"World of Warcarft" might go free-to-play?

7thsinger

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Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is still the biggest and most profitable MMORPG around, making more money per month than many third-world countries thanks to its millions of subscribers paying a $15 per month subscription fee.

But recently, competing MMORPGs like Dungeons and Dragons Online have been having great success switching over to free-to-play, microtransaction-based models. Ask most MMORPG experts and it’s this free-to-play model, not Blizzard’s, that is the future of massively multiplayer gaming.

But don’t expect to catch Blizzard with its pants down. According to World of Warcraft lead designer Tom Chilton, WoW going free-to-play isn’t outside the realm of possibility.

Tom doesn’t think those games have gone free just to compete with World of Warcraft. “I feel like they’re doing that to compete with other games that are on a similar subscriber level to what they were at. I imagine that when one of them went free to play it cannibalized some of the other subscribers. I can definitely imagine that being the case with World of Warcraft. If another game comes along and blows us away it may not make sense for us to have a subscription fee. Or even further down the line, when we have another MMO out.”

In other words, WoW isn’t going to go free anytime soon, but if another MMO overtakes them in popularity, or they release a follow-up MMO, Blizzard may well pull out the big guns to maintain dominance.
 
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