Should WoW Go Free To Play?

[Yseraboy]

I would like it to go F2P. It's not that I care about the $15 monthly sub. Maybe the devs would be disinclined to give content that is too time consuming. Which we all know the real purpose is to keep the subs up. rep, dailys, lockouts,, etc you all know. imo and NOT a wow hater.

Yes. They want to keep people from burning through the content too fast, so that they don't get bored and quit.

Saying you can just roll an alt once you've burned through the content on your main is getting harder to stomach, since you have to decide whether you're going to enjoy just leveling the alt - or taking it all the way to 90. [I have a main and two alts at 90, and three alts at 87/88].

Have you played any MMOs that went F2P? I played Aion for awhile, before and after it went F2P... and it wasn't pretty. e.g. vanity skins for armor & weapons - especially holiday-themed ones - in the cash shop even before F2P, and then F2P brought time-stamped mounts, pack-pets, and furnishings for player housing. [yuck!]

Yes, they were actually selling items for in-game use which would expire after 10-days, or 30-days, etc. The mind boggles, it is so different from what I'm used to.

And, for me, biggest problem with Aion was crafting, which could fail - causing you to lose the mats you'd used for the crafting attempt. But don't worry! You can buy crafting "supplements" which will reduce/eliminate the possibility of crafting failing... as long as you are okay with the cost of those supplements sky-rocketing as the "iLevel" of the item you're trying to craft increases.

I can't imagine what kind of cash shop Blizzard would need to implement to make-up for dropping 15-USD [or equivalent] a month from a few million people. The mind boggles at the volume of sales they would need to make-up for the loss of subs - if the subs are still above a couple million.

[soulzek]

people don't realize the game still has 8mil+ players, it's the middle of the expansion, and a lot of the subs were lost in Asia. In my eyes, the game isn't dying. There's too many servers, and so adjusting a fix needs to happen. Anyway, going F2P? I don't like this mentality, and I don't like the idea of cash shops that come with it.

[Kuthe]

No.

And I don't even play the game anymore.
But it shouldn't.
And it wont'. Not for years.

[Aquamonkey]

Again, those games went f2p because they failed to attract an audience and make any money. So of course they are making more money as a nickle/dime-dick-your-customer-over-cash-grab. World of Warcraft is in no way comparable to those games. WOW found an audience and its subscription model has made it, by far, the most profitable game of all time.

Until one of these f2p MMOs can approach those numbers, we can't have a serious discussion about how WoW subscription model is a mistake.

That's a nice deflection. Show me an instance of a game going F2P making less money than when it was P2P. If you can do this, then you have an argument for why WoW won't make more money as F2P.

[Deleted]

Going F2P is just throwing money away.

You go F2P when you're lacking subscribers, not when you've got more subscribers than multiple of your closest competitors combined. So no, I'd rather blizzard didn't throw their sub money away and continued investing it into what I'm finding a fun game.

You don't need to go F2P when you have 8million bloody subscribers.

[Definition]

No, WoW will not go free to play, it has 8 million fucking subscribers, why would they. Also i'd prefer to pay a sub and have good content, i fucking hate cash shops and microtransactions

[Valiea]

When WoW hits maybe 1 million subs sure we might want a buy to play model with micro transactions and a sub based system you can get if you want stuff faster than normal, similar to SWTOR.

At 8 mil? PFFT no.

[Laz]

Hell No. Maybe when it has 500k players but at 8 MILLION? they would have to be crazy. You think Swtor, Aion and now rift would have gone F2P if they had 8 Million player? Hell no. F2P is for games that have failed and wow isn't even close to failed yet. Then even wow will not fail it will just very slowly die.

It will not be F2P for atleast the next 6/7 years maybe even longer.

^^^ This.
F2P games suck rocks. And if you want to get into the better content of them, you HAVE TO PAY FOR IT. F2P is is like the auto car dealer's advertisement that features a great looking car for a very low payment. But when you get there it has been sold already. Even if you were the first person of the day! The job of the ad was to get you there and that is the same for F2P. It is it's job to get you there, to try out the game and when you notice that the better stuff is only available to those who want to pay for it, you do. So in the end F2P is FALSE ADVERTISING.

[Mystinn]

There are still too many subscribers to go f2p, Blizzard would be intentionally cutting profits by doing that.

[Aquamonkey]

It's funny watching so many people spouting off that WoW has 8 million subs like they know what it means. What so many fail to realize is that half the subs are in Asia, but only accounts for 7-8% of Blizzard's income. If Blizzard went F2P and added a ton of microtransactions, they could make way more money from Asia.

[SinR]

Think about the THOUSANDS of dollars alot of people have payed playing this game over the years...

If people have paid thousands, they need their heads examined.

lets see...


