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".
I've been trying to drill it into my friend's mind that he's working for no benefit; in fact he's actually paying for the privilege of working; throwing 2+ hours of his life away nearly every night, completely wasting his time that could be spent elsewhere, like improving himself and his life (or playing with me instead of blowing me off for randoms, that would be nice).
But, no, he somehow 'enjoys raiding'. Who could possibly enjoy sitting around for hours on end auto-attacking bosses is beyond me. This is of course while he continues to say that he only enjoys high-octane, action packed games.
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.
All the Money went to Vivendi. You can bet on that! Fat bonusses, big cars and private planes for the jetsets in the Board. And ofcourse tons of dividend to the stakeholders.
Why spend more Money on Development, release more expacs, etc when People are paying already anyway.
That has been their philosophy With WoW for years.
I Guess that has been one of the reasons why Activision and Blizzard bought themselves out of Vivendi, so they can keep more of the Money they earn for themselves and so spend more on Development, instead of seeing all the Money ship away into the Pockets of suits at Vivendi who only care about the bottom line.
F2P is the worst thing that could happen to mmo gaming. I agree on full trial for i.e. 1 month, but nothing more. But if Wow have set price 12.99€ is silly expect I should pay equal ammount for some mediocre (at best) game that is not even 5% of wow.
So far whatever have tried in years since release of wow (including of course last mother of all disaster mmo's called ARR) .... after returning to wow have always realized how far, very far, light years far, are all other games for incredible quality offered by Blizzard.
Exception being swtor which I have from time to time problem to decide which i love more. Wow is for sure more "rich" but I always loved lore of swtor more and really love voiced questing.
1)reducing price range gamecards and subscription until its become free to play , until then they still have a steady cashflow
2) adding a wallet system like in guildwars ..
3)adding some vague new currencies people can buy with dollars, ponds or euros, the currencies (gems) can be used to give the people cashflow. Bit like in guildwars to fight chinese hacks.
4)a new lootsystem (stolen from blizzards own diablo III)
5)maybe a new class that comes from diablo III
6)new annual pass system for those who dont want to go free to play and it pays the bills because they loose moneys from 1)
7)install spike hubs that offer a buff of speed in zones on mounts flight paths etc (you have to pay top dollar to pay a speed buff or pay a fix gold amount per zone)
8)all new research like scrolls etc go to the free to play store (so you dont have to visit the merchant) ; a overtake of the rifts gamestore
9)adding housing : any inn can be used to be used to add a housing zone (hence a teleportal to a dimension) , taken from rifts and added from the new games
blizzard have to get ideas from other firms to not loose again a million or so players or it goes kaput in 2 years or it loose it license. if they can abort the license they can put people from wow in titan
If Blizzard are smart about how they put in F2P (and as long as it is a hybrid sub model) I think it could work as far as these conversions go.
I have been through a few F2P switch overs, some more successful than others. I measure success by how much the community goes down hill and you end up with divisions between player types or how much the cash shop is prevalent in the game and breaks immersion or that I have to spend more than a subscription to enjoy the same experience I was before/or feel forced to spend a subscription regardless of the sudden new 'flexibility' of payment models.
If people paying subs are willing to fork out extra cash on cash shop goodies, is the incentive to switch over to an F2P model really there for Blizzard ? I am not convinced because subbers who are willing to spend more are more likely to give Blizzard more money than the crowd who will come in because the game is 'free'. Some posters here seem to have unreasonable expectations about what bargains they will be offered. What incentive do Blizzard have ? They won't do anything that will make them less money than they are earning now. The sub asking price is not really that high for this game and the hours of entertainment one can get out of it so is it really a better deal for us players considering that an F2P change could mean worse customer service, less maintenance on servers, etc. ?
I am unconvinced that playing F2P with cash shop is really cheaper if you want to have a comparable game experience. So far I have not seen F2P conversions really and truly benefitting us players either monetarily or in in-game experience so everyone clammering for this change are shooting themselves in the foot unless they plan to play extremely casually.
Not impressed with f2p. Companies focused on their crap cash shops rather than creating a fun immersive world and content. WoW is 10 years old and still has millions of subscribers. Show me a f2p rag that will be here in another 10 years
don't play WoW but it still stands out las a great MMORPG even with the idiotic design decisions Blizzard has made.
