Apparently we missed this news: World of Warcraft has gone free to play! Kinda!
New players can upgrade their character through the first 20 levels without paying a penny. Once their goblin, dwarf, elf or other fantasy hero is suitably buff and experienced, the player will then be able to jump on a monthly subscription to keep levelling up.
There are a handful of restrictions. You can only collect upto ten gold and tradeskills are capped at level 100. A number of features (like the auction house, guilds and voice chat) will also be turned off for non-paying users, and subscribers will get priority in queues.
There's also the fact that the first 20 levels of World of Warcraft are an absolutely minuscule slice of the full experience, and something that can be completed in a few hours. Characters can currently reach level 85 in the full game, and most content is saved for these "endgame" players.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-06/29/world-of-warcraft-goes-a-bit-free-to-play
Also, free to play is quite definitely a thing now. From a Wired article on the subject:
The idea originated in countries like Korea, China, Russia and Brazil where piracy was so prevalent that selling packaged goods with an upfront fee just became pointless and futile. Instead, companies pivoted on the traditional business model and tried a new approach. They gave away MMOs and multiplayer kart racers for nothing, and then offered up small and optional “microtransactions” on the side.
It absolutely exploded. Suddenly, gamers who used to knock off full-price games were spending 10 times that amount on virtual doodads, expediting upgrades and premium features. It hit big, it hit fast and it soon made its way to the West. By the mid ’00s, we saw games imported from Korea, and by the end of the decade we saw native releases like Electronic Arts’ free-to-play shooter Battlefield Heroes, and Zynga’s free-to-play Facebook phenomenon FarmVille.
See AlsoTop 5 Best Attackers R6 2024The business model has since ripped through the games industry like a particularly nasty pox. Today, more than eight leading MMOs (from EverQuest II to City of Heroes) have free-to-play elements either implemented today or planned for down the line. On the iPhone App Store, eight out of 10 “top grossing” games are currently free-to-play apps. Zynga’s CityVille courts 80 million architects a month; EA has 17 million users on free-to-play games.
According to the industry, it’s one very successful business model. EA Games Label President Frank Gibeau told GamesIndustry.biz that free-to-play can be “as profitable as a console game.” Tap Joy’s Paul Bowen goes one step further. At a panel during January 2011’s Mobile Games Forum, Bowen boldly stated, “If you’re making a paid-for game, stop. Make a [free-to-play] game with virtual goods and you’ll make five times the money.”
For one developer, San Diego-based NimbleBit, that claim isn’t bold. It’s conservative. “Tiny Tower, at least at the start, is making 50 times the amount any of our paid apps have,” co-founder Ian Marsh told Wired.co.uk.Tiny Tower is a recently released, and free, iPhone and iPad game that puts you in charge of a cute, pixel-art skyscraper. You move in residents, construct floors, hire workers, man the elevator and restock businesses, just like a microscopic version of SimTower.
The kicker is, of course, that you can pay (by buying “Bit Bux,” which cost about 10 cents each, but come in packs of 10, 100 or 1,000) to speed up the game. If a new floor is taking too long to build and furnish (a new floor will take around three real-world hours), you can expedite the process by paying about three Bit Bux. You can also purchase a more speedy lift and cough up real-world cash for aesthetic upgrades like new wallpaper and paint jobs.
Tiny Tower has been massively successful for the small company, and it’s only been available on iTunes for about a week. As developers have found out, you don’t actually need to turn many players into paying customers to see a strong profit. Tiny Tower picked up a million free downloads in four days, but only 2.6 percent of those players have coughed up and paid for in-game goods.
The point is, free-to-play lets gamers spend as little or, more importantly, as much as they like. “If you have a game that people really enjoy,” explains Marsh, “it is much more lucrative to let the player decide how much your game is worth rather than the other way around.”
‘Our games wouldn’t be very successful if each paying player only made a single purchase.’A popular term in the free-to-play business is “whales,” which refers to big spenders who will pour hundreds or thousands of dollars into a game. NimbleBit doesn’t track individual players, but Marsh says he knows whales exist because “our [free-to-play] games wouldn’t be very successful if each paying player only made a single purchase.”
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/06/free-to-play/#more-36847
"Whales." Hee hee. Gotta love those marketing terms that sound like ethnic slurs.
