At what point will Blizzard transition WOW to F2P?

[TerrisT]

They'd loose too many people who wouldn't follow the model change, and not gain any new ones because wow is too old.

What they will definitely do is create paid services to bypass grind mechanics. The question is when.

[Lolites]

When they lose enough subscribers.......maybe. Blizzard is soooooo damn stubborn, they would let their game die before they really give us what we want.

well going F2P is probably the most certain way to kill the game so... yeah, they rather "let it die" than kill it...
evven half a milion subscribers is better for them than 5 milion of people playing for free... unless they all buy stuff on shop, which most of them wont...

[Itori]

I would think when they decide to make a new MMO and if it becomes successful.

[VinceVega]

With declining subscriber base and the continued downward trajectory of subscriptions at what point/threshold will WOW go the F2P route and incorporate cash shops etc?

I wish it would never happen however its an inevitability at this point. The question is when?

I feel like Shadowlands will be the last expansion under the current model and we will see a f2P conversion during the next cycle.

Never. No reason. Even 1 Million player is more than enough and they still have way more than that

[otaXephon]

When they lose enough subscribers.......maybe. Blizzard is soooooo damn stubborn, they would let their game die before they really give us what we want.

Who is this "we"?

[McNeil]

Probably not for a while. Its hard to say considering that we have no idea how many people even play the game these days. They did have a succesful year because of both Classic and Corona which boosted the games activity by quite a lot. They'd have to royally fuck up at least a few expansions to go into a state where the game needs to drop its sub and increase their MTX to make up for it.

[LucyEliza]

Wow is already free to play.

Just spend a little time making gold and buy a token of the auction house.

[otaXephon]

Wow is already free to play.

Just spend a little time making gold and buy a token of the auction house.

Is this like downloading more RAM?

[Afrospinach]

sub keeps trashy speculation and trolls out.

You need to keep in mind however

1.Engagement does not equate to subscribers
Engagement can mean a lot of things, it can mean that players spend more time total in the game or that players engage in more systems than before, both do not automatically equate to more players.

How Blizzard exactly defines engagement is, as far as i know, not known to the playerbase.
Let's not forget, they most likely included Classic numbers into there as well, which most certainly does boost the numbers.

They are pretty cagey about classic in the earnings call last time I had time to waste looking through that dreck.

I am just reminded how in MoP they were trumpeting the success of LFR when they would literally not give any other avenue to advance your character.

They are consistently plugging in these FOMO mechanics as well, such that in BFA you more or less had to log in every couple of days or be behind, if not by azerite then by the sheer number of rolls you need to get a non garbage TF roll. When you do that - of course engagement is going to be high. Looks like SL might be a bit better on that front at least.

[Queen of Hamsters]

The entirety of BfA's Quarterly report history makes your thread inane at best.

This game is not going F2P within the next 10 years, at least. We already know there's another expansion after SL (duh), SL has hit records in pre-sales, after BFA did the same. It beat BFA, in other words.

From the very latest report:

World of Warcraft MAUs were stable year-over-year.
World of Warcraft franchise engagement is at its highest level for this stage ahead of an expansion in a decade, with Shadowlands presales well ahead of any prior expansion.

Sour grapes. Shitty F2P MMORPGs are plentiful. Have fun.

[Xilurm]

What are you talking about?

I have this feeling that people think sub based models are a thing of the past or something. Yet how many subs do people pay if they wanna play/watch stuff. Say if someone wants to play WoW, Playstation/Xbox games online, watch netflix, watch disney+, watch amazon prime shows, watch hbo etc. Subs aint going nowhere.

[Delano]

The exact moment their subs hit this magic number some bean counter figured out a decade ago... that probably won't be hit for another decade, since people keep paying to play this game for some reason.

[Aucald]

"WoW is Dying/Dead type threads don't tend to produce much in the way of constructive discussion or debate. Closing this.