I've been hearing some rumours that Warhammer will be offering a two week welcome back offer soon . To be followed by an announcement of the game going to change free to play sometime in July or August (the free to play to be implimented later in the year). If true do you think this would be a good thing for Warhammer Online given it is a pvp game and what would the best way to impliment it ?

I really have no idea how they would implement something like this and I have thought about it in the past.  Considering how they implemented their "renown" pack, I don't see this going well.  Their cash shop might be filled with mandatory stuff, that anyone who wants to at least somewhat compete (not get two shot) will probably have to have.  What will they sell?  Renown gain increase potions?  Armor, weapons, more uber mounts?  Not sure really, but I just have a bad feeling about it.  It's no matter though, I don't think things could get much worse, as WAR has been on the bottom for quite some time in my opinion.

To be honest, I really wish they would just shut the game down.  As long as this game is around, I will be tempted to go back and play it....only to be disappointed again.

best way would be to be as less 'extended-trial' as possible.

imo ddo and lotro are one of the best examples since technically you can have a lot of content just by farming some kind of points to get access to more content.

if they place limits on majority of classes (in aoc for example youll be only able to get 1/4 out of all classes, wtf).

chat, trading, grouping etc... those restrictions are ruining the game too much.

it would be instantly destroyed by imbalanced cash shop tho.

however as above poster stated... in some games there arent just that many things to sell without causing imbalance.

then it means massive restrictions on content.

Wow-that would be interesting!  Personally, I wouldn't mind returning to it...

As for population-I would bet it would grow, but at what cost?  The f2p transformation means that they still have to pay for things like servers and gms.  The result is going to be, more than likely, an item mall and/or some hybrid-premium mix like what DDO, LoTRO, APB and AoC (just to mention a few) are doing.  With that in mind, there would have to be some serious differences between the Premiums and F2P accounts.  You'll probably see caps placed on pvp levels, limited dungeon/instance access, and most likely race/class restrictions.

been hearing "rumours" of this game going FTP for what seems a year and half, yet here we are....

Originally posted by Marcus-

been hearing "rumours" of this game going FTP for what seems a year and half, yet here we are....

So have I..

I think they dont have even resources to go F2P :D

Well i have absolutely no clue where did you found out about this, but well, it would be really good for the game.

To quote myself from the "WAR needs to go f2p" thread on the official forums:

"Having item shop filled with
-Unique amor sets/cloaks/backpacks just for the looks. No stats.
-Cool looking trophies
-Dyes
-Unique haircuts, face accessories etc.
-Rare and exclusive mounts. Maybe multi-passenger ones too.
-Exp and RR buffs/potions/scrolls.
-Gear for leveling purposes only (like you'd be ported to your camp if you entered a rvr lake and sc's wouldn't allow you to queue until you take it off). Basically overpowered armor set with nice stats that will help people out with questing/pq's. Kinda like wow did with heirlooms.
Would guarantee success.
Add a RvR expansion every year or so on top of it and there you go"

BUT considering the budget of this game and the company that's behind it (damn EA) i'd expect a Pay2Win system like you can't hit more than RR60 unless you subscribe etc.

The company behind this game (EA) wont let them go F2P. Game will just get small bug fix patches and populaition goes down (slowly tho), when GW2 is released this game will have 1 US and 1 EU Servers