WoW needs to go Xbox gamepass/f2play - Anecdotes from my life and yours.

[Zantos]

I think you're in a very small minority lol.

And why would people be pissed off if WoW was an option through game pass?

Small minority in which regard? And I already stated why: There are plenty of people who Don't want, nor intend to ever get, an xbox or the gamepass.

[Coldkil]

10.0 will be announced, released and forgotten long before this purchase actually happens. If this new management leads to any changes in the development of WoW, we won't know until 11.0, or even 12.0.

I do agree with the rest of your post, a "cheaper" sub through Gamepass, with a few more MTX, and probably less frequent patches, is fairly likely, and not entirely a bad thing, as long as the content is of good quality.

Yeah, it's not like tomorrow everything gonna be different. Likely 10.0 is already so ahead in development that it's basically "ready" - so they cannot change much about it. Or not, it all depends about how finalized the product is.

In the end, the deadline is june 2023 for full control from MS, so they may just let 10.0 go ahead as planned only to start working for changes for 11.0 (which fits the timeline).

Or, equally plausible, they can launch 10.0 but start to introduce a new business model with it, and go with gradual changes. In the end, the sub through the game pass is actually the least difficult thing to implement (they just need to join/merge current bnet accounts to the microsoft ones, background works apart obviously).

I mean, a lot of things can happen depending on different parameters. MS can easily be uninterested about WoW future if they deem it a product not worth developing on. They can really just say "we'll leave you at it, with low budget" but i don't really see it happen because it still drives quite a hefty revenue (even if it's not at the level of CoD or King mobile games).

[HansOlo]

I will briefly say Blizzard has ALWAYS wasted their potential. They could have done so, so much more. And they seem to continue wasting it. Abandoning Diablo 3, horrible treatment of Starcraft 2, canceled projects, and terrible treatment of WoW...The list goes on.

But if there is one thing that would help is if WoW went f2play with a bigger store/microtransactions. I just want WoW to be popular and a good game again, no matter the cost of what a future store looks like, ofc within reason.

In my life I have heard it so many times - And I know you have as well "But wow requires a subscription and thats to much", people don't like that, they never had. It does not work for these people despite them buying 24 hour FPS games every month for 60 dollars etc. People say its the end of WoW if it goes f2play - Well, aint wow already dead? LOOK AT SOCIAL MEDIAS! Rhykker, Belluar, Krippirian...Like these names are not even breaking 100k views on videos often, when your average gut damn Minecrafter, valorant or Roblox kid in his parents basement gets those views on a new channel. Social media tells this story alone how gut damn dead Blizzards IP's are - Nobody gives a shit while Valorant montages gets 2 million views.

WoW needs to 100% cater to a new crowd that is like 12 years old, just like when I was new in WoW. We need them to play WoW, even if it means it goes free2play or through the Xbox gamepass now. Without new blood and new casual players coming back the game is dead. Casuals is the lifeblood of any MMO, you cant have a good MMO without casuals.

I rather pay monthly for a great game - than not paying for F2P and they try to invent some model nobody succeeded in.

Also - you don't seem to understand:

They got data centers that must support all the infrastructure. The game was built on it 2 decades ago(it's like you are saying let's remove the soil beneath the house).

Running a data center itself requires hundreds of people if not thousand. It's a business case itself - it's not some easy task and extremely costly(read: electricity bills, technical staff and entire management team). Moving away from this require rewriting the entire code of the game.

IF the game got released today - MAYBE - it would be F2P.

So - what you suggest is actually:

1)Fire many people.
2)They should spend more money AND time on moving away from the on-prem datacenter solution. Resources that could be spent on the game itself. Tons of bugs and downtime during this period, causing less people to stick around.
3)AND make it free to play so the random guy can stop complaining on the forums.

Feeling smart?

[LordKharon]

WoW coming to GamePass PC (at least) would be good. Problem is what to do with expansions, include them for free so everybody can play all content? Or sell them like today and ppl not buying cant play newest content (and put that expansion on free mode after the next expansion is released?).

