I find it Interesting everyone says WoW cannot and will not go f2p. Here's a cold reality WoW isn't the Top MMO anymore get over it white knights. I do believe its time for world of warcraft 2. However I do believe world of warcraft itself should transition to buy once free for life aspect, meaning yea make em pay for the expacs and such just like any other buy 2 play company would do. Now let's get realistic to the one guy who said there is no mmo that comes close to topping WoW's Current subscribers. Actually in cold reality Final Fantasy: Realm Reborn comes very close and in fact more than likely with how quarter 3 is looking and how servers are dying out even further Realm Reborn probably has more subs than Blizzard's world of warcraft at the moment. However I do not believe world of warcraft will ever go F2P as the B2P route is more of a logical and profitable sense of direction for them.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I find it Interesting everyone says WoW cannot and will not go f2p. Here's a cold reality WoW isn't the Top MMO anymore get over it white knights. I do believe its time for world of warcraft 2. However I do believe world of warcraft itself should transition to buy once free for life aspect, meaning yea make em pay for the expacs and such just like any other buy 2 play company would do. Now let's get realistic to the one guy who said there is no mmo that comes close to topping WoW's Current subscribers. Actually in cold reality Final Fantasy: Realm Reborn comes very close and in fact more than likely with how quarter 3 is looking and how servers are dying out even further Realm Reborn probably has more subs than Blizzard's world of warcraft at the moment. However I do not believe world of warcraft will ever go F2P as the B2P route is more of a logical and profitable sense of direction for them.
So you pick a game that recently had an expansion. We will see in 6 months Mr. FFRR Knight.
@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.
Agree with the number going down but as they have said "there are better metrics"; there is a cash shop in game and one outside game, they can just add all of the sales of cash shop, subscription sales, expansion/starter edition sale and then release a quarterly income statement to show upward revenue generation. In my opinion instead of subscription numbers a solid $$ value is a better way of showing the game is still making money and thus shareholders and players should have no worry about the game "dying".
Errrrr ....they have been reporting income in the SEC filings - from all sources for WoW - for some time: cash shop, royalties, subs, box sales etc. This quarter was $155M (down over 30% on last quarter) continuing the downward revenue generation trend.
Yes i know, i am just stating they can just use the income number to show revenue instead of putting subscription numbers in report, subscription number is not the proper metric to show a business' up or down, do you think shareholders or investors give two tin shit as to how many people play WoW?
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Surely I cant be the only one who would rather WoW to stay subscription based.
I mean going f2p these days doesn't necessarily mean salvation. and at it all time lowest 5.5m its still knocking every other mmorpg our of the ballpark.
And if you're thinking they already don't have a plan for their next MMORPG then you're naïve.
Plus the movie has been in development for fair few years now, so it really has nothing to do with squeezing what's left of the franchise.
Please look pass my bad use of grammar, English is my second language.
I find it Interesting everyone says WoW cannot and will not go f2p. Here's a cold reality WoW isn't the Top MMO anymore get over it white knights. I do believe its time for world of warcraft 2. However I do believe world of warcraft itself should transition to buy once free for life aspect, meaning yea make em pay for the expacs and such just like any other buy 2 play company would do. Now let's get realistic to the one guy who said there is no mmo that comes close to topping WoW's Current subscribers. Actually in cold reality Final Fantasy: Realm Reborn comes very close and in fact more than likely with how quarter 3 is looking and how servers are dying out even further Realm Reborn probably has more subs than Blizzard's world of warcraft at the moment. However I do not believe world of warcraft will ever go F2P as the B2P route is more of a logical and profitable sense of direction for them.
I feel the numbers will spike back up with the next expansion and again after the movie is released. I'm hoping the Warcraft movie brings in an influx of brand new, first time players.
Feel free to quote me. I am calling it now and I have been. When the movie comes out. that's when they will announce f2p. After the credits roll. it will say something cheesy like "you've seen their world. NOW LIVE IN IT" yada go to warcrafts website and download now.
