World of Warcraft offered 'free'
 

Im suprised that WOW have taken so long to do this becuase there are a lot of free to play games which are making money by offering in game items for sale instead of charging a monthly fee.



Popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW) is to be offered free up to level 20.

Previously fans of the game, which has 11.4 million subscribers, had to pay a monthly fee of £8.99.

Under the new system, players will be able to build an unlimited number of characters but they will not be able to join guilds or accumulate more than ten gold coins.

The move is seen as a way of attracting new players to the game.
Free bonanza

World of Warcraft is an online game in which players create characters, such as warriors, warlocks and shaman, who they then take on adventures to gather loot and items to make the avatars more powerful.

It is among the most successful of the so-called massively multi-player online games.

Blizzard Entertainment, maker of WoW, has previously offered free trials of the game but only for a limited number of days.

The free version will have no time restrictions.

Tim Edwards, editor of PC Gamer, estimates that it will offer someone new to the game around 10 to 15 hours of game-play.

"It is a really good offer and will allow people to get a flavour of the world," he said.

More and more companies are offering games for free as they aim to attract more PC owners to gaming.

"It is a free-to-play bonanza for gaming right now," said Mr Edwards.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13973145

I'm sure they never did it before because they never had to. Aren't there some new popular games like this out taking a stake?

Almost all MMORPGs go down this road eventually.

yeah there are a lot but even the game scene is changing very quickly with all the free to play games. The nice thing about the free to play games is the users do not have to pay out every month to keep playing and they dont even have to spend a penny unless they want to get ahead of other users in the game. Its pretty funny cuase once you have one player spending money and getting ahead of others a lot of the other players start to spend as well. They hate to be beaten lol. I had one player spend $60 in one go because he wanted revenge on another player lol

Free to play is taking off HUGE right now

might finally give it a try, heh

yeah i will play it till level 20 and then again to pay them

dont do it man

giving away content is for IDIOTS

Its not giving away content and this "free to play model" in the gaming scene works very well.

Age of Conan is also free to play now, all the MMO's are going free to play because when SWTOR is released everyone is going to be hurting.

it is what i call the freetard revolution. everyone wants everything for free, and there isnt enough ways to actually pay for it. it isnt a business model, its a waste of efforts.

Yeah but it isn't, it makes tons of money and in some cases more.

Take this game I played recently called APB (All Points Bulletin). It's basically like Grand Theft Auto 3 style play but with other people on the net. The game is free to play but you have to pay if you want some special mods on guns that you would usually get anyway if you just played long enough. And sure enough half the people I run into in the game have these guns which expire every 10 days! So if they're paying $3 a gun and only getting that one gun it totals out to $9 a month which is pretty comparable to a subscription. But it's pretty easy to forget how fast it adds up and buy one $3 thing on Monday, another one on Thursday and one more on Sunday. I mean it's just $3 but by the end of the month you've paid them $27 which is way more than they would ever charge monthly.

Look at Zynga one of the fastest growing companies EVER that is valued at ~$10 billion, their whole business model is the free to play one.

Free is the new Black...

that was only a matter of time.

:1orglaugh
LOL Its amazing the amount of people who have no understanding of how the "free" works in the gamming world. Why do you think Facebook got involved with the "free" gaming apps.

Take a look at the game Torn which is only a text based MMORPG and see the amount of players it gets and then take a look at the date it was launched. I garantee u that site makes more money than a lot of porn paysites. This "free gaming" model is not that new btw so how on earth can you say its not a biz model lol

So it's true, demos got bigger ...

OMG OMG you are now red..I bow down to thee oh great master

Congrats btw :thumbsup

I was clearing out emails last week and found a load of receipts from a 'free' game i used to play.


started off playing for free > became impossible to keep up with the ones who paid for advantages

paid for a bit > then it became very hard to compete on a higher level with bot users - at the time though all the bots were being developed by small quite closed groups

helped with bot testing, took the piss in a big way, and got banned from every server i played on :1orglaugh

once properly developed the bots become what people will pay for


Lots of money in 'free' games - whether it's direct to the game or outside of it to cheat.

Damm you bot players :winkwink:

Well, lvl 20 u don't see shot of the game potential..
But It's a game for mmorpg lovers...

It's always fairly easy to detect - just make a small change to your game script and watch how many players drop off the leader-board during the night :1orglaugh

free-to-play ends up getting the maker more money anyways.
so this 'bonanza' fueled by idiot fucking kids and people is gonna make the game makers even more money.

as always, the sheep get fucked and are made to enjoy it.

I can see how it works for gaming. But it still doesn't make sense for porn.

you do realize who was saying that right

he was joking and you completely missed it

I played Evony for 2 years and even though you can play it totally free - you don't really get very far unless you buy coins. I Probably dumped $1000 into it over those years.

