This shouldn't be of any surprise to anyone. The people saying WoW needs the subscription along with the rest don't know what they're talking about. The reason WoW has both is because enough people are willing to be ripped off that they can get away with it. But they could easily retain the game's quality without it.
“Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
Words to live by.
Are you people really that Clueless?
When you have MILLIONS of people paying a monthly Sub you don't go F2P.
WOW will go F2P when Subs drop under 500,000 in 15 years.
@Ghostcrawler:Some advice: [My pet issue] is why there were sub losses is one of the weaker arguments players use. Players don't have that data.
Of all the posts in this thread, this is the one I agree with. The transition is happening, slowly but surely.WoW will probably go free to play within a few years. When their subscriptions keep dropping (which they will) they risk losing income on microtransactions as well. At some point they will make the switch to free to play and just add a bunch of microtransactions to make up for the loss of paid subscriptions. They're right now just in a transitional phase.
The main thing slowing down the transition? The huge amount of money Blizzard gets from subs.
But as this decreases, and as people get more acclimated to a F2P model where we buy stuff in shops, the more attractive F2P becomes.
Right now, in January of 2014, the money Blizzard makes on sub fees dwarfs the amount from micro-transactions. But its 5 or 6 to 1, not 10 or 50 to 1. And the trend is for this gap to narrow over time. Over the next few years I'd say it is more than 50-50 that F2P becomes a reality. The rule of the business world is adapt or die, and Blizzard is quite aware of the companies that did not adapt, and thus died.
i agree with this. while i do understand why people are against micro transactions in a p2p game, nothing they have added in anyway makes you better than anyone. if they get to that point its another story but i dont think they will while its still p2p.
the sub fee still feels very much worth it. even when we are in a patch lull i still feel inclined to log on because there is still so much other crap to do. and thats all that matters to me. if they were doing this while not having anything to do i would raise an eyebrow.
I'm sure at this point it's economically feasible to go F2P. If they decide to permanently add the option to buy a level 90, it'll be even more so.
But Blizzard has their number crunchers. They've done the math. When it becomes more profitable to go F2P, they will. Clearly that's not the case right now.
$213 million from micro transactions is a hell of a lot though.
Last edited by Maester; 2014-01-21 at 03:13 AM.
How does LoL make $624 million in a single year? Don't they just sell skins?
OT: WoW makes such a ridicuous amount of cash through subs it is simply insane to think they will go FTP in the near future.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
Revelation 6:8
Barriers to entry are a good thing.
I'd trust that Blizzard probably knows their economic model and breakdown better than a guess you could make off the top of your head...
At any rate, all these people clambering for WoW to be free to play... I'd rather NOT have to pay extra money for dungeons, and raids, and for real gear, or to register for a PvP season, or to upgrade things, and so on and so forth that actually affect character power or are real forms of content beyond the "ooh, shiny!" that we have now. I like having that all rolled into one, thank you very much.
“Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
Words to live by.
According to simple multiplication, they likely made over one BILLION dollars from subscriptions, so going F2P would be suicide.
And this is why they're not giving us any free pets anymore for anniversaries, why do that when you can nickel and dime your sheep into buying them instead for $10 a pop? If the mindless idiots would grow wise and not support such an asinine system, perhaps they'll come back.