I find it Interesting everyone says WoW cannot and will not go f2p. Here's a cold reality WoW isn't the Top MMO anymore get over it white knights. I do believe its time for world of warcraft 2. However I do believe world of warcraft itself should transition to buy once free for life aspect, meaning yea make em pay for the expacs and such just like any other buy 2 play company would do. B2P route is more of a logical and profitable sense of direction for them.
I think it would breathe vast amounts of fresh air (and players) into
the game if they adopted a B2P model -- buy an expansion and get the
base game (all expacks included) without a subscription fee BUT with a
robust and fair in-game shop. I could live with that!
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.
I find it Interesting everyone says WoW cannot and will not go f2p. Here's a cold reality WoW isn't the Top MMO anymore get over it white knights. I do believe its time for world of warcraft 2. However I do believe world of warcraft itself should transition to buy once free for life aspect, meaning yea make em pay for the expacs and such just like any other buy 2 play company would do. B2P route is more of a logical and profitable sense of direction for them.
I think it would breathe vast amounts of fresh air (and players) into
the game if they adopted a B2P model -- buy an expansion and get the
base game (all expacks included) without a subscription fee BUT with a
robust and fair in-game shop. I could live with that!
Honestly I prefer P2P... but how Blizz has the cash shop its far closer to that of what a B2P game cash shop would be considering how much they neglect nice things for in game. Wow cash shop functions far to much like a B2P game for me while GW2 cash shop functions a lot more like a F2P game. It seems like Western AAA MMos have a bad habit of having cash shops that go far beyond what they should for their own model. Wow switching to B2P I honestly see very little changes they would need to do for it to 'fit' that scheme unless they do actually put more valuable cosmetics in game so that cash shop isn't the only place that has anything of worth (which is a TERRIBLE thing to have in a sub game).
Well, as much as I've been a "WoW's not going F2P for a very long time" guy, when Legion was announced I said that if they aren't far along and planning on releasing it this December (2015), then WoW was going to be in really bad shape come late 2016.
I also saw the trailer for the Warcraft movie and I wouldn't be surprised to see a model transition around that time. There's so little benefit to staying subscription anymore. When you have 7M-10M players, sure, you're printing money. And of course, 5M is nothing to sneeze at, but that's 5M with no content between now and Legion . . . I have a feeling we'll be looking at 3-3.5M by the time Legion is out.
WoW has made astronomical amounts of money, but I am switching bandwagons to the "WoW is dying" group. It is dying at this point, WoD had the promise of BC, but not the longevity and it clearly showed. People were hyped for WoD and it just puttered out by the second raid tier.
If we're honest, going F2P will make Blizzard a ton more money. And now that Overwatch is just about done and the last chapter of SC2 is coming out soon, that leaves a gigantic question mark above Blizzard. For the last 5 years they've been building multiple projects, D3, Hearthstone, HotS, Overwatch, SC xpacs, WoW xpacs - so it's time. Either for Warcraft 4 or for some new MMO.
@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.
Is this what they call burying the lead? Despite not having added any content for months and no
hope of any new content for many more months to come there was a shocking 2% decline in subscribers.
I understand if there was another 1 million plus
subscriber loss why you would run an article about WoW possibly going
F2P but when the real story is that WoW defied all expectations and
showed virtually no subscriber loss it's a bit baffling why this is the story you chose to run.
this just sound the the old sky is falling article we hear every year, for how many years? 10+ . even if today wow was at only 1 millions subs an everyone laughing saying told you so ,wow sucks, etc, etc.
they still be making a mint off those that stayed an am sure they would stay for least 1-2 more years before blizzard made a new MMO or tried f2p to bring back the masses if they wanted to go that route
so in conclusion, i'll wait for the next article like this one, that pops up for the years too come. in till, yes one day you will be right an can say i told you so....
