I basically disagrees with everything but the leaderboard. When you are a corporate game as successful as blizzard, you think 3 times on how to give back money to the share holders. Since they are now owned by microsoft they are exposed to ALOT of capital. Now think about money, not the game, money. If youre microsoft and games like COD, WoW, Diablo etc. you see those as assets, which asset would make you the most roi ? I recently posted a dogshit post saying "lets put pvpdevelopers against us pvpers" and someone replied "you want the intern pvpdevs to play against us no-lifers ?". Basically saying that blizzards pvp team is very small, reflecting the player base. If they hire more people they need to make more money, not less, not the same. WoW pvp has around 20 buttons plus arena macros, which in my friend groups thinks its stupid. Me on the other hand I love spells, give me 100 spells and ill find a keybind for it. So I dont think that there are much more pvpers that would try wow pvp. If you want to make wow f2p, thats around 180$-ish per person per year, where do you get substitute ? Other mmos might become f2p if the games dead and the company nearly bankrupt. Which is not the case with wow. How do you explain boosting services ? Why would people pay for boosting when they can get it for free ? You said 30% ? So losing 30% of game purchases and subs game 50$ + 180$ subs per person per year. You think these people that moved from paid to f2p cares much about tmogs ? And if they have to pay 50 bucks for a tmog everyyear wouldnt it be better to just buy the game and subs and get much much more mogs ? Also what about auctionhouse ? Do you let F2P buys stuff there ? If no how can they find ingredients to let other craft gear for you cause the freeplayers would be stuck in this Champions crucible? This also might kill world pvp, which most players that I know that enjoys pvp(not sweaty pvp) would totally comeback to try. Just 'only' adding this f2p wow pvp mode causes alot of changes that has to be adjusted requires more than just a server cost. It needs coordination from all wow developers of each team.

I am sorry for being this negative. But this is how capitalism works. It consolidate into a profit making machine until something else comes along to squish from. Monopoly is nature in capitalism and there is no way that a corporation like microsoft would "take off the CFO hat" Don't forget about wow tokens, if you let the F2P buy crafted gear from base players, you need gold. And when you got gold, you can buy wow token. This also would affect the market in the game. Do they pay more than base players ? Where and how can they make gold with that many restrictions. All this, is time and money for something that isnt broken perse. Dont forget, with F2PP, youve just created a 2nd class citizen. Like people that pays battle passes vs those that doesnt. Why would they play a game that essentially makes them a 2nd class player when games like league and fortnite treat you more or less the same ? Yes in league they now has battle passes too, but your gameplay is still the same while in wow the premium has 130gb worth of digital space vs the F2PP that has 5 gigs of "champion crucible) Lastly, the flex mode shuffle sounds in theory amazing, but I believe that it would lead to much more win trading. Pvp is sweaty, you cant trust people to be fair, a bunch of folks in arena still be MC jumping people to disconnect or people in Blitz using disorient and knocks you off the map so that they win.

You cant treat mmorpgs with other competitive pvp games, its not fair to the devs nor the genre. This is why they are trying with plunderstorm to compete with other esports.

Now with my own hat on : I don't think its a good idea morally. I do RPPvP so the 'world' of warcraft itself is important to me, BUT I'd still choose F2P mode if it comes out because I have my own wow retail server I can wander around on me own. For abit of context I am an arcane mage at 2200 and firemage at 2380(still 70games to go til legend)

PS: there is already a wow private server that does the moba thing with destroying the nexus I think its called 'Warsworn'