Rob Pardo reveals World of Warcraft originally designed as free-to-play

Posted Jun 24, 2008 at 2:22PM by QJ Staff Listed in: Titles, News Tags: Blizzard, Paris, Rob Pardo
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World of Warcraft - Image 1The vice president of game design at Blizzard, Rob Pardo, revealed a very interesting factoid at this year's Paris Game Developer Conference.

It seems that the hit MMORPG World of Warcraft which has garnered more than ten million subscribers was originally designed around a free-to-play business model complete with advertisements.

Pardo stated that "we [Blizzard] wanted to make it [World of Warcraft] free and advertising supported." However, after going over the numbers, they saw that it just wouldn't support the company.

Considering the amount of support from the gaming community the game has gotten, could Blizzard have gotten more money by making it free to play while offering players in-game items for cash and charging advertisers for a certain amount of views? What do you think?

Via Gamesutra

 
 
 

Comments

by Morlander - 2008-06-25 04:10:01
even if it was free

you still couldnt get me to play that ps2 looking crap
by Uplink - 2008-06-26 04:55:37
pfft

PS2? I Think not seeing as you have probly never played the game then you have only judged it by videos online but this games gfx are much better than ps2. Ignorance is not always bliss. Play it before you rant about it.
by imperia - 2008-06-29 18:13:30
to: Morlander

Raid with 40 people, everyone casting spells, bosses casting spells. There is no computer available to run all this ***** with all of the extras that today's video cards support. WOW runs on WIDE range of computer hardware.

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