SL Guide and FAQs

Dragpz said:
Blizzard makes 0 revenue from F2P players, and to be fair, over the years, they have been trying to restrict F2P players more and more. I'm surprised they that they decided to even keep F2P considering how many restrictions and how much time devs actually have to spend on creating these restrictions.
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This is flatly untrue on several counts.

As we apparently need to keep saying until we're blue in the face, F2P players typically maintain a paid account as well. And the longer someone plays, the chances of them eventually paying increases. Averaged across months, I probably spend as much on my vet account transferring toons back and forth as I do for my active account. And starting my F2P account is what ended up getting me to resub my old main account and make my vet account. Blizzards game plan here works.

Also F2P have gotten access to *more* content over the years, not less. Not directly, though. Anything that affects us tends to affect us because of larger changes to the game (zone scaling) than blizzard saying "man, lets open up/restrict f2p account more". They honestly dont seem to really think about us much. Which is kinda good.
 
So they changed the name from Starter Edition to Free Trial, but didn’t update the level at the same time? ThinkingFace
 

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Dragpz said:
#1 is an invalid point because WoW GMs barely have an understanding of the game, let alone the F2P aspects of it, and they probably get paid more than some Social Media Intern. I wouldn't trust anything posted by ANY of Blizzard's social media platforms if it comes to actual in-game information.

#2 is also just an opinion, Blizzard makes 0 revenue from F2P players, and to be fair, over the years, they have been trying to restrict F2P players more and more. I'm surprised they that they decided to even keep F2P considering how many restrictions and how much time devs actually have to spend on creating these restrictions.
Click to expand...

#1 it's a multi-million dollar company, and free to play aspect is their main lead generation tool. Its their bait and their first part of the funnel. They are very focused on the f2p aspect as why its even before the shadowlands in the description. Its more important than a new expansion for them.

#2 When I talk about f2p I don't talk about f2p twinks, I talk about genuine new players who are on a starter account just to see what this game is about. They want to get to know MMORPG aspect or just see for themselves before paying. Like you get free chocolate in supermarkets as a bait to get you to buy it. It's done when the product can sell itself. If then all efforts are made to get cool content created then just to render it useless for starters is not reasonable, wow want to sell itself and will let starters go beyond 10. Especially now with Path of exile.

Again their main lead gen tool (f2p) purpose is to get new customers, and they don't want it to be bad.

F2P + Good Content + Time = P2P
 
Breakable Wooden Board said:
#1 it's a multi-million dollar company, and free to play aspect is their main lead generation tool. Its their bait and their first part of the funnel. They are very focused on the f2p aspect as why its even before the shadowlands in the description. Its more important than a new expansion for them.

#2 When I talk about f2p I don't talk about f2p twinks, I talk about genuine new players who are on a starter account just to see what this game is about. They want to get to know MMORPG aspect or just see for themselves before paying. Like you get free chocolate in supermarkets as a bait to get you to buy it. It's done when the product can sell itself. If then all efforts are made to get cool content created then just to render it useless for starters is not reasonable, wow want to sell itself and will let starters go beyond 10. Especially now with Path of exile.

Again their main lead gen tool (f2p) purpose is to get new customers, and they don't want it to be bad.

F2P + Good Content + Time = P2P
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I don't really agree, if you are basing F2P experience on Blizzard giving a shit, twinking would 100% be gone and not allowed. It takes a person with 50IQ to log into a battlegrounds and see that one team is just getting shit on.. directly do to steroided out level 20 vets/f2p. Blizzard does know this stuff... they just don't care. The degree to them caring or not caring is random and there is no evidence it is tied to anything. Like getting rid of actual 29 twinking... is the way it is right now any different?... no 20 vets just kill a leveler in 1.1 seconds instead of 1 second. So Blizzard does not know how to judge the severity... but they just don't really care... they do random shit because they just feel like they "have to do something".
 
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Daltert Moropi said:
The problem isn’t having the mindset of 10, it’s from the business stand point why people think it’s gonna be 10.

I forget where I posted this information on here before. but if 20 becomes the new ftp/btp cap, literally 30%-40% of the game becomes for free. That’s 1/3 to 2/5 of the game in context of 10%-20% or 1/10 to 1/5 what is in the ptr.
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That 30-40% has been virtually empty for years, glossed over quickly to get to the most recent expansion. Even current content is a race to the endgame for a large segment of the population.

I could very easily see them use the 20 cap again since they haven't announced it changing.
 
Dragpz said:
#1 is an invalid point because WoW GMs barely have an understanding of the game, let alone the F2P aspects of it, and they probably get paid more than some Social Media Intern. I wouldn't trust anything posted by ANY of Blizzard's social media platforms if it comes to actual in-game information.

#2 is also just an opinion, Blizzard makes 0 revenue from F2P players, and to be fair, over the years, they have been trying to restrict F2P players more and more. I'm surprised they that they decided to even keep F2P considering how many restrictions and how much time devs actually have to spend on creating these restrictions.
Click to expand...

blizzard has kept the F2P rolling, and added the vet20 free to play system on top. blizzard may make money off vet20s, but that is just a month here and there to upgrade enchants, etc, after a major patch. alot of paid account players have separate F2P and unsubbed vet20 accounts attached to their main Bnet account

F2p20 and vet20 players add to players in low level areas, help populate low level LFG. maybe they are using paid and free players in MAU (monthly active users) counting in their quarterly reports? nothing specifies paid there

vet20 free to play are more work for blizzard in GM tickets than F2p20s are. just look back thru threads on this forum. how to get GMs to give you 1 day time, take 10G turn on your XP on, etc. some players do multiple tickets and no luck. but what alot don't tell you they are subbed on another account, and doing GM tickets on a 120 saying i need help on my other account (that's unsubbed) they get results.
 
