WoW made 213 million dollars in 2013 from microtransactions!

[AVPaul]

Why should they go F2P and suffer the quality loss just because they make good money from services, pets, and mounts? That's like saying to someone that once they reach a certain level of income they should stop getting paid.

Simple reason: just because mounts/pets/other paid services requires much lesser effort from them.

[Feali]

Why should they go F2P if they make so much money from the system they already have?

[Kon]

im curious as to why you think that if a game goes f2p that the quality somehow is diminished? ill be "that" guy and say that in my honest opinion since swtor has went f2p the quality really hasnt suffered in the least.

SWTOR quality hasn't improved either. Yes they might be pumping "content" out but by "content" I mean things for people to buy not actual content, take a look when was the last raid added for the game as an example.

http://www.swtor.com/gameupdates/1.4-terror-from-beyond

Also WoW isn't going to go f2p there is no need, they have been implementing micro transactions since a couple of years ago, starting with pets ( Not counting services like transfer e.c.t) They have already established a more bigger micro transaction store little by little in all these years. They have subs fee and micro-transaction all in one place, best of both worlds its a win - win for them.

[Chickat]

SWTOR quality hasn't improved either. Yes they might be pumping "content" out but by "content" I mean things for people to buy not actual content, take a look when was the last raid added for the game as an example.

http://www.swtor.com/gameupdates/1.4-terror-from-beyond

Also WoW isn't going to go f2p there is no need, they have been implementing micro transactions since a couple of years ago, starting with pets ( Not counting services like transfer e.c.t) They have already established a more bigger micro transaction store little by little in all these years. They have subs fee and micro-transaction all in one place, best of both worlds its a win - win for them.

WoW is sub based and its last raid was also out in September. I play wow, but come on.

[Gimlix]

WoW is sub based and its last raid was also out in September. I play wow, but come on.

Sept 2012?

[NuLogic]

WoW is sub based and its last raid was also out in September. I play wow, but come on.

That says September of 2012...it's 2014.

[Trubo]

Wth is CrossFire

A game involving hoverboards, smoke and lightning

[Smece]

SWTOR quality hasn't improved either. Yes they might be pumping "content" out but by "content" I mean things for people to buy not actual content, take a look when was the last raid added for the game as an example.

http://www.swtor.com/gameupdates/1.4-terror-from-beyond

Also WoW isn't going to go f2p there is no need, they have been implementing micro transactions since a couple of years ago, starting with pets ( Not counting services like transfer e.c.t) They have already established a more bigger micro transaction store little by little in all these years. They have subs fee and micro-transaction all in one place, best of both worlds its a win - win for them.

But Swtor is a half baked mmo and without f2p it would have died in 2012. On the other hand WoW is succulent pork rib so sweet and tasty and probably has 10 times the size developer team that Swtor has.

I honestly without a doubt think that WoW implementing a f2p model + a subscription based model would generate more money for Blizz, and more content + better experience for us.

[Gimlix]

But Swtor is a half baked mmo and without f2p it would have died in 2012. On the other hand WoW is succulent pork rib so sweet and tasty and probably has 10 times the size developer team that Swtor has.

I honestly without a doubt think that WoW implementing a f2p model + a subscription based model would generate more money for Blizz, and more content + better experience for us.

Also means the addictive 'Must keep playing because i spent so much time on it' fades away, and WoW might get faster inactive then now.

[Frozenbeef]

To compare with that how much do they make from subs?

[Chickat]

Sept 2012?

Omg thats terrible. Thats like having all of MoP and only getting the off patched instead....

[Pann]

I am a bit sceptical about the accuracy and validity of these figures as Blizzard have never released a breakdown but assuming they are accurate that is roughly 20% of WOW's yearly income and rivals, maybe even beating, the revenue from an expansion release all for a fraction of the development costs. No wonder they are keen to expand the cash shop and paid for services.

[hrugner]

Why should they go F2P if they make so much money from the system they already have?

