WoW Not Going F2P

[Scott Tortorice]

There is an interesting trend developing of game devs dismissing the F2P business model. Blizzard is the latest:

Blizzard: WoW Won't Be Going Free-To-Play

"I think that there's an underlying, a fundamental, assumption right now that the less you charge, the more money you make ... which isn't true. And it doesn't necessarily make for a better game," Morhaime said. "I mean, everybody likes free... I think that definitely, players have seen a lot of really great quality free-to-play experiences, but I'm not sure it's the best model for us right now."

 

[Redwolf]

f2p is all about the Asian markets. In America the business trend has been to make people sign up for monthly suckage and then hope they continue paying when they are too busy using. This is true for everything from car loans to warranties, cellphone plans, cable TV, Netflix etc etc etc

But in Asia they won't have any of that. They don't commit to regular payments.

Needless to say simply fixing this one problem didn't bring instant success to those games that did go to micropayments and people start realizing it. Hopefully they realize that making a good game will bring them customers.

 

[Scott Tortorice]

That's an interesting point about Asian markets. I don't think I've seen that mentioned elsewhere.

As a cheap SoB and very casual MMO player, I am all for the F2P trend. But I agree with the sentiments of you and Blizzard. Really, the biggest success stories for the F2P trend are games that were failing, or games that were having difficulty establishing themselves. F2P is a no brainer for those games, but for a AAA experience like WoW or EvE? Maybe not so much....

 

[doristoller]

Yeah! I would be agree with Redwolf.