Diablo III free for 1-year WoW subscribers

[celerisk]

See title.
No strings attached (other than already having to be a WoW addict).

Announced just now, live at BlizzCon.

 

[Bloodcount]

wait wait wait, diablo 3 is free for 1 year for all wow players OR diablo 3 is free for all wow players who have played for more than an year ?

 

[celerisk]

Neither, sort of

Diablo III will be free for World of Warcraft subscribers. Those who are new to World of Warcraft, and subscribe to 12-months commitment will get Diablo III free also at launch, and be able to download the game.



Well, the final details will be down... "Coming soonish(tm)".

 

[Bloodcount]

Well SCII players get free DOTA, so the WoW players need something too

 

[Sim]

Wow. They are really in need of WoW subscribers. The number is going down supposedly.

 

[Monsterous]

Guild Wars and SW:TOR are incoming. (Guild Wars especially imo, no subscription fee - and it looks very dynamic)

And after seeing the new "expansion", im going to guess those numbers are going to drop even harder. Then again, some people might like it.

 

[tommerbob]

Guild Wars and SW:TOR are incoming. (Guild Wars especially imo, no subscription fee - and it looks very dynamic)

And after seeing the new "expansion", im going to guess those numbers are going to drop even harder. Then again, some people might like it.

Pretty much this. It's fairly obvious the WoW team is completely out of original ideas, so they are turning to other "creative" things, such as catering the game to 8 year olds with Pandas and Pokemon arenas. Hence, the desperate call for more subscriptions.

And to clarify:

Diablo 3 is free to WoW subscribers who subscribe to the 1-year Annual Pass. Mathematically, it comes down to if you play WoW more than 8 months next year and you plan on buying Diablo 3, you should just buy WoW's annual pass and you will save a little bit of money.

 

[Jaujarahje]

Guild Wars and SW:TOR are incoming. (Guild Wars especially imo, no subscription fee - and it looks very dynamic)

And after seeing the new "expansion", im going to guess those numbers are going to drop even harder. Then again, some people might like it.

This. With Guild Wars 2, LOTR, SW:TOR coming out and not having subscriptions, WoW will struggle. Only the hardcore will remain and profits will drop.
Side note: Can't wait for Guild Wars 2

 

[Dan]

Pretty much this. It's fairly obvious the WoW team is completely out of original ideas, so they are turning to other "creative" things, such as catering the game to 8 year olds with Pandas and Pokemon arenas. Hence, the desperate call for more subscriptions.

And to clarify:

Diablo 3 is free to WoW subscribers who subscribe to the 1-year Annual Pass. Mathematically, it comes down to if you play WoW more than 8 months next year and you plan on buying Diablo 3, you should just buy WoW's annual pass and you will save a little bit of money.

I don't agree with this angle. WoW is getting to be an older game. They have polished it a lot over the years and are just implementing smaller and smaller aditions to the game. That's why we have better fishing, more pets and vanity items, "Peacebloom vs Ghouls," tighter ui, revamp of the darkmoon faire, crazier quests, transmogifier, void bank incoming, achievement system, etc. They have time to change the small things and implement minigames and the such for their playerbase to mess around with. My wife loves all that stuff, but it doesn't change the great raid content that they release at all. Vanilla had less content than they pump out presently. They simply have the time to mess around with smaller things now.

From a marketing standpoint, I believe it's a great idea that will keep their players playing (or at least paying) for sure, but I think that it's a long term play at getting battle.net to become a coercive all encompasing platform that everyone is using for multiple games. This, to me, seems more like a way to get their playerbase to chat cross-game and start feeling even more like a Blizzard community than separate game communities.

Also, there really doesn't have to be "catering to 8 year olds" with the release of pandaren. It's a pretty cool race that gives them the ability to do a lot of new things in the game that they haven't done before; whilst, giving us a lot of new lore and implement something into the story. Panderen are pretty popular among the fanbase you know.

***NOTE***
You can take advantage of this offer to buy the collector's edition of D3. It's still free, and you get credit to your WoW sub for the difference in price.

 

[Sim]

I went to Orgrimmar today and saw the huge amount of players riding whatever suits them, from Nether Drakes to multicolorglowing Dark Ebon Of Ultimate Light Phoenix to Giant Flying Machines and I had a sudden thought of nostalgia toward the old days where everyone was standing on the ground with their normal-looking mounts and the world felt "real" as in, "believeable" with players looking dead plain in comparison to the city bosses, who had an epic look. An epic look that was justified by the part in Warcraft 3's storyline they had.

Right now it's just a mess of flying things everywhere.

I hope Diablo never gets that feel.