World Of Warcraft Exploring In-Game Purchasing

In what could be considered baby steps towards going completely free-to-play, the Community Manager for World of Warcraft has confirmed on the game’s official forums that the WoW team is currently exploring in-game purchasing options for players.

"We are currently exploring the possibility of adding a way for players in certain regions to make purchases directly within the game. As part of this process, elements related to this will be appearing on the PTR. We’ll provide additional updates on our plans as development progresses."

As the MMO market has been slowly shifting towards free-to-play games over the past half-decade, there are fewer and fewer big name titles requiring subscription or pay-to-play models. World of Warcraft is starting to feel the effects of required monthly pay from its customers, losing more than 1.3 million subscribers in the first quarter of this year and bringing their total to roughly 8.3 million players.

The big question from current and prospective players is just what exactly does an in-game cash shop provide. One item has already been found in the World of Warcraft database, allowing the player to gain experience at an 100% increase. In a game that is based heavily on its end-game material (raids, heroic dungeons, etc.) it does very little to affect player balancing issues, but Blizzard would be wise to stay away from pay-to-win items that increase either statistics or drop rates.

Whether or not this is a conclusive step towards free-to-play in the future, this move shows that World of Warcraft developers and executives are planning some sort of change to their payment model. To what extent is yet to be known.