Do You Think Blizzard is Setting WoW Up for F2P?

[DarkAmbient]

Why would they quit the sub when they have so many people prepared to pay it AND pay top dollar for character services and virtual sparkly horses from the store?

[Alopex Major]

I like how everyone still thinks there are 7 million paid subs.

[xanzul]

You do understand that 80%+ profit isn't considered normal for companies, right?

And that at some point, trying to generate more income streams because $800m profit a year isn't enough for you creeps over the line from "good corporate practice" into "sheer bloody minded greed".

It is sad, because the original Blizzard wouldn't have behaved this way. They would have carried on focusing on the game, trying to make it as good as they could for their players. They wouldn't have spent years brainstorming new ways to monetise them, while allowing the game to become less and less attractive to the people paying for it.

But that Blizzard has been dead for a while now. The cold rotting corpse of the original Blizzard is propped up in front of the players whenever they need to justify another money grab, and the players that were there at the start of Blizzard look at it and think "see, it's still Blizzard. What they are doing MUST be fine. Blizzard are a good company, they wouldn't treat us badly".

But you carry on worshiping that corpse, Xanzul. The rest of us will keep our eyes just a little more open than that.

I'm not worshiping a fucking thing. I'm just an adult who understands how the real world works. I really don't get why you jaded haters hang around here. It must be exhausting being that negative all the time.

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Yes it's called lying to investors, and it's illegal. No way can this turd of a product (WoD especially) have this many real subs. I look forward to the day when the authorities take Blizzard to task, do a proper audit and Blizzard/Metzen goes the way of Enron/Madoff respectively.

I mean, who plays this game? Anywhere you go, people only say how bad this game is/how they wish it was dead and noone will admit to playing it post-Cata. All the while being a worse product than any other game in the market (still coasting on unvoiced kill 15 mob quests, 2000-era graphics, mob grinding for endgame - looks at WoD dailies/apexis) and costing 4x as much to play (expacs + sub + cash shop + p2w) than other games.

I know you and others are still butthurt that Wow isn't dead but the subscription numbers are real.

[Soulwind]

I like how everyone still thinks there are 7 million paid subs.

Because Blizzard would lie to the investors, waste millions of dollars and risk getting fined for even more just to please a few forum lurkers. Clearly.

[Monkeem]

I dont feel wow is pay 2 win at all, but they might make it free to play. which I think is a good thing, either it will make a lot more people play it or everyone will switch to the next awesome mmo game.

[Sicarius87]

Blizz already confirmed last year that the game is not built around F2P and it would be a huge pain in the ass process to convert it to that model and thus they have no plans now or in the near future to do so.

[xanzul]

Aaah the sheeple. They do not have 7.1 million subs in the way you are thinking. There are not 7.1 million people paying $15 a month. They are counting all the chinese kids that spend 5 minutes in the game in the last 30 days of the quarter (they pay for time used, not monthly sub).

I know this is difficult to comprehend but paying accounts are paying accounts regardless of how much they pay.

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Seems funny. You say 7mil subs are enough for Blizzard. Okey, then why are they covering sub losses with with price increases in practically everything and also giving us nothing in return. You have little knowledge how a business works. Just because they earn 1 bill a year, perhaps their target is 1.3 bill, in order to pay everything to their employees and also sustain some capital within the company. Lets talk about Internal/External Bills, investors, lawyers, export, import, retailers, much more.

I assure you Blizzard's costs are more than covered with Wow. Anyone who has looked at their quarterly reports knows this.

[rogueMatthias]

Are they setting up WoW for F2P??

Hell no. Why would they? They're charging for everything every F2P game does already, PLUS a subscription on top of that and people lap it up. Blizzard fans love being milked.

[MoanaLisa]

Hell no. Why would they? They're charging for everything every F2P game does already, PLUS a subscription on top of that and people lap it up. Blizzard fans love being milked.

That does bring up a point about being a sensible customer and why everyone should be one.

And no they are not charging for everything every F2P game does already. There's a whole wide array of things that you can pay for in F2P games that aren't for sale in WoW; bag space and extra characters being major items.

I think you're mistaken though about whether or not they're getting WoW ready for F2P. They very clearly are putting things in place so they can launch when they need to do so.

[Biggles Worth]

Why would they move to F2P system when they still have millions of players willing to;

pay more for less content.
Pay more for mounts and pets
Pay more for expansion packs
Pay more so that others can use in game currency to play
Pay more for recycled dungeons and events.

Blizzard has worked out a great system somehow, they continually manage to get thier customers to not only enjoy paying more for less but even go out and defend thier actions. White Knighting doesn't even cover it sadly.

Why would Bli$$ard move to a Freeium platfrom when they have customers will to keep paying more and more while getting less and less and many customers will defend Bli$$ards moves despite the fact it's obvious to everyone else.

No, WoW is in a good place as far as Bli$$ard is concerned. Maybe they'll start charging for DLC, the fan boys will just eat that shit up.

If I were a religious man this is where I say AMEN!

[Fexus]

They are obviously heading in that direction. It may not be soon, but it will happen eventually.

[Thandorr]

I don't know why people are still using the argument, "Blizzard is making a ton of cash in the current price model... blah blah blah..." For some off the ball reason, people don't realize that when/if WoW goes F2P it will completely dwarf the amount of money they are making right now. F2P is the greatest deceiver in the world; everyone places F2P on the same playing field when in reality it differs from game to game, drastically.

