Predict the year WoW will become free-to-play

[Exkrementor]

The people who think the game is F2P because you can purchase your sub with gold, reminds me of people who think healthcare and other social services should be, or are, "free".

Thats exactly what F2P is. Some people are playing for free and some people pay money. Newsflash: You cannot sustain a game when nobody is paying for it.

[Chriisto]

When the RIOT MMO drops and its both better and F2P

[Unholyground]

Ah yes, of course. They'll give up that free extra 5$ a month, because "Just trust me bro"


In terms of likelihood, I rank them thus:

In the "Not going to, but may happen" tier, I put "Merging WoW in to GamePass".

In the "omegalul are you braindead and/or have zero understanding of how business' work" tier, I put the removal of the Token. No business is going to give up that free money, especially when they've got shareholders to satisfy.

They will because the token allows you to buy games outright which directly competes with gamepass, they don't want you buying games for free. If they do for some reason keep it they will make it so you cannot exchange for b.net balance as it will be under the MS flag anyhow.

[Stickiler]

They will because the token allows you to buy games outright which directly competes with gamepass, they don't want you buying games for free. If they do for some reason keep it they will make it so you cannot exchange for b.net balance as it will be under the MS flag anyhow.

Man, you REALLY don't understand how the token works, do you. You don't "Buy the games for free". You buy the games for 30% more than you would otherwise. A 60$ game would cost 80$ in tokens, which means they make more money. Sure, the money doesn't come from the person who's buying the game, but that doesn't matter to the business. They're making an extra 20$ on every 60$ game they sell, there's not a chance in hell they give that up.

[Unholyground]

Man, you REALLY don't understand how the token works, do you. You don't "Buy the games for free". You buy the games for 30% more than you would otherwise. A 60$ game would cost 80$ in tokens, which means they make more money. Sure, the money doesn't come from the person who's buying the game, but that doesn't matter to the business. They're making an extra 20$ on every 60$ game they sell, there's not a chance in hell they give that up.

I've been playing the game longer than you guaranteed. I understand how tokens work stop being a pustual. b.net balance from tokens can be used to buy full priced games, most tokens were bought at a time when gold was far easier to attain throughout WoD and Legion. Tokens are also extremely disruptive to how the game is meant to be played vs what it has become, they have even had to design around the token which madenthe game even worse to some degree.

[Stickiler]

I've been playing the game longer than you guaranteed.

Wowee pal, that's so relevant!

I understand how tokens work stop being a pustual. b.net balance from tokens can be used to buy full priced games, most tokens were bought at a time when gold was far easier to attain throughout WoD and Legion.

It literally doesn't matter what the gold price of the tokens is. It's a fact that the token is purchased for 20$ originally, and provides 15$ of battle.net balance if that's how you decide to use it, which means anything purchased with that 15$ of battle.net balance actually gave Blizzard 20$.

[Itori]

2027. Hopefully by then they drop a new mmo and have a staff with imagination.

[Shadowferal]

I think the question will be better answered after Dragonflight.

[Dakhath]

If you think the community is bad now, just wait til its F2P.

[Unholyvamp]

Never o'clock on the Neverleventh of Neverember.

Yep, pretty much my opinion as well.

[RobertMugabe]

Probably never going to happen, but I do hope it'll become free-to-play (actually no, it should be a one-time purchase) soon enough.

IMO for me, paying the sub is not an issue. However at this stage with the shop and all that being a thing, I don't really see why we need to have a sub and on top of it a shop that sells gold, mounts etc. and of course you need to always buy the latest expansion too.

That being said though, whenever they go ahead with this, I hope they add a system where you must confirm your identity (such as a through a phone number) before being able to play.

[Spikeychris]

considering the wow subs are dead,and many pay with gold,the sub is likely their smalest revenue,the expasnion sales and the token is what brings in more money,and when microsoft takes over,they can just fill up the shop with a bunch of cosmetics,the whales will love it,proly make way more money than they do today

I hate to break this to you but subscribing with a WoW token is still subscribing the difference is someone else paid the money and you gave them gold for it. Also claiming that WoW subs are the smallest part of their revenue is a pretty bold claim especially considering expansion sales happen every 2 or so years.

