[Rumor] WoW will become free to play!

[NerieX]

They won't do that. How should they get money to keep servers up etc?

[ForcesAlike]

My guess:
WoW = F2P
Battle.net = P2P

[lamoza22]

maby they will make it like codemasters -->the lord of the rings online
some quests and etc to be payed with real money

[DjKuja]

Ofc they will make it free at some point, and it makes them earn even more $$$ if it's free. They will then charge real money for a lot of actions. Wouldn't be surprising if it costs 5$ to have a battleground, arena or raid access for 14 days or so. Also increasing level cap would not be free. Then there might also be loot boxes (especially mount boxes) since almost every free to play mmo has those.

Wouldn't be surprising if they removed rep requirement from faction mounts too and made them available from "mount loot boxes" only.

People get addicted to those and will pay a LOT more than 15$ a month. I know a LOT of people who don't play wow because it costs. This change will increase the playerbase by millions, and when they get addicted, they start to buy stuff from the real money shop in wow.

[Netherdrake]

IT'S A DOUBLE FAIL, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!

Yes, it is a friggin' double fail. I hate it, I hate it! :O

I have played Runes of Magic and other games, they just think they are pro players because they play a game similar to World of Warcraft. Runes of Magic is shit, if WoW becomes like it. I WILL QUIT! **** THIS SHIT THIS IS A TRIPLE FAIL NOW! >

[Banananas]

It'll never be completely free.. one way or another they're gonna find a way to leech money out of your wallet.

[Diagorr]

actually, your account facts are very exaggerated. I can tell you without any doubt that there wasn't even 9 million when tbc was released.

[markons]

No1 is looking a bigger picture. Yeah, servers probably cost 1mill$/month to run and yeah they need to pay ppl like GM, developers... But if it goes free to pay there will most probably be some kind of "pay to use' option. Like if you wanna unlock certain part of the game ( map ) or raid you will have to pay for that, weapons, items, mount editing, probably weapon design, there could also be a personal house ( where you can rest your toon and get some buff that will double your exp gain, more room for gear, with teleport and stuff like that.... ), they could easily earn 5x more then now with options like that. Many players would pay for that... And also 50% of players are tired of this game, and only play it because there isn't a game decent enough to replace it, and also i bet Blizzard is planing to make/create a new game ( better graphic, design... ) and are probably planing to drop some of those players addicted to WoW... We all know time for this game is ticking and it is a matter of time when it will go down in a history....

[spectre123]

They might make it free to play once you have purchased the game itself. I think it's ridiculous how you have to buy the game AND pay for it aswel...

[Shadow178]

My guess is that they're expecting alot of competition with the GW2 and StarWars games coming out, and this can only lead to MORE competition, if they make it F2P they will most likely make a Diablo 3 styled AH, where you can use real money to buy and sell.

Just a guess, but it might not be completely wrong :P

[phantom325]

Tom Chilton, lead designer at Blizzard, explained in an interview at PC Gamer.com, that World of Warcraft will most likely become free in the near future.

Exact quote from OP. This was posted one year ago. That's not "the near future"

This won't happen.
This thread shouldn't even be up, super necro post by Diag.

[Mizuho]

P2P = Everyone pays the same
F2P = Some people don't pay it, but then they get the money from the people that have it


So, if you pay now 15$, if they change the game to F2P then you're going to pay extra 15$ for each player that never pays anything.

And yes, wow have a lot of things to "exploit"
- Rental / Cash mounts, currently ones removed or new ones with more speed.
- Gamble boxes
- Access to lower cost of ingame services (Auction, Repair, Travel) while they put it 2x or 3x (perhaps 4x) for the people that don't pay for it.
- A system where if you pay, you go to the nearest graveyard if you die, but if you don't, then you go to the far one
- Rental equipment (Full T12 for 30$ available for 15 days).
- Rental / Premium gems / enchantments
- Access to Battleground and Dungeon finder
- Potions to restore more Life and Mana, and you can use more than one in combat.
- Potions that give stats
- Access to a premium gliph tab.
- Scrolls that teleport to raids, cities, places. Of course any static portal like the ones in Stormwind and Orgrimmar should be removed.
- A scroll or something that reduces the use of materials to make things in professions while the make it double to the people that don't use them.
- Scrolls to give 1.5/2/3 exp, drop, reputation etc rates.

[wac]

Move along people. Look at when this thread was created. Is WoW now F2P? No. Will it ever be? No.
Possibly free to login, but never free to play.

[nerfmeplease]

Why do people necro threads, holy balls.

[ketrish]

i think more or less they earned so much with it that they could allow themselves to make it almost like free just to keep WoW's servers not payable from their side so in other meaning players would keep servers alive while paying only for next expansions not the time... anyway better idea would be to change elua and let players have their accounts as their own - there is more $$ potencial buisness in that than making free WoW