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Is WOW going F2P?
MMOVet74
Member UncommonPosts: 76
So with the massive loss in subs, the news that 6.2 will be the last major content patch for WOD, you can bet that something is going on at Blizzard headquarters. They apparently doubled their staff so that they could get more content out quicker. Then why is that there is less content being pushed out?
I think the game is finally going F2P. And Hearthstone is a big factor in that decision. If you look at that card game, it's production costs were minimal. I think the game was made with a team of 15 developers yet it's made over 500 million since launch and hasn't lost steam.
I think Blizz has finally seen the potential of F2P. Heroes of the Storm is F2P, and most likely Overwatch, their next online shooter coming out probably sometime next year.
They recently hired Stephan Frost who was lead designer on Wildstar, a game which is in the process of going F2P hmmm Coincidence?
I mean they already have a cash shop, selling character boosts, pets, mounts, etc... They introduced the WOW token so that players can exchange gold for in game time. hmmmm
I think they are just testing out different models to see which one nets them the most cash. Once they are satisfied with a model, I believe F2P is coming. Gold will probably be an option used to unlock content or purchase items in the cash shop, which is maybe why the WOW token was implemented in the first place , to flush out some of that excess gold people have saved up from years of playing. Mobs and quests will probably reward much less gold and the game will probably have a gold cap that needs to be unlocked through cash. Who knows?
What do you guys think?
Comments
Don't think will go f2p anytime soon as even with sub numbers they still making a killing sub fee + cash shop, as I see it if they do end up going free to play, may end up something like star wars but thats be pretty long time from now.
Right now should keep a eye on D3 they may go f2p just to drag in people.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
I personally don't see that happening anytime soon. I mean the subs would have to drop a whole lot more. They still have like 7 million subscribers. That's still a delicious chunk of revenue coming in every month. It would be really hard to give up that kind of cash if I were them. I would ride it until the wheels fell off.
They lost 3 million subs in 3 months. Now with the news that 6.2 will be the last major patch for WOD, do you seriously think people and going to stick around with no new content for the next 10-12 months till the next expansion launches. This is not 2004 , there are so many F2P games out there today its almost overwhelming.
Look at Path of Exile for example. A huge FREE expansion "The Awakening" comes out July 10th. Even Blizzard has two great F2P games, Hearthstone and HOTS. F2P has taken over. Gamers have so many options, why pay 15 dollars of month for no new content when other content is free. It's just common sense.
Yet another post about WoW doing something other than being effortlessly and by
far not only the most successful MMO but also the most successful MMO with a sub.
Poor WoW.
Only 7.000.000 subs.
The end is near.
Also,that Frost comment is right on the spot since the guy's been gone from WS
for months now,and he's got nothing to do with it going F2P.
Unless their plan is for WoW to fail like W*,and then they'll have to make it f2p.
G.
Rock, they lost 3 million subs. That's like saying, "WOW is fine, it only has stage one cancer, that won't kill it" , but the thing is Cancer spreads and spreads and eventually it will kill you. 3 million in 3 months is almost quarter of their sub base. I think the cancer is spreading fast if you ask me. And the only reason they aren't in panic mode is cause of Hearthstone making them shit tons of money.
In 6 months when they are down to 4 million then come talk to me. And yeah they still make shitloads of money but they also spend shitloads. They have almost 3000 people working for them, that they have to pay.
I seriously doubt they have 3000 staff for WoW. Got any hard evidence for that number?
They spend almost nothing on infrastructure and servers because those have long since been paid for and the bandwidth is a laugh with a $15/$20 sub price.
Even if they have "only" 4 million subscribers they still laugh on the way to the bank.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment
In 2012 Blizzard had 4,700 employees,[1] with offices across 11 cities including Austin, Texas, and countries around the globe. As of June 2014, the company's headquarters in Irvine, California had 2,620 employees.[28]
they are probably going f2p someday. Just dont' know when.
I dont think they'll go f2p soon though. Being subscription model probably helps them more to differentiate from the market.
people say the same after every expansion. Population drops, still have more than every mmorpg out there combined, a new xpack launches whenever, they double the amount of subs again. Rinse and repeat. WoW will only go F2P when they go to Wildstar levels of subscription number or something like that. They are still the kings of the hill.
I don't think that was much of a surpise for them, Blizzard had gained and then lost many players the last 3 expansions, many people come back and play 1-3 months whenever an expansion hits.
Anyways, I don't think there is any chance of F2P until they drop below 3 millions subs, having the monthly fees in from 7 million players is still a huge sum (even with the Chinese players paying less counted in). I am not sure exactly how many F2P players you need to replace a single one but you surely needs to gain at least 3 as many (since a lot of F2P players never buy a thing). F2P do attract more players but I don't see Wow going up to 21 million active players even with F2P.
Now, if they were down to, say 2 million, things would be different. Then going F2P would most likely earn them money but far too many of the people who enjoy Wow is still playing and paying a subscription.
Instead I think they will just increase their cashshop for now.
