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Will WoW be F2P/Nonsubscription Game?

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I am asking this to myself cause i see a lot of awesome f2p games like TERA and nonsubscription games like Guild Wars.


1) So do you think blizzard will join the WoW to F2P/Nonsubscription games?..

2) Why they should?

My answer

1) Yes..

2) If they won't a time will come where no one will play WoW and play games that are more awesome and F2P or they don't need to pay subscription fee.

I myself admit that it would rather play Guildwars than WoW since both of them give enjoyment and entertainment but the GW save you more money.. or even TERA where you don't need to buy it..
 
(1) I don't think they want to detract from the hype over expansions. They definitely won't make the game F2P. They might give an unlimited trial up to a certain point (they already do, up to lvl 20. They should increase it to lvl 40 or so), but there is no reason to make the actual latest game F2P. I doubt it would bring in as much money ($15 * 5-11 million subscribers each month). Other MMO's actually had to be F2P just to compete with WoW. WoW doesn't really have that incentive, since it still dominates the MMO world. They'll just follow their formula: chug out expansions and content sooner. They've made great progress with the game, I think most of my months were worth the $15.

(2) I disagree with the idea that it will die. Unless they literally stop updating it, I don't think it will die. Even if they stop updating it, I am confident there will be a following (e.g. wc3, sc1). Anyway, Blizzard will always have something in store to appeal to players, and players do tend to come back. Even the most unpopulated servers become filled once expansions hit. They've lowered the gaps between seasons and expansions, so they actually got an increase in subscriptions last quarter (I think).

And about other games taking its place--it isn't that simple. Even if the game is an exact replica, it doesn't mean people will move over. People are already attached to it. WoW is "the MMO". People won't have much incentive to move over to some random game they don't know anything about. That is why people thought SWTOR could actually become popular. People did have an interest already established in Star Wars (the game itself fell a little short of expectations, though).

Long story short, franchises tend to remain strong as long as they are updated. Warcraft will stay as the MMO. Starcraft will stay as the RTS. CoD/Battlefield will stay as the FPS (Halo occasionally, and maybe some games that are hyped up e.g. Titanfall). Legend of Zelda/Mario will remain as the adventure games (hooray!). This doesn't mean that other games can't get popular. Rather, it just means that the only thing that can dethrone them is themselves.
 

Chaosy

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1. no

reasons:
- f2p games get a younger community
- something you dont pay for is not something you value meaning even though WoW get many new players most of them would leave.
- since its blizzard they can use a sub fee + ingame stuff + the expansions themselves cost cash there is not reason for them to change.
- WoW will still be running for many years and once its dead I think they will release titan and not care about WoW anymore. Either closing it or letting it remain the same way. (with like 1-3 realms max)
 
I still don't think Titan will end WoW. I can't imagine 30+ realms suddenly compressing into 1-3. And even so, there is no reason why Titan and WoW can't coexist. For small companies, yeah they'll usually ditch their old projects to work on the new ones, but Blizzard is large and can afford to have multiple projects going on at the same time. And since Titan isn't a direct sequel to WoW, I doubt that everyone will drop WoW in favor of it.
 

Chaosy

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Titan was restarted from scratch even after blizzard already worked on it for a year or two. You wont see titan in stores in 5 years if not more. (took 7 years to develop diablo 3 if I remember the numbers right) by that time wow will be less popular than it currently is. (unless blizzard does something really amazing o_O)

We should be happy if there is 10 realms left by that time. Just look at the player loss.
 
Titan was restarted from scratch even after blizzard already worked on it for a year or two. You wont see titan in stores in 5 years if not more. (took 7 years to develop diablo 3 if I remember the numbers right) by that time wow will be less popular than it currently is. (unless blizzard does something really amazing o_O)

We should be happy if there is 10 realms left by that time. Just look at the player loss.

It's gone up last quarter in subscribers. And I'm pretty sure people will come in for WoD.
 
Personally, no matter how much I kinda hate the subscription system, I'd say that WoW won't die from that. And yeah, there's no benefit for Blizzard if they make WoW F2P... and you know, some (or most) F2P games rely on cash items for fundings, sometimes to the point that it becomes a question of who's richer in the real world... which is quite a sad thing...
 
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Personally, I think that WoW should be free to play. Here are my reasons:
WoW is slowly dying. There are more than enough free to play MMORPGs that are definitely better. Blizzard is just piling on more and more expansions that are ruining the game. Every expansion after WotLK make no sense to me (especially the Mists of Pandaria expansion). They changed the talent trees in both Cataclysm and MoP which I find a mistake, changing a perfectly fine talent tree system into something... Silly. No one new to MMORPGs is going to play WoW, definitely those who first played WoW when it came out in 2004 are going to play it now. Plus, pirate / private servers are killing it.
So, if Blizzard wants new people to play WoW they should make it a free to play game. My personal opinion.
 
