Develop Online is reporting that Blizzard is planning on entering the free-to-play market with an unannounced game, but they fail to mention where they came up with this information.
Blizzard Entertainment is the next major games studio to embrace free-to-play and will apply the model in an upcoming, as yet unannounced game, Develop understands.
After Diablo 3, Blizzard’s next game, Blizzard DOTA, is a very good candidate for going F2P, seeing as every DOTA clone to-date uses that model; however, it’s not an unannounced game. This leaves, of course, Blizzard’s secret MMORPG: “Project Titan”. Although, with the Blizzard name behind it, I would see no reason as to why they wouldn’t stick with a subscription model. This could be accredited to Blizzard plans to expand their RMT (real-money-trading) market, and plans on turning “Project Titan” into something similar to D3.
Blizzard COO Paul Sams previously mentioned at BlizzCon 2011 that the possibility is there for a F2P game, stating:
“It certainly is possible, if we find ourselves in that circumstance, or if we come up with a game where we think that’s the right business model, the most appropriate for players to experience it,
We don’t have any opposition to the concept, it’s just that at this point we haven’t decided to make a game where that is the model. But that doesn’t mean that we won’t.”
So while it’s probably very likely that Blizzard will enter the F2P market within the next few years, your guess is as good as mine to which game will be their first.