Recent developments in the MMO industry have led some to believe that World of Warcraft will one day indeed become free-to-play. The addition of micro-transactions in the form of the Blizzard Pet Store as well as several notable games such as Lord of the Rings Online switching to the free-to-play model have stoked the embers of the discussion.
Are micro-transactions like the Pandaren Monk pet the future of Warcraft?
A recent news story on pcgamer.com features some quotes from WoW lead designer Tom Chilton who even goes as far as saying that, “at some point, it may not make sense for us to have a subscription fee.” These are some strong words from someone in the know and they lend credibility to the WoW free-to-play prophets.
I’ve personally had several discussions with a somewhat deranged individual who claimed that WoW would become free-to-play eventually. Generally I would scoff at him and call him crazy but I may have to eat my words, although it does seem that Chilton and the rest of the Blizzard team realize that this is not an option for the near future. With Cataclysm around the corner, the Warcraft well is far from dry and so far the nature of the free-to-play model has been a way to stay competitive. World of Warcraft is still beyond competitive.
The implementation of the micro-transaction free-to-play model is a scary proposition to me personally. One thing that makes WoW so wonderful is the fact that everyone starts at the same ground level and what you do from there is what sets you apart from the rest of the players. If there were a division on what content was available based upon the amount of money a player was willing to spend then I believe many players would step away from the game. However, if the micro-transactions were limited to aesthetic items and novelties then I do believe that WoW could stay profitable if the day comes when it is not the undisputed subscriber king of the MMO landscape.
It’s always going to be tricky to change the way a game is distributed so drastically but if Blizzard has proved anything over the lifetime of World of Warcraft it is that they are thoughtful and deliberate about making these sorts of decisions and I expect that will not change anytime soon.
What do you guys think? Post some comments and share your opinions.
I agree with you that the Microtransaction/F2P model is scary.. but if they do it right and stick to cosmetics and accessories for extra cash, it could work out very well. The feeling and greatness of WoW would be ruined, in my opinion, if they had the option of paying for extra raid content. That being said, i don’t think a F2P model is very near.. only after WoW starts dying out a bit will F2P become viable.
I think that if Blizzard did move to the free-to-play model it would be a mistake. LotRO moved to f2p because of DDO’s success with the system. However, i think the reason that it worked so well for these games is that WoW is still the big daddy. People are going to hold onto their WoW accounts and while they may have interest in other games, can’t afford more than one and if they have to choose, WoW is it. If WoW moves to f2p I think they will lose a lot of casual players. Also, LotRO and DDO both have an older demographic (the average player age is older). WoW is still the preferred MMO for young people, who might just turn off their subscriptions if it doesn’t mean theyre locked out of the game.
I know this is going to be long and winded, but please hear me out.
WoW better not go F2P… F2P is awful. micro transactions are horrible and that is the main thing that ruins F2P games and companies alike. The company begins to gear the game towards making micro transactions being almost mandatory just to compete with other players and the next thing you know you’re spending far more than the $15 a month. Sure by doing this they increase their revenue and profits but in my experience it causes the company to become greedy, pushes players to leave the game, destroys the population, destroys the in-game economy, and destroys the gameplay. It also allows big spenders the chance to make the gameplay imbalanced based on how much they are willing to spend. That in my opinion would ruin the game and force a lot of players to quit WoW.
The first time I ran into F2P issues was nearly 4 years ago. The company was netgame and the game was Legend Of Ares. Their micro transactions were not the issue. The main issue was their lack of customer support and their neglect of bug fixes and fighting hackers. Eventually the company decided they didn’t want to invest in tactics to fight hacking or just eliminate the problem via hack prevention software and they shut down the game.
The fact that WoW is P2P is an important reason why myself and my friends play it. We are all former F2P gamers and went through the hardships of spending at minimum $30-40 a month just to compete with other players. The most recent company was YNK Ineractive(aka YNK Korea), the game was R.O.H.A.N. Online, probably one of the most pvp oriented pc games out there. My friends and i spent upwards of $500 to $1,000 throughout one year playing that game. the company got greedy and over 2 years neglected to fix known in game bugs and wouldn’t nerf one class in particular that they used as a cash cow because of their overpowered strength. They also took a very long time to get very little content out, and what they did implement was cash shop oriented. Their cash shop consisted of items with 30 day durations that increased stats making them far better than the non spending casual player and cost anywhere from $3 to $8 each and they all stacked. This geared the game towards people practically needing those items to keep up with other players. Recently they had implemented “Epic” weapons that were far beyond anything you could create inside the game and sold them in their cash shop for $230, increasing the bar of pvp and completely imbalancing the gameplay. They did that to increase revenue because they had chased so many players away and were at risk of going bankrupt because of it.
