Do you think that Blizzard would ever make the original WoW (up to and including BWL and the BGs but not Naxx and not BC) free but have no updates or patches? I'm not hardcore enough to even get bored of MC let alone Naxx. Because of this, I don't care about patches offering new raid content when I haven't even come close to finishing the original stuff. I don't like BC because it made almost all the dungeons at 60 useless. I would love to see servers with the highest level being 60 again and, potentially, free. Do you think they will eventually do this and/or would you want to see that?
I doubt it. A lot of the costs of the monthly fee goes into maintaining the servers. Someone with only pre-BC is still taking up server space and bandwidth. It wouldnt be a profitable model.
By the time they would consider making any part of their product free, they would have the next MMO ready for deployment. I think with the amount of money it costs them to maintain that game that it will never be free until the client base falls enough to fit on a few servers.
Lets think about this for a second. If your blizzard, and you have made a game that has 8.5 million subscribers (with literally thousands of more people every month joining) that each pay you 15$ a month, why the hell would you make it free? Honestly, from a business stand point their essentially printing money at this point with WoW. Would be the worst decision in the history of bussiness to give it to everyone for free. Also, the reason so many people still play WoW daily is because of the content patches and expansions. Just because you havent exhausted the content in the game yet, doesnt mean loads of other people havent. So in short, no, I dont see WoW EVER being free, even years from now when it doesnt have millions of subscribers. I mean heck, Ultima Online and the original Everquest still arent free for christ sakes. If your looking for a free online roleplaying game, I recommend guild wars, and some of the expansions.
I think what Crushbone said about sums it all up. Really, the only chance you ever have for free WoW may be buying a car with the WoW credit card, or playing on an illegal free server. Good luck with either of those solutions. I'm sure both will result in prison at one point or another.
I don't mean all of WoW should be free. I mean like a couple servers could be 60 maxed and without updates. Obviously, most people still want the updates. This would all be in like 4 years or something when 5 expansions have come out. They'd still make a ton of money. But you are right, they'd make more if they didn't. I'm just hoping they'll be happy with $1billion instead of $1.1billion or whatever their profits may be by then. I'm just hoping is all.
I doubt it. A lot of the costs of the monthly fee goes into maintaining the servers. Someone with only pre-BC is still taking up server space and bandwidth. It wouldnt be a profitable model.XaosII
Considering the amount of subscribers to WoW, I would say only a very small fraction of the monthly fee cost goes to server maintenance.
I would be intresing to see it go free, but that ain't ever happening. They are making sooo much money off these people playing this game. It's a goldmine.
Log in to comment