In an interaction on the Battle.net forum, Blizzard community manager Jonathan Brown has confirmed the company is considering adding microtransactions into long running MMO World of Warcraft. Testing is ongoing and in connection to this, they will be releasing certain 'elements' into the Public Test Realm in the near future.
In a way, Blizzard already offers in game items for sale, in the form of pets and mounts. However, other MMOs have succesfully leveraged microtransactions into their free-to-play games since World of Warcraft, notably Guild Wars 2.
Microtransactions can be a tenuous topic among gamers, but it seems to be a business model that fits MMOs to a tee. The question that seems to come out isn't why do this, but why only now? Considering the resources they're still pulling into development of the game, and how far ahead they were, Blizzard could have moved towards this sooner.
In fact, in Blizzard's recent quarter 1 results investor talk, Bobby Kotick confirms that they do expect falling numbers in World of Warcraft to continue. Their continued development of the game is intended to eventually stem that loss and make the game a decent, if not significant, revenue earner again.
It's great to see an aged online game continue to receive this much support from the developer, especially one of this vintage. Obviously, Activision Blizzard has a soft spot for this now legendary project. However, at the dawn of a new generation of consoles, WoW looks hopefully outdated, and will likely not get its old userbase back. Hopefully it can find new opportunities in the microtransactions sphere.
