Could WoW go almost fully F2P?

[Mynta]

I realize it is already F2P up to level 20, but hear me out.
With Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR both looming on the horizon, let's be realistic, WoW will lose subscriptions, now I don't know if the majority, but it will.

What if Blizzard, seeing that SWTOR has a monthly subscription, decided to go free to play like a week before SWTOR came out?
GW2 does not have a monthly subscription, but I imagine it would keep quite a few players on WoW instead of Star Wars. do you think Blizzard would ever resort to this? Or will they bleed out as much as they can before they lose more subscribers?

I think WoW will still go strong for awhile, possibly even a few years, SWTOR doesn't look all that new honestly, it's GW2 that concerns me, WoW going F2P at a strategic date would almost certainly cut SWTOR off from its subscribers.

Thoughts? I personally think it would be a pretty ingenious move, if not a slap in the face to Bioware, not that I hate Bioware, it just would be quite comical to see their confidence go out the window.

[WorldofWorkcraft]

Possibly. But isn't it their cash-cow-Tauren? So I doubt it. Unless they're expecting huge revenue from other sources (D3, etc) in the near future and can have streaming income equivalent to the subscription, I don't see it happening.

[smif]

wow has 11 mil subs why would they make it free? lol. think...

15/m x 9 million/subs = 135 000 000 $ a month.

yah it might go down, but nearly enough to matter much

[Xeones]

If wow goes pay to win, or whatever else all these other buisnesses do they won't get my buisness. Other games go F2P when they can't get enough subscriptions, wow doesn't have this issue.

[etubrutei]

wow has 11 mil subs why would they make it free? lol. think...

15/m x 9 million/subs = 135 000 000 $ a month.

yah it might go down, but nearly enough to matter much

not counting the blizz virtual store and other products

[Schmilblick]

No .

Try to post constructively.

[Mynta]

No .

Good contribution, delete your post if it's going to be worthless.

[Caiada]

I'm guessing it'll happen for their 10th anniversary. That's the earliest possible.

[Steelyorc]

F2P = less service, probably even less content, and I would assume less server stability being that there would be a massive loss of revenue.
At the rate people bitch now, I couldnt even imagine the QQ

[Lyriamlol]

Honestly with what they should have by now, it shouldn't be an issue to make it F2P. Especially if they keep paid character transfers/name changes/etc. Then again, they have no real reason to, so I highly doubt we'll be seeing any more than up to level 20.

[Pud'n]

Well Blizzard has stated they plan on releasing smaller expansions in shorter time intervals, so it's very possible.

[Pool of the Dead]

Good contribution, delete your post if it's going to be worthless.

Saying no to a stupid question is still a contribution.

OT: No, it would not go F2P while they are able to make millions a month. Even is they lost 90% of there subscribers, they would still be making $15x1million a month.

and for any logical business would be a retarded move to go F2P, as most companies that advertise F2P do so because they wouldn't have a huge playerbase(if any payer-base at all) without it

[Deleted]

the upkeep for World of Warcraft is MASSIVE. f2p games usually pay their upkeep through micro transactions (new hair style, cool looking weapon skin...) while WoW takes a more direct approach.

[Maleagant]

Instead of F2P what if WoW went B2P.No monthly subscription fee.Anytime Warcraft releases big patches with raid content you pay.....$9.99 to download.Add some costumes,hairstyles and more companions to sell in Blizzard store.

However Warcraft has no need to do this as the subscription model is still very successful.But It could be done and Blizzard would still turn a profit.

[Freezeframe]

Good contribution, delete your post if it's going to be worthless.

You seem nice, mynta. He's answering your question derp.

[Aqua]

If they need to do that they will. Right now they do not need to. They have utterly cornered, lock, stock and sat on the subscriber market, there is no need to make that switch unless they have to. And they don't right now. It'll be a costly change to WoW in itself, their income will fluctuate far too dramatically for them to reliably hold up costs of employees, servers, game creation and marketing. Alot will change in the company and I think that's a dangerous move until it HAS to happen.

[Kalcheus]

The answer is No, and here's why:

There are more former players than current players in the world. If they went F2P, a lot of those people would come back. What then? Not only would they have vastly more "subscribers" (20 million? more?), they'd have no revenue from the game to support all those players. Servers would be a mess. Latency would be ridiculous. And then what? Why throw profitability out the window just to have a higher subscriber total? It reminds me of the old joke:

"We lose money on every item we sell"
"Then we'll sell more of them and make it up with volume!"

F2P is the refuge of the low/inexpensive. WoW is too far gone from that point.

[xile]

Good contribution, delete your post if it's going to be worthless.

The same could easily be said about this entire topic, the biggest reason that WoW subs have shrank is because WoW essentially filled the market of who would play this game, even if it was entirely free they wouldn't see their game sales go up by much if any period. There's no reason or incentive period for WoW to go f2p, it won't increase the playerbase by anywhere near enough to make up the 150+ million dollars a month they make off subs alone. if you want the math thats almost 2 billion a year off of this game just from subs, not counting the things ppl buy in game and the new copies of the game sold.

[helheim]

f2p means more gold spammers and bots. they probably will at some point consider lowering the monthly fee, however, if newcomers manage to put sizable dents into their subscription numbers. nothing released to date has had this ability, and thus things have stayed the same. people make big stinks over 300k subs here and there, but it would probably take a large hit to get blizzard to change the way the subscription system works - upwards of 20-30% through the course of an expansion could maybe change that.

[DeekZ]

Please think before you make stupid threads like this, of course WoW is not going to ever go F2P, especially not when they're making this much money from it.