[Razorice]

It's been F2P for me since Draenor. Haven't used Real life currency on Blizzard products since the integration of WoW Token with Battle.net

[Bramickias]

Never. They have the best of both world with WoW, a sub cost, costly services, a microtransaction store, and a currency transfer with the token. There's no reason to let any of this go away.

[loras]

Next year if ever.
Economical outlooks grim, inflation high, high real poverty due to decades of hidden inflation - ergo not much to spend on leisure.

Enter ftp - people can now escape whenever they want to, but probably need to buy some bundle every so often to remain competitive. Effectively the bundles would replace sub income, the ftp-ishness (if done proper) keeps the game alive by populating it, the bundles wouldn't be priced too steeply so plenty would buy them, and finally the whales, addicts and sunken-cost fallacists will remain a reliable source of dependable income anyway.

[Stickiler]

considering the wow subs are dead,and many pay with gold,the sub is likely their smalest revenue,the expasnion sales and the token is what brings in more money,and when microsoft takes over,they can just fill up the shop with a bunch of cosmetics,the whales will love it,proly make way more money than they do today

I hate to break this to you but subscribing with a WoW token is still subscribing the difference is someone else paid the money and you gave them gold for it. Also claiming that WoW subs are the smallest part of their revenue is a pretty bold claim especially considering expansion sales happen every 2 or so years.

That actually raises a fascinating question, and not something we'll ever get an answer to, but I wonder how they define revenue internally, if WoW Tokens are separated from Subscription revenue, or if they do some fancy maths and roll the WoW tokens used for subscriptions in to the subscription revenue.

[Krimzin]

Next year if ever.
Economical outlooks grim, inflation high, high real poverty due to decades of hidden inflation - ergo not much to spend on leisure.

Enter ftp - people can now escape whenever they want to, but probably need to buy some bundle every so often to remain competitive. Effectively the bundles would replace sub income, the ftp-ishness (if done proper) keeps the game alive by populating it, the bundles wouldn't be priced too steeply so plenty would buy them, and finally the whales, addicts and sunken-cost fallacists will remain a reliable source of dependable income anyway.

You just named all the reasons why it wont be Free.. In hard times people look for things to do that cost them less money. So for less than the cost of one movie ticket they can sub for a month. When times are hard people want to escape the real world and take their mind off their problems. WoW wont go free until they lose a large portion of market share which isnt even on the horizon. There are no other MMOs out or in production that threaten WoWs market share. With the pending sale to MS, the purchase or the gaming studio which will add 100 team members to the WoW Content team, all this does is solidify that WoW is gaining ground with more capital to put into the game. The one thing that will happen with the sale to MS is WoW will become part of the monthly gaming pass that MS offers.

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That actually raises a fascinating question, and not something we'll ever get an answer to, but I wonder how they define revenue internally, if WoW Tokens are separated from Subscription revenue, or if they do some fancy maths and roll the WoW tokens used for subscriptions in to the subscription revenue.

I saw a post a couple years ago that showed people who pay for their sub with in game gold was less than 1% of 1%, but players who paid the $20 for a token to get gold was over 40%. Not sure if thats still valid today.

[Unholyground]

Wowee pal, that's so relevant!



It literally doesn't matter what the gold price of the tokens is. It's a fact that the token is purchased for 20$ originally, and provides 15$ of battle.net balance if that's how you decide to use it, which means anything purchased with that 15$ of battle.net balance actually gave Blizzard 20$.

Yeah but they don't want you to do that, they want you to pay for gamepass, do you see what I'm trying to say to? They want more numbers on gamepass they don't care about the token they're going to retire it as it adversely affects the game and has since warlords.

I can guarantee you there is not more tokens sold than subscriptions, That extra $5 is negligible when you can force people over to gamepass which is what's going to happen. Every single current player is going to be paying for a game pass subscription to play wow I'm telling you now.

The wow token will be retired in its current iteration.

[Gaidax]

2074

/10c

[Puri]

I don't think it will ever go into a actual f2p mode, but I am still fairly convinced it is going to be included in the MS gamepass once the merger is finished, so I assume in the next 3-5 years.