I got no indication of F2p what so ever from this statement.
What i am reading is Blizzard does not like to divulge losing numbers but was ever so quick to literally spam the internet bragging about it's numbers in the past.
No longer going to publish numbers sounds like hiding to me,they don't want any negativity towards the game because that usually leads to a massive exodus.
I bet as long as any other game is doing well,we will hear the bragging once more,expect to hear numbers on Overwatch.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
When will you guys understand? Free-to-play is just an illusion, "free" in F2P means limited. OTOH if WoW goes B2P...
Free to play is not much any illusion, people over think thing the word free to play just to play for free don't mean everything in the game is free other then playing it. It's say it in the wording.
But still does trap people over spending on a game, Sub game does help from some people not over spending but a company find a way to make anyone spend more money even if there paying amount that company can get by.
When will you guys understand? Free-to-play is just an illusion, "free" in F2P means limited. OTOH if WoW goes B2P...
If you mean with " F2P" limited gameplay , yes then you are right.
But with Blizzard's fanbase they can afford to give everyone access to 100% of the content, no gold/inventory restrictions or anything, but just put tons of fluff gear in their Store, and people will buy it.
Because they all want that exclusive mount with that unique skin, although they dont get any speed increase or benefits, "I gotta have it, NOW!"
So if they go f2p, and in a game that is so stripped of any difficulty, how are they going to restrict players and forcing them to buy a subscription? Even with 1/10 of the gold cap, 1/10th of inventory space, 1/10th of XP and/or DPS/tank, you are still going to faceroll to endgame. It is that easy.
Result: they are going to explode the Store with fluff items and skins to transmog your items etc, and buying that wil cost more then a subscription.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
@azarhal I agree 100%. As a current WoW subscriber, I can tell you that my once-high population server is a ghost town. I almost fell out of my chair at only 100k being lost when I would have put money on 1M+. I also further agree that the nebulous wording of the "metrics for success" is troublesome. If you look at the investor graphic created, Destiny's, Hearthstone's and Diablo's numbers are all touted, but not WoW opting instead to call it (and rightly so) "the world's most popular MMO" (or something like that. It's almost as if they don't want numbers coming out and showing that, while still arguably successful, it is a dying game that will continue to show negative growth between expansions in a continuously descending arc. I would "guesstimate" that WoW subs will go back to 7M with Legion and, as has always happened, sink below the pre-Legion sub numbers within 6 months and continuing downward until the next expansion and so on.
You can also ask the question how many players still play WoW and not how many subs they have, some people keep the account running and dont play at all, think thats a better way to see if the game is dying, like you said some servers are ghost towns now and still they have 5.5 mil subs but how many of those 5.5 mil subs are really playing?
I just hope this F2P plague never enters Azeroth lands. Drop, sooner or later was to be expected as now we have 100 times more games to play and experiment with. Still, with exception of Wow&Swtor, Rift&Gw2, .... all the rest is not worth single one of this 4.
I think it needs to be kept in mind that when a game like ffxiv is failing terribly, peaking at just over 1/2 a million subs and they blatantly mislead with false "registered players" numbers it works out for them, sites like mmorpg report the false numbers and flat out lie calling them subs when they are nothing of the sort. Why? possibly because of advertising money? who knows!
When a company like microsoft and blizzard are honest they get beaten with the stick of honesty, as such why do it anymore?
You won't ever see a negative troll editorial like this about a failed game like FFXIV for obvious financial reasons, either that or the writer has a chip on her shoulder.
FFXIV is a game that cost hundreds of millions to make twice, has low retention issue, that has never had over 630k subscribers and has among the lowest subscriber numbers of any p2p mmo. Given that, isn't it funny that Wow with 10 times as many subs at its lowest point is called out for going possibly going f2p with nothing in the sources that would give any indication of it at all?
FFXIV has well under 500k subs and a massively growing f2p style cash shop, it has failed in china and Korea and the company refuses to ever give any numbers at due to month on month falls. No editorials about it going f2p have been made here.
Wow at its weakest has 10 times as many subs as ffxiv and every month there is a f2p editorial, keeping in mind that it is about to get the greatest advertising boon any mmo has ever seen in existence.
I don't mind trolling editorials but when the mods would ban you for doing the same thing it kinda stinks of hypocrisy. Yes I know those who make the rules can break the rules but still, it makes the site look like a joke.
why the heck would more people play it if it were f2p? only more poor peope and children would join.
i dont see why would blizz ever do the f2p step. thers nothing to gain out of this. just more server load.
You tell them. Get the sub raised to $150 a month. Get rid of the poor people who can only afford $15. Sorry if that would include you by the way!
