Would WOW make more money going F2P?

Community General Discussion
1

Since so many people are willing to shell out to play if they went full cash shop like Path of Exile and others…

Would it drive core players away?

They would probably make TONS more money since people addicted to the game would buy up everything they could.

2

Maybe. But they’d also lose a huge part of their core market, and their expenses would increase.

F2P WoW = More Spammers = More $ to pay employees to curb spam.

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3

look how many ftp games there are. look how many people actually play them and make them successful. so most likely a big not even close

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4

probably but the character dances and emotes would be 10 USD each. Do you really want that?

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5

I can only speak for myself, but yes it would drive me away.

No idea. But let me borrow someone’s cynical hat for a moment and say if the forums are to be believed that Blizzard cares about nothing except money… reason would follow that if they would make more money by being F2P then the game would be F2P. So either no, they wouldn’t make more money being F2P or no, they don’t care only about money. It can’t be both.

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7

No. It would not.

F2P is what you do when you fail at making a good enough sub based game.

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8

No idea, but its not worth the current sub fee for what bfa is overall.

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9

If they went free to play, they’d have to have many more Cash Shop mounts as well as put in a bunch of Cash Shop transmogs.

They just don’t have the stuff in the store now, to support free to play.

So they’d lose way too much money.

The best way for Wow to do it would be like ESO’s model:

It is “Free to Play”, but IF you pay 15 bucks a month you get perks like more bank/crafting space and 1500 crowns (crowns is their virtual payment method, spent in the shop on housing, mogs, mounts, pets, etc.)

So some people do still pay that “sub”, for a “free to play” game.

:heart_eyes:

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10

I’m sorry to derail this, but you are adorable. I love the mog.

11

Pure speculation since you don’t know what microtrans add to wows revenue

12

Yes. In a thread designed to discuss and speculate, my answer was speculation. There is no way anyone could participate in this conversation otherwise.

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14

Well there’s no point in making factual statements like “No it would not” then. You seem foolish.

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15

So how should I reply?

I was asked “Would WOW make more money going F2P?”

But apparently I am not allowed to give an answer?

Or am I supposed to precede every statement with a known quantifier. 'It is my personal opinion and speculation that no, it will not". When within context of this thread everyone knows we are all speculating.

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16

Judging by the amount of cash shop mounts I see around, and the amount of people even in my own friend circle who buy the overpriced boosts … I want to say definitely, but honestly? Big maybe.

I feel like WoW is in a unique situation where people are kind of used to the idea of having microtransactions on top of a sub fee. Seems to me they could add a good few more (and keep the sub) before people started to snap.

17

Buy to play i could see, f2p? probably not.

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18

They could make money F2P when WoW goes mobile but til then, I’d think they’ll make more with subs.

19

I’m quitting if it ever goes f2p. Not that I’m anybody important, but that would be the one change to make me finally stop playing.

20

I would cancel immediately.

I previously played a game that was subscription based (I had a lifetime subscription for a upfront cost - which perhaps led to them having to make that decision of F2P) that eventually went to F2P. It was awful. The game became even more of a grind then it was devolving into. The microtransactions were a headache for players and guilds. The game (content, exploration, questing, raiding, dungeons, pvp, etc.) quickly became an afterthought. The smallest of things in the game were quickly routed towards microtransactions. If you were not buying into the microtransaction system, the grind would take days if not weeks to obtain a 1/10 of the items/gear needed to even move forward into the game.

I vowed to never play an MMO that is F2P after that and will continue to hold to that.

You do not want a F2P MMO. I am being serious - There is no F2P MMO that is viable.

21

I’m sure at some point down the road it’ll go f2p but it would come at a hefty price. It’s generally not too bad if they could just stick to “cosmetics” but they rarely do that for various reasons. You want to create an incentive to get players to spend money and lots of it. That’s where many f2p mmos fall, the publisher/developer gets greedy.

Not saying there are a few f2p games that have a good balance but there are quite a few out there that if you spend money you can buy rng boosts(not even joking) and all kinds advantages over players who do not. Is that really a game you want to play? Wouldn’t it be better to play the game called real life at that point…

22

They would have to change what they sell in the store from cosmetics to convenience items and increase the amount of grind in the game by 5 times so people were really encouraged to pay real money for the items.