WoW going free to play sooner than later?

[Deleted]

If wow went F2P i would quit within the minute, the reason i don't play F2P games is because the content is either alot more shit and not as frequent or it's going to be pay 2 win which is retarded.

[TirielWoW]

And that source would be??????? until this is told ill just say ur whole comment is bs.

It's a sad thing in this world when people don't even get that reference.

[Glaziola]

I certainly hope they will not make it f2p. They might make 1-60 f2p though (to give people a true taste of the game and it would not hurt them allot)... I also hope more games will stap p2p as I like the p2p model more then the f2p model.

I agree 1-60 would be perfectly fine with some limitations like use /1 or /2 once every 20min or something to avoid spammers. I dont know about the technical details but it seems okay for me atleast. Also 13 euros a month is totally worth the entertainment I get for my money.

[Deleted]

Except their entire Asian base only pays about $2 - 3 a month, not $15.

Assuming that the bulk of the player base is from Asia currently, say 65%, that's only 2,905,000 million American / European customers or $43,575,000 a month from them alone.

Assuming 1 / 4 of the player base and the same above statistical guess, that would be 726,250 American / European customers at $15 a month or $10,893,750. Definitely not a small amount, but probably nowhere near what's needed to keep WoW chugging along at the current level of development.


Will it go free to play? Most likely, when it hits about 2 - 3 million subscribers or most of the American / European market are gone.

I just lost a post that said pretty much the same thing

Sources with some old but still relevant splits data:

http://mmodata.blogspot.co.uk/2009/1...y-less-so.html
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/world...0m-subscribers

My estimate base on a quarter of the subs was around $196 Million a year or 45% less than the simplistic $15 x (Number of Subs) x 12 (months)

[Dch48]

It will never happen so it's pointless speculating about it. Games only go F2P when their subs are right at or less than 1 million. WoW will stay well over that for a long time. Probably until Blizzard phases it out. If they ever do.

[klaps_05]

the game was expected to have around 300-400k players, not 12 million. you can be sure it wont go f2p as long as its at least around 500k

[marthsk]

You know what...

Screw Free-To-Play; I prefer Fritolay.

[TirielWoW]

Seeing as quality is an entirely subject measurement I do not think that is a question that is possible to answer. Although on the subject of SWTOR what little I have played looked like a quality product if I was not a current WOW player I would have been inclined to take a further look at it.

Obviously WOW would lose subscribers if it went F2P that is the whole point, it is free. To suggest that less people would play when something is free than when it costs money flies in the face of basic logic. Whilst it is not something I think they are going to do any time soon the comments from Kotick certainly hint that it is something they might consider.

It looks that way until you play the game through and realize what you've bought into. I had extremely high hopes for SWTOR, but the pervasive bugs, the lack of customer service, the simplicity of the dungeons/raids (which is necessary as they do not allow mods/addons of any sort) just turned me off of the game. Their f2p model is also completely horrible.

[Facepalmer3]

Why are people so obsessed with "F2P" Wow. It already is F2p to an extent, with the free lvl 20 accounts. I would say that unless/until the wow subscriptions go down to 1 million active, then the F2p conversation should start.

[MoanaLisa]

I am going to guess that CRZ is here to stay, but I think the way we do dailies and the gating behind them will change in the next expansion.

In fact, there are serious changes coming next patch if you haven't read up on it. The Golden Lotus gating to get to the other dailies is going away. I'm guessing that sort of thing will never be seen again. I'm also guessing that gear behind reputation gating will change later on but remain an option for those that wish to pursue it that way. Either by loosening the requirements, upping the number of reputation points you get for dailies, or some other mechanism to make it easier which all amounts to the same thing in the end. And even GC seems to agree that more dungeons are in order for the future if you read his tweets. We'll have to hope that their recent staffing up will hold up over the long run. Given that they've known for months what was revealed on Tuesday to the rest of the world, one would assume that it would.

Whatever happens the next year will be an interesting thing to watch.

[DeadmanWalking]

Neverwinter, where the threat table is completely borked? That has no raiding? LOTRO has no real PVE to speak of. DDO is the same. TSW and Terra similarly have no real PvE endgame. I have no idea what Champions Online is, but I'm betting it doesn't have a PvE endgame, either.

Champions Online has a PVE endgame but it generally comes down to grinding for several hundred item drops so you can craft endgame gear, or achieve 100 points to get endgame gear.

Champions Online is 100% F2P, you can download it right now from the champs webpage.... BUT you only get 2 or 3 character slots, have very limited costume options, can choose 5 out of 40 travel powers, can only choose a dozen power archetypes (like rock tank, or flame dps) and have limited access to crafting and bag slots.

Subsciption players get a huge boost in power selection alone, from the start they can mix and match their power sets freely. F2P players who choose 'flame DPS' get powers allocated to their character as they level, and subscription players can choose to take ice defences with superstrength attacks, regeneration, electrical flight, super jump, thorn traps, chain 'get over here' pulls, ect. The subscription player has a decided leg up on the f2p player, so much so they get preference in PVE endgame content in supergroups (guilds) and in PVP they wipe the floor with F2P players and most F2P players avoid PVP since they don't like loosing all the time.

