Should WoW Go Free To Play?

[Deleted]

Video games are shit these days. It's not at all uncommon to spend $60 USD on a video game that you play through for 6 hours, only to never pick it up again. That entertainment cost is $10 an hour.

People have a hard time understanding math or putting perspective into things. There are people who have 500 hours played in Diablo 3, but scream that the game was shit and a waste of money. That entertainment cost .12 cents an hour! Where the hell else can you go and be entertained for .12 cents an hour?

Same thing with wow. The value you get for your money FAR surpasses most video games. Over the years, WoW has cost me pennies per hour, while Call of Duty: Modern Warfare cost me $1.

Unfortunately, video games don't attract the most intelligent of minds, so using arithmetic and logic is probably lost on most.

Thats how I look at it aswell, else I would be dissapointed every time I rented a movie or went to the cinema. Video games are cheaper entertainment per hour than any movie.

For me Diablo3 was one of the best releases in terms of entertainment, took me 350 hours to get bored of it. Thats 0,16 dollers per hour of entertainment. Plus I kinda sold my stuff in the game for 900 dollers. So I kinda made 2,41 dollers per hour while having fun. Being paid to have fun, awesome.

Also people who don't like Diablo3 probably didn't play Diablo 2 at release, because it was worse than Diablo3 until LoD.

[mickybrighteyes]

If people have paid thousands, they need their heads examined.

yeah, the game isn't 10 years old yet. Only people who probably should have paid near 2 grand so far would have had to have gotten each collector's edition and paid more then 6 years worth of payment plan?

[Deleted]

While I think WoW is doing fine (even the most negative person on the forums thinks that wow has 2-3 million West Subs).

I am not stupid enough to think that F2P is not in WoWs future at some point.

I 100% think that WoW will go F2P when Blizzard think they will make more money from F2P than the pure Sub Model.

I really hope when that time comes that they do it right and are more like Tera/Rifts F2P model than SW:ToR F2P model where they got very close to charging you for extra action bars.

[Dairyking101]

No /10char

[DCUOb4ifuru18]

Wow should be free for gays

Dcuo>wow

Infracted

[Aquamonkey]

Because that is pretty much how f2p has been utilized. Most MMOs are forced to go f2p because they failed to attract and KEEP real subscribers. Publishers of these ill fated games would be stupid not to try a free 2 play model; MMOs are incredibly expensive and they have to answer to some seriously pissed off investors if they just throw it away. Except for maybe Rift, most of these game probably never saw a single $ of profit before the switch. Blizzard is clearly in a much different position.

Show me an instance of a game going F2P making less money than when it was P2P.

[bigbadworgen]

Of course it should, why not? Blizzard can still make money through micro transactions just like other companies have been doing. I wouldn't mind saving some money.

I have no idea what the problem of people who are so against this idea as if they are getting some of the revenue from Blizzard (maybe they are lol). If they think F2P model will reduce Blizzard's revenue (I don't agree) and they want to help Blizzard make more money, they can still donate. I assure you, nobody will stop your donations guys.

[mistahwilshire]

No. Going F2P is a last ditch effort that may have helped to keep a few exceptions afloat for awhile longer, but it's still a bad thing. WoW is not even slightly close to being anywhere near dangerously low numbers to have to pull such a move to stay afloat. It's still completely obliterating all the MMO competition by far.

[mvaliz]

Eventually - yes.

Remember though - Blizz only gets ONE chance to go free to play! One chance to get a big hype parade behind the moment when they do.

So, they will definitely wait until they lost XYZ number of subs down the road - THEN they'll announce it. My guess is until they get the D3 RMAH sorted out and working properly so they can port that system over to WoW.

[Armourboy]

Right now there is no economic reason to do so, and at their sub levels they would probably lose more money than they would gain. When your numbers are low F2P makes your numbers go up, but with this many players, the number of players may increase, but the number of subs would drop drastically. You would also need to consider how many people still play WoW because its not F2P. I'm one of those people and I suspect there are quite a few more like me.

Now in the future could it? Yeah it could.

