With the change in the old world, are any of the old vanilla raids even still accessible at 60? If the game was free to play up to 60 and you could still do some of these old raids I think it would create a sub population that would enjoy it. But it might be small. They might want to try to concentrate such a population onto a handful of servers. I don't see why not. If the content already exist it takes nothing to "deliver" it. These players might end up monitizing by picking up a mount or pet in the store.

In fact, I would say, they should offer vanilla for free and then charge a bit for the expansions as if they were DLC but still not charge a sub until you get to MoP.

F2P is for the dogs. I don't understand everyone's thinking. Is everyone really that broke that they are pushing F2P on everyone and every thing?

I'm starting to get a tad bit frustrated over all this F2P wave seemingly going on here at MMORPG.

I mean I commented on the game's cash shop and another forum about it costing 2 pounds for 1 hour of buffs and holy cripes I got flamed to no end about it being "pay to win." Ok? If it is pay to win, ANET still needs to make some more income then original box sales. Otherwise, you personally,  over time become a leech on their income.

Lets just stop and think about this article.     10% of P2W games has paying customers.   That would require those 10% to purchase $150 a month just to compete with the current business model.

P2W isn't for games that have a large number of subscribers.   It is for P2P games that have failed.

Consider how much of the pre-60 content already got retrofitted into the nostalgia raid o' the week....Why not.

Your pre-60 includes a lot of cataclysm content for free, however...might cause a stir among the bean-counters.

Yes, it should go F2P.  Most every sub game should.  It should go Aion or Perfect World type of F2P, but it doesn't have to.  They really don't have to do anything they don't want to.  Even though they are bleeding subs somewhat it always seems their players come back because there is nothing out there better for them.  RIFT is the closest thing that offers challenging raid based content and it's nowhere near as large yet, doesn't have the brand recognition, and requires a much higher end system to enjoy the game.

Also people keep mentioning 9-10 million subs, but I don't think that is right, is it?  It's 3 - 4 million subs in North America and Europe with Asia (the larger player base making up the other 5 - 6 million) buying time slots not monthly recurring fees.  So it's not really accurate to say 9 - 10 million recurring subs.

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Originally posted by Slampig

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Originally posted by lizardbones Given that buying four expansions is going to cost something like $100 or more, it certainly wouldn't hurt them to get people into the game and playing through a lot of content for free. I would think that initial cost is a huge hurdle to get people to jump over.

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You can grab all of the games at Amazon for under $50, add in $40 for MoP and you are still under your $100.

 

Also, you assume people are going to buy the entire cataloge at one time. 

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I like subscription models, it helps restrain me from spending way more a month then I should.

15$ a month is fine, but I have played f2p and end up spending 3$ here..4$ here....end of the moth I have spent 50 bucks on stuff I will use for the month cause I thought it was cool and  then is buried in my inventory.

Originally posted by Method01

Why should a game with close to 10 mil subs go f2p? I know you mentioned it's only to lvl 60, but i really don't think Blizzard are that desperate to make it f2p up to lvl 60. 

    From a players point of view, sure....From Blizzards point of view, I have no idea why they'd do this.

Sorry Bill, but you kinda screwed up. Again.

There is no "unrestricted access to lvl 20". These are the restriction on the free version:

• A level cap of 20
• A maximum of 10 gold
• Trade skills are capped at 100 ranks
• Unable to trade via the Auction House, mailbox, or player-to-player
• In-game access to public chat channels unavailable; players are limited to communicating using only say, party, or whisper
• Characters will be unable to create or join guilds
• Characters are not able to send whispers to other characters unless they have been added to the characters' friends' lists or have received a whisper from a character first
• Characters will not be able to invite other players into a party
• Characters will be unable to disable experience gains
• Voice chat is disabled on Starter Edition accounts
• Realms experiencing login queues will prioritize players who have full, paid accounts
• Starter Edition accounts are not eligible for character transfers
• RealID features are disabled on all Starter Edition Accounts

Originally posted by sniperman248
It would be a great idea. And for the oh they have 9.1million subs here's the thing Aion had 11 million yet they went f2p and now their population went up to 16million and they are making more money than they did off of subscriptions alone. People are willing to spend more on a cash shop a week than what blizzard is making now just in one month.

Where did you get those numbers? NCSoft took a loss in Q2 and partly blamed Aion and it's loss of subs and microtransactions. Nowhere those numbers that I've seen on any site, including NCSoft. Closest I have seen was back in 2009 when it had 4 mil in Korea and about 3 mil in Europe and America combined. They had a bit of a jump when it went FtP, but nowhere near that.

As for WoW it peaked at just over 12 million players in 2011 and now a year and a half later down to 9.1 mil. That's the sharpest drop yet. Hell even before the polished turd Cata hit (and yes I played it and still play once in a while), it jumped almost a half a mil players. This time it's dropping. Looks like the rats are deserting the sinking ship. People are getting tired of the "same stuff, new package" thing.

As for the "freemium" set up, it might keep it from bleeding all the way out. Up to 60, no restriction except maybe limiting how many mails or auctions can be done. Yea, it would mess with the economy for a short period, but would be better in the long run. Most of the economy in WoW now is higher level stuff anyway. Would actully improve the economy for the low range,  Hell, I would make an account for just the 60 raids alone.