Blizz should make WoW free to play

[glowpipe]

why in hell would they do that. Blizzards MAIN focus is making money. Now they make a shit load of money. Mora than any other game company ever will by the looks of where games are going now days.

Making a game free to play is something they do when they might earn more money on a cash shop than subscribers. Cause they are dipping day by day.. Lets face it. Wow aint dying any time soon. Its going down. But not nearly fast enough to make it f2p.

They are now making a ingame shop. Something they probably also will get away with. And make even more money.

Not a single other game, currently out can get away with p2p and ingame cash shop. So they are in a good spot.

[LeperHerring]

No. They're not even close to that point that they'd need to do something like that.

I would be surprised if the decision hadn't already been made. You can't just think "omg the sub numbers are too low", flip a switch and go free to play. It requires major changes to the game, like in-game shop (sound familiar?) and thorough planning and PR, and therefore the decision must be made well ahead of time.

WoW's sub numbers are dropping by the millions (and have been consistently trending down for years) and they told investors that they expect numbers to keep falling. At the same time f2p games like LoL are pulling in huge player numbers (and probably revenue numbers as well). With Titan facing major delays and WoW being critical to Blizzard and ATVI profitability, they can't afford to just let WoW head down the path it's going. At this point it's clear that they are not going to get a magical reversal of the subscriber trend with the tools they've been using (increase accessibility and produce more content). They need to do something more fundamental, and in today's market going f2p is the only real shot they've got. The downside is, of course, that going f2p is seen as "failing" by many people and their attempts at profiting from microtransactions in D3 failed miserably.

[Tekkommo]

Stupid idea, I hope it only goes F2P when they go well below 1m subs.

I would rather pay a sub and have proper end game than have a shitty F2P model.

[Jalek]

Still wouldn't play it. Some people don't realise that it's not the cost, I've got heaps of other games to play and I've had my fill of WoW over the years. Nothing could bring me back except a complete revamp and even then I'm not sure.

[palamanian]

Fascinating thread this is, bring out current subs, people that no longer play, etc. It's interesting to see that even players that don't play anymore are commenting they still wouldn't come back if it were F2P.

Anyway, on topic, it's clearly far too soon for Blizzard to consider the F2P model. Perhaps in 5 years or so down the road, maybe even longer than that. It all depends on how many subs they have, currently 8 million is a little high to throw all of that monthly sub money out the window.

[Metian]

Blizzard isn't going to make World of Warcraft, free-to-play anytime soon. But they probably will make it free-to-play sometime. When Blizzard is done making expansion packs and not making any content anymore. It probably takes years to make this happen. So, stop thinking about WoW and F2P.

Just my 2 cents.

[MerinPally]

Why would this help things? If you say that the kind of person attracted to the game would play once in a while like you, and then repopulate, who gives a shit? Noone cares if it's populated at times when things aren't really happening. What you want is more potential raiders and more guilds. Honestly you'll have exactly the same problem, just with more people. The problem of not enough raiders per realm and those in a raiding guild generally don't want to change to another, even when things get a bit rocky, because they may suddenly get no raiding at all. People playing a couple of times a week is NOT going to help the situation, other than increase numbers of people who don't really want to do the side of the game that needs help.

If your problem is the spread of your "specialists" is too thin, the answer is not to add a million peons and dilute them more. The answer is to find a way to bring them together. The game doesn't need more casual players, it needs smaller distances between those who want to go pushing for hard content.

[Strakha]

When it becomes F2P (pay to win) I will just find a different game to play, which will suck, but I play WoW because it is the way it is, not because I want it to be different. Change the game I enjoy in this manner and I will find a new one to enjoy.

[Thirstblood]

Free to play so you are expecting cash shop in the game? I mean like buying 10 dollars for measly boa necklace or something like that? I am just saying this an example...

[hailey]

I would rather see them do something to bring back old players, that seems like a way more reliable way of getting more people in WoW. Maybe it's too far gone now after Cata and MoP and the increased casualization. They would have to scrap so many things they've done to the game over the past 2 years to achieve that

[Mosotti]

I'm waiting for a nut to come an calculate how WoW has less than 1 million subscribers left, and it should go f2p because "that's better". Right, like the people paid to determine how to make a lot of money wouldn't know when the time to go f2p is...

[Deleted]

I can't imagine wow EVER going below 1 million subsriberss, so not, it will never go f2p.

[melodramocracy]

They don't strictly NEED to, but the game would make metric butt tons more money.

Back this statement with data.

[Jtbrig7390]

I don't know if some people haven't notice but blizzard is laying down the ground work for wow to be free to play.

