Will WoW ever become F2P?

[mickybrighteyes]

Having a larger player base != success.

The way people talk about wow you'd think it were the be all end all.

[Zhira]

Having a larger player base != success.

Actually all MMOs are rated based on the size of their playerbase. Have you ever heard "This game is INSANE, but only 50k plays it" ?

Number of subscribers or the amount of microtransactions (for F2P games) are about the only numbers they can measure up against imo

EDIT!

What I do agree on though, is that a game doesn't have to have 5mio subs to be succesful. The developer need to make a profit and the gameworld should not feel empty.

[Amengar2407]

I really do hope this will never be. Evey F2P game I played was crap or became crap within months.

Also I can't understand why people do complain about it. Think about the following:

A normal Game that is released will cost about 50-60€
A normal Game is designed for roughly 20-30h of playtime
Only 1 of 5 normal Games pass the 10h played line (in my case)
So lets summ this up 30h played for 60€ thats 2€ per hour played (this doesn't take into count that only 1 of 5 games reaches that Playtime)

lets have a look at WoW:

played per Week:
* Mo-Fr 3-5h/day
* Sa+Su 5-8h/day

Lets take the minimum that adds up to:
5x3h + 2x5h thats about 25h per week

so lets take 4weeks per Month (which is only true in February, in the other Months you have more playtime, because there are more days in the Month)
thats 4x25h = 100h played per month

You pay 15€ (which is the highest amount)

so 100h playtime for 15€ thats 0,15€ per Hour.....an normal Game 2€ per Hour

So.....even if you take a fucking big game like Final Fantasy with about 300h playtime for 60€ you get 0,2€/hour....i think there is NO ONE out there complaining about the 60€ for Final Fantasy....

So why complain about WoW???? I can't understand that.

[Deleted]

That's just not true, Rift wen't F2P and is more successful now then it was when it was P2P

Its still a shitty game tho so that doesnt matter

(This is my opinion. Im not trying to make this sound as facts. I think i need to clarify this so that the common mmo-c viewer will understand)

[vindicatorx]

All due respect, that statement is not true at all. GW2, Rift, LoTRO and (somewhat) SWToR are all benefitting from the F2P model.

Looking into the future my bet is that the F2P model (with microtransactions) will take over. Also, I personally think the crowd funding will make it's entry, ie. "We have this SUPER HARD über 20 raid instance that we would like to make" - then you'd fund if you were a raider and not if you was not. This way a lot of content would be what the players "really" wanted.

Pure guessing though

Z.

GW2 is not f2p it is b2p. The others as I have previous stated now have a larger player base and that does not equal more successful. F2P only works when you have a low subscription number. Game such as EQ1 and FFXI have both been around for over 10 years and are both still p2p. Why would a game developer take a risk every patch? Also another reason you see very limited updates in f2p games.

[Deleted]

How many F2P games have y'all actually played?

[Deleted]

Blizzard will most likely milk the old subscription way until subs are lower, then consider other options like f2p with more ingame transactions.

[Murtagh]

WoW have a huge subscribe number. I don't know if the F2P change would be good now (thinking about $$$ incoming). They are improving the store with cosmetic things for more $$$ too.