14 DAY TRIAL // It might seem like impossibility at the moment but the winds of change will not spare World of Warcraft, the MMO from Blizzard that is the leader of the subscription-based market. The fact that the game will at some point ditch the monthly fee in order to go free to play is labeled as “Certain” in one of the drawers of my mind that is video game centered. It might take years but it will happen and here's why it makes sense.
A few years ago, we would have been talking about World of Warcraft and we would have used the shorthand “biggest MMO in the world.” It was accurate but since then a few crucial things have changed. People can play Farmville. People can log into Dungeons & Dragons Online and play without paying, for a while at least. They will soon be able to do the same things in The Lord of the Rings Online from Turbine.
Sony got into the game with Free Realms. There are rumors that Star Wars: The Old Republic, the MMO coming from Electronic Arts and BioWare using one of the biggest licenses in the entertainment world, might also ditch subscriptions. These days, when talking about World of Warcraft, we still say “the biggest MMO in the world” but add the qualifier “subscription based.”
Blizzard is now working on Cataclysm, which will reward high level players who are already in the game and will probably draw in some of those who abandoned the MMO and some new blood. But in the long term, it's unlikely that, as long as pay walls stay up, the game will get another huge influx of players.
The company must be content with the revenue it's getting from more than 10 million players and recent sales for pets and rides have shown it can also make money by selling special content directly to players. This means that it could get a much wider player base by dropping the subscription fee and that it has the clout needed to sell it objects ranging from mounts to, presumably, special armor, weapons and access to certain parts of the world. It might take time but World of Warcraft will be swept by the free to play tide.