Look at SWTOR, they are making a mega asston of money off of their F2P model, much more than they ever would have/did with their sub model. This is for two reasons and the same would apply to WoW when/if they go F2P: (1) F2P makes the game accessible to an incredibly larger market (SWTOR and WoW are both great games but the idea of a subscription to a video game is archaic at best when you consider the overwhelming majority leader in video games comes in the form of consoles - buy the game and play the game, no sub). (2) Most F2P models are not really F2P, but are Pay-to-play under the guise of F2P. Just because a game can be accessed for free in some fashion even in a very large portion of the game, it does not make it F2P. In SWTOR, being F2P (not a subscriber or preferred access) player leaves you very limited in what you can do on a few fronts. After level 10 you begin to earn exp at a severely diminished rate. You are limited on the number of actionbars, characters on a server, battlegrounds, flashpoints and raids you can do in a week, and the list goes on and on. They advertised F2P, but in reality, the only way to play the game to its full capacity is to pay money, and a lot of it. You can either sub, purchase a preferred member status, or purchase with their currency the particular thing they are withholding from you (i.e. more possible flashpoints that week).

WoW is by one definition already F2P, that is you can play for free up to level 20, and you can purchase a sub with gold. What is not free however, is the same thing that is not free in SWTOR, expansion packs.

SWTOR advertises F2P but withholds a large portion of the game and still requires you to pay for the current content; WoW does not advertise F2P but allows you to play withholding a large portion of the game and having to purchase the game to play the game.

We're really not that far off, honestly. As soon as Blizzard realizes that they will make more money than they can spend with a Gated F2P model like SWTOR, we're fucked. All they really need is to put gear on the blizz store and they will be there...

TL;DR WoW is close to F2P and in the interest of greater financial prosperity, we can expect it sometime in the future.

[xanzul]

I don't know why people are still using the argument, "Blizzard is making a ton of cash in the current price model... blah blah blah..." For some off the ball reason, people don't realize that when/if WoW goes F2P it will completely dwarf the amount of money they are making right now. F2P is the greatest deceiver in the world; everyone places F2P on the same playing field when in reality it differs from game to game, drastically.

Look at SWTOR, they are making a mega asston of money off of their F2P model, much more than they ever would have/did with their sub model. This is for two reasons and the same would apply to WoW when/if they go F2P: (1) F2P makes the game accessible to an incredibly larger market (SWTOR and WoW are both great games but the idea of a subscription to a video game is archaic at best when you consider the overwhelming majority leader in video games comes in the form of consoles - buy the game and play the game, no sub). (2) Most F2P models are not really F2P, but are Pay-to-play under the guise of F2P. Just because a game can be accessed for free in some fashion even in a very large portion of the game, it does not make it F2P. In SWTOR, being F2P (not a subscriber or preferred access) player leaves you very limited in what you can do on a few fronts. After level 10 you begin to earn exp at a severely diminished rate. You are limited on the number of actionbars, characters on a server, battlegrounds, flashpoints and raids you can do in a week, and the list goes on and on. They advertised F2P, but in reality, the only way to play the game to its full capacity is to pay money, and a lot of it. You can either sub, purchase a preferred member status, or purchase with their currency the particular thing they are withholding from you (i.e. more possible flashpoints that week).

WoW is by one definition already F2P, that is you can play for free up to level 20, and you can purchase a sub with gold. What is not free however, is the same thing that is not free in SWTOR, expansion packs.

SWTOR advertises F2P but withholds a large portion of the game and still requires you to pay for the current content; WoW does not advertise F2P but allows you to play withholding a large portion of the game and having to purchase the game to play the game.

We're really not that far off, honestly. As soon as Blizzard realizes that they will make more money than they can spend with a Gated F2P model like SWTOR, we're fucked. All they really need is to put gear on the blizz store and they will be there...

TL;DR WoW is close to F2P and in the interest of greater financial prosperity, we can expect it sometime in the future.

Why on earth would Blizzard continue keeping Wow subscription based if free to play is more profitable? Use some logic please.

[MoanaLisa]

Look at SWTOR, they are making a mega asston of money off of their F2P model, much more than they ever would have/did with their sub model.

I can pretty much guarantee you that if SWTOR had been really successful on a subscriber basis--like two million or more subscribers consistently--it wouldn't have gone to F2P.

All things are relative. I'm glad that it's doing well now. Really. But "well" in this case is compared to how badly it did with a different revenue model.

[Mellrod]

Honest question: What would be wrong if WoW did go F2P? All that means is no subscription fee, wouldn't that be a load off our backs? It would probably bring a shit ton of players back, as well as new ones. Is that not what people want? The F2P model can work in an MMO if done right (i.e. not putting a pricetag on everything like SWTOR, AKA Star Wars The Old Failure, and no shortcuts for a price, sort of like boost to 90, although BT90 was kind of necessary for this game's age and mountain of old content), so why does everyone hate it so much?

Look at SWTOR, they are making a mega asston of money off of their F2P model, much more than they ever would have/did with their sub model.

SWTOR went F2P because no one played it, a lot of mmos will go F2P if the company realizes they are failing, sort of like ESO did. Ofc like Xanzul said, F2P certainly does not make as much mulah as P2P. With the F2P model, you cant gate every single person from playing with the old subscription fee wall, you just have to hope people buy into your ploys and purchase the in-game shinies, which only gullible folks actually ever do, so that halves your profit right then and there.

[mike2014]

Just put it this way wow will go f2p when the fan base starts dying in real life lol