Blizz should make WoW free to play

[toychristopher]

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.

Having more players does help an MMO make more money though. IT's free word of mouth advertisement. Friends try to get their friends to play and each person playing the mmo might spend money in the cash shop. You have all the people who are paying money and subscribing now, plus you attract a bunch of people who might spend money.

Also, no one wants to play a "dying" mmo. While WoW is far from dying empty servers, deserted auction houses, and long queues can certainly give that impression. By attracting free to play customers you will have a population boost on realms and ensure people have other people to play with. Free to Play is genius because it subsidizes those customers who aren't willing and increase the game experience for everyone.



I think a lot of people in this thread are really unaware of what else is out there in the MMO market. There are a lot of very high quality free to play games that are not "pay to win." Arguably WoW is "pay to win" right now since you can't even play if you don't pay, and if you can't play you can't win.

[Pascal]

Besides the fact that it's not "time to do it," free to play games suck - being f2p is what makes them suck. You can't just have a f2p game. You can't just make a game and make a good game that isn't pay to win and has genuine effort put into it and have it be f2p. If you can't understand why, you should probably work on your critical thinking skills.

A ton of people would quit if WoW became F2P, unless Blizzard suddenly became a charity organization supported by vast, generous donations.

[Deleted]

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.

Basically this.

WoW will go F2P the second they think they can make MORE MONEY from it being F2P than it being sub based.

With 8.3 million subs I don't think we are even close to that point.

When it does get to that point I hope they come up with a model that still means we get large raid tiers every 6 months (I would happily pay for each patch if that is what it took).

I really like the look of Rift and how they did F2P, Tera did a good job as well, but SW:ToR has had a really dry spell content wise and they tried to charge people for action bars, I hope we don't see that!

[Rehija]

F2P Means...

Negative:

10 Euro every 30 days for a "Golpack" to get access to the auction house, the /2 trade-chat
Access cooldown for instances from 3 to 48 Hours without Goldpack, halved cd on instances with Goldpack
Cash Shop for things like Buffs, rare recipes, mounts, weapon / armor skins
Cash Shop for socket / enchant helpers cause the whole system had to change
Shitty enchant / gem socketing system were they can fail and the gems or enchant would be destroyed
Much less support then today. Waiting for a ticket about a week or two just to get a automated answer

Positive:

Colors in the Cash Shop to dye your Armor Pieces to your liking


choose wisely ...

[Redmage]

A ton of people would quit if WoW became F2P, unless Blizzard suddenly became a charity organization supported by vast, generous donations.

I would quit, yes.

[tyrindor]

If WoW went F2P I would probably quit. It would lead to cash shops, and other things I absolutely hate. On top of that, F2P almost always cost more than $15/month especially when its Pay2Win. $15/month is a small price to pay to keep a cash shop out of the game...

[The King in Yellow]

No just no....

WoW with a pay to win scheme would just be terrible and destroy the game...

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

They have 8 million players paying them $15 a month, why on earth would they make it free to play, its a $120mill we're talking about here. Stop bringing up the stupid wow free to play idea...

[Lochton]

Having more players does help an MMO make more money though. IT's free word of mouth advertisement. Friends try to get their friends to play and each person playing the mmo might spend money in the cash shop. You have all the people who are paying money and subscribing now, plus you attract a bunch of people who might spend money.

Also, no one wants to play a "dying" mmo. While WoW is far from dying empty servers, deserted auction houses, and long queues can certainly give that impression. By attracting free to play customers you will have a population boost on realms and ensure people have other people to play with. Free to Play is genius because it subsidizes those customers who aren't willing and increase the game experience for everyone.



I think a lot of people in this thread are really unaware of what else is out there in the MMO market. There are a lot of very high quality free to play games that are not "pay to win." Arguably WoW is "pay to win" right now since you can't even play if you don't pay, and if you can't play you can't win.

My apologies for this.... BUT DID YOU JUST CLIMB OUT OF YOUR CAVE?!

