Blizzard happy with subscription model

Free to play MMOs do a great job of challenging WoW.

The World of Warcraft subscription model is going nowhere, Blizzard game designer Dave Kosak has told VideoGamer.com.

In the wake of the successful relaunch of Lord of the Rings Online as a free-to-play game, and the imminent switch for Cryptic's Champions Online to a free model, we asked if this puts pressure on World of Warcraft to change its pricing model?

"We have over 12 million subscribers so I think our business model is working pretty well for us," said Kosak. "You know, if that ever changed we might look at different business models but we're pretty happy with a subscription based one."

Lead systems designer Greg Street added that Blizzard does keep an eye on what the free-to-play games are doing.

"Now what those games do a great job of is challenging us in the sense of, you know, what are they doing that's good?" he explained. "Did they find out a good user interface model or were they clever about the way that they did loot? There are things that we can learn from any game, whether it's a casual online game or a handheld game or something. We're pretty voracious at taking good ideas and trying to put our own spin on them. I think all good game designers do that."

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, the third expansion for the massive MMO, launched today.