[Djuntas]

It’s been a few years since I’ve played wow, just got bored of it and to be honest I don’t see myself ever playing a sub fee mmo again. It’s not the money, it’s the innate desire to get good value out of everything I pay for that I can’t ignore. When I’m paying a sub fee for something I feel compelled to use it, even if there are other things I would rather do with my time. If wow comes to game pass, I could see myself playing it again casually

Excactly. I have this mindset my self 100%. People can be anti-f2play, and point out flaws. But at the end of the day WoW is fucking dead. Like I cant even imagine a 12 year old play WoW these days...Do they even exist. Back in my days I jumped from Diablo 2 to WoW, with some odd warcraft 3 on the side.

[Lady Atia]

I can see WoW's base sub being rolled into Gamepass and then WoW developing a separate "Season Pass" style premium reward track like Destiny 2 or MTG Arena.

As a huge fan of the hearthstone rewards track I would love that

[Swnem]

I am in shocked at how several people are so desperate to turn the game into another F2P trash game. The game is already terribly designed. Going F2P is not going to make it better.

[Isheria]

You already have eso as an example of what will happen if the game goes on game pass you don't need to guess, if you play eso on game pass the only thing you get is the base game, you have to purchase expansions separately and subscription still exists on top of game pass subscription.

[Bumkin]

I highly doubt its going into the gamepass. The backlash from people like myself who do not own an xbox, nor intend to, would be too great. Its typically not in a companies best interest to make their customer pay for services or products they don't need or want by tying in something else to it.

so u wanna pay 13 euro JUST for wow instead of 13 euro for wow AND access to another 100 AAA games ok lol

[Syegfryed]

if they put wow into the gamepass a lot of people will come back to paly, the price of wow sub is absurd and i know many people who don't play anymore because of how abusive is in some places who don't use dollar

[Soikona]

WoW coming to GamePass PC (at least) would be good. Problem is what to do with expansions, include them for free so everybody can play all content? Or sell them like today and ppl not buying cant play newest content (and put that expansion on free mode after the next expansion is released?).

ESO, which is owned by MS, sells them as box copies.

[Sucralose]

F2P would be awful unless they hired a legion of gms and even then it would greatly devalue the gaming experience... that said putting it into the xbox pass wouldn't be a awful idea. Would basically get more for the same subscription

[Zantos]

so u wanna pay 13 euro JUST for wow instead of 13 euro for wow AND access to another 100 AAA games ok lol

My point stands. Just because you think there is some value there, doesn't mean everyone does. Especially when (from what my brother who has it has said), most of the free games are just really old games. Which are games that you could play on a PC for free anyway.

Now, there may be other games, but if I was interested in them, Personally, I would get them. I tend to play maybe 1 or 2 games. Why would I waste money on some pass for "hundreds of games" when I'll end up playing 1 or 2? Waste of money in that point.

I really don't see WoW being added. Why would it? Why Wouldn't they simply keep it as it is and keep reapin in that sub money? Its a bigger cash cow to leave it at its current sub price and have people pay for it separately than to lower its price and add it to gamepass. Logically, it doesn't make sense. They already know people are willing to pay the sub. They aren't giving that cash flow up

[Miffinat0r]

People will always blame the "face" of the design - the guy that takes his time to go out and speak about design ideas the team has. Those ideas are then attributed to that single person, because few people understand how designing works internally. I remember very clearly how happy some people were when Ghostcrawler left his post. Ion's todays Ghostcrawler - if he leaves today, all will rejoice, and in a few years time we will all hear how great the game was when Ion was still around xD

This is such a bad argument. I'm a director in my company. What happens from my unit, regardless of who did it, I get the blame/glory. I have my vision for how the work gets done, and that got implemented. I may not have the full control of the overall picture, but how we get there, that's entirely me. Saying that this just more complaining because he's the face, ya, but guess what he's a director, he gets the blame or glory. Ion got praised for Legion, BFA 8.2, and he gets the blame for rest of BFA and SL. It's part of the job.

Ion's problem is very simple. The man cares about one thing and only one thing. You can see it in the interviews, and what content he focuses on.