Should WoW Go Free To Play?

[Dilbon]

F2P no, but I'm betting that when the next expansion hits the mandatory sub fee is dropped.

[Myrandron]

It's much to big to go f2p, it needs the monthly income from the subs to keep all of the servers up and I doubt all the idiots paying for vanity pets from the blizzard store could keep it afloat.

[Zeek Daniels]

It's much to big to go f2p, it needs the monthly income from the subs to keep all of the servers up and I doubt all the idiots paying for vanity pets from the blizzard store could keep it afloat.

quite wrong there. Subs do nothing but pay for your access to the servers. Your not helping maintain them they got plenty of money from the ammount of subs they have to pay for those and any other costs. WoW money goes into other games. Your subs fund other games not WoW exclusively.

[Ceece]

The money, subbing or buying from the store, is used for a wide range of objectives.

[Frolk]

STOP making these threads, JESUS fucking christ
Wow will NOT go f2p for at least the next 3-4 years, so stop asking, instead look in the other 300threads about it

[Klutzington]

Hell No. Maybe when it has 500k players but at 8 MILLION? they would have to be crazy. You think Swtor, Aion and now rift would have gone F2P if they had 8 Million player? Hell no. F2P is for games that have failed and wow isn't even close to failed yet. Then even wow will not fail it will just very slowly die.

It will not be F2P for atleast the next 6/7 years maybe even longer.

The amount of bias is shocking in this one.

[Mister K]

Not yet but in near future (3-5 years) I should hope so.

[Aquamonkey]

Why do people keep saying having 8+ million subs means going F2P is off the table? If F2P can turn a profit on a game unprofitable with subs, why can't it make a game already profitable with subs even more profitable? Why is F2P only seen as a move of desperation? Companies use F2P because it makes money; if it didn't, they would just shut down the games.

[I No I FeaR I]

Maybe not FREE, but they really should reduce the prices of everything. I mean, we already pay $40 for the basic edition of each expansion, then pay $15 every single month, then if you change factions or servers, there's another $25, then they sell mounts and pets on the Blizz store for $5-10....you all know Blizz is rolling around in all this money.

I do think they should atleast reduce the monthly fee to something more reasonable, like $5 a month. Think about the THOUSANDS of dollars alot of people have payed playing this game over the years...

[misterbeefy117]

Should WoW go Free to Play? No.
Should these threads die? Yes.

[mickybrighteyes]

Hell No. Maybe when it has 500k players but at 8 MILLION? they would have to be crazy. You think Swtor, Aion and now rift would have gone F2P if they had 8 Million player? Hell no. F2P is for games that have failed and wow isn't even close to failed yet. Then even wow will not fail it will just very slowly die.

It will not be F2P for atleast the next 6/7 years maybe even longer.

I disagree on the bolded part. I however think that players tend to ignore non-wow games for some reason when they have to pay for them.

[ablib]

Think about the THOUSANDS of dollars alot of people have payed playing this game over the years...

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

[Elhana]

no.. dont see why any1 want it to go free to play.. if u cant awford such a small fee as 15 euro per month or like 135 swedish kr for me.. then your economy is weird..

Paying 15e per month is not much, but question is if it is worth it? Do you get a value for it? Despite common belief server maintenance costs are negligible, they dump more money on marketing.
That 15e/month is 180e/year + expansions are not free, most games cost much less than that. Blizz keep adding silly stuff like pet battles spectator mode..

Bad thing about f2p is that in most games you end up being pay 2 win. And F2P can be profitable, but I guess not at current subscription numbers. Blizz actually has a shop already anyway.

[Lilly32]

Depends what F2P model they use. One like Guild Wars 2 where you can play the entire game without ever spending a dime or SW:ToR where you have all sorts of penalties on your account unless you sub. Seeing how Diablo 3 is pay to win im guessing they would get rid of the sub fee but make the game only go to level 80 unless you sub. So basically they get to lie and say its free to play when it really isnt.

[Chickat]

I think wow has 3 more expansions before it goes ftp.

[ablib]

Paying 15e per month is not much, but question is if it is worth it? Do you get a value for it? Despite common belief server maintenance costs are negligible, they dump more money on marketing.
That 15e/month is 180e/year + expansions are not free, most games cost much less than that.

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.

[Deleted]

Blizzard should let WoW go free to play once they stop making expansions for it, not a second before.
At that time they will probably have RMAH and a proper itemstore running in the game to cover serverexpenses.

With 8 million subs they get a stabil income and Blizzard can't afford making a mistake like letting wow go before they have its successor ready.

[vindicatorx]

As I have stated in the identical threads like this I will cancel my sub the day they announce WoW is going F2P.

[nazrakin]

Why do people keep saying having 8+ million subs means going F2P is off the table? If F2P can turn a profit on a game unprofitable with subs, why can't it make a game already profitable with subs even more profitable? Why is F2P only seen as a move of desperation? Companies use F2P because it makes money; if it didn't, they would just shut down the games.

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.

[namelessone]

God no. There needs to be one good sub-based MMO. There's enough decent F2P games already.