According to Craig Sherman, a speaker at the MI6 Marketing Conference in San Francisco, World of Warcraft is only doing a fraction of the business it should be doing.
Speakers at the conference were debating the future of MMOs, and in particular, the scope of free-to-play games. Apparently, there are 800 million teens worldwide that would like to play an MMO, but don’t have the means to pay a subscription - in other words, they don’t want to pay, can’t afford to pay, or don’t have a credit card.
Based on those figures, Sherman claims that World of Warcraft’s 10 million subscribers can hardly be seen as a success. “There are 800 million teens in the world. That’s not a success.” In his opinion, a 10% share of the the market could qualify.
Via softpedia.com
I’d say the worst assumption that he made was that success of an MMO should be measured exclusively by the number of people playing it.
Suggesting that WoW should change to a free-to-play model is simply idiotic. Blizzard is a business, not a charity. Having more customers only makes the business more profitable if those customers are actually paying.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that WoW would be more popular if it was free. This isn’t a popularity contest though. Comparing a subscription MMO to a free MMO simply isn’t fair. If you compare WoW to similar products at the same price, there is no doubt whatsoever that it is successful.