“I certainly think it's possible that we could do some kind of micro-transaction stuff. Whether or not World of Warcraft ever goes the direction of, I guess like Anarchy Online has gone the direction of going free-to-play with micro-transactions. Whether we ever shift to a free-to-play model is really too hard to say at this point. Anything I say now could easily five years from now end up seeming like, oh my gosh, that was an incredibly dumb thing to say, how naive!”
“我觉得引入微交易内容并非毫无可能。先不管WOW是否会走向这一路线,至少Anarchy Online这样的网游已经开始实施免费游戏+微交易的运营方式。现在还很难说我们会不会转向免费模式。我说的这些东西五年以后再看的话真的会觉得好二”
(注解:微交易是玩家可在游戏中选择小额支付购买虚拟物品或功能,在亚洲是一种较为常见的模式。最近一些西方公司,如EA的《战地英雄》(Battlefield Heroes)也开始尝试探索这种模式。对游戏厂商来说,时间会证明微交易是否会比按月收费获利更丰厚。但看起来似乎很难相信暴雪会放弃已经赚取数十亿美元的《魔兽世界》收费模式。)
虽然暴雪主设计师表示了对免费运营模式的认同,但是暴雪至少在近几年没有将魔兽免费运营化的打算,至于未来是什么样,也许那个时候的网游运营模式也会有更大的变化吧。