Playing WoW for Free?

Jeff Strain, one of the co-founders of ArenaNet, the developer of Guild Wars, recently gave a keynote speech at the GC Developers Conference. You can find a link to the text of the speech here.

It’s a good read, especially for anyone who plays a MMO. I was especially interested in what Jeff had to say about MMO payment options. Guild Wars charges zip a month to play their game; you buy the game and play it without paying another penny . . . as long as ArenaNet keeps the servers lit and humming. I’ve never personally played Guild Wars, but know the game has had a series of expansions released since the original (three all total.) Amazingly, it’s from the sale of these expansions alone that Guild Wars profits. This model contrasts with that of WoW, EQ2, LOTRO and most other MMOs for that matter, where the gamer purchases the game ($50) and begins paying a monthly subscription after 30 days, usually around $15 a month.

Not surprisingly, Jeff is rather keen on his games’ business model. Using marriage as an analogy, Jeff points out that Guild Wars never asks the gamer to “get a divorce” and leave permanently. A Guild Wars gamer can see-saw back and forth in their commitment to the game, all without ever involving their credit card. As a result, Guild Wars never relies on a monthly revenue stream that could potentially be dammed up by cancelling customers.

But how in the world can Guild Wars afford to NOT charge a monthly fee? Is the games’ content considerably smaller than that of other monthly fee MMOs? Does it have a solid end-game? Solid PvP? Loyal community? A community at all? I’ve never played the game, so I don’t know the answers to these questions. But even if Guild Wars pales in comparison to a game like WoW, their business model does get the gerbil in my head spinning its big, colorful wheel.

For instances, how often have you heard companies like Blizzard defend monthly fees as offsetting the cost of “bandwidth and server maintenance.” ArenaNet maintains bandwidth and servers, and yet the only money they get from their gamer comes from aforementioned pasty-faced specimen buying the box at the store. Perhaps Blizzard and its ilk exaggerate maintenance costs, creating a convenient and believable rationale that shields them from consumer scrutiny as they roll around in gobs of monthly fee earned cash like a dog in a cow patty? Hmmmm?

Seriously though, could Blizzard afford to follow a Guild Wars business model? Certainly, Bliz has got dozens and dozens of boxes to care for. And each box could sap hundreds of dollars per month? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Who knows? But maybe the real question isn’t can they afford to drop the monthly fees, but would they? Though unique in its own right, Blizzard took the EQ MMO model and developed it into something with enough mass appeal to quickly transcend the originator. And along with many other borrowed features came the decision to charge monthly fees. Even if they would change, they might be stuck with the model. Jeff Strain thinks so. He even said as much: “We could never turn Guild Wars into a subscription-based game, just as Turbine could not suddenly decide to eliminate the subscription model for Lord of the Rings Online.”

And what could possible motivate Blizzard to drop the monthly fees? They have a strong consumer base, likely the most loyal and stable in the entire industry. If I were the CEO of Blizz and I saw Jeff Strain wagging his finger at me for my monthly fee based model, I’d smile politely as I continued to count my money. With their established player base, Blizzard doesn’t have a good reason to change their current pricing scheme. The only thing that could possibly get Bliz to drop their current model is if the loyalty and stability of that base came at risk. And the likelihood of that seems the tiniest of specks on the broadest of horizons.

I guess it’s not exactly going out on a limb to state that the next WoW killer has its work cut out for it. Not only will it have to match WoW’s content, both in breadth and quality, but it will also have to implement an innovative business model, something similar to what Guild Wars has done. To beat WoW, it won’t be enough to make a game as good as WoW, it’ll also have to be priced to sell. And even that might not be enough to draw people away from Azeroth. Still, Guild Wars has spawned three expansions after its initial offering and Guild Wars 2 is reportedly in the works. Unless some eccentric third party is funneling them money, it would seem their business model does indeed work. It’s a model I’d love for Blizzard to get behind.