WoW going free to play sooner than later?

[Kaleredar]

saying all that now, i do not think it will go total F2P, but i was surprized when WOTLK was added so quickly into WOW basic game package which occured pretty much at the beginning of MOP. where as they took along time to make BC part of basic WOW

The logical conclusion is that Blizzard doesn't make their revenue off of expansion pack sales, they make it off of subscription fees.

Servers and the like aren't run for free. Game developers don't work for free. Blizzard would need to get their money from something. If it's not subscription fees, it'd be them nickle and diming you to death, something complainers are ALREADY having hissy fits about in regards to completely trivial content like mounts and non combat pets.

[Wildtree]

No, at such point it is better to deal with expenses. Cut down on customer support, on management, and so on. F2P is to be considered in the very end, when cutting any more expenses doesn't look viable.

you are absolutely correct, if you look at it from an angle to do damage reduction.
But we know that there are companies who make a fortune with F2P based games. Zynga comes to mind.
Compared to such games, WoW is a Rolls Royce, and could - if done right - be a huge profit cow in the f2p market.
Reducing overhead would prohibit that approach.

[Dilbon]

I never played a F2P game so can someone tell me how much you pay for the game (as an average user) "for content" per month / year whatever.

Well, I play DDO and I pay maybe 10-15 euros every two months.

[Pann]

The current regular price is $80 for all together, but they just had a promotion going a short while back where you got it literally for like 40 bucks.

They should have done this as soon as Wrath went live I cannot help but feel that they simply priced themselves out of the market. I thought that Wrath was a quality expansion and so many people missed out simply because.. well, who is going to pay between £60-£80 for a game that also requires a subscription? I, also, think, I could be wrong, that had subs not stagnated during Wrath we would have seen some of the more unpopular changes.

[stellvia]

I never played a F2P game so can someone tell me how much you pay for the game (as an average user) "for content" per month / year whatever. I always read like "its free!" "they make more money" "nobody pays a single cent" "WTF".

I forget the exact percentage breakdowns, but I remember reading an industry report about F2P last year on the subject. It was something like 70% paid nothing, 25% paid some nominal amount per month $10 or less. And then 5% paying a lot more than that per month.

IE: I remember some guy in Eden Eternal opening week bought like $600 in item store points to trade for gold in-game.

[Wildtree]

They should have done this as soon as Wrath went live I cannot help but feel that they simply priced themselves out of the market. I thought that Wrath was a quality expansion and so many people missed out simply because.. well, who is going to pay between £60-£80 for a game that also requires a subscription? I, also, think, I could be wrong, that had subs not stagnated during Wrath we would have seen some of the more unpopular changes.

I agree with the costs.... Vanilla and 4 expansions to be up to par, that's a lot of money to be spent.
They should just simply throw the old stuff into a new package and sell it as the battle chest for 50 total.

[Dero]

I agree with the costs.... Vanilla and 4 expansions to be up to par, that's a lot of money to be spent.
They should just simply throw the old stuff into a new package and sell it as the battle chest for 50 total.

Since apparently no one looks up facts that is exactly how much it costs to get all of them digitally I just had to do it since I was wrongfully permbanned without appeal going through it costs 10 for vanilla/bc/wotlk and 40 for cata/mop

[stellvia]

Amazon.com offers a "Buy All 3" deal for the Battle Chest, Cata, and MoP for $53 atm with free shipping. *shrug*

[ro9ue]

wow wont go free to play until that model looks like it will bring in more than a sub model. and thats basically when wow is at 500k subs. so maybe in 5 years.

[Deleted]

Only 1 out of the 3 guys in the video thought that WoW would go free to play, and the guy in red sweater who thought they would had all his argument completely smashed.

Games that have gone free to play have made allot more money, true. But only because they have gotten 3-5 times more players. The average player still pay less then 15 bucks a month in a f2p game. If you have 100 000 players, then it's viable to go f2p and get 500k players and double or triple your revenue. If WoW were to go f2p however, they would not suddenly have 32 million players. They might gain players, at best I could see them (and this is being generous) doubling their players base to 16 million, and then they would still make less money then they are currently doing if they have the same kind of income per player as other f2p mmo's.

I'm willing to bet that WoW will never go f2p, or atleast not until Blizzards next MMO is out. At that point there will probably be a decision between making it f2p with very slow updates to the game just to squeeze the last money out of it, or just killing it right off.

[Pann]

Only 1 out of the 3 guys in the video thought that WoW would go free to play, and the guy in red sweater who thought they would had all his argument completely smashed.

Games that have gone free to play have made allot more money, true. But only because they have gotten 3-5 times more players. The average player still pay less then 15 bucks a month in a f2p game. If you have 100 000 players, then it's viable to go f2p and get 500k players and double or triple your revenue. If WoW were to go f2p however, they would not suddenly have 32 million players. They might gain players, at best I could see them (and this is being generous) doubling their players base to 16 million, and then they would still make less money then they are currently doing if they have the same kind of income per player as other f2p mmo's.

I'm willing to bet that WoW will never go f2p, or atleast not until Blizzards next MMO is out. At that point there will probably be a decision between making it f2p with very slow updates to the game just to squeeze the last money out of it, or just killing it right off.

WOW is going to go F2P at some stage whether it is in three months time or three years it is going to happen. I think one thing that people are wrong about is that when it happens it will be the same as when it happened to other games. It there is one thing that Blizzard are amazing at it is making money from their customers, no-one thought that a game that charges for the base game plus expansions as well as a monthly fee could get away with value added services yet Blizzard introduced server, faction and, even, guild transfers and not only are they accepted they are, really quite, popular. No-one thought that a game with sub fees could get away with a cash shop but just look at how many people are riding the latest mount from the cash shop as soon as it is released.

It is not a question of if but when and when it does happen the rest of the industry will look at WOW and think; "why didn't we think of that?"

[Deleted]

It is not a question of if but when and when it does happen the rest of the industry will look at WOW and think; "why didn't we think of that?"

Whereas i agree with the rest of your analysis on Wow giong F2P being inevitable i do disagree with this point.

F2P games are already successful and B2P are also currently successful. Therefore i foresee Blizzard finding themselves copying an existing successful F2P and not coming up with anything innovative themselves. Wow is already one of the last games to charge monthly subs, so theyll be one of the last to adopt a F2P model.

[Civfanata]

Here is the reason why it will never happen...

8.3 million subscriptions x $15 a month = $124,500,000 a month

What if F2P = more than 124,500,000 a month?

[Wildberry]

Doesn't the Original EQ have a F2P Model, but due to restrictions it has in place or something, there's a sub based model as well that a lot (by a lot, I mean a lot for EQ, which to my suprise still has a decent community to this day) of people pay for? If people are still paying a monthly EQ sub, I highly doubt WoW is going Free to Play.

Which I, personally, am glad for, the Free-To-Play Crowd usually ruin any game community they touch.

Why are people so adamant about this F2P stuff anyway? Sure there might be MMO's that aren't, but the thing is, unless $15 a month is hard to come by for you (And let's face it, that is not much when you factor in other entertainment costs, I could spend more on a movie ticket and popcorn, and that's for two and a half hours of entertainment) it's a small price to pay for the most polished game on the market.