Sunday Theme: End of WoW era?

In recent news, we published that World of Warcraft have lost more than 2 million subscribers. That is a big loss for Blizzard and to be more shocking, the most of the subscribers that stopped playing WoW are from China. Few people on other forums told us that our title of news is true or it starting to be true, cause WoW is losing his power and the latest expansion Mist of Pandaria shows that Blizzard doesn’t have more ideas than pandas. Crisis?

Lets talk about begging of WoW, it wasn’t first MMORPG game, but none till WoW made so popular game like Blizzard did. Why WoW became so popular? We think cause it was one of the first MMORPG and Blizzard had good marketing- advertising and hype was every day higher and higher. Blizzard spent 4-5 years to develop game and they hard work payout, cause WoW is one of the most profit games ever, with one of the most highest population in the game.WoW reached 15 million subscribers, but some people are saying that WoW had  15 million players. Most of them came from China more than 7 million.

In our first Sunday Theme we talked about F2P model of MMO games, is it a future? We think it is and that P2P will be only used by big companies like EA or Blizzard, but most of the developers and publishers will choose F2P model. Can WoW survive 2-3 years more on P2P? Well it can, but Blizzard than need to update game with better expansions and have better relationship with community, every year someone gossip about WoW transforming to F2P, but that will happen hard, cause we must say Blizzard wants more and more money, they don’t care if they will lose 2 million subscribes, untill there are still people playing and giving their money to Blizzard game will stay on P2P model. But what if they in future give some kind of F2P model or whole game transforms to F2P?

Surely it would be big news that every portal/forum (including us) would talk about for few days. Imagine on our portal title WoW F2P game or something like that? I and we in PCGN think that servers would crash first day of F2P and Blizzard will have hundreds of problems. After that game will not last forever, but it would be top game for next 10 years? We can’t predict that, but one thing we can WoW will shut down one day and that day new era of PC gaming and MMO gaming will start, a future of free games and better ones!

CONCLUSION: In the end we can be grateful to Blizzard and all people who started this whole idea of making an ultimate online game, with million players from all the world playing in one place and they did it, since than more and more developers are trying to make MMO games that will be better than WoW, but for 7 years none did that, but that moment is coming, everyone can feel it and last news about losing subscribes just confirms that. SWOTR and GW 2 will be next great MMO battle, we guarantee that. I as writer of this text never played WoW, but my friends did and almost every time they meet, they talk about WoW and its getting annoying. Enjoy while it lasts

Sunday Theme: F2P future of MMO games?

Sunday Theme is new section on our site, it’s a column, every sunday we will post new columns. We wanted to publish something new on sunday, cause none works on sunday, so no news or reviews. Enjoy!

World of Warcraft ever free? Maybe in some future, 1-2 years before closing the game. Why P2P (Pay to Play) games are losing population in the game. The first reason is monthly subscriptions, in the beginning it wasn’t so hard to give 30-40$ every month, but now when more and more F2P games are coming, people are thinking: “Hey why I should give money for some game, if there are hundreds of free game” and the key word is free. When people hear word free they are interested for that and that’s the biggest advantage of F2P games.

Maybe the problem of P2P games is that there aren’t so many events, bigger updates or expansions and quality of the same. The latest expansion to be released for WoW Mist of Pandaria already picked bad criticism and there are few parody. And if you look at F2P games updates and expansion they are more often and more better. There are a lot of more events in F2P games than P2P, I don’t know why, but its true.

Now you think, well how F2P can have profit, I mean how people who developed the game and still makes update for games are getting their wages. Micro transactions is what keeps these games alive. Whats that, you ask yourself? That’s when someone gives real money for in-game currency or he buy item or something else from in-game shop. That’s how F2P games earn money, that’s how developers workers earn wage. Recent researches showed that F2P games together made more profit than P2P together. That researches showed one more interesting thing, F2P games are taking over market in North America and Europe, but Asia still remains P2P continent.

Are there disadvantages? Of course there is, nothing is perfect in this world, from people, nature and games. The most biggest problem is item shops, in some F2P games, cause item shops games are unbalanced. I remember playing Allods Online, it was good game, with good graphics a lot of people playing it, but later I heard that they added few items to item shop that gives you 200+ damage, community that didn?t have money to pay for that item or they didn’t spend money on video games raged, that players who paid for the item are leveling faster and everything else is better for them and then players stopped playing game and in the end they balanced game some how, but too late, game isn’t so popular as it was.

In the end every model has their advantages and disadvantages. I as writer of this column prefer F2P model, cause I don’t need to spend my money on games and for MMO games you need a lot of money if you want play it serious. My first MMO was Runes of Magic, the copy of WoW, but it’s not, they are not same games. At the moment I am not playing any MMO games, cause I am not so interest to play online games, but if someone asks me whats better F2P or P2P I would say F2P, cause its free and if game is enough balanced you will have good fun and you will probably stay longer playing it. More contents game have, more players will game have and every player will play game longer, cause new events, updates and that stuff. I hope you guys enjoyed reading our first column that we call Sunday Theme.