The numbers are lowering, the game is like 11 years old, and every good thing has its end. Do you think Blizzard will ever put it into the free-to-play format in a last resort, or they'd rather it die squeezing their last couple of million?
This seems like a duplicate topic, not sure though. Anyhow I don't see any benefit to the players or Blizzard by going free to play at this point.
I don't see the point going F2P at this point. Sure it's hemorrhaging number, but it's also an 11 year-old game. Moving to F2P will take a lot of time and resources to change the mechanics of the game, time and resources that can be better spent elsewhere. Otherwise, you'll end up with a mess like TOR when it first transitioned to F2P.
11 years. Wow. That's a lot. The game has to die sometime and I definitely think they'll switch to F2P before it does although I think that still won't have the effects they desire.
Honestly, the game made Blizzard an ungodly amount of money so far that I imagine switching to F2P won't come anytime soon even if it does happen at some points. People seem to forget that despite all the grim talk about it losing subscribers left and right, WoW still has 5.6 millions subscribers in Q2 2015. That's a lot more than many F2P games and way more than any other subscription game. Not to mention the spike in subscribers when they announce and release a new expansion (which you have to buy, in case you forget). So yeah, not going F2P anytime soon.
Well, sure, those are huge numbers, but I think that exactly because it made them that much money and they are able to earn a whole lot through other means, they might eventually switch to F2P. Not anytime soon though.
Since Blizzard is still doing pretty good in terms of subscribers, I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. But it's not impossible, maybe when the game starts to die.
As much as we like to say that WOW has lost half of their subscribers, you still have to remember that plenty of games like Ultima Online have 1/40th the amount of people and still have a subscription. I really doubt WOW will ever go F2P, the game is just not designed for it. Their costs and the amount of spam/harrassment that would take place would be too much for them to handle.
I think it will eventually but it will be a very long time from now. Probably in a decade or so when they have run it for so long and the options have run out they might try to rejuvenate it by changing the system into free to play but I doubt they have much reason to do it in the near future.
They could probably get to a point if they eliminate a lot of customer service and auxillary stuff where they could just do B2P with expansions.. you buy the expansion for 40 bucks and get a year of playtime. People vastly underestimate the cost of customer service and GMs in games like wow.
Very true. At this point they probably do need a lot of resources to keep the game running so unless they are able to change the system that it becomes self sustaining even as a free to play game it will probably take a lot of time.
That's a good point. Maybe that's why the game isn't F2P yet... But on the other end, Blizzard could make a lot of money just by selling pets and mounts...
Blizzard hasn't indicated in any way that they want or need to implement a f2p system. They are still bringing in a lot of money under the current setup. Any talk of going to f2p is just useless conjecture and wishful thinking at this point, or paranoia if you don't want it to be f2p.
I doubt it, but maybe. It could? But before that, I'd imagine they either release a second edition or start making all of the expansions free or super discounted. The game needs players to keep going, players aren't happy, etc. Leveling is ridiculous right now.
I really doubt they would do that with a second edition. They might expand the limited free play up to level 20, but separate editions or separate clients or servers isn't likely. SOE tried that with EQ2 when it went free to play, they ended up merging everything because separate editions and clients was a nightmare to manage.
Yeah, I think people underestimate how much of a headache it is for a dev team to maintain different rulesets and different clients, especially as a last ditch effort to save the game. Even in WOW today, they try like hell to avoid making a legacy server because they know how much effort it will take to maintain it.
I highly doubt that, as WoW has been a decade old money making machine, and it has racked tons of cash for the game developers and their companies. Why stop the flow of income just because the game is getting old and some fans are maybe getting bored? Just release a new DLC or area, a few new missions, and it will good as new.
I highly, highly doubt it. It still has a somewhat healthy population, and there are millions of people who are waiting for Legion. I imagine that once Legion releases, the sub number will go back up to at least 7 to 8 million, if not more. WoW itself just isn't a free to play game. There is no buy to win, and most cosmetic items you need to work towards (other than the few in the shop). The community is based around it being pay to play as well, as you actually get mature guilds and groups.
