Blizzard is taking WoW free-play in the Asian markets (most notably China, Taiwan, and Korea) because of the market differences overseas. In Asia, pay-to-play as a business model is rapidly dying while cash-shop free-play only grows in popularity every year. Many Asian free-play MMOs that tanked in the US remain extremely popular in China and Korea, because they offer a la carte content and players can buy what content they desire and experience it when they want, without having to worry about paying for game time.
That being said, they also noted that they are looking at free-play options for the Western markets, again due to the surge of pay-to-play MMOs going free-play and seeing a surge in players and revenue, but only have any intention of doing so if they are 100% sure it will be a superior move to the current sub model in terms of revenue stream and content delivery.
Be seeing you guys on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA!
Baby steps are the path to acceptance. Get it out there, let players discuss and debate it. Get people used to the idea. Make small seemingly insignificant changes. Before you know it they will be selling all kinds of things in the store, people will be paying for a sub, buying the latest gear etc... etc... etc... After the initial outrage people will continue on as usual. Not saying I'm for it, because I'm definitely not but until players are willing to put their money where there mouth is and say "we don't want this now, we don't want this ever, and we aren't going to pay you if you do this" then it will happen. People are already over the initial outrage from the pet store and happily buying things, not seeing as how this will be any different.
also known as 'how to boil a frog.' it works, and that is why companies do it. they are patient, they can plan out years with incremental steps, etc.
the one thing i don' see is FTP, ever or at least not within many years. as far as ftp/china, has netease given any indication they plan to do this?
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Subscription numbers aren't opinion. It isn't some nebulous thing that can't be pinned down. Go look at ATVI's last quarterly report and you will see it quite clearly and explicitly states how Wow subscription numbers are handled. As per SEC regulations this kind of information has to be 100% accurate or Blizzard executives risk prison time and significant fines not to mention the fact it puts ATVI's whole operation at risk. Seriously just stop with this nonsense you are only making yourself look quite ignorant.
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I know of at least two different threads where you have asked for this proof that Blizzard said these types of items are unlikely to ever appear in the NA/EU cash shops only for you to immediately dismiss it and then ask for the same proof yet again in subsequent threads. Just stop. You aren't fooling anyone here.
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Except for one little problem: Blizzard has said NA/EU markets aren't nearly as receptive of these types of items in cash shops as evidenced by the reception of the transmog helms they started selling. It doesn't matter anyway because the amount of subscriptions required for an mmo to remain profitable are well below 1 million and Wow won't be getting to that point for many years.
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Wow isn't going free to play anywhere. Those of you who continually make these claims don't seem to be able to comprehend the fact that mmos are still profitable with significantly less subscribers than Wow has currently. They could lose all but 500k subscribers and the game would continue to make a profit, just on a smaller scale.
Not really sure why anyone would care. I wouldn't pay $1/hour for 100% bonus xp, but I honestly don't care if others would. It's not like you couldn't pay $20 for an extra account, tie it to your main, and get 300% extra xp for 3 months now which is a much better rate.
Blizzard has been selling all kinds of things in the Blizzard store for years. This isn't new. At all. There is certainly nothing to be outraged over. Again do you people bitch to your cable company for not including premium channels in your basic cable package? After all they should be included in the basic package and not sold for extra right? Right?
This rather misses the larger business point which is that WoW pays for a lot of things including Blizzard non-game infrastructure. In truth, it might be possible to be profitable with 500K subscribers but it would be a very different Blizzard with all sorts of consequences for all of their games, including WoW. You don't just strip that much revenue out of a company without some profound changes. I personally think we're still a long way away from WoW being F2P but it wouldn't surprise me a lot to see some sort of expansion of the free game--like maybe F2P for 1-80 or higher while end game is still one or two expansions, i.e. 5-15 levels beyond that.
Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2013-09-26 at 01:04 AM.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
This is not true, why do you lie to defend Blizzard? I have seen nothing from Blizzard that says the experience potion is unlikely to ever appear in the Western cash shop only that there are no plans at present and all the comments I have read from Blizzard regarding this item have been pretty opened ended and most certainly leave the door open for it to sold in the West in the future. Perhaps you could link a post where they actually say it is unlikely to ever to be sold in the West instead of directing veiled insults towards me?
As Moanalisa has pointed out it is unlikely that Blizzard could maintain development of their other titles with 500k subscribers. It appears that you are saying you are saying that they are taking the money from almost eight million subscribers and only investing the equivalent of the income from less than 500k back into WOW, what are they doing with the money from the other 7 million?
Last edited by Pann; 2013-09-26 at 08:08 AM.