Quote Originally Posted by Tonuss View Post
I think WOW will eventually go F2P because it seems that is where the MMO industry is headed, but I think it's a few years off. As long as they can retain several million subscriptions I don't see why they would change. When they do, the number of people who will return will probably swamp the login and realm servers for a while. It's a fun game and it's managed to both attract and retain a surprisingly large number of players since it launched. Blizzard's real concern (IMO) should be that WOW might be an anomaly, and their next game will be like all of the other post-WOW MMOs, which has an early surge of subs but settles in with fewer than 1 million or even 500k.
Ha ha, wouldn't that be a bummer to work so hard on a new game and not be able to be as successful as their own same old WoW lol.
I can't see how they won't compete with each other. If the new game is anything short of amazing, they will have to use a lower sub/month to attract more people. Even if the new game is amazing, many people might just not want to move on. Old is sometimes better, just like wine. And I doubt they would just shut down WoW when it still has so many subs.

Now of course, there are going to be a whole new set of customers for the new game who never played WoW, or are no longer WoW customers.