Joking aside "a lot" of people paying "a little" can bring in more money than "a few" people paying "a lot". Which is why Destiny's revenue was maybe twice what WoW made last quarter and in the last 12 months. (We know what WoW made we only know Destiny's sales hence the "about".)
However server load is why I believe they won't go "free-to-buy" with no sub. B2P though - like Destiny - maybe. Or TESO. Or GW2. In "western" markets of course.
Yeah there's no way it's only 100k, we're in agreement there.
It obviously is only 100k subs. Pretty sure its not 100k players though. Are we simply looking at a delay whilst peoples' e.g 6 month subs run out. Could "pending cancellations" be another reason for dropping the number? We will never know.
why the heck would more people play it if it were f2p? only more poor peope and children would join.
i dont see why would blizz ever do the f2p step. thers nothing to gain out of this. just more server load.
You tell them. Get the sub raised to $150 a month. Get rid of the poor people who can only afford $15. Sorry if that would include you by the way!
Joking aside "a lot" of people paying "a little" can bring in more money than "a few" people paying "a lot". Which is why Destiny's revenue was maybe twice what WoW made last quarter and in the last 12 months. (We know what WoW made we only know Destiny's sales hence the "about".)
However server load is why I believe they won't go "free-to-buy" with no sub. B2P though - like Destiny - maybe. Or TESO. Or GW2. In "western" markets of course.
What will be Destiny's sustained revenue compared to WoW. That is what is important.
why the heck would more people play it if it were f2p? only more poor peope and children would join.
i dont see why would blizz ever do the f2p step. thers nothing to gain out of this. just more server load.
You tell them. Get the sub raised to $150 a month. Get rid of the poor people who can only afford $15. Sorry if that would include you by the way!
Joking aside "a lot" of people paying "a little" can bring in more money than "a few" people paying "a lot". Which is why Destiny's revenue was maybe twice what WoW made last quarter and in the last 12 months. (We know what WoW made we only know Destiny's sales hence the "about".)
However server load is why I believe they won't go "free-to-buy" with no sub. B2P though - like Destiny - maybe. Or TESO. Or GW2. In "western" markets of course.
What will be Destiny's sustained revenue compared to WoW. That is what is important.
More DLC people showed they can replay content over and over then having new stuff each month. Just drop a DLC every 3 or 6 months and people end up playing it over and over until the next DLC.
By the way that Teaser looks insane. Movie is directed by same guy who gave us amazing The Moon. So quality will be there no doubt. Waiting for Friday to see full trailer.
You know that's not gonna happen, Suzie. Blizzard is not in it for the consumer. Years ago, Bobby Kotick himself said it that he doesn't care what the players think or want. I wish I could find that article. It had so much of the WoW community up in arms. I THINK it was during the WotLK era that he said it. Or near the end of that era.
Now I agree with you. It would breathe so much life back into WoW. But....it will likely never happen with Blizzard. $$ is all they see. They are gonna milk this cow until it don't give no more milk and then probably just sunset the game. Or if it does continue to live on, it's going to be VERY niche like EQ1 became. It has a community. But it is only the die hard EQ players that remain. I'm not going to attempt to guess on numbers.
This is the very reason I feel that it will eventually go B2P or F2P. If they start losing money, they will be forced to go B2P or F2P to stop the bleeding. Even in it's decline, it's still one of the best games in the genre. If they love money that much, they're not going to be stubborn and prideful and not switch models. That way they can just reprime the cow to rejuvenate the output of milk.
Argh.. here we go again.. We've had this before and the answer is still NO
You're probably right, but it's SO fun to speculate/editorialize.
Feel free to speculate about how FFXIV will go f2p due to low player numbers, they have well under 1 million subs. Don't see you doing that do we?
Square advertises here a lot, so that would not be "fun"
I want to know where you got that 'under 1 million subs' from.
It would be nice to see WoW go free and have them jump on a brand new WoW model. Honestly, the game as it is has seen its good years but has become rather stale. Yes, a ton of die hards will look at this and deny it to high heavens and above but we've all seen it like it or not. And I hope that this is a sign that Blizzard has seen it too. Its current model is not worth the monthly fee. However, thinking of a WoW 2 that many have already mentioned I would jump all over that if they came up with fresh ideas.
Wow does not NEED To go free to play, it has 5.5 Million active players who are happy to pay a Box Fee, a subscription AND still have a Microtransaction store.
The only thing wow would gain from F2P is a short term player numbers boost and a large amount of players who then DONT pay a box Fee and sub. If wow goes F2P it wont be until its numbers are declining so much its queue system no longer functions at all. The only reason they will go free to play is so they can get more players in to service the paying players, they dont need to do that at the moment.
