Blizz should make WoW free to play

[toychristopher]

They really should. It's time to do it. They are losing subscribers and going free to play would attract a whole new group of players to the game.

Players like me who are no longer willing to pay a sub for a game that I would only play once a week would come back and help beef up the numbers on deserted realms.

Many free to play games actually make more than when they had a subscription. Blizz already has a cash shop, with some pretty obscene prices on cosmetic items. All they have to do is add some more and give some perks to people who want to continue paying a subscription: unlimited in game mail, extra rest xp, free charms of fortune each month, whatever.

[Darsithis]

No. They're not even close to that point that they'd need to do something like that.

[Nirty999]

No they should not. I don't want another paytowin "free" game.

[Derpleton]

No way f2p usually means pay to win or very limited options without handing the company tons of money.

[Ronduwil]

Having customers is not the key to making money; having paying customers is. Why should they go free to play when they already have more subscribers than any free-to-play MMO? That's just throwing money away. There is no guarantee that F2P would even bring players back.

[Reinaerd]

Not happening, even after the sub dip, they still have a playerbase other mmo's could only dream about.
And like others said, no ta @ the pay to win / bling bullshit the other horrendous mmo's out there poop out every month.

[Deleted]

all other F2P mmos are shite.. make it £4.99 a month then instead, maybe id resub then. or maybe not ;p

[Shampro]

FF11 still has a sub model and WoW has basicly 8 times the population of that game for example, why should they desperately go F2P? Explain.

[zeropeorth]

No way f2p usually means pay to win or very limited options without handing the company tons of money.

nope; only in your very limited experience/opinion it does

i will only play wow again when it is f2p; can't justify the sub when i don't enjoy it that much any longer; while i've been greatly enjoying a few f2p games without restrictions and without paying.

[Nanaboostme]

WoW will never go free until they have a more established game store like every other friggen free to play mmo. My guess is they will build on it slowly like the new double xp you can possibly buy in the next patch.

to just make it free to play for everyone without any compensation, thats like saying, hey lets throw millions of dollar down the drain

[Dragore]

So what is the number of subscribers now, 8.3 million? Lets go with that then. 8.3 mill x 15 (round up a cent for monthly sub) = $124,500,000 of loss profits. Yeah real smart. Theres a reason why WoW is still going strong. Paying a monthly fee for a better game, im okay with that.

[Majiinx]

An MMO with 250k+ subs is considered successful and sustainable, wow has around 8 million i'd say they are still more then successful. I think what they need is to update models and do whatever they can to improve the graphics engines, you'd be surprised at how far an engine can be pushed (look at quake 1 and 2 and look at some of the games built on those engines) and have a very strong xpac and I think WoW will be fine and can hold blizzard till titan which will almost defiantly be WoW 2 I don't care what they say, they would be idiots to not make a WoW 2.

I' personally hate F2P games they end up making people spend more money then they would with subs plus balancing whats free and whats paid for can be very difficult. Its like any quality product out there wether it be clothing, cars or electronics you get what you pay for and 15 dollars a month for a solid game with a ton of content and very large content updates is more then a reasonable price.

[akris15]

People who want f2p think that they are going to get a service like the current sub model only for free with a cash shop like pets and such. To those who want f2p be careful what you wish for because if you want f2p you get f2p content. 6 to 9 month patch rotations, gone because in a f2p environment there is no incentive to produce new content unless people are not using cash shop and the content becomes stale then they might produce more of it. Hey want to raid siege you can for 20 dollars for 60 days! You really think that a game that solely is fixated on the endgame and not leveling would allow a buy once get all access pass? For you tha love leveling enjoy reduced xp leveling so you get so flustered you buy those do pots (considering how the 85-90 do had to be dropped last patch this would be ironic), want a 3rd alt you can for 10 dollars, want another bs spot other than you 16 slot bag you can for 5 dollars per slot! Basically what I am getting at you want f2p then you get that quality of it being Nickled and dimed the entire way because of the restrictions to make you so annoyed at the lack of quality of life features that made this game great so they can get 15 dollars out of you each month or more instead.