12 months at 15/month, 180 a year. if you've been playing nonstop since launch, that's 1530 dollars in sub fees alone. tack on 50 bucks per expansion, 200 bucks, 50 for vanilla, we're getting pretty close to 2000 dollars invested

[Pull My Finger]

It's funny watching so many people spouting off that WoW has 8 million subs like they know what it means. What so many fail to realize is that half the subs are in Asia, but only accounts for 7-8% of Blizzard's income. If Blizzard went F2P and added a ton of microtransactions, they could make way more money from Asia.

Yeah, it's funny how these industry veterans don't get it, but you do. If they only listened to you.

[Ap0calypse]

I'd consider playing if it was F2P. I wouldn't play it enough to justify a sub.

[nazrakin]

That's a nice deflection. Show me an instance of a game going F2P making less money than when it was P2P. If you can do this, then you have an argument for why WoW won't make more money as F2P.

Its no deflection, its the truth. Neither of us know enough about WoW financials to make such a statement; simply basing it off the f2p success of games that never had subscription success is not a valid argument. Personally, I highly doubt SWTOR, Rift, and Tera would be f2p if they had even half of WoW's audience right now.

[Aquamonkey]

Yeah, it's funny how these industry veterans don't get it, but you do. If they only listened to you.

Because industry veterans are stuck in their ways. They do what is safe, even if it isn't what's best. Just look at all the CoD clones and how resistant the industry in general is to change. Devs stuck in their ways trying to make P2P work and failing turn to F2P because they have nothing to lose. Then they find out that F2P actually works better.

---------- Post added 2013-05-18 at 11:23 PM ----------

Its no deflection, its the truth. Neither of us know enough about WoW financials to make such a statement; simply basing it off the f2p success of games that never had subscription success is not a valid argument. Personally, I highly doubt SWTOR, Rift, and Tera would be f2p if they had even half of WoW's audience right now.

That's my point. We don't know what would happen. That's why I was asking why so many people say with certainty that WoW would lose money going F2P when every instance has shown games making more money with that model.

[nazrakin]

^^^ This.
F2P games suck rocks. And if you want to get into the better content of them, you HAVE TO PAY FOR IT. F2P is is like the auto car dealer's advertisement that features a great looking car for a very low payment. But when you get there it has been sold already. Even if you were the first person of the day! The job of the ad was to get you there and that is the same for F2P. It is it's job to get you there, to try out the game and when you notice that the better stuff is only available to those who want to pay for it, you do. So in the end F2P is FALSE ADVERTISING.

Absolutely. The grandest scam of all are the subscription fees these games continue to carry. Those are the people that are hooked enough to buy all the shit in the cash stores. I would love to see how much of the increased revenue is from actual new players and how much is from the existing players being smashed up against the pay wall for anything remotely new or interesting that is added to the game.

[SinR]

F2P is usually the final last ditch effort to make money. sometimes its successful... other times its not. See: City of Heroes/Villains.

---------- Post added 2013-05-18 at 11:31 PM ----------

And, I honestly think WoW can get away with an in-game cash store with cosmetic items, mounts, and possibly some lower than top-tier gear (like, lets say some normal mode drops from HOF and TOES, but not any tier pieces)

[nazrakin]

Because industry veterans are stuck in their ways. They do what is safe, even if it isn't what's best. Just look at all the CoD clones and how resistant the industry in general is to change. Devs stuck in their ways trying to make P2P work and failing turn to F2P because they have nothing to lose. Then they find out that F2P actually works better.

---------- Post added 2013-05-18 at 11:23 PM ----------


That's my point. We don't know what would happen. That's why I was asking why so many people say with certainty that WoW would lose money going F2P when every instance has shown games making more money with that model.

You seem pretty certain that it would make more money. I've never said whether they would or wouldn't make more money, I really don't know. The truth is that Blizzard has people far smarter than any of us who already know the answer to that question. My only point is that the success of other MMOs as a f2p game are not automatically applicable to WoW.

[Kaleredar]

People already bitch about Blizzard supposedly "nickle and diming" people to death with pointless fluff content like mounts and pets from the store that have no actual impact on gameplay.

I think people that expect blizzard to suddenly go "free to play" assume everything in WoW to function in the exact same way it does now... only just without having to pay anything at all.

And I'd call that a fairly poor assumption.

Blizzard doesn't make their money off of expansion box sales... if they did, they wouldn't constantly be downgrading the prices. They make it off of sub fees.

[Pann]

People already bitch about Blizzard supposedly "nickle and diming" people to death with pointless fluff content like mounts and pets from the store that have no actual impact on gameplay.

I think people that expect blizzard to suddenly go "free to play" assume everything in WoW to function in the exact same way it does now... only just without having to pay anything at all.

And I'd call that a fairly poor assumption.

Blizzard doesn't make their money off of expansion box sales... if they did, they wouldn't constantly be downgrading the prices. They make it off of sub fees.

How on earth do Blizzard not make money of expansion sales? The majority of people buy them as soon as they are released when they cost the same as a full priced game.