The First Sign was CRZ it will work just like a mega server.
The Second Sign was the item seen in the 5.4 PTR and blizzard hinting at selling items to players "even tho there was that region comment"
The Third is Virtual Servers "Same setup as Guild Wars 2 Overflow servers"
The Final Sign is the delay of Titan. I bet blizzard wanted titan to come out before any f2p setup happens to wow but that time has been shorten by the huge amount of sub lost and now that team is working on wow to get everything going and the titan team is super small if even there anymore.


Now about Virtual Servers they will work in the same way that Overflow Server's work in guild wars 2. Now ask yourself them if dam near 90% of the servers on both EU and US are at low to empty why would blizzard put in this system. The answer is they would put this system into place to deal with a mass amount of player's coming in at one time.

Now I am not saying WOW will be f2p by the end of the year but I personally feel if not by the Start or End of the next xpac the one that fallows will be the one where WOW go's free to play. They are laying the ground work so when it dose go from p2p to F2p "Or P2p+F2p like SWTOR just not as shitty" there will be little to no problems.
The P2p market is dead no new mmo can last in it and all the current ones have accepted that there player base mite rise a little but it will mainly however where the sums are at for them hell the only P2p MMO's that are still pulling in more players is EvE and Runescape and that is not by much.

Feel free to disagree with me because after all this is just my opinion but with the recent F2p game blizzard is releasing and the four things I pointed out it dose seem blizzard is going to go the B2p/F2p route in the near future.

Before all the F2p=P2w crap rift is a perfect example on how a MMO can be F2p and not P2w in anyway shape or forum and to call Rift a P2w mmo just shows those people have blind hate to it.

Also to add none of us know how many subs is in the EU/US so as far as we know only 2 million out of the last reported 8 million could be US/EU subs and if people remember blizzards main amount of money comes from the EU/US sub cost and the cost of current items in there shop. So blizzard could be treating this as a 2 million sub's left problem and not 8 million since the remaining 6 million barely pay a dam thing.

"Above number isn't 100% fact it is a example"

/My 2 cents.

To be clear before I get yelled at this is just how I see it going with the current events that has happen and just my opinion I am not trying to say any of this is a fact.

[LeperHerring]

Now about Virtual Servers they will work in the same way that Overflow Server's work in guild wars 2. Now ask yourself them if dam near 90% of the servers on both EU and US are at low to empty why would blizzard put in this system.

Um, because 90% of the servers on EU and US are low to empty. Virtual server combines a bunch of dead servers into an alive one.

[Jtbrig7390]

Um, because 90% of the servers on EU and US are low to empty. Virtual server combines a bunch of dead servers into an alive one.

...So dose CRZ so why have 2 systems that do the same thing.

The answer is that Virtual servers will work like overflow servers where when a server hits so high in pop players can still log in and play and just switch to the real server once there is room.

[LeperHerring]

...So dose CRZ so why have 2 systems that do the same thing.

No, they are different. With virtual servers I can be in the same guild with players from other realms and trade in the same AH.

[Jtbrig7390]

No, they are different. With virtual servers I can be in the same guild with players from other realms and trade in the same AH.

Once more you will be able to do that with CRZ later on.

Virtual Servers and CRZ is two different things it would be pointless to do Virtual Servers to replace CRZ and also a waste of time when they could have just left everything alone and wait for Virtual Servers to happen.

[Deleted]

...So dose CRZ so why have 2 systems that do the same thing.

The answer is that Virtual servers will work like overflow servers where when a server hits so high in pop players can still log in and play and just switch to the real server once there is room.

Huh?

CRZ and Virtual Servers work VERY well together.

Virtual Servers are for virtually merging realms, guilds, ah the works.

CRZ is for making non current expansion zones fell "alive" and "full" you know actually seeing people out in the world in an MMO.

Not even close to the same thing.

Neither of those in the slightest work like the overflow server in GW2 (which I think is very good tech btw).

All 3 are very different tech and used for very different reasons.

[LeperHerring]

Once more you will be able to do that with CRZ later on.

Virtual Servers and CRZ is two different things it would be pointless to do Virtual Servers to replace CRZ and also a waste of time when they could have just left everything alone and wait for Virtual Servers to happen.

CRZ and virtual servers probably share many technologies behind the scenes. CRZ was probably something they could roll out quickly to alleviate the problem with dead realms (and dead low level zones) while working on a more comprehensive solution through virtual servers. Or perhaps they rolled out CRZ, but realized it didn't go far enough to solve the problems, and now they're bringing out virtual servers as a better solution. You can also have both virtual servers and CRZ working together (CRZ populating low level zones and virtual servers fixing the overall dead realms problem).