It's easy to forget how popular World of Warcraft is. When it was revealed last week that WoW's number of subscriptions was still in decline, down almost a million players since the launch of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, I had the same reaction that probably many others had -- I immediately thought they should go free-to-play. Of course, that was a completely illogical snap-reaction. The half-dozen or so high-profile games that have gone free-to-play in the past year all had far, far fewer subscribers. World of Warcraft "only" has 11 million. Even at the current rate of subscribers leaving, it would be about a decade before World of Warcraft faced the same situation as City of Heroes, Age of Conan or EverQuest II.

But let's say that Blizzard did switch to the free-to-play model. How could they do it? The great majority of subscription-based games that have gone free-to-play in the past have taken the route of selling non-core content as extras. Games like Champions Online and Age of Conan have instanced structures, with loading-screens when you pass between zones. This makes it easier to lock out access to non-essential areas to players who don't want to pay. That's not the case with World of Warcraft, though.


World of Warcraft has an open-world structure, where passing between areas is seamless. This means that breaking up content into free and premium is a little tougher. Luckily, World of Warcraft already has a lot of microtransaction-style content implemented, such as special vanity pets and sparkly flying horses. World of Warcraft also has a huge volume of content that could be tweaked to fit a different business model.


Take Heroics, the extra-hard-but-extra-rewarding versions of dungeons for players at the level cap, for example. The current structure limits players to one Heroic per dungeon per day. This keeps players from continuously running the same dungeon in the hopes of obtaining an especially rare item. This could be replicated by using a token or stamina system akin to games like Vindictus or Dungeon Fighter Online.


In Dungeon Fighter Online, dungeons are divided into rooms and players can enter a maximum number of rooms. Once they reach that max, they have to wait for their stamina bar to reset (usually in the middle of the night) or they can buy an item to give them a little more stamina. Vindictus uses a token system that puts a limit on the total number of dungeons a player can run (with tougher dungeons costing more tokens). Extra tokens can be bought and remain available until used. This could be easily modified to fit WoW's multitude of dungeons and heroics -- say, five free tokens a day, which would give players the opportunity to conquer five Heroic instances. If players want to redo a Heroic they just completed, the token cost goes up by one. This could be applied to PvP Battlegrounds and Arenas too, should Blizzard be really hurting for revenue.


Most players won't want to do more than five instances a day, which means those players could theoretically play normally for free. The hardcore raiders, on the other hand, might frontload their instance-use every time a new set of Heroics comes out, so they may end up paying more. I'm alright with that. I'd rather have the few hardcore pay for the many casuals.


Then there are the expansions. Unlike the rest of Azeroth, expansion content is separated from the main world either by airship/boat or by a means of travelling -- you can't reach Hyjal without the ability to fly in Azeroth and you can't get that without World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. I imagine everything level 60 and upwards would remain premium-content, but with no subscription cost following it up, that seems quite reasonable.


Likewise for Hero classes. Hero classes first appeared in Wrath of the Lich King with the Death Knight, and since then we've seen…well, none. Will Blizzard ever revisit the concept of Hero classes? No one knows! If they did, though, they'd be prime candidates for premium content under a free-to-play model. There would need to be more than one, but I imagine that many players would happily fork out ten bucks for the chance to play as a brand new class.


The end result would be something very similar to the current game, almost entirely unchanged for the casual player. It's hardcore raiders on the bleeding edge of content and the PvPers who are trying to get the best PvP gear -- the people really committed to being the best -- who would end up reaching for their wallets, and that's how other free-to-play games function anyway. There would likely be an optional subscription that would remove the limitations and let WoW function exactly as is currently, similar to Dungeons and Dragons Onlne or Lord of the Rings Online. Would Blizzard be making less money than they do under the current subscription model? Probably! But this isn't a model for the game as it is now, it's a model for the game in five, maybe ten years, when subscriber numbers are much lower.


I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Blizzard has something up its sleeves, after all, it recently showed it wasn't afraid of trying new business models with the announcement of the Diablo III real-cash auction system. I contacted Blizzard to see if they had any plans -- distant as they may be -- for WoW to go free-to-play, and have yet to hear back.

Source: http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/118/1187321p1.html

Posted: Aug 11, 2011 2:08 pm