World of Warcraft is still considered to be the most successful subscription MMO of all time but recent comments from lead designer, Tom Chilton, has led many to believe a free-to-play announcement could be coming in the near future. The naysayers have been out in force this year as Blizzard’s leading MMO game has already seen a loss of over a million players but despite that World of Warcraft still boasts a player base almost 8 million strong.
During a recent interview with Tom Chilton Polygon discovered that the lead designer and Blizzard are not totally against the free-to-play revolution:
“For Blizzard it makes sense [to go free-to-play] at some point. But a
lot of the risk is in making that transition. You hear stories about
developers going free-to-play and getting double the number of players,
but you don’t always know it works out that way and how long it stays
that way. We really don’t know what the rate is before people drop off
and lose interest.”
It’s not exactly confirmation but a declining player base combined with new competition in the likes of The Elder Scrolls Online and Black Desert could be enough to sway Blizzard into the free-to-play market.