WoW going free to play sooner than later?

[Deleted]

Clearly you missed the point, and I'm not sure you'd get it the 2nd time it was explained... Less subs doesn't mean Armageddon, sorry, it just doesn't.

The only people on this thread who are suggesting a Wow armaggedon are the Wow fanboys like yourself Seranthor.

As far as ive read the latest threads there is a section of posters (like myself) who are analysing the data objectively and opening discussing the possible implications that this has. And there are those who feel they must get their ass on the forums to simply shout as loud as they can that Wow is not dying.

Ive told u before i have no agenda for or against Wow or Blizzard. I care about Wow as much as everyone else which is why im here. Im just happy to discuss, guts and all, the latest bombshell to land. Its obviously big news its all over the net, even the BBC released articles on this.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 11:11 PM ----------

Also remember that Asians don't pay a traditional subscription, they pay for the time that they play in.

Which is exactly why Asian subs has always been a guesstimate and controversial... Its been pointed out many times that Blizzard can manipulate this figure to their own ends.

[Anix]

Hope not, would be terrible

[Conscious]

Clearly you missed the point, and I'm not sure you'd get it the 2nd time it was explained... Less subs doesn't mean Armageddon, sorry, it just doesn't.

If it goes below Vanilla numbers, it kind of does.

Not 'game shutting down' Armageddon..

..but more like what does a game that has the infrastructure in place for twelve million people, do with a fraction of that?

Things like: Server closures, Merges, layoffs (if they haven't already happened), hell even the onset of the ever reviled idea of being 'f2p'.

[stellvia]

Firstly, the point made above states that LOTR mkaes more money now than it did when it was sub based. That means that with even less subs they are making more cash even though the games free.

Secondly, even though all the Wow fanboys are shouting loud and clear they dont care about whatever subs numbers Wow currently has, and that dropping 1.3mill subs doesnt bother them. Tell me why is it that they still bang on about how many subs other games have and how Wow still has more than them?

You fail at reading again. Wow. I said that their active accounts DOUBLED after going F2P. Where in that do you read that I said they were making more money off of less accounts than when they were sub-based? The triple revenue number was also a statement from shortly after going F2P -- you can't claim that the same is still true today. (It may or may not be, we have no statement from them)

As for the WoW "fanboys" -- humanity isn't a hivemind so they obviously don't represent the opinions of everyone that plays WoW. And IMHO their intention is probably to point out that despite losing those subs, WoW still has umpteen times more subscribers than other titles. So to claim the game is "dying" whatever else, is still incredibly premature.

You are also somehow trying to speak for all GW2 players on how they feel about content. That is doubtful. I've spoken to a number of friends and guildies that stopped playing GW2 because of lack of content. Should I claim they represent everyone as well?

In your words: Your blanket statements about GW2 are your opinion. Nothing more.

To make some critical nitpicks of GW2: I dislike the downing system. Especially in regards to dungeons. Dungeons and bosses are designed around downing characters, and yet recovering from downing takes far too long and risks your allies also getting downed trying to pick you up. I had a lot of fun playing my Illusionist, but that was by and far my most hated aspect of the game. I'll probably dabble in it every few months for whatever little content they add, but it's hardly enough to keep consistently engaged in the game.

[DeadmanWalking]

The only people on this thread who are suggesting a Wow armaggedon are the Wow fanboys like yourself Seranthor.

As far as ive read the latest threads there is a section of posters (like myself) who are analysing the data objectively and opening discussing the possible implications that this has. And there are those who feel they must get their ass on the forums to simply shout as loud as they can that Wow is not dying.

Ive told u before i have no agenda for or against Wow or Blizzard. I care about Wow as much as everyone else which is why im here. Im just happy to discuss, guts and all, the latest bombshell to land. Its obviously big news its all over the net, even the BBC released articles on this.

---------- Post added 2013-05-10 at 11:11 PM ----------



Which is exactly why Asian subs has always been a guesstimate and controversial... Its been pointed out many times that Blizzard can manipulate this figure to their own ends.

No they cant manipulate this to their own ends because they are legally bound to correctly expose their data to share holders or else they are guilty of more than a handful of anti-trust laws. Changing the numbers to falsify data to up your own share values means you dont pass go, you don't collect 200 dollars and you go directly to bang you in the backside prison.

I don't see the fanboys suggesting armageddon, they are usually defending Blizzards numbers. Its the wow haters that show up every 4 months and flood the boards with doomsday prophesies and why their reason for leaving the game is the only reason why the sky is falling.

[Slummish]

Do you realize how many other game developers would commit murder or other heinous acts of crime for 8,300,000 subscribers? WoW isn't going anywhere, nor is it going F2P.

[Conscious]

Do you realize how many other game developers would commit murder or other heinous acts of crime for 8,300,000 subscribers? WoW isn't going anywhere, nor is it going F2P.

I don't know where you've been but WoW sure has been going somewhere..

Its the wow haters that show up every 4 months and flood the boards with doomsday prophesies and why their reason for leaving the game is the only reason why the sky is falling.