Its totally Pay to Win and a great reason why WOW should never be Pay To Win.

[Dch48]

If wow went F2P i would quit within the minute, the reason i don't play F2P games is because the content is either alot more shit and not as frequent or it's going to be pay 2 win which is retarded.

LOTRO is free to play and doesn't fit either one of those descriptions. It's a good game whether you pay or not. You just get more Character slots and bag space by paying as well as all the new content except for full expansions. You also get 500 free Store points every month. Their sub base has actually gone up since they started the F2P option. It is possible to get the new content stuff without paying but it takes a lot of alt grinding to build up the store points. I'd rather pay the 10$ per month.

[Azrile]

Joystiq is asking the same question.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/05...-free-to-play/

It's not an unreasonable question when you are losing 400k players a month.

Not sure if you actually read the business report, but Blizzard actually beat expecations. The money is fine, they just lost all the casual chinese players that were paying almost nothing to a F2P game that charges nothing. That is the news that is missing. A huge, high quality F2P game was release in china recently. People need to look past the subscriber number and look at the revenue number. Wow is doing fine in the areas that charge $15 per month.

[Sildor]

It will at some point, but not until subs drop by 90% or so from the current which won't be for many years.

[MaximusRex]

World of Warcraft will NEVER BE free to play.

-> The reason you ask? Why would it change it's model that's worked for over 8.5 years.

Never say never, but I really doubt they will change models unless they feel they can make it more profitable, and since they already have a large market share, and the share they are losing is mostly in china, which doesn't pay near what we do in the West, it seems like a lot of risk for little reward.

If the decline in subs is low enough, and Titan takes off well before WoW subs decline too much, they might decide to shutter WoW instead of going F2P.

[TirielWoW]

Champions Online has a PVE endgame but it generally comes down to grinding for several hundred item drops so you can craft endgame gear, or achieve 100 points to get endgame gear.

Champions Online is 100% F2P, you can download it right now from the champs webpage.... BUT you only get 2 or 3 character slots, have very limited costume options, can choose 5 out of 40 travel powers, can only choose a dozen power archetypes (like rock tank, or flame dps) and have limited access to crafting and bag slots.

Subsciption players get a huge boost in power selection alone, from the start they can mix and match their power sets freely. F2P players who choose 'flame DPS' get powers allocated to their character as they level, and subscription players can choose to take ice defences with superstrength attacks, regeneration, electrical flight, super jump, thorn traps, chain 'get over here' pulls, ect. The subscription player has a decided leg up on the f2p player, so much so they get preference in PVE endgame content in supergroups (guilds) and in PVP they wipe the floor with F2P players and most F2P players avoid PVP since they don't like loosing all the time.

Its totally Pay to Win and a great reason why WOW should never be Pay To Win.

Neverwinter is shaping up to be similar. To even respec, you have to pay $6. A bag is $10. Mounts are $20-40 (though there are mounts available in game for gold). To get the best enchants (which are completely, over-the-top overpowered), you also need to pay to increase your chances of the enchant working. It's a great game for what it is, but the quality is nowhere near WoW.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 03:05 PM ----------

Never say never, but I really doubt they will change models unless they feel they can make it more profitable, and since they already have a large market share, and the share they are losing is mostly in china, which doesn't pay near what we do in the West, it seems like a lot of risk for little reward.

If the decline in subs is low enough, and Titan takes off well before WoW subs decline too much, they might decide to shutter WoW instead of going F2P.

Doubtful. They will milk WoW for every last cent for as long as they can.

[ElfinHilon10]

WoW will be F2P when Blizzard decides it's ready to be. /End thread.

[Banawani]

US$15 x 8,000,000 = US$120,000,000.00 a month.

US$120,000,000 x 12 = 1,440,000,000.00 a year.

Im sure half of the "business men" out there would start world war 3 over a cash flow half as big as that.

Free to play? maybe in 10 to 15 years it might have dropped to a point where free to play is a reasonable change. Not at day earlier.

That is the most flawed math I have seen in a long while.

First of all all the money they take in is not revenue, a lot of it is R&D in order to continue the franchise. Also many people pay on annual subscriptions not monthly. They also have to pay tax like any other business in the US, they have to pay for server cost and maintenance, employee checks, etc. You forgot to factor in base costs with expansions and such.

[Deleted]

When blizzard decides that they wont do anything else in wow, no new content just minor bugfixes and when they have a game to replace wow thats when it will become free to play.

And if we're gonna talk about stuffs thats going to kill wow, i believe that free to play would be one of them.

[Deleted]

It looks that way until you play the game through and realize what you've bought into. I had extremely high hopes for SWTOR, but the pervasive bugs, the lack of customer service, the simplicity of the dungeons/raids (which is necessary as they do not allow mods/addons of any sort) just turned me off of the game. Their f2p model is also completely horrible.

Whereas if u checkout GW2 then u will see the correct way to deliver a F2P game...

Whether u like GW2 or not is irrelevant, thyve demonstrated its possible to deliver a quality game which hasnt dropped in playerbase since the month of launch, its steadily rose. They release content monthly, their customer service if excellent and their devs chat with everyone on the forums, basically showing they listen to their players.

I feel ESO are looking long and hard at the GW2 model and are seriously considering going F2P also.