, Rob Pardo, revealed a very interesting factoid at this year's Paris Game Developer Conference.

It seems that the hit MMORPG World of Warcraft which has garnered more than ten million subscribers was originally designed around a free-to-play business model complete with advertisements.

Pardo stated that "we [Blizzard] wanted to make it [World of Warcraft] free and advertising supported." However, after going over the numbers, they saw that it just wouldn't support the company.

Considering the amount of support from the gaming community the game has gotten, could Blizzard have gotten more money by making it free to play while offering players in-game items for cash and charging advertisers for a certain amount of views? What do you think?

Source: wow.qj.net

WoW's Midsummer Fire Festival to begin tomorrow, bring new enemies and quests

Over on Blizzard's World of Warcraft forums, there's an official announcement ushering in the beginning of the Midsummer Fire Festival. What's more, they've actually added some stuff to the festival to make it even better than last year.

The festival brings with it the usual bit of fire dancing and blossom collecting for special festival-specific items, but in addition to that, they've added some new questlines specifically for the event. There's now a daily quest based on throwing and catching torches, an Ashenvale questline that leads to a 10-burning blossom daily quest, and a new summonable boss (the Frost Lord Ahune) for level 70 characters to tackle!

The Midsummer Fire Festival will begin on June 21 and will end on July 5, so that gives you two weeks to get those burning blossoms. Make your preparations now by checking out the source link below, and get ready for two weeks of midsummer fun!

Buy: [World of Warcraft Battlechest]

Source: wow.qj.net