There could be nothing better for the health of the game than if WoW went F2P.

[Deleted]

This guys are called "whales". In fact Wow is ALREADY F2P. Blizzard simply try to hide this fact behind illusion, that their game still has mandatory sub fee. Yeah, it has and what? Assumption, that F2P games are truly free and Wow isn't, would be right only in such extreme case, when 100% players won't pay anything for it. But it isn't the case. You should clearly understand one simple rule: IF NOBODY WOULD INVEST MONEY INTO F2P GAMES - THEY WOULDN'T EXIST.

Simple thing: 9 players pay via gold, while 1 "whale" buys this gold to pay for mythic runs with top guilds and buy stuff from BMAH.

Some people simply refuse to realize it. They still stick to this old "everything is accessible to you for your $15/month". Dunno, why it happens. May be they try to justify the fact, that they still pay money for this game, despite of fact, that it no longer worth this money? I.e. this piece of crap doesn't look good and smells, but it costs $60 and I've bought it - I just can't be wrong!!!

Ehh...why do you think the bold part is not true?
And how is WoW F2P? I can't play for free because I need to buy gametime, so how is it an illusion.
A whale has absolutely no advantage over me, going to a would be shop and buy 925 gear for 500$ is a different from going to some shady sites and buy boosts für RM from players who still beat the content.

If you don't think so, then you might as well say that the p2p system never existed. Because that was always possible and has always been done. But that wouldn't make sense...

[FelPlague]

I find it hard to believe people pay 500$ a month to play a "free to play" game.
In WoW you must pay consistently without any kind of breaks.
Other games like League of Legends you can spend years without making a single transaction.

It's vey inconsistently in F2P games because the majority of stuff is cosmetic.
And if the game is "Pay 2 Win" it is VERY frowned upon by the community.

I don't think Blizzard will ever lose this consistency in payment. It's very safe for their pockets.

they exist, one of my friends is one for a game called warframe, he doesent even play it much anymore and he still buys everything that gets added
and yeah ive seen alot of others

[WowIsDead64]

I find it hard to believe people pay 500$ a month to play a "free to play" game.
In WoW you must pay consistently without any kind of breaks.
Other games like League of Legends you can spend years without making a single transaction.

It's vey inconsistently in F2P games because the majority of stuff is cosmetic.
And if the game is "Pay 2 Win" it is VERY frowned upon by the community.

I don't think Blizzard will ever lose this consistency in payment. It's very safe for their pockets.

I don't know. I also play MWO from time to time. And when PGI release new early access 'Mech - I see at least 2-3 players, having it, in every single match. There are also almost zero players, who haven't bought MechBays, Camos or Colors. So players are actually ready to spend money in game. The idea, that nobody would do it - is misconception, some players like you have.

P2P vs F2P has always been about schoolboys/students vs adult players. Former ones want to spend minimal fixed amount of money in game and they want rewards to be "fair" i.e. proportional to amount of time, they sit online. Of course they have few money, but large amount of free time. And they think it's fair. But it isn't. In real world TIME = MONEY. And once they grow up and become adults - they realize it and their priorities change. And concept of "fair" rewards changes too.

Once you become adult, several things happens:
1) You start to appreciate your money and therefore stop accept game "as is". You realize, that everything has it's fair price - you don't want to buy things, you don't need.
2) On the other hand you start to have your own money and therefore start to be able to spend money on something really pleasant. Such as little cosmetic gifts.
3) You start to demand some respect. You're no longer a little kid, who can be fooled pretty easily. You don't want developers and other players to scoff over you.
4) Etc.

[Deleted]

I'll let Blizzard worry about the health of the game. I don't own any ATVI stock so I don't really give a fuck about their business models and how they monetize WoW.
I DO know that F2P games tend to have annoying gear gates that send you buying fucking diamonds or pots or whatever shit from the cash-shop and they constantly remind you of this - the day that comes to WoW, I'm out of here.

- - - Updated - - -

It is free to play. I am super casual (only LFr, random BGs anf 5 mans) and can easily earn 50-75k gold from questing, sell ore/herbs mats and trash loot.

So.. that's roughly about 1/3rd of what you need to earn to buy a token? Your point is what exactly?

[Pull My Finger]

TL; DR. But I think not everybody should be able to afford everything and if anything, we need less of this whole freeloader mentality today where every fuck thinks he's actually entitled to get this and that for free. It's vile.

[WowIsDead64]

Ehh...why do you think the bold part is not true?
And how is WoW F2P? I can't play for free because I need to buy gametime, so how is it an illusion.
A whale has absolutely no advantage over me, going to a would be shop and buy 925 gear for 500$ is a different from going to some shady sites and buy boosts für RM from players who still beat the content.

If you don't think so, then you might as well say that the p2p system never existed. Because that was always possible and has always been done. But that wouldn't make sense...

There is big difference between buying boosts on "black market" and doing it officially. Yeah, for example gold sellers always existed. And you could always buy game time for gold. But this things weren't supported by game developers themselves - via doing it you were violating EULA, TOS and were risking to be banned. Now this things are supported officially.

Also, I've already explained, why "plex model" - is just illusion of P2P. Yeah, somebody need to buy game time for you. But exactly the same thing happens in F2P games - it just isn't so explicit. By definition F2P = YOU PERSONALLY don't have to pay any $$$ to play the game. Whether other players pay for you or not - doesn't matter. You should understand, that in both cases logic is pretty simple: if you want to play for free - you need to grind and if you don't want to grind - pay $$$ to avoid it. It's all about time gating.

