WoW - Blizzard Rules Out F2P

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In a short interview on Eurogamer from BlizzCon 2013 comes the news World of Warcraft will not be going F2P. The reason just ask the seven million current subscribers.

Blizzard has ruled out making massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft free-to-play.

With the current trend for free-to-play coupled with WoW's falling subscriber numbers, some have expected Blizzard to bite the bullet and make its gargantuan MMO F2P.

But, speaking with Eurogamer at BlizzCon last night, key WoW developers insisted such a move was off the table.

"We didn't make the game to be free-to-play," production director J Allen Brack said.

"We would have to rework the game pretty significantly in order to make it free-to-play. It's not something we're currently considering."

While World of Warcraft remains a subscription-based game, it is in part free-to-play. The first 20 levels of the game are free as part of the Starter Edition - a feature that was seen as WoW'S first step on the road to full F2P.

This week Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime announced WoW had shed another 100,000 subscribers over the last three months. It now has around 7.6 million subscribers.

While subscriber numbers have reduced steadily over recent years, World of Warcraft remains the world's most popular subscription MMO nine years into its life, and Blizzard said it was investing more resources into its ongoing development than ever before.

"Player response to the content has been good, and we saw increased engagement that has contributed to maintaining relatively stable subscribership quarter-over-quarter," Morhaime said.

"We'll continue to invest heavily in World of Warcraft to deliver frequent, high-quality content to our players."

He added: "But in terms of the content and developing, we have more resources focused on developing content for World of Warcraft than ever before. So we expect to continue having a long and happy life."
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When their subscription base dips below 1 million I bet they will reconsider.
 
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At the rate they have been losing subscribers it will go below 1 million well before 10 years and when they come out with their new mmo it will probably take a big chunk of their subscribers from WOW.
 
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Oh no the game that I will never pay for is never gonna turn into the game I will never pay for.

Well that was confusing to type. OT: Turning it into F2P is just gonna make it worse. Once they start going into "Holy shit we have to save the Cash Cow!" mode then it's gonna be really bad.
 
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Not currently considering != ruling out.
Not my title blame Eurogamer it's theirs I just took a part of it for the news-bit. Matter of fact I didn't even read the article. ;)
 
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They still have a solid (and paying) playerbase, so why would they think about F2P. Although I have no doubt that if the subscription numbers fall, they will consider it.
 
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I know I just felt like posting a reply and I did.;)

To get back on topic I don't see Wow going to go F2P as Blizzard announced two more expansions. They would need less than a million subscribers, and that's not happening anytime soon.

Here is the link on the expansions, and their plans for WOW in the future.

Link-http://www.incgamers.com/2013/11/world-warcraft-aiming-annual-expansions-two-planned

Soon? Most likely not.

Ever? Unless the general perception suits and many gamers have of F2P: Very likely.

In 100 years, how many subscribers will WoW have?
 
how many subscribers does Ultima Online still have? That went F2P awhile back but both sequels got axed because EA didn't think it would gain many new subscribers, the costs would be higher, and it would just cannibalize the then current base.

Basically, instead of competing with EQ they put Jay Leno on at 10.
 
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Not too surprising, they are nowhere close to the point where going F2P would be logical. As always they are losing a lot of subscribers at the end of their current expansion and they will gain a lot of new ones at the beginning of the next one. At some point a new big game will have to replace it, but there are no signs of that happening anytime in the foreseeable future.
 
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I imagine they can continue upgrading the game ad infinitum, including adding new tech to the client engine, that's backwards compatible for older platforms. To attract new customers though, they are going to have to do something new that's really spectacular.
 
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At this point I think they need to start considering how to bring former players back rather than trying to bring new customers in. One of the basic principals of business is it's easier to retain customers than recruit new ones.
 
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how many subscribers does Ultima Online still have? That went F2P awhile back

It's F2P now ? Oops, I might have missed that ... Maybe I should take a look at it ... ?
 
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