Since this question is being asked a fair bit.

If Blizzard felt that their shop would make up the difference in a much larger market: everyone who ever had an active account versus everyone with a currently active account, then it would be a good idea to broaden their market. Also, if they felt that the fans they still had were willing to spend much more, they could focus more on the cash shop to milk those most loyal.

I don't think they are to that point quite yet, but maybe soon.

[Soulzar]

Because i think they could make more money by going ftp, and instead of 7 mill active accounts we would have 20+ mill.

7,000,000 x $15 = LOTS of $$$

20,000,000 x $0 = Not lots of $$$

I could see them potentially making Vanilla and perhaps one of the old dated expansions F2P as a replacement for the 10 day trial to help hook more people and still require subscription for current and/or more current content... but that's about it.

[Danifilth]

A subscription fee means less kids and more adults in the game. Play Rift Neverwinter and other free games and play other games that charge money. You would be able to tell the difference in attitude of the players

[Pann]

A subscription fee means less kids and more adults in the game. Play Rift Neverwinter and other free games and play other games that charge money. You would be able to tell the difference in attitude of the players

Hmm, I take it you run the game with trade chat turned off.

[Ronduwil]

So according to Gamespot, WoW made 213 million dollars from microtransactions alone in 2013. That's from services like realm transfer and pets/mounts.
I never thought these numbers could be so huge.
Is it finally time for WoW to go ftp?

Why would they do that? They're already making more off microtransactions than SWTOR which is primarily focused on microtransactions! Consider subscription revenues: 6.8 million subscribers * $12 per month * 12 months per year = $972 million per year on top of what they made off microtransactions. Why would they throw away almost 90% of their revenue to capitalize on just 10% of it?

[Sainur]

Money or not, if WoW ever goes F2P, it'll be the final nail in the coffin.

[Toiran]

WoW will clearly go F2P one day, as Chilton suggests, but it's exactly that, one day.

Not in the foreseeable future, planning for the future = good business, if they ignored the idea of F2P, it would be a mistake.

If you compare subscription income to the transaction income, it's not very surprising/shocking to be honest, seems about right, especially with the price of server transfers, which could clearly be £5 cheaper.

Also, optional in game purchases are perfectly fine in a sub based game.

I'd abandon WoW when it becomes F2P, because generally, it attracts an awful community, WoW's community is nowhere near as bad as some of those, nowhere near.

[Shuji V2]

Actually, I think that at this point Blizzard is realizing that F2P will become a very solid profit model for World of Warcraft. I also think that F2P will prove to be more profitable over a sub model as well.

Let's look at it this way, Blizzard continues the trend of releasing more overpriced mounts/pets/character services (transfers/lvl90/etc) to increase the revenue made if it would go F2P. When there are no subfees, players are more prone to spend it on additional services. It also means that WoW could easily quadruple the playerbase if not more. So if we won't be too optimistic, the microtransactions income could easily double. At the same time, it solves an additional problem of having empty realms so that would mean their server costs are well spend as well as solving a huge player problem.

It is true that it would mean that Blizzard loses the current 5mil subs, but they can still offer additional features based on a monthly sub (xx amount of XP pots, a new cosmetic transmog piece every month, xx increase run speed pot, additional character and bank slots, etc). So again, they increase the potential sub market as well.

Personally at this point I feel that World of Warcraft could become more profitable with a F2P model. The current one had it's days and imo, using both a sub and an F2P model just pisses people off the wrong way which only hurts them in the long run.

Another thing is, WoW has over 100mil unique players, so if this game would go F2P that means they would tap into their full playerbase and can even expand on that. You shouldn't write F2P off just because you don't like it. It's actually a very powerful way to increase profits. I also feel that if a company is able to pull it off without hurting the game experience, it is Blizzard.

But as I said before, they REALLY need to make up their minds whether they'll go f2p or stay sub based because the current model is just too much and won't get any customers back nor get a lot of new ones.