Ironically whenever someone brings up they are losing subscribers, they forget to mention, even though they've lost millions of subs the last few years, they still have about 8+ million subs, more or less. For exact numbers, i suspect the last Activision earnings call will have the details. For sure, I think Blizzard is moving in the F2P direction but its going to be gradual. More items on Bliz store that can't be gotten ingame as well as the PTR data mined exp buff point to it, but we aren't there yet. WoW is still insanely profitable, they aren't going to drops subs anytime soon.
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I have always said the only company I think that could make the Perfect or Worse setup for P2p+F2p is blizzard. If they did it there won't be a middle ground.
Also every single MMO that has gone f2p has made huge profit and the only one to shut down was City Of Heroes but that was not because of money problems it was backroom contracts where Cryptic still owned CoH even tho Paragon's name was on it or something to that effect.
Blizzard is laying down the ground work and I personally feel that sometime from now to the start of the xpac after the next wow will have a f2p setup. Hell they could do a setup like Everquest has.
Its no longer a If wow will go f2p its a When wow will go f2p and I wish people will stop trying to pull the "Wow has 8 million subs argument" the EU/US make up most of blizzards income and there is not 8 million EU/US players so while the number is 8 million they mite be looking at the sub problem as 3-4 million and getting lower.
lets no forget blizzard has done stated that subs will be lower by the end of the year/xpac.
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Should they from a customer standpoint? Yes. People seem to think that it always means pay to win, but that is really not true at all.
Should they from a business standpoint? No. They are raking in money and have a ton of subscribers, so there is really no need to change yet.
OK, I've been convinced.
I think that when they go F2P, they will still do well.
Didn't check any comments. I can just imagine the rage of posters flooding this thread.
Infracted
Last edited by Darsithis; 2013-08-02 at 01:55 AM.
I don't see that happening for years to be honest. Blizz has already said subscription works for them, there is no need for them to change things. Yes, F2P models can make more than a sub based game. But there aren't any other sub games that have as many players as WoW does. There are plenty of people that are willing to pay to play.
In a way WoW is actually Pay 2 Win, your subscription allows you to do more than the F2P account.
I can see F2P being an option when they have 1M-2M subs left.
Hi
No it fucking isn't.
It is likely to stay sub until it drops to 500k to 1mil sub, which, probably won't happen for a couple of years.
Using your example, (you didn't specify but it is one of the sub game that went F2P) SWTOR wouldn't have gone F2P if they had a good sub base stayed in the first place, when the numbers fall below the threshold, they went with the F2P model, but WoW probably still have a few more years before it hit that threshold, unless they do soemthing really good next Expansion and bring the sub right back up, or, sustain it.
You CAN however, contribute to turning WoW F2P though. They are likely to go F2P when sub hit 500k-1mil, since you don't even log in much and losing the will to pay for a sub, just unsub yourself, and help brining WoW closer to 500k-1mil.
To be honest, if wow was free to play they should still keep in paid server / race / faction / name changes then they'd still be making good money and the subscribers / new subscribers should get like a special new 3 seater mount or something like that. so they'd still make a good ammount of money on that.
(Just my opinions on how the F2P wow should work then).
f2p perhaps, but I have had this crazy thing in my mind where whole b-net library is included in the monthly fee, where you can play all the blizzard games "titan" + wow...
Last edited by mmoc198caea9b6; 2013-08-16 at 09:17 PM.
Sounds like the game pass thing SOE had years and years ago as they added more sub games to their lineup. ~$15 for EQ, $15 for SW:G, $15 for ... what was it, a tank game? Or pay $16 for a couple of their sub games combined, or $18 for all their sub games combined. It's been a reeeeally long time since I even thought of that system so I might have the actual amounts mixed up. They might have restricted it to their older sub games, and still forced you to pay full sub price on their newer sub game (EQ2). Somethin', like you've said, though!
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