[Deleted]

There is no such thing as buying boots officially, Real-money trade is always "black".

WoW is simply not F2P. I can make it F2P if I grind... but that is already the problem. I don't grind, I don't play the AH, I just play the way I want, and I would never be able to afford my game time with Gold.
So, yeah, pretty simple logic indeed: WoW is not F2P. No "illusion" involved. Someones buying game time, whether it's me or them doesn't matter, the fact remains that someone has to pay money for playing-the-game.


On top of that, blizzard doesn't sell benefits for real money. So no whaling either.

[Kazgrel]

B2P would be nice, but I don't see F2P happening for a while, if ever. As long as people are throwing cash at tokens, why would they get rid of that?

[Arbs]

The game is essentially F2P for me ever since the WoW tokens were released.

This for me aswell.

[Daffan]

Buy to play could be interesting, I'm sure f2p would add a big playerbase but there is just something about f2p that makes me feel off.

[Swalload]

The game will become F2P once it reaches a too low player base.

That will be in approximately 5 to 10 years. At which point, many of you will have already quit for a long time and may consider coming back for fun since it would have been a while.

[Gmollster11]

I'll let Blizzard worry about the health of the game. I don't own any ATVI stock so I don't really give a fuck about their business models and how they monetize WoW.
I DO know that F2P games tend to have annoying gear gates that send you buying fucking diamonds or pots or whatever shit from the cash-shop and they constantly remind you of this - the day that comes to WoW, I'm out of here.

- - - Updated - - -



So.. that's roughly about 1/3rd of what you need to earn to buy a token? Your point is what exactly?

Average token is around 99k. Go learn some math please.
Point is it's simple to play casually and buy tokens. Since you struggle with math, I'm not surprised this wasn't clear to you.

[Stormspellz]

WoW is still to big of a cash cow to go f2p: revitalizing pvp, bringing back old blizz innovation, less menucraft would all do wonders for the "health" of the game.

[Deleted]

Average token is around 99k. Go learn some math please.
Point is it's simple to play casually and buy tokens. Since you struggle with math, I'm not surprised this wasn't clear to you.

lol.
Buy Price 192,124g

[Wildmoon]

Blizzard is keeping WoW p2p because it makes more money. They would go f2p if it makes them more money without you having to tell them about it.

[Huehuecoyotl]

F2P would be a good model for Blizzard, because then they could look at new revenue streams. Like purchasable items, and paid for in-game services.

Oh, wait.

Why would they want to go for a model that ends up with them having fewer ways of generating income than they have at the moment? They have millions of people that appear to be happy enough for pay subscriptions AND a box price for expansions, while all the time there are the standard F2P charging methods ticking away in the background. Asking them to go F2P is like asking Apple to charge less.

As long as they have enough customers willing to indulge their greed, they won't change.

[WowIsDead64]

Yeah, what I wanted to say in my initial post - is that P2P -> B2P -> F2P is about keeping population of game on reasonable level. Online game can't survive without some minimal amount of players, you could play with. Even tiny minority of whales has to have other players to play with or against.

Because do you know, what happens, when population of game sinks? See MWO as example. Do you know, what PGI have to do to keep game running? They had to completely disable matchmaker, simply because queue times became unacceptable for Tier 1 players. Do you know, what that means? That means, Tier 4/5 noobs and Tier 3 casuals are being thrown into matches against Tier 1/2 hardcore pro Meta players. Do I need explain, that this makes game completely unplayable for Tier 3-5 players? And that Tier 1-2 also aren't happy, cuz they expect their teammates/enemies to be competitive. But PGI have to pretend, that everything is ok, cuz they need to keep selling new 'Mechs in shop and they need to throw new ones more and more often, cuz population keeps and keeps dropping.

So. Simple thing. Population drops -> other players stop enjoying game too -> even bigger population drop -> death of game. And it doesn't matter, that with F2P model Blizzard will have tons of players, not paying anything for their game - Blizzard will need them to keep game alive for players, who still pay for it.

Yeah. Wildstar went F2P pretty fast - plex period wasn't so long. Blizzard simply have enough resources to stretch this period. But it will happen sooner or later.

What F2P model I would want to see in Wow? Leveling and obsoleted content, being F2P. DLC-like actual endgame content. I want to pay for content, I enjoy, only. If I have to play obsolete content due to Blizzard being incompetent - I want to do it for free.

[Kantoro]

Let me sum up OP "I am too lazy to get a job and pay $15.00 a month for the game."

$15.00 a month is $0.50 a day, you could farm change off the street and pay for this game. The $15.00 is not a deterrent for anyone but lazy asses who think everything in life should be free for them becuz they exist. Even, then you can farm gold and not pay anything yourself, but again, self entitlement prevents this from being a solution for some players.

[Deleted]

Let me sum up OP "I am too lazy to get a job and pay $15.00 a month for the game."

$15.00 a month is $0.50 a day, you could farm change off the street and pay for this game. The $15.00 is not a deterrent for anyone but lazy asses who think everything in life should be free for them becuz they exist. Even, then you can farm gold and not pay anything yourself, but again, self entitlement prevents this from being a solution for some players.

You mean he's not a brat with no self control, spending other peoples cash while encouraging games companies to rip people off.

[Kantoro]

You mean he's not a brat with no self control, spending other peoples cash while encouraging games companies to rip people off.

Correct, he is a brat who's parents won't give him money anymore, so he needs the game to be free. Becuz $15.00 a month is way hard to earn.