC Game Pass?
It will be interesting to see what the future holds for WoW Plunderstorm and how Blizzard plans to compete in the already competitive battle royale genre.