Commercially it just doesnt make sense, these articles keep appearing to keep getting the commentary and clicks though so I guess they do the job.
One could pin their hopes on the upcoming Warcraft movie doing so well that Blizzard will make a WoW 2 as movie sequels are being made. They would be fools not to, it will be a guaranteed massive profit even if it never comes close to the popularity of WoW.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
The game will need at least another 5 years til they start thinking about F2P. I see no point to pay a sub in WoW with so many game B2P-F2P like WoW everywhere anyways.
Wow does not NEED To go free to play, it has 5.5 Million active players who are happy to pay a Box Fee, a subscription AND still have a Microtransaction store.
The only thing wow would gain from F2P is a short term player numbers boost and a large amount of players who then DONT pay a box Fee and sub. If wow goes F2P it wont be until its numbers are declining so much its queue system no longer functions at all. The only reason they will go free to play is so they can get more players in to service the paying players, they dont need to do that at the moment.
Commercially it just doesnt make sense, these articles keep appearing to keep getting the commentary and clicks though so I guess they do the job.
NEED has nothing to do with it. 12 months ago you could have written: WoW has 10M active players who are happy to pay a Box Fee, a subscription AND have a Microtransaction store. And - clearly - you would have been wrong about c. 4.5M of them. The point being we do not know what is happening. Subs are down less than 2% (good) but net revenue is down over 30% (bad).
And it is revenue - and revenue projections - that will determine if there is a change. And if - AB decide they can make more money with a different business model they will. A commercial decision to do with money.
Comments
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
But still does trap people over spending on a game, Sub game does help from some people not over spending but a company find a way to make anyone spend more money even if there paying amount that company can get by.
But with Blizzard's fanbase they can afford to give everyone access to 100% of the content, no gold/inventory restrictions or anything, but just put tons of fluff gear in their Store, and people will buy it.
Because they all want that exclusive mount with that unique skin, although they dont get any speed increase or benefits, "I gotta have it, NOW!"
So if they go f2p, and in a game that is so stripped of any difficulty, how are they going to restrict players and forcing them to buy a subscription?
Even with 1/10 of the gold cap, 1/10th of inventory space, 1/10th of XP and/or DPS/tank, you are still going to faceroll to endgame. It is that easy.
Result: they are going to explode the Store with fluff items and skins to transmog your items etc, and buying that wil cost more then a subscription.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
When a company like microsoft and blizzard are honest they get beaten with the stick of honesty, as such why do it anymore?
You won't ever see a negative troll editorial like this about a failed game like FFXIV for obvious financial reasons, either that or the writer has a chip on her shoulder.
FFXIV is a game that cost hundreds of millions to make twice, has low retention issue, that has never had over 630k subscribers and has among the lowest subscriber numbers of any p2p mmo. Given that, isn't it funny that Wow with 10 times as many subs at its lowest point is called out for going possibly going f2p with nothing in the sources that would give any indication of it at all?
FFXIV has well under 500k subs and a massively growing f2p style cash shop, it has failed in china and Korea and the company refuses to ever give any numbers at due to month on month falls. No editorials about it going f2p have been made here.
Wow at its weakest has 10 times as many subs as ffxiv and every month there is a f2p editorial, keeping in mind that it is about to get the greatest advertising boon any mmo has ever seen in existence.
I don't mind trolling editorials but when the mods would ban you for doing the same thing it kinda stinks of hypocrisy. Yes I know those who make the rules can break the rules but still, it makes the site look like a joke.
Joking aside "a lot" of people paying "a little" can bring in more money than "a few" people paying "a lot". Which is why Destiny's revenue was maybe twice what WoW made last quarter and in the last 12 months. (We know what WoW made we only know Destiny's sales hence the "about".)
However server load is why I believe they won't go "free-to-buy" with no sub. B2P though - like Destiny - maybe. Or TESO. Or GW2. In "western" markets of course.
It obviously is only 100k subs. Pretty sure its not 100k players though. Are we simply looking at a delay whilst peoples' e.g 6 month subs run out. Could "pending cancellations" be another reason for dropping the number? We will never know.
I self identify as a monkey.
The only thing wow would gain from F2P is a short term player numbers boost and a large amount of players who then DONT pay a box Fee and sub. If wow goes F2P it wont be until its numbers are declining so much its queue system no longer functions at all. The only reason they will go free to play is so they can get more players in to service the paying players, they dont need to do that at the moment.
Commercially it just doesnt make sense, these articles keep appearing to keep getting the commentary and clicks though so I guess they do the job.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
And it is revenue - and revenue projections - that will determine if there is a change. And if - AB decide they can make more money with a different business model they will. A commercial decision to do with money.