Personally, I think that WoW should be free to play. Here are my reasons:
WoW is slowly dying. There are more than enough free to play MMORPGs that are definitely better. Blizzard is just piling on more and more expansions that are ruining the game. Every expansion after WotLK make no sense to me (especially the Mists of Pandaria expansion). They changed the talent trees in both Cataclysm and MoP which I find a mistake, changing a perfectly fine talent tree system into something... Silly. No one new to MMORPGs is going to play WoW, definitely those who first played WoW when it came out in 2004 are going to play it now. Plus, pirate / private servers are killing it.
So, if Blizzard wants new people to play WoW they should make it a free to play game. My personal opinion.

Well, we'd all like it to be free to play (who wants to pay for the game?). But I don't think it'll happen (at least not fully-featured).

Btw, you should try out the expansions. The talent systems upset a lot of PvE'ers who liked to stack % bonuses, but it is a lot of fun for PvP and dungeons. Overall, I'm quite happy with the changes they've made over time. I also didn't have interest in MoP but I still had a lot of fun during it.

As for the F2P MMORPG's that are "better", that is subjective. I have yet to play a free MMO that gave me the same enjoyment as WoW. They killed time, at the most.

Private servers are actually pretty neat in their current state. You get to enjoy older expansions (because it is increasingly difficult to keep up with the patches). Try out a vanilla server. ;D
 
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blizzard has lately been trying to get more and more money out of its products and this has reflected on their content. maybe they are just greedy or need money for whatever new game they are working on but the fact remains that they have the game which brings in the highest revenue and the monthly subscription system does not cause anything negative in terms of profit (apparently). so unless some other game out there manages to put wow in its shadow i doubt blizzard will change its subscription model
 
F2P's are better?

For you maybe...

I've been playing F2Ps since years ago, and I've yet to find one that is fun to play. Most of them are haven for rich kids that can use the cash shop, that it takes most fun from it. You want good items? Buy from the cash shop... You want good mounts? Wings? Buy from the cash shop...

And I've also seen a P2P game turn F2P, Ragnarok Online... All I can say is that ever since it started to go F2P, the quality and the fun factor has been seriously decreasing

WoW is WoW, is that simple.
 
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Well for me i think not all FREE RPG wants to clone WoW..

For example.. Guild Wars 2 has a good quest system.. and interactive one... and they have a good ability system.. TERA use non auto attack system which is fun...

Well WoW has some really original features... but their features is surpassed by the new features of new RPG's that are nonsubscription and f2p...

The disadvantage of players in WoW... is that they are force to grind just make their money worth of the subscription..

Well but as they said BUSINESS IS BUSINESS.. and i am sure they won't game as much money
 

Dr Super Good

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It will become so eventually. Blizzard even said they will consider it when it loses popularity (when "titan" over takes it, if it even does).

If people are happy playing subscriptions then there is no need to gear the game towards micro transactions. When people become unhappy, then is the time.

Eventually I might even try out WoW, even if it takes 4 times as long to get somewhere as it did with the subscriptions. Just for the experience it may be great and I know it is of a good quality unlike a lot of the "free to play" mmorpgs made.
 
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No it will probably not become a f2p game. An ex dev friend of mine (of wow) told me that they pay a lot to keep the servers up. Money also goes into peoples salaries and then game development, but really, do you really need money to think up new lore? :)
 
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This hole F2P or better said Pay to Win is about milking people for money.

If you have a "F2P" game yet the things you add don`t give a definitive advantage to those that buy then they they will not buy it, thus you make no money.

There is no such thing as free things.

The only thing Blizzard could do, and should do in my opinion, is to have a tiers of available content.

Tier 1 - free of charge - can level character up to max level but you don`t have access t any BG, Dungeon or Raid of any kind.

Tier 2A - 3, 4 Euros - dungeons raid Finder, Normal raids

Tier 3A -10 Euros, heroic Raids, changed more complex raids with more complicated strategies

Tier 2B - 3, 4 Euros - Normal BGs

Tier 3B - 10 Euros - Rated BGs and Arena

Tier 4 - 15 Euros - access to everything

Just an example on how they can make the game more accessible.

13 Euros isn't much for someone from Western EU, Eastern EU can afford it too but only 3 or 4 Euros for your casual Raider or BGer sounds much better.
 
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1) No they are too greedy to do that
2) It would be awesome if they do so, but sadly they wont. Actually there is one thing if they would make it so that you buy the game and thats it you dont have to pay every month they i would gladly buy the game, but with this crappy every month paying thing i cant buy the game.
 
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1) No they are too greedy to do that
2) It would be awesome if they do so, but sadly they wont. Actually there is one thing if they would make it so that you buy the game and thats it you dont have to pay every month they i would gladly buy the game, but with this crappy every month paying thing i cant buy the game.
With all the respect, they have over 200 serves in North America alone, let`s not even talk about Europe and Asia.

They need permanent hardware to run and it needs to be maintained and people surveying the games for hacks etc.