Originally posted by 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?
They'd gain more people than they'd lost by going f2p, but its hard to say if they'd make more money.....As for the state of the game, I dont have any really high level characters, but from what I have read getting gear is a total joke with this last patch......Basically they have made all the older content worthless now.....I jsut don't see how people can keep paying for this when they do stuff like that.....Why keep doing dungeons and raiding your brains out when the next expansion its all worthless again anyway?....
I'm thoroughly done with WoW now. BG's and RBG's kept me going for the longest but now it's simply build vs build.
I took the names down of the last AB we did and did an armory check. Out of everyone...every single person. 2...only 2 had different gear and of that, all the specs were the same. (Also note: doubt it was pre-arranged as numerous servers involved.) IE, all the priest heals were holy w/ same talents, all the hunters were BM, and all the warriors were Arms.
I'm not complaining here but taking just that single BG out of all of them. Exactly the same people in every way except for xmog'ing and race. Complete replicas of one another.
As far as the hunter pets, 3 were all some sort of spider and one was a flamingo looking bird lol.
The vast majority of F2P games in the west make the majority of their money via subscriptions. It is not unreasonable to assume that if WoW went F2P... it would be mostly sub based. The only real change would be that players could get the game for free, and continue to play if they stop paying the sub. This isnt really a big change.
F2P is the worst thing that could happen to mmo gaming. I agree on full trial for i.e. 1 month, but nothing more. But if Wow have set price 12.99€ is silly expect I should pay equal ammount for some mediocre (at best) game that is not even 5% of wow.
So far whatever have tried in years since release of wow (including of course last mother of all disaster mmo's called ARR) .... after returning to wow have always realized how far, very far, light years far, are all other games for incredible quality offered by Blizzard.
Exception being swtor which I have from time to time problem to decide which i love more. Wow is for sure more "rich" but I always loved lore of swtor more and really love voiced questing.
I tend to agree, Star Wars the Old Republics voiced story lines quest system is far an above one of the best questing models Ive seen to date. The linear questing system is trash, and should be thrown out, but that wont happen until Citadel of Sorcery proves its a functional method of questing.
WoW is old school, its engine is out of date and with newer games like Citadel of Sorcery and Star Citizen in development its not going to be surprising that WoW will more than likely be knocked down for not taking advantage of the current tech and development.
If WoW goes F2P it would be a shame as its one stabilizing feature is its "troll control" feature. What I mean by that is, when you look at a F2P game like say LoTRO you see something that should have never happened. The economy and the player base was stable, sure they didnt have the millions of players that WoW has but it was a different game than wow, one stapled with a long history of lore. WoW was derived from Warcraft RTS games.
Now when LoTRO when F2P alot of subscribers dropped and the F2P crowed came in.. the mindset of those players is different, the cohesiveness of the Long time subscribers was disrupted by the game hopper casual players. This has happened with every game that went from Sub to F2P.
Now on the other hand.. WoW is out of date. There are better games coming out that have more content and better stories.. and havent been run millions of times already. WoW going F2P wouldnt necessarily be a bad thing for game development.
If WoW goes F2P then that frees up the hard core players to check out some other games they normally wouldnt have just to get a break from the casual freebie player base influx.
Also with WoW going F2P Blizzard could turn a serious eye to doing some real development on another MMO as like with most F2P games the cash shop would make far more money than the subs would.
It's a grey area but there' s no alternative that competes for very long with WoW in a subs war, so better the devil you know.
WoW's main handicap will be Blizzard relying on a fanbase that will be taken for granted but eventually so much exploitation will be put on their shoulders any addiction will be broken and vast amounts of subs are lost because Blizzard have taken the player base for granted one time too many in the future.
I don't know if I will be playing this game next year but maybe, damn Blizzard lol.
Since the majority of games are now f2p,i don't think it is much of a guess or brilliant prediction to say the game might one day go f2p.
F2p is however not a given,EA has closed down a few operations and Square Enix has said they would shut certain games down rather than go f2p.