Anyone's reason is just as good as another right now.

[Trassk]

The problem with an MMO going free to play, is that it risks falling off the shelf in a store and not being seen again.

The other mmorpgs that nowadays support themselves with a 'free to play' image, they end up having hidden charges to them. Champions online advertised itself as free to play for all.... its just that you couldn't get anything new in the game, and you couldn't unlock all its features unless you paid the sub fee AND paid for tokens to buy new armor and costume peices.

Allods online is similar. It adversities itself as free to play, but its ingame menu as in it an item shop with a vast amount of items you can buy, if you use your ingame tokens to pay for it, which of course you need to buy from the g-potato website.

Now, you could argue that wow does this with its blizzard store, but from what I've experienced of those other mmos, is well all blizzard store has is a few mini pets and store brought mounts, it doesn't give you anything that has anything to do with gameplay, wow still works itself on the idea of 'work for your mounts/achievements/weapons and armor/pets, not 'buy them here for just $20 for tokens'.

Also, you need to realize how nothing is ever really 'free', if wow become a free to play, it would end up becoming a marketing tool for advertisement, drawing in god knows how many crappy products to advertise through the game or around it. Imagine walking though orgrimmar and seeing a sign up saying 'The NEW Razar Naga Headset, just sign up to <insert generic website here>.com!" or hello kitty posters.

[Nyteyes]

They still have over 8 million subscribers, no reason for them to move to free to play when they still make money off of it.

[DeadmanWalking]

Do you realize how many other game developers would commit murder or other heinous acts of crime for 8,300,000 subscribers? WoW isn't going anywhere, nor is it going F2P.

Shhhh, this is a secret. If you go around exposing facts some of these haters will explode in a puff of logic. "No sir, the game is doomed and its doomed because of the reason why I left WoW forever, Not enough shaved Cows!!! Thats right! Not enough shaved cows in the game! Thats why, right there yes sir-e bob!"

[stellvia]

If it goes below Vanilla numbers, it kind of does.
Not 'game shutting down' Armageddon..
..but more like what does a game that has the infrastructure in place for twelve million people, do with a fraction of that?
Things like: Server closures, Merges, layoffs (if they haven't already happened), hell even the onset of the ever reviled idea of being 'f2p'.

They've already addressed a lot of this, and continue to consider additional measures towards that end.

Ever heard of Cross-Realm-Zones? CRZ is essentially Cloud-sourcing MMO servers.

Instead of maintaining hundreds of idle servers with empty zones, they use load-balancing to maintain only a single instance of a certain zone for many many servers. This allows them to dramatically cut down on the amount of server hardware they need, and to dynamically bring more or less resources online as the need may be. They have also had talk about possibly doing Cross-Realm-AH in the future as well to help with the stagnant economies of smaller servers.

Extending that technology further -- Titan will most likely have no individual servers at all, or only a few gateways. Character names will be non-unique ... instead being a suffix tied to your unique battle.net ID. Load-balancing will guarantee that all server hardware is used efficiently.

[Conscious]

They've already addressed a lot of this, and continue to consider additional measures towards that end.

Ever heard of Cross-Realm-Zones? CRZ is essentially Cloud-sourcing MMO servers.

Instead of maintaining hundreds of idle servers with empty zones, they use load-balancing to maintain only a single instance of a certain zone for many many servers. This allows them to dramatically cut down on the amount of server hardware they need, and to dynamically bring more or less resources online as the need may be. They have also had talk about possibly doing Cross-Realm-AH in the future as well to help with the stagnant economies of smaller servers.

Extending that technology further -- Titan will most likely have no individual servers at all, or only a few gateways. Character names will be non-unique ... instead being a suffix tied to your unique battle.net ID. Load-balancing will guarantee that all server hardware is used efficiently.

CRZ has been widely disliked since the beginning, and contributes to the very population and economy issues you speak of.

As far as Titan tech speculation, i'll avoid that until we hear otherwise.

[Trassk]

I'm watching the video though, and one of them even tries to justify having people pay for any new content in a game.

This is a horrible method of having a game developed. "So theres new content here, buuuut you can't enter it, until you pay for the new dungeon to open for you!"

Think about how screwed up that sounds. you are literally asking players to folk out more money for every bit of new content, or your have nothing to play, so what then is the point of removing sub fees, if your still paying for new stuff as it comes out. And YES, the developers will gouge players for any new content they bring out, new mounts, new dungeons, new pets, new abilities, new classes, new races, all of it.

gouging the playerbase with products that should come with the game is BS. If you just sell the game as a stand alone mmo, like guild wars, then its without reason.

[Deleted]

No they cant manipulate this to their own ends because they are legally bound to correctly expose their data to share holders or else they are guilty of more than a handful of anti-trust laws. Changing the numbers to falsify data to up your own share values means you dont pass go, you don't collect 200 dollars and you go directly to bang you in the backside prison.

I said that accusations have been made, i didnt say i believe or dont believe them.

To explain more fully the situation in Asia. They dont use subs system they use gamer timecards. And how many of these are sold is not easy to monitor let alone how many of them are actually used.