Finally my friends and I got tired of throwing our money away so we quit, for a while we tried other F2P MMO’s, and it just didn’t have what we were looking for. A friend of ours had been playing WoW for quite some time and we had always picked fun at him for it until one day i decided to check out the trial because i was bored. I fell in love. It was something new, fresh, balanced, and there was a lot of content to explore unlike most other games. I convinced my other friends to come check it out and well, the rest is history. We found what we wanted and we are enjoying every bit of it without worrying about what is being done with the money we spend and we’re not forced into spending heavy amounts just to have fun.
P2P is what keeps WoW on it’s pedestal and i hope it stays that way forever. I see bad things happening with LOTRO to be honest. F2P might increase your population but greed, neglect, and imbalance will force people to drop your game like flies and the next thing you know you could be struggling to keep the game and possibly the company alive. I see no harm done with the implementation of the pet store as that is more of a novelty aspect of the game instead of something that gives brings an unbalancing rift to the gameplay, but don’t go F2P and rely on micro transactions. It’s bad news in the long run, and that’s from the player/customer experience aspect.
Sorry for writing a novel, and it probably won’t make it on the podcast but i wanted to give my honest opinion coming from a long time F2P gamer and now a P2P gamer.
If WoW went F2P tomorrow i know for a fact my friends and i were just quit and probably play an inferior game called Aion for the mere fact that it’s P2P.
The only way I can see WoW go F2P is when the game has hit a point where there simply is not a major interest in WoW, and the cost to bring quality content is no longer cost productive in relation to paying customers, that or the popularity of the game takes a huge plunge and the only way to bring in profit wold be pure by micro transactions.
In my opinion I do not see this being the case for quite some time still.
F2p is where mmo’s go to die because they simply could not innovate in the shadow of World of Warcraft. Will WoW go f2p, yes, but by then Blizzard will have released a new mmo which will be subscription based and populated by former WoW players. The fact is that f2p simply does not mesh with Blizzard’s gameplay/community philosophy. It (f2p) interrupts gameplay fluidity, kills immersion and can create socio-economic classes within the game that fragment and destroy community.
When my friend was first trying to get me to play, the biggest financial obstacle was paying for all three editions of the game (vanilla, BC, and WotLK) just to get started. Buying the first 2 games, when the content I really wanted to play was in the 3rd was more annoying then the subscription fee. I understand they don’t want to give the games away, but they should sell them at a very low price.
I think when Chilton says “at some point, it may not make sense for us to have a subscription fee”, it means, when we have the new mmo, D3, SCII all running strong and WoW might have dwindled in popularity only then will they open up that model. I don’t see his quote as anything in the near future. As many of the great posts above have said, F2F is code word for garbage. I would much rather pay 15$ a month and get EVERYTHING in the game then have to pick and choose what areas or classes I want to do, and have the hastle of going somewhere to pay for them.
As long as WoW have anywhere in millions of subscribers and they plan on releasing new content for it, they won’t give away the golden goose. WWBK do? (What would Bobby Kotick Do? You think they would ever let this happen?) I am happy to spend 15$ a month for the best quality game out there and I think enough people are too.
No. Just froma pure business perspective, it is not possible for WoW to go F2P. Blizzard would have to replace that revenue stream with some other IP. That new IP would have to generate the same revenue and by default consume equivalent resources in order to replace WoW. So therefore, WoW going F2P would not be 1) cost effective and 2)it would consume resources that could be used to generate revenue. Not a good business decision.
In laymen terms:Right now you go to work, earn a paycheck and pay bills. Now imagine that I offer you the same job, making slightly more money and I ask you to continue to work (part time just a few hours on the weekends) at your old job.