[Lochton]

They really should. It's time to do it. They are losing subscribers and going free to play would attract a whole new group of players to the game.

Players like me who are no longer willing to pay a sub for a game that I would only play once a week would come back and help beef up the numbers on deserted realms.

Many free to play games actually make more than when they had a subscription. Blizz already has a cash shop, with some pretty obscene prices on cosmetic items. All they have to do is add some more and give some perks to people who want to continue paying a subscription: unlimited in game mail, extra rest xp, free charms of fortune each month, whatever.

No, they shouldn't. It's not even time for that yet. And no, they shouldn't do any of your ideas. The XP boost is okay, everyone did that way faster than WoW because they couldn't gain players fast enough.

No, Blizzard doesn't have a cosmetic cash shop. They have a store with mounts and pets, doesn't fall under cosmetic.

And no, most F2P games earn just barely enough to run. SWTOR does good on a subscription, but as soon as you see it on F2P then you will wonder. You will wonder how people can even stand playing it as free, everything have off-prices and most your progress is limited till you pay cartel coins or money. Do you wish to pay for 3 months permission to wear your epics? Pay for permission to enter certain zones? Pay for permission to do more than a limited dungeon/battleground? That is why you for example do with SWTOR.

If you look at Rift, log in and you got loot now that they went F2P.

I haven't met a single MMO game that started with a subscription and successfully changed direction to F2P without starting to bleed like a wounded animal.

Added note: It's calculated that even if WoW has 1-1½ million subs going, they can still develop more content without too slow speed. Though, we would have had to sacrefice things like BlizzCon and tournaments in the end.

[Socialhealer]

no freebies for you.

[MoanaLisa]

Many free to play games actually make more than when they had a subscription. Blizz already has a cash shop, with some pretty obscene prices on cosmetic items. All they have to do is add some more and give some perks to people who want to continue paying a subscription: unlimited in game mail, extra rest xp, free charms of fortune each month, whatever.

That's largely because there's a tipping point where your player base gets small enough to make the switch. It's preposterous to think that everyone currently subscribed to World of Warcraft in the US/EUR regions will continue to spend $15/month in a cash shop.

Which is not to say they aren't going to open up a wider F2P game sometime soon. I can easily imagine them doing something like 1-80 as F2P with a full-blown cash shop to support that. Why no one else can seem to imagine this is sort of a mystery. Over in the "oh-my-god-the-sky-is-falling' cash shop threads, I haven't seen this mentioned even once.

[ldev]

Are you kidding? F2P now? Wait until they hit like 100k subs lol.

[Aleksej89]

It is time to do it????????????????

They got about 8.5 million paying subscribers, that is over 110,500,000 dollars/euros PER MONTH - about 1,326,000,000 dollars/euroes per year.
In short, Blizzard is making OVER 1.3 BILLION $/e annually on WoW - and you want them to make it free to play?

There are a sh*t ton of MMOs out there running at 50,000 subscribers and making more than a good profit, WoW will stay with subscriptions all the way till it drops to adequately low numbers.

Please do not make threads like this again, it is just pointless asking a billion $ earning business to change into a "F2P"...

[Issalice]

I use to be firmly against WoW going F2P but after playing Rift the past few weeks, I don't really have a problem with it anymore. WoW doesn't need to though. There are enough subs that will keep them from going free, they simply don't need to. The sub model works for them. The dying realms issue is being addressed next patch anyway, so your argument that f2p would help that is moot.

[Kaleredar]

another person that thinks that a free to play Warcraft would be WoW, just free.

Hehehe... no.

You want to join this arena season? Pay up. You want to unlock the new raid zone? Pay up. A bunch of new dungeons just came out? Not for you, unless you pay. You want to pursue a meta achievement? Great, just pay the fee to unlock it.

Blizzard doesn't make their money off of "box sales," they make it off of Sub fees. And you BEGIN to think that taking that away, and tossing in some fluff items would make up for all that money?