Therefore when u look closely at any Conference Call u will see that at the end of the line announcing the current Wow subs there is a little no2. Below is what this no2 means

²According to Activision Blizzard internal estimates

they have to post this up for legal reasons to cover thier asses that they have had to guess some of the figures.

Is it surprising that when its fact that some of the data has to be guessed (estimated) that accusations of figure manipulation follow them around?

I don't see the fanboys suggesting armageddon, they are usually defending Blizzards numbers. Its the wow haters that show up every 4 months and flood the boards with doomsday prophesies and why their reason for leaving the game is the only reason why the sky is falling.

What im saying is the fanboys are attempting to defend against people claiming armaggen whereas if they bothered to read the critics nobody is saying that at all.

[stellvia]

CRZ has been widely disliked since the beginning, and contributes to the very population and economy issues you speak of.
As far as Titan tech speculation, i'll avoid that until we hear otherwise.

My point was that the "infrastructure for 12 million players" isn't nearly as massive as you make it out to be. At the 12M peak, 50% of WoW accounts were in Asia ran by 3rd party companies. Blizzard isn't on the hook for any of that hardware. And the majority of the sub losses have been in Asia. And that CRZ means they don't need to have nearly as much extra hardware lying idle as you think. And they can save money by merely keeping the extras for maintenance spares instead of buying new stuff for failures.

It's been my perception that server stability has been much better since CRZ was introduced as well. But I'm not on one of the really full servers like Malganis, Blackrock, etc. so maybe its still worse over there.

The reasoning for dislike of CRZ is also rather dubious in my book, and is not indicative of the tech itself, but that they don't ALSO have merged economies yet. The small pop servers complain about small pop, but then dislike CRZ causing their zones to be more populated and have more competition for resources. Or complain about the CRZ players ganking them while leveling etc. When if their server wasn't low pop it would still be exactly like that. IMHO if they rolled out combined AH for low pop servers, that would close the other end of the loop to CRZ and bring prices down for materials like the low pop servers want.

[Wildtree]

They still have over 8 million subscribers, no reason for them to move to free to play when they still make money off of it.

This may be certainly true... Yet since Blizz became part of Activision the game lost well over 3 million subs...

What many in here forget is that Blizzard isn't as independent as they once were when the game started. When the mothership demands changes, the changes will be made... When Activision says, we go f2p now, then the game will be f2p.
To wait for such transition until the subs are totally declining to 4, 5 or 6 mio. is madness from a business view. At that point the reputation is so far negative that a switch to f2p wouldn't do much to save the day anymore.

And to the people who come in here to add their 2 cents.... STOP bringing up business calculations if you fail miserably at the basic math...
It is NOT 8.3 mio x $15.00.
WoW doesn't cost 15 bucks for everyone. The median figure for WoW is a lot lower per player.
Not only don't all NA players pay $15.00.... Most pay either $14 or just $13.
There's also a world outside NA which has millions of players that pay in different currencies, which again doesn't add up to everyone paying $15.00
And btw.. If you happen to pay your sub via credit card, Blizzard can kiss a certain amount of the sum you pay goodbye to the merchant bank etc.
CC transactions are not free. At least 3% of the monetary amount moved goes to financial institutes involved, and Blizzard pays that, not the customer. Some apparently have no clue about the mechanisms behind card payments.

[Conscious]

My point was that the "infrastructure for 12 million players" isn't nearly as massive as you make it out to be. At the 12M peak, 50% of WoW accounts were in Asia ran by 3rd party companies.

Holy fucking citation needed.

[Deleted]

The guy in the movie has NO clue. He thinks the game lost 1,3million within 1 year, when it was in 3 months.

[stellvia]

Think about how screwed up that sounds. you are literally asking players to folk out more money for every bit of new content, or your have nothing to play, so what then is the point of removing sub fees, if your still paying for new stuff as it comes out. And YES, the developers will gouge players for any new content they bring out, new mounts, new dungeons, new pets, new abilities, new classes, new races, all of it.
gouging the playerbase with products that should come with the game is BS. If you just sell the game as a stand alone mmo, like guild wars, then its without reason.

This is why I prefer a monthly fee. I hate that feeling of being nickel and dimed to death. I don't want to be taken out of immersion in the game to constantly have that specter behind me about what I want to spend on the game this month. Or what content I don't have access to.

Don't even get me started on gameplay intentionally being sabotaged to get you to buy stuff on the store.

IE: Eden Eternal is a F2P that makes the game miserable unless you pay money on the item store. And even then it only makes it slightly less miserable. 6hrs to collect materials for an item combine -- 40% success rate or everything is destroyed. Paying $3 gets you 1 item to improve your combine chance by 15% ... so still 45% chance to fail and destroy everything. And the UI and gameplay and menus and stuff are sloppily done, no thought put into the flow of them etc.

[tru]

I love seeing titan being brought up like its their save all end all best fkn thing ever creation. I personally hope if falls flat on its face from being OVER HYPED... like every other game in the past 5 years. They cant even fix issues with their old ass game now they built from the ground up.