Zarhym weighed in with no real clarification.
We are currently exploring the possibility of adding a way for players in certain regions to make purchases directly within the game. As part of this process, elements related to this will be appearing on the PTR. We’ll provide additional updates on our plans as development progresses.
Last edited by Sservis : 07-04-2013 at 08:15 AM
Originally Posted by Sservis
I have absolutely no qualms about purchasing an experience boost, because it means I don't have to buy yet another account in order to level my characters more quickly.
Free to play could be on the horizon. Doesnt blizzard make more money off services than actual subscriptions? I think I read that somewhere.
If they keep losing subs they will have to change drastically, I could see ftp as a way to increase revenue and get back some of those players who quit. Ghostcrawler said that the reasoning that most players give for quitting is that wow is to expensive.
Last edited by Fat Tire : 07-04-2013 at 09:48 AM
if they go free to play and how blizzard is all about cash. then the game will be play to win. to be fair i can see more games going ftp and making money of items etc seems to be the new way.
My guess is that it will only be available to those regions that don't allow RaF. Currently playing arena with a guy who was going to transfer to my realm, but since he is a student he didn't fancy transferring more than 1 toon. Offered him the option to get a 5 euro battlechest and that I would boost him a few nights to dungeons. Easiest/fastest/cheapest way to get multiple alts on a new realm. Unfortunately the country he lives in does not allow incentives like RaF. And just looking at the list of countries that don't allow it, I can see they miss out on quite some business. Making the purchase directly ingame would circumvent the whole restriction for these countries.
Either way, I don't see WoW becoming free to play any time soon. If they have 5m subs at 15$, thats $75kk per month or $900kk from subs alone each year. That's a whole lot of cash to put on the line. Slowly adding items (pets, mounts, this xp boost, cosmetic items, ...) while not trying to piss off your subs, i.e. items that don't offer any strength cq direct combat advantage in the game, ... sure. But free to play with the current revenue they get from subs, I highly doubt it.
Just like I doubt that they make more money from services than from subs ... you have to transfer/faction change/buy a lot of pets to surpass what you pay each year for your sub.
And a last consideration: I've been playing on an empty realm until roughly 20 months ago. Pretty much everyone I knew there has quit over time, simply because they could not play the game anymore the way they want. When I look at the people I know on my new full realm, the drop out rate is much lower. So yeah they made perhaps a lot of money from people transferring away from dead realms, but most feel ripped off for that. But the amount of people that left the game because they were stuck on a dead realm and didnt feel like paying $100+ to transfer their alts to a populated realm sooner or later surpasses that.
That is one of the reasons why they will cluster the low pop realms together next patch. Which obviously means that they will miss out on a lot of transfers, but a bunch of players who quit might come back (or keep their sub going since there will actually be more to do).
Everything that is fun in life is either bad for your health, immoral or illegal!
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