World of Warcraft is slowly being patched together again after people started yelling more about "it's dying, oh noes". New models are in the progress for the races. New content are to be unlocked soon. A boost offer is in the research paper for the people who wishes to pass levelling faster. VIRTUAL REALM, go read, boy. This is basicly going to patch servers together in a non-physical merge. Bringing people on the same turf, sharing auctions houses, joining same guilds, arena teams and so on.

And you can already have people try the game, you invite them as a friend or they go get a trial, if they like it then you and they get rewarded for such. If people wish to return, they can even get a FREE lvl 80 character on the same server as you.

They earn more than enough money to keep floating, and to keep content coming more faster/bigger than other games. AND they can have side projects running still. No, they wont earn enough on a cash shop if it went F2P - because people like YOU (Mr. OP) will be complaining about having to pay for a permission for something. Sorry, but Free To Play is going to choke a game. It does with other games.

Besiddes, Blizzard is running perfectly fine still, people come and go and it's normal to lose and regain interest. Everytime people have yelled, "It's a WoW-killer" then World of Warcraft and still been standing more stable than other. That's obvious hints that they wont need it yet.

- - - Updated - - -

I think a lot of people in this thread are really unaware of what else is out there in the MMO market. There are a lot of very high quality free to play games that are not "pay to win." Arguably WoW is "pay to win" right now since you can't even play if you don't pay, and if you can't play you can't win.

Only one I haven't heard isn't having some Pay 2 Win function is Guild Wars 2 - but haven't tried as one would need to buy the game

[Vetis]

companies dont go F2P to get people playing the game. they do it because they make lots of money. rather than spending £8.99 once a month people spend 50p here and £1 there and it ends up making more.

Plus F2P games always end up horribly restricted and full of annoying children. you think its bad now?

[shise]

And yet another one, please use one of the many threads opened with this issue.

Also, this makes no sense, they are not losing players. They have the most played mmo and, trust me, they'll know when to kill it with F2P better than anyone else.

[Rapti]

When they drop below 1MLN... yes, before that... nah :P.
@shise: Actually they are, a lot of them.

[toychristopher]

It cracks me up that people are against free to play because you might have to pay for things like access to the auction house or 2 chat (which no free to play game has limits like that anyway) when you are paying for that NOW.

Basically this.

WoW will go F2P the second they think they can make MORE MONEY from it being F2P than it being sub based.

With 8.3 million subs I don't think we are even close to that point.

When it does get to that point I hope they come up with a model that still means we get large raid tiers every 6 months (I would happily pay for each patch if that is what it took).

I really like the look of Rift and how they did F2P, Tera did a good job as well, but SW:ToR has had a really dry spell content wise and they tried to charge people for action bars, I hope we don't see that!

It is the time to do it. Why wait until you have a low number of subs? The subscription keeps a lot of people from even trying wow (even with a free trial many don't want to start something that will end with them being FORCED to pay). It is impossible to "quit" a free to play game because there is no subscription to end. That means that all the players who have "quit" would be able to jump right back into the game without having a monetary transaction to act as a barrier. How many people do you think have played wow in the past who no longer do? All of them could be potential players again, and once they are in, are probably more likely to spend money in the cash shop then they would on a subscription.

A cash shop makes people feel like they are getting something for their money besides just being able to play. They get a sparkle pony or a double experience potion, or a cool looking transmog skin for their sword for their 15 bucks instead of they "nothing" that they would get now.

The only thing that would be a problem for blizzard is that in a free to play game you have to be focused on keeping your player logging in to your game month after month, and you can't go 6-7 months without releasing new content or people will stop spending money in your cash shop. That's bad for blizzard but would be good for the players.

[Mihalik]

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.

You realize that the closest free to play game has maybe... 250k to 500k players at best. Why the fuck would Blizzard throw out the window all that precious precious subscription money. 95% of free to play games are in reality pay to win, as that is the only model in which they can make some money.

There is a very good reason why those guys have a few hundred thousand active accounts, and WoW has a few million subs. If anything Blizzard will make the payment plans more flexible or allow them to run concurrently with different types of payment methods like pay by day or such.

[Drithien]

No fucking way. I don't want WoW to go down the same slippery slope most other mmorpgs have.

Free-to-play rarely ever works in favour of the players. It's just a gimmick for failing games to stay afloat.

