[Column] World of Warcraft: What's Next For World of Warcraft?

SBFord

With WoW's first decade nearly complete, we begin to speculate what will come next for the fading champion of the MMO space. In today's Free Zone, we opine about a few things we think could happen. See what we think before letting us know your own thoughts in the comments.

It's SuperData's belief that WoW's total revenue for this April was $93 million. While pointing out that this is “not a bad sum”, the company says it represents a drop of 54 percent compared to $204 million only seven months earlier. Over the course of a full year, that would be more than $1.2 billion. To put this in perspective, this is right about one quarter of the $4.8 billion Activision brought in last year. What's more, we're also told that the game's player base in the eastern hemisphere has lost a substantial 1.3 million monthly active users. 

Read more of Richard Aihoshi's The Free Zone: What's Next for World of Warcraft?

Purutzil

Honestly... I could care less. I enjoyed my tiem on WoW, but their direction has shown they don't want my business. Shame too, I usually enjoy revisting old games I've played, shame a game I did spend several years playing could end up in a state I have no desire to even bother revisiting. Only would if they made massive changes I KNOW they won't do.

Rockniss

The questions are: How many people will pick this game up after f2p? How many will quit because of f2p? You could argue that the people currently playing will still play and you could argue that those that aren't playing still won't. Then you ask of those playing, who is willing to pay more? Then you ask how much will that disrupt the game?

Tamanous

F2p will destroy Wow. By this I mean the community.

 

Even if subs go up with f2p it drastically changes the in game community and feel of the game. It shattered the Lotro community which was one of the tightest in mmo history. Each and every game I have ever played that went f2p post-launch had the same thing happen. The influx of players who treat the game like a console game where they slap a cd in for "short term solo play" destroys community.

 

If Wow offers access to f2p all the way up to LFR or even Flex expect a sea of ultra-casuals who do not give a flipping rat's ass about anyone else or team play. Shortly after f2p conversion you inevitably see game changes to reflect this allowing accessibility for F2P players who can't compete against even the easiest content. The game could be said to have already gone that direction but sub players in tight communities will eventually simply feel bombarded by the influx of f2p players and their demands.

 

Bliz is reaching for the cash grab ... amazingly seeing how it is the most profitable game in history likely. Yet Wow still has no additional content over other games that make far less money. I still have no @#%&;ing clue where all the money went. It certainly didn't all go back into the game ... not anywhere near the income it generated.

 

Someone's pockets are extremely padded. The new isle is tiny ... insanely tiny and vast regions of the game are left useless. MoP content is extremely small overall with most of the end game play being stuck in some of the smallest zones ever to hit wow in an expansion. Years of content and in each expansion only a small fraction of the total game is relevant at any time. For a massive game it plays very very small.

newbinator

Originally posted by Vivasvan
Keep the raids going and lets have a huge dragon based expac .... No more panda style xpac

That sounds really generic and boring. The next expansion needs to be something BIG, and new. Not rehashing and "more of the same".

Jynxx

I was playing since retail release and took a couple breaks.  This has been my longest break and I've no desire to go back especially with this latest content patch where it's basically, "Go here and loot purple shiny's".  No more carrot on a stick for me thank you, but it was a great ride.

Razeekster

There are honestly better free to play games out there than WoW. The only thing WoW has over other games is that it's massive.

Rockniss

Going f2p would indeed be dumb. F2p exists because games couldn't compete with wow. Wow should just keep doing what they do.

slickbizzle

Originally posted by Rockniss
Going f2p would indeed be dumb. F2p exists because games couldn't compete with wow. Wow should just keep doing what they do.

Bleed subs at an alarming rate?

 

 

 

SnarlingWolf

"We have no way of knowing the credibility of these reports"

 

So you then base an entire article around them? Journalism at its best.

SnarlingWolf

Originally posted by Vivasvan
Are they going f2p where does it say this?

It's the end if they do f2p

The article doesn't say anything despite being a page long.

 

It is essentially this:

"I long ago suggested WoW would go F2P at some point in history. This other company, who cited no sources and showed now work on how they came to their numbers so we can't verify any credibility, also suggested WoW would do well to go F2P. So since I want it to go F2P, let's assume that what this other company said is accurate and then marvel at random extrapolation of unknown if true information about how awesome this could be."

 

 

Bladestrom

Originally posted by newbinator

Originally posted by Vivasvan
Keep the raids going and lets have a huge dragon based expac .... No more panda style xpac

That sounds really generic and boring. The next expansion needs to be something BIG, and new. Not rehashing and "more of the same".

An expansion dominated by an old god invasion, dark storms everywhere, undead, huge tentacles, no 'in jokes' with the quests, play it serious and respect with wide and deep epic quest lines that take 6 months to work through that I would sub for!

Shaigh

Problem with superdata is that they ignored that september 2012 was the launch month of MoP which means much higher revenue compared to other months so their comparison is just a data analyst company trying to make headlines instead of providing good statistics.