Ironic statement considering they just went almost all of 2014 with no new content and were only bleeding a few hundred thousand subscribers a quarter. While it does feel different this time WoW subscribers have a track record of staying subscribed no matter how poorly they're treated.
I've thought about this a lot actually, and here are some of the things I've noticed or obseverd.
Blizzard has released 2 F2P games recently (Hearthstone and Heart of the Storm), and another on the way. This shows that they are not afraid of F2P, and even that they can be successful with that model. In the most recent earnings conference, it was said that although WoW has lost 3 million subs, they turned the highest profits yet. WoW has made changes in recent years, that has a lot in common with other F2P games. There is a cash shop, and this is EASILY expanded upon. There is an in-game token / gold buying system. There is an "unlimited free trial." You can log on without a subscription. They have said that the focus for future expansions would shift from the massive things they have been in the past to a more frequent, and much smaller in scope, version.
Now. Given the results of their most recent leaves and earnings statement from early June, I'd say that making a change to the payment model would be a mistake. However, it is VERY clear to any that don't have their heads buried in the sand that the framework has been laid for a seamless transition to free to play if such a time comes when profit margins are no longer where they need to be. Sure, they have said that they would never go F2P, but at one time, they also said it would be a cold day in hell before they allowed PvE to PvP transfers, Gold buying, and boost items too. I suspect that if and when the time comes, Blizzard will adopt the GW2 model of B2P, and that it will be a very successful transition.
It is a possibility.
Hiring a design producer doesn't mean much. It's a huge project from a successful well-known company. If they were aiming to substantially change their business model with WOW they'd probably hire someone for that role specifically (or generally hire more analysts, product managers, or business intelligence people.) Admittedly we have a producer who does some PM work, but Frost is likely just a typical design producer that doesn't mess with that stuff much.
'Doubling staff but less content' sounds like bullshit. Maybe it's just because I looked up the rate of WOW's content a while back and they were pretty damn impressive with their rate of new stuff (when you considered the sheer size and challenge of bringing that content to bear.) But you're certainly free to try to show other games doing it faster and/or better.
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Given the age of the game, that is probably the most likely outcome, they will probably run it until it is no longer profitable as a P2P game, and then that is the point it will be shut down, by then though, i would imagine they would already have several more games out that would have taken up the revenue loss from WoW, we are talking several more years time at least after all.
Yeah they took a full 12 months off with no new content to release an expansion everyone and their mother describes as rushed. Pray tell just how many years does Blizzard need to take off to produce an expansion that isn't half-assed?
You're really going to try an compare the rate of content release for a game that takes in a billion dollars a year to games that make a tiny fraction of that? Oh wait, SE just demonstrated they don't need to take off a year or more to get a decent expansion out the door unlike Blizzard.
What's happening to WOW is classic example of any company which has 2 most important choices.
1) If company loses example 20% of the market, it cuts 20% of its employees, future development of product. They do this to ensure they can continue to see profit from their product, while clearly showing signs they are abandoning it.
2) If company loses example 20% of the market it does drastic changes to the direction its headed, invests heavily back to its product to regain consumers and ensure its bright future ahead. This example is clearly not in Blizzard case.
At the end of the day for good or worse World of Warcraft being gone from the market (in near future particularly) can be beneficial for others to bring their products to success. It will be much easier. I also see still some posters above saying Blizz has 7 mil subs. LOL, I don't think Blizzard has 250k subs paying $15 a month. 90% of the "subs" Blizzard advertise are from countries such as China and then Asia in general not paying the sub like NA/Europe.
From downsized stuff to lack of players in the game (despite all the merges on servers) as well as popularity on the game. You can just see how popular WOW is today compared to other MMO's out there to get the pic. 250-500k sub paying $15 a month is like TOP and that's even hard for me to buy it in.
Wait what... they sold 3.3 million copies of WoD before it was even available in Asia so they had at least that many subscribers in the West at that time, certainly a bit more as not everyone buys the expansion immediately. For them to be down to 250k that means all 3 million of their subscriber losses would have to be in the West which seems... unlikely.
As someone who played on high-pop servers they seemed fairly active when I left a few months ago, there would have to have been crazy drop off over the last few months for that to be accurate.
It's possible. They've probably been thinking about this for years now, especially after seeing the continuous subscriber losses each expansion. They've already eased their playerbase into a soft-F2P model with the token system, so i wouldn't expect a full-blown F2P model soon.
It doesn't matter if it still holds the most subscribers either, because the higher-ups at Activision-Blizzard see that the game is declining over the long-term. A subscriber loss is all that matters to them. It doesn't matter if it's 4 million or 100,000. A loss is a loss, and they want to recuperate that lost money. No company wants to lose customers and potential profit, and if that means selling cash shop items and going F2P, they will absolutely do it.
The MMO genre isn't too hot anymore either, and that's why they are focusing on Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, etc, which are all F2P.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I'm not sure why F2P means Blizzard will do better.
Mainly because almost all the mmorpg is F2P this days. Maybe it's better to differentiate from the market.
Besides, I'm sure Blizzard market department knows better than most of us guessing here.