It seriously puts a huge black mark on gaming when you see 3/4 or MORE of your game's population running around as botters in such games as Silkroad or Runescape.Going f2p gives a developer no control over it's game.If Blizzard went f2p it would simply be one rmt operation trying to compete with many illegal rmt operations.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Comments
I've been trying to drill it into my friend's mind that he's working for no benefit; in fact he's actually paying for the privilege of working; throwing 2+ hours of his life away nearly every night, completely wasting his time that could be spent elsewhere, like improving himself and his life (or playing with me instead of blowing me off for randoms, that would be nice).
But, no, he somehow 'enjoys raiding'. Who could possibly enjoy sitting around for hours on end auto-attacking bosses is beyond me. This is of course while he continues to say that he only enjoys high-octane, action packed games.
Some people, I will never understand them.
All the Money went to Vivendi. You can bet on that! Fat bonusses, big cars and private planes for the jetsets in the Board. And ofcourse tons of dividend to the stakeholders.
Why spend more Money on Development, release more expacs, etc when People are paying already anyway.
That has been their philosophy With WoW for years.
I Guess that has been one of the reasons why Activision and Blizzard bought themselves out of Vivendi, so they can keep more of the Money they earn for themselves and so spend more on Development, instead of seeing all the Money ship away into the Pockets of suits at Vivendi who only care about the bottom line.
F2P is the worst thing that could happen to mmo gaming. I agree on full trial for i.e. 1 month, but nothing more. But if Wow have set price 12.99€ is silly expect I should pay equal ammount for some mediocre (at best) game that is not even 5% of wow.
So far whatever have tried in years since release of wow (including of course last mother of all disaster mmo's called ARR) .... after returning to wow have always realized how far, very far, light years far, are all other games for incredible quality offered by Blizzard.
Exception being swtor which I have from time to time problem to decide which i love more. Wow is for sure more "rich" but I always loved lore of swtor more and really love voiced questing.
ideas for the expansion
1)reducing price range gamecards and subscription until its become free to play , until then they still have a steady cashflow
2) adding a wallet system like in guildwars ..
3)adding some vague new currencies people can buy with dollars, ponds or euros, the currencies (gems) can be used to give the people cashflow. Bit like in guildwars to fight chinese hacks.
4)a new lootsystem (stolen from blizzards own diablo III)
5)maybe a new class that comes from diablo III
6)new annual pass system for those who dont want to go free to play and it pays the bills because they loose moneys from 1)
7)install spike hubs that offer a buff of speed in zones on mounts flight paths etc (you have to pay top dollar to pay a speed buff or pay a fix gold amount per zone)
8)all new research like scrolls etc go to the free to play store (so you dont have to visit the merchant) ; a overtake of the rifts gamestore
9)adding housing : any inn can be used to be used to add a housing zone (hence a teleportal to a dimension) , taken from rifts and added from the new games
blizzard have to get ideas from other firms to not loose again a million or so players or it goes kaput in 2 years or it loose it license. if they can abort the license they can put people from wow in titan
If Blizzard are smart about how they put in F2P (and as long as it is a hybrid sub model) I think it could work as far as these conversions go.
I have been through a few F2P switch overs, some more successful than others. I measure success by how much the community goes down hill and you end up with divisions between player types or how much the cash shop is prevalent in the game and breaks immersion or that I have to spend more than a subscription to enjoy the same experience I was before/or feel forced to spend a subscription regardless of the sudden new 'flexibility' of payment models.
If people paying subs are willing to fork out extra cash on cash shop goodies, is the incentive to switch over to an F2P model really there for Blizzard ? I am not convinced because subbers who are willing to spend more are more likely to give Blizzard more money than the crowd who will come in because the game is 'free'. Some posters here seem to have unreasonable expectations about what bargains they will be offered. What incentive do Blizzard have ? They won't do anything that will make them less money than they are earning now. The sub asking price is not really that high for this game and the hours of entertainment one can get out of it so is it really a better deal for us players considering that an F2P change could mean worse customer service, less maintenance on servers, etc. ?
