LotRO introduces Mithril Edition, Dwarves swarm local retailers

Blizzard could learn a thing or two about F2P from these guys with WoW, hint hint Blizz.

@dudes

"Blizzard could learn a thing or two about F2P from these guys with WoW, hint hint Blizz. "

I guess the main question is, would Blizzard make more money if they changed their model to F2P? How many fans would they loose, because you know damn well people will leave; And how many paying players will join after the F2P conversion. Do you want freeloadering players, or do you want players that know how much it will cost and is willing to pay before they play for the month. It really sounds like a dumb idea, switching over to F2P with at least 11million subscribers paying 15 a month. You're talking about switching from $165,000,000/month to relying on items in an item mall to sell? That insanity. You won't even make that much in your lifetime, especially if you're on a massively comment thread expressing your opinions about a company that "could learn a thing or two" from a company that has already had its battleship sunk; Turbine could learn more than a couple things from Blizzard, like how to make a good game that maintains its subscription base. I wouldn't bash a game unless I've played it, my retail purchase of LOTRO was the last produced I will ever buy from Turbine, and I'm still regretting that $50 waist of money. Even if the F2P conversion increased the player base, how many of those players will actually pay?

You see games like Runescape, boasting millions of registered users, but they are nowhere near the financial level that Blizzard is sitting at. All a F2P conversion will do is piss off existing fans, and increase the player base, while revenues will stay at a standard level. Blizzard, would be maintaining servers for 20 million registered users, while only pulling in a revenue of 5 million monthly subs; More wear and tear, less incoming revenue. DDO was revitalized by F2P, and many other games, but they were making zero profit to begin with, of course they will be increasing their revenue by 100 times; 100 playing players X 0 paying players is 100 times increase in revenue. WoW has 11 million paying players, how many more players that are not sick of WoW are left? A F2P conversion will only bring in the remnants of what is left in the MMO world, and wouldn't that hurt the rest of the MMOs out there?

For anyone that says they will not play WoW, unless they can try it out. You can go to the website and create a new account and play up to lvl 20 for free. I know that's low for any WoW player, but you can at least try the game if you have not tried it yet, "for free."

@Bladerunner83 It' s where players spend their time that matters. If they aren't paying a sub because of spending time in an f2p MMO rather than WoW and the potential to spend money there, wouldn't it be better for Blizzard to make some money rather than no money? I think they may feel that way too by creating WoW f2p options to L85+, perhaps through game cards per x amount of levels unlocked, maybe 20 levels and the next tier of skill level unlocking per game card, might get them some cash that they otherwise wouldn't make because of the large amount of f2p games that players are spending their time in and potential money that Blizzard won't be making but company's and games like Turbine and LOTRO are.

And it would not be a complete switch over to f2p for WoW. Subscriptions would still be an option. It would be widening their market, not shrinking it.

@Bladerunner83

You might want to brush up on your facts. For starters WoW does not have 11 million people paying $15 a month. There is a substantial part of that player base that is in Asia and they don't use a per month model. There are also other countries that $15 a month is way to expensive for the pop. They also get a lower rate. Blizzard makes a shit ton of money, but not as much as you want to believe.

@exe973

I'm aware my information could be speculation. If you could post references as to where you obtained your information, I would be inclined to believe you, but right now, your facts are about as credible as mine.

@Bladerunner83

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/World_of_Warcraft#Subscription

I can give you Blizzard sites if you can read the Korean or Chinese languages.

@exe973

First of all, wikimedia is not a credible source. I don't need to read Korean and Chinese to know how much of a rate they charge, per min, hour, days; I just need a credible source, like a financial statement from the company. It really doesn't matter if they charge by the second, it's actually more profitable the less you go, they can't do that in America because people would scream robbery. The lowest currency in American money is a penny, and if you charged 1 penny a second, you would be making 60 pennies a minute, 60c times 60min is $36 an hour.

The fact of the matter is, Blizzard could be making a lot more money from these Asian countries, instead of $15 a month, it could be $30 a month. But you don't have any credible sources, just a public wikimedia site, that really doesn't tell me anymore than I already know. Maybe you should brush up on your facts, I'm only speculating, I never stated my information was fact. I do for a fact know how much money Blizzard makes, and it's not 165 billion as I speculated, but it is substantial, far more than any other MMO developer that is willing to make their statements public. Companies hind their financial statements from the public, because it can make them look bad, (as a less than profitable company), Trion and Turbine are two companies that do not share their financial statements with the public. Here is a credible source for you:

http://investor.activision.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1104659-11-44296&CIK=718877

@Bladerunner83

Wikipedia is not a credible source by itself. But it is a great jumping off point if you bother to follow the notes. People who automatically dismiss a wikipedia entry as completely without merit are missing a great source to begin research.

I never said they didn't make a lot of money. In fact I did say they made a lot of money. I just pointed out how you got your figure was wrong based on differing methods of payment. The differing payment methods are actually pretty common knowledge. Wikipedia was just a quick source. I'm really not inclined to find wow.com articles or such about it.

Charging by the hour is not always as profitable as you believe. Someone could by a 60 hour time card and take 2 months to use it. If that time card equals 10 dollars then they got 10 dollars for two months of play.

Your speculation was wrong, and your speculation was not about the 15 dollar fee. You were actually pretty solid in that idea. You can dismiss the wiki all you want, but in this case the information was derived from blizzards own sites. The wiki links to them. Never dismiss a resource without seeing where that resource gets it's info. I might use wikipedia, but I always check their sources.

@exe973

I did look at those sources on the wiki link references, and they led to a dead end of no information. One led me directly to Blizzard's US QA website, were I had to search for a specific term and that still did not give me the information you stated about foreign country discounts or the actual prices of the Asian market. I dismiss wiki information because Wiki-style sites are filled with bias and propaganda, and the majority of their links lead you to various unaccredited news sources. I'm done with this pissing match. Bottom line is Turbine could learn a few things from Blizzard when it comes to making a good, highly successful game, and not vice versa.

@Bladerunner83, @exe973 : anyway, point is, looking at that SEC filing, Blizzard made $766 million in six months from "subscription, licensing and other revenues" (NOT product sales). That's a lot of money. A LOOOOOOOOTTTTT of money. I would need extraordinary evidence to persuade me that Blizzard have anything to learn from Turbine when it comes to making money from an MMORPG.

@BigAndShiny

If you can find it.

@Eamil They're called Amazon, Ed.

@Graill440

No monthly at least. I've now spent around $80 US since release and have all the overland content unlocked (not skirmishes, but I don't do those much anyway).

Compare that to the amounts that folks spend on monthly plus expansions and it is cheap. If you grinded your living butt off you could get it all unlocked without spending a dime, but it would take a looong time. At least it has the option though.

@Graill440 I can log in and play for free. Hence Free to Play. It's not called All Content Free or Do Everything for Free. It's not a web based f2p game. It's a hybrid F2P game. You can log in and pay money for the content you want at your own pace or pay a subscription to get access to all content (except expansions). I love the hybrid model. I'm been premium for a while. I don't need quest packs for lower level regions since my toons are all 65+. I just buy points bundles when I want new content. It's cheaper than spending $10-$15 a month. I'd rather pay $15 on points every 3 months when new content comes out.