Counsel said:
That 30-40% has been virtually empty for years, glossed over quickly to get to the most recent expansion. Even current content is a race to the endgame for a large segment of the population.
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i don't think your looking at it in my point of view though. true it'll be glossed over quickly. but if you need a particular item (mount, gear, and pet) and don't wanna pay for the game time, there's going to be more people heading to the least path of resistance.

examples that 10s can get in SL:
https://ptr.wowhead.com/item=138258/reins-of-the-long-forgotten-hippogryph
https://ptr.wowhead.com/item=147805/valarjar-stormwing
https://www.wowhead.com/item=31775/sporeggar-tabard
https://www.wowhead.com/item=9452/hydrocane

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heck, if there's a major influencer (probably a twitch user) that finds out that some classes get buffed out on certain brackets. they're probably gonna stay put in said bracket and only change brackets if a class gets buffed/nerfed.

kind of like how the brackets will be mainly determined by the pvp and/or raid-finder tools.

____________________________________________________

also, i do wanna point out that those competitive end-end gamers will get board with end game if they can't do much... seeing how one mini-game is litterly "war of legions" ripoff.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/war-of-legions/id631881629

edit: here's a video about the game if ya don't wanna click the link above.

Counsel said:
I could very easily see them use the 20 cap again since they haven't announced it changing.
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i can see that too, probably in 2-3 expansions later. but the way i see it, it's too soon.
 
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Chops said:
This is flatly untrue on several counts.

As we apparently need to keep saying until we're blue in the face, F2P players typically maintain a paid account as well. And the longer someone plays, the chances of them eventually paying increases. Averaged across months, I probably spend as much on my vet account transferring toons back and forth as I do for my active account. And starting my F2P account is what ended up getting me to resub my old main account and make my vet account. Blizzards game plan here works.

Also F2P have gotten access to *more* content over the years, not less. Not directly, though. Anything that affects us tends to affect us because of larger changes to the game (zone scaling) than blizzard saying "man, lets open up/restrict f2p account more". They honestly dont seem to really think about us much. Which is kinda good.
Click to expand...

I would agree to the Vet part of your argument, as I am also a Vet that occasionally resubs strictly for Vet level play, but there are still many dedicated F2P players that do not pay a single dime, and probably haven't for years.

Some notable changes over the years have been caps to professions ( You could get up to MoP cooking on a non subbed acct.). disabling of pet battles, muting of chats/emotes, and not being able to loot higher level mobs/mobs from certain holidays (Pirate day, I believe). And yes, sure, the removal of the battle chest has opened up more content for F2P PVE, but over the years, Blizzard has been developing more restrictions, not less.

Breakable Wooden Board said:
#1 it's a multi-million dollar company, and free to play aspect is their main lead generation tool. Its their bait and their first part of the funnel. They are very focused on the f2p aspect as why its even before the shadowlands in the description. Its more important than a new expansion for them.

#2 When I talk about f2p I don't talk about f2p twinks, I talk about genuine new players who are on a starter account just to see what this game is about. They want to get to know MMORPG aspect or just see for themselves before paying. Like you get free chocolate in supermarkets as a bait to get you to buy it. It's done when the product can sell itself. If then all efforts are made to get cool content created then just to render it useless for starters is not reasonable, wow want to sell itself and will let starters go beyond 10. Especially now with Path of exile.

Again their main lead gen tool (f2p) purpose is to get new customers, and they don't want it to be bad.

F2P + Good Content + Time = P2P
Click to expand...

I can't really argue to the effectiveness of the F2P experience being a lead generator, but anecdotally, I would say most new players are probably willing to drop $15/$60 for a sub and/or a new xpac, simply because they want to test out the full experience. And most of these players have probably been recommended this game by their friends or some MMO sites, because at this point, WoW is 16 years old, it's such a widely known game the truly "new" player market is such a minute part of the market.
 
Dragpz said:
but over the years, Blizzard has been developing more restrictions, not less.
Click to expand...
I dont remember pet battles ever being a thing, high level mob loot restrictions exist for the subbed and unsubbed, and muting emotes is a level thing, not a subscription thing (players under a certain level are muted to players over a certain level). In other words, these are restrictions put in place game wide, not specifically on F2P

Where F2P specific things have simply increased. The number of zones, dungeons, transmogs, gear, classes, races etc have all increased over the years. And continue to increase.

What do you think is the more believable future? That all content but the current xpac goes f2p or that blizzard does away with f2p altogether? Because its trending towards one of those...
 
Question about gearing if we actually get to be level 20 - and i supposed to be reading stuff from the lvl 40 bracket in terms of gearing then?
 
Malgibbon said:
Question about gearing if we actually get to be level 20 - and i supposed to be reading stuff from the lvl 40 bracket in terms of gearing then?
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As chops stated, we’ll probably see a reorganization in the threads once SL finally drops and once things get settled down a bit.

some one will probably make the threads on the SL 20 & 40 by then. But in the mean time, the debate continues on if btp and ftp will either be 10-20. Once that’s revealed, we’ll start to see people act like that jack skeleton song “what’s this?“

edit: I hate my phone's autocorrect sometimes...
 
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