I am unconvinced that playing F2P with cash shop is really cheaper if you want to have a comparable game experience. So far I have not seen F2P conversions really and truly benefitting us players either monetarily or in in-game experience so everyone clammering for this change are shooting themselves in the foot unless they plan to play extremely casually.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Not impressed with f2p. Companies focused on their crap cash shops rather than creating a fun immersive world and content. WoW is 10 years old and still has millions of subscribers. Show me a f2p rag that will be here in another 10 years
don't play WoW but it still stands out las a great MMORPG even with the idiotic design decisions Blizzard has made.
They'd gain more people than they'd lost by going f2p, but its hard to say if they'd make more money.....As for the state of the game, I dont have any really high level characters, but from what I have read getting gear is a total joke with this last patch......Basically they have made all the older content worthless now.....I jsut don't see how people can keep paying for this when they do stuff like that.....Why keep doing dungeons and raiding your brains out when the next expansion its all worthless again anyway?....
I'm thoroughly done with WoW now. BG's and RBG's kept me going for the longest but now it's simply build vs build.
I took the names down of the last AB we did and did an armory check. Out of everyone...every single person. 2...only 2 had different gear and of that, all the specs were the same. (Also note: doubt it was pre-arranged as numerous servers involved.) IE, all the priest heals were holy w/ same talents, all the hunters were BM, and all the warriors were Arms.
I'm not complaining here but taking just that single BG out of all of them. Exactly the same people in every way except for xmog'ing and race. Complete replicas of one another.
As far as the hunter pets, 3 were all some sort of spider and one was a flamingo looking bird lol.
Discuss. Reason. Society.
Become a Dragon. Take your world back.
The vast majority of F2P games in the west make the majority of their money via subscriptions. It is not unreasonable to assume that if WoW went F2P... it would be mostly sub based. The only real change would be that players could get the game for free, and continue to play if they stop paying the sub. This isnt really a big change.
I tend to agree, Star Wars the Old Republics voiced story lines quest system is far an above one of the best questing models Ive seen to date. The linear questing system is trash, and should be thrown out, but that wont happen until Citadel of Sorcery proves its a functional method of questing.
WoW is old school, its engine is out of date and with newer games like Citadel of Sorcery and Star Citizen in development its not going to be surprising that WoW will more than likely be knocked down for not taking advantage of the current tech and development.
If WoW goes F2P it would be a shame as its one stabilizing feature is its "troll control" feature. What I mean by that is, when you look at a F2P game like say LoTRO you see something that should have never happened. The economy and the player base was stable, sure they didnt have the millions of players that WoW has but it was a different game than wow, one stapled with a long history of lore. WoW was derived from Warcraft RTS games.
Now when LoTRO when F2P alot of subscribers dropped and the F2P crowed came in.. the mindset of those players is different, the cohesiveness of the Long time subscribers was disrupted by the game hopper casual players. This has happened with every game that went from Sub to F2P.
Now on the other hand.. WoW is out of date. There are better games coming out that have more content and better stories.. and havent been run millions of times already. WoW going F2P wouldnt necessarily be a bad thing for game development.
If WoW goes F2P then that frees up the hard core players to check out some other games they normally wouldnt have just to get a break from the casual freebie player base influx.
Also with WoW going F2P Blizzard could turn a serious eye to doing some real development on another MMO as like with most F2P games the cash shop would make far more money than the subs would.
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
It's a grey area but there' s no alternative that competes for very long with WoW in a subs war, so better the devil you know.
WoW's main handicap will be Blizzard relying on a fanbase that will be taken for granted but eventually so much exploitation will be put on their shoulders any addiction will be broken and vast amounts of subs are lost because Blizzard have taken the player base for granted one time too many in the future.
I don't know if I will be playing this game next year but maybe, damn Blizzard lol.
Since the majority of games are now f2p,i don't think it is much of a guess or brilliant prediction to say the game might one day go f2p.
F2p is however not a given,EA has closed down a few operations and Square Enix has said they would shut certain games down rather than go f2p.
It seriously puts a huge black mark on gaming when you see 3/4 or MORE of your game's population running around as botters in such games as Silkroad or Runescape.Going f2p gives a developer no control over it's game.If Blizzard went f2p it would simply be one rmt operation trying to compete with many illegal rmt operations.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.