AC1074

Well for starters stop Oping and nerfing classes. Try to level them out...however before going F2P try lowering the sub price. Yes there is a risk of losing revenue but it might appeal to more people at a lower sub fee than F2P. You can already F2P to lvl 20 but you can only do so much at lv 20. 

tordurbar

The reason that AAA MMOs go free to play is to have get players who have never tried the game to play it.  That is why in every case this has been done there has been a big influx of new players and then a steep drop off.  There would not huge amount of new players with WOW because who has NOT tried WOW?

I agree with one of the posters above. What will happen is the that the free to play crowd will kill the community. WOW always has it's rectums but they come out in droves with new expansions and would flood the game if it went free to play. What the public does not realize (and Blizzard does not want to admit) is that there are a LOT of older people (30s and above) that play WOW. In general older (especially long term players) have more decorum. Also in general (personal opinion over 8 years and several servers) is that the WOW community tries to be decent. Bring in the flood of players that came in to SWTOR, RIFT and the first month of GW2 and the WOW community will fall.

 

jesteralways

An mmo is being played by 10 million players world wide : isn't it something unnatural? isn't it completely unbelievable? why would this many people play "one" mmo? mmo is the most time consuming of all the game genre, didn't anybody think at least once how can this many players play "one" mmo? i don't know about you but i believe 10 million players playing an mmo is very much unnatural. mmo was never designed to be played by mass population and yet this is what happened with wow. this sub bleed was bound to happen, for some reason it just took almost 10 years; how can an mmo have a playerbase this large? it is impossible unless non-mmo players entered the scene and that is what happened with WoW. these non mmo players were bound to leave and this bleeding won't stop until it again hits 2 million world wide. and at that point blizzard will start making right decision, again create content for mmo players and not for those who like to see big numbers and solo raid with those big numbers. i am waiting for this to happen.

Rockniss

Wow is f2p - up to lvl 20

NobleNerd

They are going the casual player route to attract the maximum player base, but funny thing is they have lost more since they went this direction post Burning Crusade and Lich King. 

 

Now if you want my wish list of of what I would like to see WoW go.... get back to what made it great... go back to the skill sets and trees of vanilla. Make the raiding hardcore, but do not lock the story content to raid only. Make pvp fun again.

Vapors

since its blizzard and I dont know about WoW, but they take ages to even patch or update small things in diablo, rather not talk about titan which was "seen years ago" as a 2013 project, and now its a 2016 project. Somehow I have the feeling they will just add some small event with ballons you can buy and the random mmo event stuff.

If they said they patch something new then im wrong and sorry.

Thebigthrill

Going f2p would indeed be dumb. F2p exists because games couldn't compete with wow. Wow should just keep doing what they do.


You need to think outside your little box

Rockniss

Been there and jumped right back in. Everything outside the box is a terabad nickle and diming experience

jbombard

The thing about data is you can look at it a variety of ways.

 

Sure you could say the store sales to a small dedicated portion of players  is helping cover for the loss of subscribers.

 

Or, you could say that that the store is one of a several factors driving the loss of subscribers in the first place.

 

Of players that play a F2P only approximately 40% ever make a purchase from the store... ever.  When you start talking about reoccurring purchases or purchases greater than the monthly sub fee you get down to a much smaller number.  If WoW was to go F2P they would likely need to quadruple current subs to even stand a chance at breaking even.

 

When people quit the game it is usually not for one reason but for a variety of reason.  One very large factor is value.  Do you feel you are getting value for your $15 a month?  Having a store affects how you perceive that value as you aren't getting access to everything, and when you see store content added with very little new game content added(think SWTOR) you start questioning what your $15 is buying you.  The store is definitely not the only factor affecting value, but it does affect it and not positively, and the more value a player feels like they are getting the more likely they are to continue to pay.

Abdar

It doesn't really matter if your are sub based or ftp for me. If there's content I like, I'll pay either way.

WoW is just using an old formula and they need to mix it up a bit.

Player housing, better crafting, more sandbox elements are things that come to mind for me personally.

azmundai

solo versions of raids

pvp that lasts less than a minute

big fountains of epic loot in stormwind and orgimaar.

severius

Well seeing as how their profits from the pets and other microtransactions keep them well in the black I don't think they would want to deal with the the server instabilities that would come from a solid fraction of former players all returning to the game at once.  Which in turn would impact current subbers which, if anyone has played wow before, would know the whine fest every message board and gaming site would turn into for a week or more.

Blizzard will release a new xpac and they will get a ton of people back in for the recent content updates and new content.  Once the new sets are complete then they unsub until next time.

itchmon

microtransactions and payment models have had zero effect in my decision 2 and a half years ago to leave Wow. 

 

the removal of customization and theorycrafting, and the "make it so everyone can do all the contentz" mentality had everything to do with my decision to leave wow.

 

blizz is now trying to retain as many folks as they can and they're looking at changing their revenue model.  well, 10 million people werent playing their game during BC and vanilla because of the revenue model.  they were playing it because it was fun the way it was.  why not move the game back in the direction of how it was back in the day when people were flocking to the game in droves, not leaving it in droves.