World of Warcraft Free to Play Rumors Debunked - 'We Didn't Make the Game to be Free-to-Play,' Director Says
Popular online computer video game, World of Warcraft, has seen a steady decline in subscriber's with Activision-Blizzard citing a loss of 100,000 players this month. Rumors circulating that the company would make the game free-to-play just are not true, they said.
"We didn't make the game to be free-to-play," World of Warcraft Production Director J. Allen Brack said to Eurogamer. "We would have to rework the game pretty significantly in order to make it free-to-play. It's not something we're currently considering."
Just this week, the company revealed at Blizzcon a new expansion pack for the game called Warlords of Draenor. Brack said they were hoping this expansion would peek interest and keep their solid fanbase from growing stagnant with what is currently out there.
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While the 100,000 dropped subscribers seems like a huge number, the franchise still has over 7.6 million users playing the game, according to Escapist Magazine. However, in the game's best times, that number was a staggering 12 million.
As for Warlords of Draenor, the game was created to take players of the series back in time to 1994 when the first game by Blizzard was created, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans.
"There's a huge number of World of Warcraft players that never engaged with those events," Blizzard senior vice-president Chris Metzen said to over 20,000 fans at Blizzcon, reports RedLandDailyFacts.
The first Blizzcon was in 2005, and the attendance was only around 4,000. The 20,000 in attendance this year is still a sign that World of Warcraft will remain a dominant entity in video games.
World of Warcraft is one of the most popular video games of all time, and remains the largest MMO ever. In addition to WoW, the company is known for two other popular series', Diablo and Starcraft.