Without coins, you mostly get pwned by other paying players in those game types and even though it felt kinda dirty giving them money for made up BS it was essential to get the most out of it and to justify the hours playing.

this game is so addictive...no way to stop at level 20.....believe me

LOL I have just been reading his blog and yep I did :helpme

well this really sucks, I have a character that is way over level 20, but I haven't played it in a few years, there is no point to this "free" offer
:2 cents:

LOL not u as well I spent so much damm money on that game. Then I became host of an alliance ...Some of the alliance members would spend even more money than what i used to spend on it.. It was fun but I stay away from it now

My guess is that over time you wont have to pay for a monthly membership but pay for in game items On the game which i run you have the ability to charge $$$ for any made up item you want, the game can become endless because when players reach high levels to get into diff citys to get the best items you just make up a new city with new shops where they can buy new items. Thats the beauty of MMORPGS that dont reset after a certain amount of time.
Its also very funny to see players threatening each other with all sorts of shit and reporting each other to try and get ahead.

I dont know but maybe you could run porn films like a TV soap. Let your members sign up totaly free, let them watch the first 15 min of teasing vids then get them to pay a small amount to see the rest and then sell items of worn clothing, props, signed movies, ect from the porn stars in the movie or something lol

This will never happen with WoW, mark my words. Their fanboys would turn their backs in a heart beat if people with money were the ones with the best gear.

What happened was when they released Cataclysm, they changed the style of play from the WotLK expansion prior. They made the game "harder" like it used to be, and many of the people dropped out and I believe (rumored) that Blizzard lost upwards of 1,000,000 subscriptions. It's $14.99/month to play... do the math.

As someone above stated, the game is highly addictive and you can make it to level 20 very easily within a day or two. Once you start leveling and get immersed into the world and the lore, well, you are hooked.

Smart move on Blizzard's part to bump their subscription base up. I think Blizzard is only looking at one more expansion for WoW anyways, and I also think that they know that they will probably lose quite a few players to WoW when Diablo III drops sometime at the end of this year/beginning of next.

You could be right but I think in the end it will be a free to play with items to buy. They have made thier money and are fighting against a ever more changing gamming world as the porn industy is. More and more gaming companys are now offering the "Free to play" model

""It is a free-to-play bonanza for gaming right now," said Mr Edwards.

"Team Fortress 2 went free over last weekend and it tripled its players overnight. If customers like the game it is pretty easy to get them to buy stuff," he said."

We had similar players - upgrading hero gear to lvl 15 cost an average of $10,000 - $12,000.....we had two alliance members who spent that on 15 gear.

I remember hearing of one poor soul on our server (Battleaxe) who'd spent $20k for his 15 set......poor dude must have failed a fair few star upgrades lol

I stopped at an 11 set...because after that, it got crazy expensive :Oh crap

The most expensive free to play is Entropia Universe.
I know many people that have dumped 5k+ a month into this, what a waste.
Then there are those that want to "own" a chunk of the universe.
http://www.geekosystem.com/entropia-...-sells-335000/

Oddly enough like 2 or 3 years ago when I was buying something at Walmart they had WOW cd's at the check out for..... wait for it......... $1.00 I said fuck it and snagged one.

so I really don't think this is anything really "new" for WOW,

Never really liked the game btw I dubbed it W.orld O.f W.alking lol

-Loki-

Smart move for WOW. I bet some upgrades will cost a few bucks. Next thing you know, you had spent more than you were just subscribing for. F2P rocks! :thumbsup:)

Isn't this how crack dealers get school children addicted?
Give them the first few hits free then start charging at level 20...

League of Legends is a free online game, and it is getting bigger and bigger every day. It's based off of the DOTA map from Warcraft.

I've never seen that in real life with any drug.

You don't need to give free samples of something that needs no advertising and people will hunt down for themselves.

Could you try and explain to me, cos clearly I am very stupid, how giving away 20 levels of a game isn't giving away 20 levels of a game?

KTHXBYE.

Yeah, Blizzard are fucking retards, right?

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/7995...1m-in-q1-2010/

While we are on the subject of MMORPG'S anybody want a link exchange on a PR2 MMORPG Site ? hit me up on ICQ or send me an email to halfpint070 at hotmail.co.uk

Only got one left which goes on the homepage

Its silly to charge as you simply get people to play for free and make cash inside from people buying bits and bobs.

They are not just giving it out for free they will make money from it. Its a similar thing as using free sites or giving out 5 min vids to capture your audience and make $$$

Sorry, I thought you could play the first 20 levels for free.

My bad, carry on.

Oh come on you know better than that dude stop trying to wind me up lol ..

50 wow addicts
http://gearcrave.frsucrave.netdna-cd...3/warcrack.jpg