And it results in the game getting filled with obstacles that require money to get traversed, annoying notifications for buyable items and bonuses, and so on; resulting in a bad gaming experience. Not to mention the very real possibility of getting scammed to pay even more money than you would under a subscription due to all those "small fees" pilling-up. And most importantly, those games never, ever get to have the same budget that WoW does up to now.

I think that WoW's overall maintenance is lacking in the departments that are important for a game of its genre, namely exploration and questing. And that too much attention is given to instanced and repeated content. If it ever goes free-to-play, the focus will be even more intense on those sectors of the game, resulting in an even worse gaming experience.

I like being able to manage my gaming budget for WoW as clearly as I can right now. And I like the notion that with all the money that the game makes, at least some of it goes to developing more content for it. And I got no problem with the situation. I don't want a free game that plays bad, and tries to trick me into buying stuff all the time in order to play decently. I like my pay-the-subscription-and-forget-about-it game.

[ridamark]

this is a silly idea. they dont need more ppl. they are not strapped for $ either. as for ppl who are playing getting more advanced bc they are paying per month? lol nah game would be the same just ppl who are f2p would get less so this is all around a bad idea!!

no no...NO!

[Frolk]

JEEESAAAS
ENOUGH with these threads, YOU the OP should just post in the other 87459745964564875646857465 posts about this same subject.
The "They are losing subscribers" does not count in EU/US, most of those were in asia, but u seem to dont care about those facts, do u?

Mods, cant u just auto-lock these posts or just merge em with any of the others ones? Getting really tired of this shit every single day >_>

[Deleted]

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

Pretty much this, but come on are you guys serious? How many of you bought Bloodwing? thats 2 months of subscription, and theres still the faerie dragon mount that everyone wants to buy too....

Also remenber those helms that were mined some time ago? Helm of hungering darkness and the others? what if you get that as a cosmetic item for transmog? I think they are smart enough not to make it pay to win just cosmetic to win :P

[Lochton]

It cracks me up that people are against free to play because you might have to pay for things like access to the auction house or 2 chat (which no free to play game has limits like that anyway) when you are paying for that NOW.



It is the time to do it. Why wait until you have a low number of subs? The subscription keeps a lot of people from even trying wow (even with a free trial many don't want to start something that will end with them being FORCED to pay). It is impossible to "quit" a free to play game because there is no subscription to end. That means that all the players who have "quit" would be able to jump right back into the game without having a monetary transaction to act as a barrier. How many people do you think have played wow in the past who no longer do? All of them could be potential players again, and once they are in, are probably more likely to spend money in the cash shop then they would on a subscription.

A cash shop makes people feel like they are getting something for their money besides just being able to play. They get a sparkle pony or a double experience potion, or a cool looking transmog skin for their sword for their 15 bucks instead of they "nothing" that they would get now.

The only thing that would be a problem for blizzard is that in a free to play game you have to be focused on keeping your player logging in to your game month after month, and you can't go 6-7 months without releasing new content or people will stop spending money in your cash shop. That's bad for blizzard but would be good for the players.

I want you to list some pros by going F2P then.... Please.

I don't see why they need to do anything right now? You don't list anything that could convince anyone but yourself about this horrible idea. No, you wont even get a saying in F2P, yay for Cash Store? You'll be whining in the future when you suddenly have to pay for wearing you epic gear (SWTOR). Or is it because you want something for playing the game, do you want a reward for pressing "login"? (Rift). Is would you accept to buy a game and then free to play? But the game being way more expensive than it's competition? (Guild Wars 2). Do you wish to spent money on more customization in a Cash Store, things you could do before but not anymore without paying? (SWTOR).

Or, are you looking forward to have your character list reduced until you pay a unlock fee to have more characters? (SWTOR & Neverwinter). Or paying to have some races unlocked that you had before? (SWTOR).

Please, do tell me why you want so many micro-transactions? So much problems.

AND NOW THE BIGGEST PLUS YOU HAVE TO TAKE IN CALCULATION - Some players doesn't have a creditcard, leaving the Cash Store useless without having to ask ones parent.

[Bathory]

I don't think F2P is what everyone thinks it is...