Free-to-play is the norm in China and South Korea for online titles and they are trending well in the West as well. In fact, World of Warcraft lead designer Tom Chilton thinks that titles like Lord of the Rings Online, Company of Heroes and Dungeons and Dragons Online going free is a natural evolution.
“I feel like they’re doing that to compete with other games that are on a similar subscriber level to what they were at. I imagine that when one of them went free to play it cannibalized some of the other subscribers. I can definitely imagine that being the case with World of Warcraft. If another game comes along and blows us away it may not make sense for us to have a subscription fee. Or even further down the line, when we have another MMO out.”
“While that may be the case in the long, long term, going free-to-play is not in World of Warcraft’s immediate future. We’re not spending a lot of time thinking about it. It s not something that’s a reality for us in the near future,” said Chilton.
Source: PC Gamer
