World of Warcraft dominates the MMORPG market. Why? they created the best damn product.
Go free to get lots of broke users if you want to help scammers serve ads to those users.
Go free to get lots of broke users if you want to help scammers serve ads to those users.
1) Network effects. If you've got friends who play WoW then that's a major reason for you to play it even if there is something better out there. Of course you could all move to the better thing but they won't because...
2) "Loyalty". Anything where people invest time which can not be transferred (for instance in levelling up characters) tends to incur loyalty, if only because they don't want to start over.
I almost said "and WoW isn't the best damn product," but that depends on your definition of 'best.' It almost mirrors the Mac/Windows thing. Connoisseurs tend to scoff their noses, yet they just keep on selling...
WoW is a mediocre product executed _perfectly_.
Define mediocre.
WoW is the gold standard of fantasy MMOs. It just doesn't do anything new or interesting; it only does a small set of things, but does them very, very well.