Blizzard whenever asked about it though doesn't seem to be too keen on doing it. I think they believe they have a superior product and as long as they make good enough content they are far better off with a sub model. Sub models have their issues, but if not done correctly F2P has even more.

[melodramocracy]

I would like to get other people's opinions on the matter, and what you think should be done.

I'm thinking someone should introduce you to the search feature that this forum lovingly provides.

[Wildberry]

Absolutely not, I do not want to think of the abomination that the community would become if it went free to play. (No I will not gibe moni, I do not jaja when I laugh and Mordekaiser is not number 1)

plus with the current sub model and the amount of subscribers Blizzard is making more money this way, so by that logic they can afford to put more money into the game than they could with F2P

[Last Starfighter]

World of Warcraft has been going strong since its release, but recently I've been reading threads stating that it's in decline. I have not noticed anything "declining" but I'm starting to get worried. If going F2P would bring down the quality of the game, I wouldn't want it to, and I'm also aware that WoW is still one of the best MMORPGs worldwide, and that's why those threads confused me.

I would like to get other people's opinions on the matter, and what you think should be done.

GENIUS! "Hey guys, we only have a few million people subscribing to the game. I KNOW! LETS MAKE IT F2P!!"

---------- Post added 2013-05-19 at 03:56 AM ----------

Video games are shit these days. It's not at all uncommon to spend $60 USD on a video game that you play through for 6 hours, only to never pick it up again. That entertainment cost is $10 an hour.

People have a hard time understanding math or putting perspective into things. There are people who have 500 hours played in Diablo 3, but scream that the game was shit and a waste of money. That entertainment cost .12 cents an hour! Where the hell else can you go and be entertained for .12 cents an hour?

Same thing with wow. The value you get for your money FAR surpasses most video games. Over the years, WoW has cost me pennies per hour, while Call of Duty: Modern Warfare cost me $1.

Unfortunately, video games don't attract the most intelligent of minds, so using arithmetic and logic is probably lost on most.

"video games are shit these days.". How hipster.

[Aeka]

I would like it to go F2P. It's not that I care about the $15 monthly sub. Maybe the devs would be disinclined to give content that is too time consuming. Which we all know the real purpose is to keep the subs up. rep, dailys, lockouts,, etc you all know. imo and NOT a wow hater.

You have no idea how blessed the WoW playerbase is with the content that we get.

[K i s u]

As we've had dozens of other threads like this, I won't go into depth and simply say No.

[celinamuna]

No, if wow goes F2P i'd most likely quit.... actually.. yes it should, because then i have a good excuse to quit.

[paralleluniverse]

No. It should never go F2P unless it's finished by Blizzard (i.e. no more game updates or expansion will ever be released).

[adorich]

This doesn't really make sense. They make "time-consuming" content because what's the alternative? Quick content and then nothing to do? If you actually enjoy playing WoW, what would you gain from no content left to do?

I suppose a better question is, what should developers be producing instead of daily quests, etc? I mean, I don't like daily quests but other people do. I only like raiding, so constant raid content would be nice for me, but would do zero for people who don't enjoy raiding. What's the content that you feel is the obvious correct avenue for developer resources that would make everyone happy?

Instead of "time consuming content" they could focus on making fun content. Blizzard is worried people will rush through content and quit, so they make tons of dailies, slow gearing to a crawl and people quit anyways. It feels like work.

In BC there was less to do, yet I had a great time. Classes and specs felt different. Even if I did gear a toon I could start on another and have totally different experience. Pvp wasn't balanced, but at least I didn't die in 2 global cooldowns and Kara was absolutely wonderful.

Subscription games going F2p are last ditch efforts to keep a game alive. They are poorly run and new content is rare. Wow as a f2p game would be a really bad thing.

[nazrakin]

Show me an instance of a game going F2P making less money than when it was P2P.

Again, those games went f2p because they failed to attract an audience and make any money. So of course they are making more money as a nickle/dime-dick-your-customer-over-cash-grab. World of Warcraft is in no way comparable to those games. WOW found an audience and its subscription model has made it, by far, the most profitable game of all time.

Until one of these f2p MMOs can approach those numbers, we can't have a serious discussion about how WoW subscription model is a mistake.

[icausewipes]

no


/twochars