WoW - Blizzard Considering Micro-transactions

Couchpotato

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Oh my it's the end of the world. Blizzard Community Manager Zarhym confirmed on the official Battle.net forums for World of Warcraft that the company is considering adding in-game micro-transactions to the title. This follows the recent mention of an "In Game Store" in an item's description.

We are currently exploring the possibility of adding a way for players in certain regions to make purchases directly within the game. As part of this process, elements related to this will be appearing on the PTR. We’ll provide additional updates on our plans as development progresses.
More information.
 
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Hpefully this means that they are going to the F2P model since if they keep with only subscriptions and do micro-transactions like other games have they probably will run into legal problems. The only reason there are no problems with the hybrid model is because it is both F2P and subscription based.
 
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Hpefully this means that they are going to the F2P model since if they keep with only subscriptions and do micro-transactions like other games have they probably will run into legal problems. The only reason there are no problems with the hybrid model is because it is both F2P and subscription based.

Not sure why they would run into legal problems - paying a subscription to join a club wouldn't mean they couldn't charge for drinks, for instance. And LOTRO has a premium model where you still pay a subscription.
 
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Star Wars The Old Republic has a Free To Play as well as a subscription model with Micro Transactions. I could see WoW moving in this direction even though the game is still the most popular subscription mmo out there.
 
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It is a different thing to have drinks at a club you have to pay to enter since having the drinks costs the club a significant amount extra outside of the normal costs of running the club. Much of what is normally in an item store in the f2p games doesn't fall under the above since other then things like costumes or new mounts it don't cost them anything to make. Charging their customers for those items would be considered double dipping. In hybrid models those items are meant for the f2p players and most of those games give points to subscribers if they want items from the item shop.
 
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That is maybe why they consider making micro transactions available in certain areas in the game. You pay the fee, you've got the generic content. You pay extra, you've got the extra.

The video game industry running into legal problems, brought by some external party (I am not speaking of problems between members of the industry like over intellectual property etc), that would be something to be seen.
 
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