World of Warcraft®

So, World of Warcraft has always been a Subscription-based MMO.
Rather, it is The Subscription-Based MMO, as it is very hard for other MMOs to compete with World of Warcrafts stranglehold on this payment method. (Yes, I am aware of RIFT, SW:TOR and EVE etc.)


It is not a secret that WoWs popularity is declining and there's always been an amount of Warcraft fans that simply can't afford paying the monthly fee. I for one think it's about time WoW starts embracing competition on full scale for once and prove that a king actually CAN live forever.

So here's a crazy idea that might leave you writing hateful comments all night: What if WoW removed the monthly payment and instead became a "pay-once and play forever"?
They'd have to upgrade their Cash Shop in order to keep the game profitable, but this can easily be done considering the new transmogrification feature.

They could pull off a cash shop easily. I've seen a couple of great amateur modellers make amazing models for World of Warcraft on various fansites and youtube. Hire them.
Altough, I would strongly recommend avoiding implementing anything other than cosmetical items in the Cash Shop. No experience boosts or PvP boosts. Making the game Pay-to-win would be unfair.

Also, Expansions should not be free. Just my opinion again, but reducing the cost of expansions would make Blizzard give too much focus on the Cash Shop instead of new content as the Cash Shop would be they're only profit off this game.

So, a quick summary of my idea: To play World of Warcraft you'll only have to pay for the game and expansions, no subscription fee, and you can buy ingame cosmetical items to improve the look of your character.

Yeah I guess it could go that way. When another MMO totally outperforms it. And that's been attempted by many for quite a long time, sadly no one came even close. But when it occurs, I guess it's possible to go full F2P.

Can it? Yes. Should it? No. Would I keep on playing if it did? Probably not.

15/05/2012 12:46Posted by Brujeria

Can it? Yes. Should it? No. Would I keep on playing if it did? Probably not.

Pretty much this.

15/05/2012 12:42Posted by Icehorn

It is not a secret that WoWs popularity is declining

You clearly haven't seen the latest demograph then.

[quote="40781110755]It is not a secret that WoWs popularity is declining [/quote]

Not sure that you're right there. There are fewer subscribers than at the end of TBC, but not by a massive percentage. I see no reason for Blizzard to introduce F2P in a more serious fashion unless there were a significant reduction in numbers. I'm sure it will happen one day, but I dont think anytime soon.

15/05/2012 12:42Posted by Icehorn

It is not a secret that WoWs popularity is declining

Wrong. New statistics show the population is starting to stabilize significantly again and popularity and commerical awareness is rising with the coming of Mists of Pandaria.
Especially the popularity in Asia -for obvious reasons- is catered and with its large population and vast developing economies this has all in all been a great move.

15/05/2012 12:42Posted by Icehorn

WoW removed the monthly payment and instead became a "pay-once and play forever"?

Why would Blizzard remove such an incredibly profitable concept?

So, a quick summary of my idea: To play World of Warcraft you'll only have to pay for the game and expansions, no subscription fee, and you can buy ingame cosmetical items to improve the look of your character.

Then you can kiss Maintenence and Fixxes goodbye

NO TY

F2P would mean the end of wow, games only go that way when they need lots of players to justify the game, wow dont need to go down that route, then with F2P games the people will pay alot for the armour so you can have someone who has paid alot of money for the best armour before they brought out new armour beating players who dont pay for the armour, the way blizz has got it is just right.

small subscription fee everyone has a chance if they are willing to put the work in for the best armour, everyone is treated the same by blizz, so in fact F2P would kill wow.

I imagine F2P will become a reality with wow, but that is still a long way away. Only once all expansions are released, and it is stated that there will be no more, and numbers drop down much much lower than they are now (at the very least below a million) would I say it would be the way to go. That is still some years away.

I don't think it is a good thing in terms of what we would get out of it, and I'm very happy to subscribe right til the end, but I do see it as a way to go at some point in the not so near future.

Edit:

Why would Blizzard remove such an incredibly profitable concept?

There are increased rumbling because of the relatively imminent release of Guild Wars 2, which will not have a sub fee. However there are a lot of differences in terms of how the game is built, and the nature of company that makes GW2, that can be seen as being behind that decision and why it is good for them. Those reasons are not necessarily applicable to WoW and Blizz

It will never go F2P. Blizzard will close down the servers before that happens.

When it stops being profitable Blizzard have 3 ways to go,

Sell the franchise
Shut it down
Make it Free to Play and make the money to keep it going by selling vanity and a very limited amount of useful ingame items.

15/05/2012 13:15Posted by Industria

It will never go F2P. Blizzard will close down the servers before that happens.

Actually, i think they said at Blizzcon it would be something they may consider when the time is right. I don't think its within any companies thoughts to shutdown a product that could continue to be profitable in a different form. Certainly Bobby "To hell with fun" Kotick would squeeze the money out of it in the same way as others would wring a towel.

I'm confident it will happen, but it is a long way off yet.

Well it certainly wouldn't do any favours for their reputation if they throw their lot in with the cheap Korean developers.

or just reduce the monthly cost alot. that way people would buy something this good, that cheap, and blizz would still recieve big money.

The day that a single server in a corner can handle wow, the day popularity has waned due to better and more modern games have been released, that day all you would need would be a battlenet account, updates and fixes would be close to non existent, but wow 16.4 would have fewer bugs and the player base would be more forgiving.
But dont bet that it happens in the next couple of years. The server code has been rewritten a few times, the client code is under constant change, all in all the game is pretty resillient to improvements in client hardware/server hardware.

15/05/2012 13:53Posted by Smiting

or just reduce the monthly cost alot. that way people would buy something this good, that cheap, and blizz would still recieve big money.

Reduce the cost by half and you need twice as many subscribers to make the exact same money.

And then that means you likely need more servers, more GMs, more Community managers, and more people just being there to say "No dave, this is how you get out of that bug".

It will not happen for a LONG time.
When WoW is actually dying, it will be a F2P.

And even then, "dying" for WoW will still be ~4 million subscribers, which is still more than most other MMOs put together right now.

Free to Play will not happen unless it is the best way to make money, and that will not happen unless 90+% of the population leave.

I know this kind of F2P...yes the game is free, but if you want anything nice you have to buy it with real money and thus spending WAY more on that then an actual subscription would have cost in the long run.
So you're either stuck with a boiled down game, or an even more expensive game that's supposedly free.

Posted by Smiting
or just reduce the monthly cost alot. that way people would buy something this good, that cheap, and blizz would still recieve big money.

A. Will you quit playing if they don't make it cheaper?

B. Do you think a substantional amount of players will leave if the price isn't reduced given the fact some of them are used to this and never had a problem with it for over 5 years?

C. If you'd sell an item on ebay would you go for the biggest money or not? What do you think a company like Blizzard would do?

I personally will keep playing and I don't have an issue with the price. I would however insta leave if the servers became even more crowded with younger children. Face it, young children don't own credit cards ...
The people who keep paying wow also feel as if wow is sth more than other games. (I know, not a fact, don't shoot me for it, if you think different of it, np) At least I do, wow is just ... wow, it's more than a game to me and I'm willing to keep paying for it.
So no (B) I don't think that the number of players that would leave w/o price reduction would be higher than those who'd leave if the quality was reduced (more).
I think C speaks for itself. Every company wants money!

F2P is an act of desperation and wow isn't down the gutter far enough for that. There'll prob come a time when they will be but as for now they are still on top of the foodchain