Blizzard (like everyone else) is subject to the same “psuedo economic” principle: DEBT RISES TO MEET INCOME. With the current structure of the Blizzard company it’s not possible for them to make “less money” and still survive. The revenue from the WoW IP is just too massive – what is now – like 8 million plus subscribers (conservative esitmate of course!) at $15 per month. And you want to try to give that up?? If I owned some Vivendi, and if they went F2P, I’d sell tomorrow.
I saw this coming, because it makes sense. I had a discussion with other WOW players a few months back about this possibility (F2P). Time will pass as the game gets older and Blizzard will be moving forth in venturing with new ideas that are not WOW related. The game cannot decease totally. Almost everyone likes to go back to the old school days of their favorite games and for that, too many people are attached to WOW. I wouldn’t worry about this version of the game getting too old even 5 years from now. Scott Johnson said in a recent episode, that WOW is getting long in the tooth. I disagree. For other games that are more standard for game consoles, this is true. RPG’s die slowly. They do not get “long in the tooth”. They just don’t work that way. There are still gamers that go back to the earlier Final Fantasy’s, Dragon’s Quest, Dragon Warrior (the list goes on). WOW will just be another one of those classics. People go back to them. Warcraft has been around for 15 some years and do you think they are going to stop with this? I would assume the answer to be, No.
the player base has to shrink drastically for the bean counters to want to give up that monthly income.
I agree with ZionCor. In our family (my wife and I and our two children) started playing F2P MMO’s three years ago. We started playing MapleStory. OMG all the little crap that they make you pay for, Store you you can sell your stuff in game (like the acution house) pets, etc. In that game and in ROHAN when you die you loose exp ALOT of exp. But wait you can buy safety charms for only $3 for 10 so when you die you don’t loose exp. Tired of grinding for ever on the same monster to level, Wait you can buy a 4 hour 2x exp card for $3. 99% of things in the F2P world and not really yours when you buy it either. When you buy it, they expire in 30 or 60 or 90 days and you have to buy them again.
Like ZionCor We too (the family) played ROHAN for a year. I won’t go into details but ROHAN was free to play, but it was PAY to WIN. The big gear and weapon enchants you had to pay for special stone you had to buy to use guild buffs.
We were paying, sometimes up to $200 a month for all of us to have a good gaming exprience.
We LOVE WoW. It is cheaper and the in game items are just that IN GAME. After playing these other games and coming to WoW, OMG the amount of content is awsome. WoW has more things for you to do in game then the other two mentioned games put together.
I did get red in the face and a nervous twitch the the in game mount and pets start showing up. I thought here we go again. But the one thing that is different about Blizzard’s pets and mount that you pay for is, they don’t expire and all your toons get it. (oh that’s two things
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STOP THE F2P INSANITY!
I don’t think F2P is going to be a realistic dream of the players, nor do I think it is any kind of goal for the company. Blizzard makes money from subscriptions, and that is the bottom line. They may at some point reduce the monthly fee to $10./month, or have online payment mean a discount price, (like the difference between physical cards and online payment for XBOX LIVE, but WoW will most likely never be actually/absolutely free.
As always, micro-transactions even just in concept bother me, especially as stated if they were to move beyond cosmetic changes for characters. That I hope is not the direction this company hopes to move into, when they so clearly have a successful operation now.
this article was written a year ago, & even then it’s untrue that wow has a fair leveling ground for all players, some players r able to equip better armor/weapon bought with real money at the store w/c makes them better geared for pvp, w/c is why rude idiots who think they’re better than others (& there r a lot of these idiots) would challenge any player that they encounter, by my reaction to these idiots, i’d say it happens every time i go into town
i’m glad i stopped subscribing to wow, now i play lotro w/c is better than wow in terms of crafting & pve, the items i craft in lotro, i can use coz they’re better than quest rewards & makes me look good unlike wow w/c r all junk subject only for disenchanting, the only time wow’s crafted items becomes worthy of use is near endgame & thats level 60 up & by that time ur toon would have died several times & in my opinion, death means lousy player. typical for wow, since the game celebrates death too much.
but eventually with the success of ddo & lotro, wow will shift to f2p sooner than later, i just hope the hard pvp ballers stay with wow, dont need idiots like those creeps in lotro