I don't want this WoW F2P. New game with less bloat everywhere, and better tech please. WoW did so many things right, it was the last time I remember really enjoying the trip to max level. I used to be excited to finish class/work and go questing. For whatever reason, no other game world has ever felt as truly real to me as vanilla wow.
...ok maybe EVE, but the "questing" there sucks.
I think the change just has to do with the fact that negative numbers and trends just lead to more negativity while the opposite is true of positive trends and numbers.
If the subs were increasing by 200,000 / quarter I don't think you'd see any changes in reporting.
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“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
They've been laughing all the way to the bank for quite some time... they will continue to laugh after the release of Legion. It's a cash cow... a loot piñata... it will remain so for quite some time mainly because the people spending the most money on the game could really care less if there were ever another expansion made. They play out of habit and routine.
Let's assume even 1/3 of the 5.5M are US players. That's $27.5M a month is subs. Yeah, they're going to get rid of that.
Let's assume (OK we know) revenue was $155M last quarter from all sources: subs, cash shop, box sales, royalties, services. Just over $50M a month. If over half of that revenue is from US subs so be it - means EU subs have tanked but that is possible imo.
But so what? Revenue dropped another 30%+ last quarter.
Compare that to Destiny which (probably) generated over twice the revenue of WoW last quarter and (probably) over twice as much in a full year. (We only have sales numbers hence probably).
Conclusion: it is possible to make more revenue without a sub. Which is why they might change.
I wish it would go f2p, but I suspect they just don't want to be embarrassed by their poor numbers anymore.
Which is too bad. I was really hoping to see the numerical effect which the return of flying and the announcement of Legion would have. Yes, flying had already returned, but it took me a while to come back to the game after it came back anyway.
Poor numbers? ROFL, please tell me another game that has close to 5.5 million paying customers.....Nothing close. Any game would kill for numbers like that.
With all the expansion that they make just to make the game play better, why people think wow 2 going be any different? Be just like expansion same thing there doing to wow now just not keeping people for long point of time.
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I also saw the trailer for the Warcraft movie and I wouldn't be surprised to see a model transition around that time. There's so little benefit to staying subscription anymore. When you have 7M-10M players, sure, you're printing money. And of course, 5M is nothing to sneeze at, but that's 5M with no content between now and Legion . . . I have a feeling we'll be looking at 3-3.5M by the time Legion is out.
WoW has made astronomical amounts of money, but I am switching bandwagons to the "WoW is dying" group. It is dying at this point, WoD had the promise of BC, but not the longevity and it clearly showed. People were hyped for WoD and it just puttered out by the second raid tier.
If we're honest, going F2P will make Blizzard a ton more money. And now that Overwatch is just about done and the last chapter of SC2 is coming out soon, that leaves a gigantic question mark above Blizzard. For the last 5 years they've been building multiple projects, D3, Hearthstone, HotS, Overwatch, SC xpacs, WoW xpacs - so it's time. Either for Warcraft 4 or for some new MMO.
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.
I understand if there was another 1 million plus subscriber loss why you would run an article about WoW possibly going F2P but when the real story is that WoW defied all expectations and showed virtually no subscriber loss it's a bit baffling why this is the story you chose to run.
they still be making a mint off those that stayed an am sure they would stay for least 1-2 more years before blizzard made a new MMO or tried f2p to bring back the masses if they wanted to go that route
so in conclusion, i'll wait for the next article like this one, that pops up for the years too come. in till, yes one day you will be right an can say i told you so....
If the subs were increasing by 200,000 / quarter I don't think you'd see any changes in reporting.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Let's assume (OK we know) revenue was $155M last quarter from all sources: subs, cash shop, box sales, royalties, services. Just over $50M a month. If over half of that revenue is from US subs so be it - means EU subs have tanked but that is possible imo.
But so what? Revenue dropped another 30%+ last quarter.
Compare that to Destiny which (probably) generated over twice the revenue of WoW last quarter and (probably) over twice as much in a full year. (We only have sales numbers hence probably).
Conclusion: it is possible to make more revenue without a sub. Which is why they might change.