I think Blizzard can have a profitable pay to play WoW as long as they adjust their content release schedule to something more friendly to monthly subscribers.
Do you think the world is going to end tomorrow? You whys well of asked a question like that.
"Never" is a silly option that either comes from naivety or the opinion that "if it comes to that, they'll simply close up shop." The only realistic one is "Later than that."
Soothing Mist:"Healing them for a minor amount every 0.5 sec, until you take any other action."
Jade Serpent Statue: "The statue will also begin casting Soothing Mist on your target. healing for 50% as much as yours. "
[What's half of minor?]
"Statue casts Soothing Mist at a nearby ally for toddler healing."
Why would they ever go free to play? Final Fantasy XI still isn't free to play, despite launching before world of warcraft. Rift, Tera, TOR, these games went free to play at the least partially because of not having their next thing in the works. Blizzard is still working with Titan, deciding how it will be and obviously confident they have the time to make it right with taking it back to the design phase.
Candidly, I always assume that when people bring up the topic of wow being free to play is because they don't want to pay a subscription, but want to play wow.
They'll do it when it stops being profitable and not a moment before that.
I'm pretty sure they stated that with 0 money from the store/services the sub model is better until a bit under 1mil subs. And I'm pretty sure Blizzard (and most companies for that matter) know better than forum people and they have the data to back it up.
Also the services+store made 213mil. They had a third of Riot's profits without the sub fee... there's absolutely no reason to go F2P.
Last edited by Ichifails; 2014-03-18 at 02:18 AM.
I seriously doubt they would do F2P. B2P maybe but never F2P. It doesn't help that most people are unable to distinguish the difference between the models.
NAH DOOD. naw.
Nope...not anytime soon. Even after all these years WoW is still king of mmo's and prolly will be for a long time to come.If some one comes in here and says "input name" is gonna be the wow killer I will literally roll out of my chair laughing..we have heard that shit one too many times.
I agree with you. I think we're going to see race specific cosmetic garrisons pop up on the cash shop. I also think they're going to put the current race alternatatives, eg. Mag'har Orcs, Wildhammer Dwarves, etc. will end up as a pay feature, not one they do for the players.
I personally do think it will go free to play at some point, but I have no idea when it will be. The only thing I'm sure of is that it will go free to play, when the cash shop items make more profit then the subs do. How soon that is, no idea though, because we don't know how many people are paying a monthly sub, and how many are paying a different model.
"Maybe" if the subs drop to around 1-2 million, but who knows if and when that will happen. WoW has a massive fan base of hardcore players that will play no matter what. I think Blizzard can and will charge a monthly fee forever. It's just that when it does start to drop more, they will one day lessen the monthly fee.
As others have said, it's doubtful that WoW will go FTP as long as there's a healthy sub. base. (and despite what these forums may have you believe, 6-7mil, hell, even 5 mil. is a very healthy sub. base). I could honestly only see WoW going F2P if subs dropped below 1mil. which seems to be the industry standard for the point at which FTP becomes viable. (Most sub based MMOs that went FTP happened at about this point.)
They also have no incentive, as looking at the market trends shows that most sub-based MMOs that went FTP retained a small niche audience, and eventually fade into forgotten depths of the internet. (I.e. When was the last time you heard anything from Aion?). To my knowledge there has never been a sub-based MMO that had any success at all going FTP, I would say SW:TOR was the closest and even that has just kind of stagnated. Basically, as long as the sub-based model is profitable to them, FTP will never happen, since, judging by trend in the market, the best a FTP game can hope for is basically breaking even.
so Warlords of Draenor is /'woɹː.loɹːdz ʌv 'ɖɹæːn.oɹː/.I've always loved how in an attempt to make pronunciation through text easier to understand people have created a seemingly alien cypher for which few people without a degree related to language would ever been able to understand.
My guess would be when Titan is released, or shortly before that.
When work feels overwhelming, remember that you're going to die.
The number of subs will have to drop a lot further before they'll try F2P with heavier cash shop items. It'll probably end up kinda like SWTOR. The free version will have limits some people will find horribly restrictive and they'll pay the sub to keep playing like they used to, others will accept the suck and play the free version, and there will be plenty of attractive items and things to drain away at their pocketbooks.
I'm not too familiar with Heroes of the Storm, but Hearthstone is just such a completely different game. It is a game that lends itself to micro-transactions, not a sub fee. I don't think we can read anything into that beyond, "Blizzard are smart enough to realise what profit schemes fit games".
People have been predicting the "death of WoW" since pre-BC, since we were waiting for Burning Crusade. They've also been predicting things like this - WoW going F2P, WoW charging more/less, etc, etc.
It's all just random guessing and borne of some insane idea that just because WoW is not as popular as it was at its peak, it's suddenly "in trouble" and the sky is falling.
Originally Posted by Tseric
World of Warcraft is a game that will probably will be born as Monthly pay and die as a monthly pay.
Atleast how i see it.