They have thousands of people if not tens of thousands taking care of WoW and making sure it works well.

It`s not that hard to grasp the fact that they need money for those sort of things - salaries, replacing hardware, major patches, developing further expansions and making a profit ( DUHH ! ) etc.
 
And take a look at most "F2P" MMO's out there, a number of them are infested with a huge amount of bugs that the developers know of, but they don't fix it right away, possibly because they don't have enough money to pay for the overtime needed to fix all of those...

and the whole system works for WoW, because it is WoW...
 
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The game is already a premium pay to play that not only requires a monthly subscription but also charges some of the highest prices for microtransactions in the market, why on earth would they make it a f2p when they get away with that ?
 
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1) So do you think blizzard will join the WoW to F2P/Nonsubscription games?..
2) Why they should?
  1. NO!, I think they will never do it.
  2. They Shouldn't, plus they already have its free up to 20, but with all the free private servers out there, Blizzard would more likly shut it completly down and force players to play on a new WoW MMO, which I also believe will never happen. They simply transfer all the accounts over to the new MMO, keep subscriptions and make money!
That's Activision for ya!

Now, lets take this into a different approach, Say Blizzard didn't have the partnership with Activision, and it was Just blizzard making the calls..
I think they would reveal that wow would become F2P, but not before adding a new MMO at the same time, giving players a choice to play one or the other (being you could play both, but time consuming you yourself would just play one over the other) and of course Blizzard would make the NEW MMO AWESOME!

That's just who Blizzard is! they love to give to the fans, they gave more then they took, which resulted in an awesome game company!
I hold nothing personal against Activision either, just business is business.
 
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Now, lets take this into a different approach, Say Blizzard didn't have the partnership with Activision, and it was Just blizzard making the calls..
I don`t want to come out as rude but I think you really need to inform yourself better about what is a Holding company.

Blizzard and Activision are both owned by the same mother company from France.The mother company wanted to reorganise their game making studios so they have Activision swallow all of their other studios while Blizzard was left alone.

But Blizzard was open to cooperation up to a degree so they created a Holding company called Blizzard-Activision, basically Blizzard and Activision are both listed at the New York Stock Exchange under the name of the Holding company.

What the majority of people fail miserably at is when they actually assume that Activision has any influence over Blizzard.Both companies are completely autonomous.
 
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I don`t want to come out as rude but I think you really need to inform yourself better about what is a Holding company.

Blizzard and Activision are both owned by the same mother company from France.The mother company wanted to reorganise their game making studios so they have Activision swallow all of their other studios while Blizzard was left alone.

But Blizzard was open to cooperation up to a degree so they created a Holding company called Blizzard-Activision, basically Blizzard and Activision are both listed at the New York Stock Exchange under the name of the Holding company.

What the majority of people fail miserably at is when they actually assume that Activision has any influence over Blizzard.Both companies are completely autonomous.
Hehe ok w/e you say :)
 
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Yeah, sure, because a post on mmo-champion is more valid than the official contract.

It`s not a contest about who knows more.We are talking about facts here, Blizzard might not have Activision`s size but it`s not a company made of 10 underfeed employees either.

Judging by how slow they are releasing WoD and how much it took for them to release Heart of the Swarm it`s safe to assume that current Blizzard is mostly the ond Blizzard we are used to.
 
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Yeah, sure, because a post on mmo-champion is more valid than the official contract.

It`s not a contest about who knows more.We are talking about facts here, Blizzard might not have Activision`s size but it`s not a company made of 10 underfeed employees either.

Judging by how slow they are releasing WoD and how much it took for them to release Heart of the Swarm it`s safe to assume that current Blizzard is mostly the ond Blizzard we are used to.
Look you were the one coming across rude and trying to explain something I already knew, except I just felt different about it opinion wise. I simply said ok whatever, and gave ya a link explaining other people have different opinions about this.

This entire topic is about my opinion of which I gave, your directly targeting my opinion and trying to say I'm wrong. If that is your opinion, fine. Try to focus on the thread topic, not on my opinion ok?

Beyond that I did not care to even read what your writing, that is the end of our discussion, if you have any further issues with it, please feel free to take them out of the thread and send them via VM/PM, but leave it out of this thread.
 
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Look you were the one coming across rude and trying to explain something I already knew, except I just felt different about it opinion wise. I simply said ok whatever, and gave ya a link explaining other people have different opinions about this.

This entire topic is about my opinion of which I gave, your directly targeting my opinion and trying to say I'm wrong. If that is your opinion, fine. Try to focus on the thread topic, not on my opinion ok?

Beyond that I did not care to even read what your writing, that is the end of our discussion, if you have any further issues with it, please feel free to take them out of the thread and send them via VM/PM, but leave it out of this thread.
Well, you don`t have to like me, you just need to understand that from a technical point of view Blizzard is 100% autonomous and you people need to pay attention to the contracts rather than start ranting and blaming Activision for something they have 0 say over.
 
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