Blizzard Entertainment Interview

IncGamers has cranked out their own interview with Blizzard Entertainment, and this time it’s with Rob Pardo, Dustin Browder, and Chris Metzen. The interview is mostly related to StarCraft II, but some questions about Battle.net 2.0 and combating piracy come up:

So, will Battle.net be completely free to play, or have fees/microtransactions?

Pardo answered the question by saying Blizzard is still finalizing that. He said: “I know the big question out there is: ‘is there going to be a subscription to Battle.net or anything like that’, and we’re certainly not doing that for StarCraft 2.” Blizzard’s approach on business model for a game is to do ‘what’s right for the game’.” Monthly fees on World of WarCraft might be a hit, but not necessarily so for StarCraft II “because it’s an entirely different sort of a game.”

More information will be released in the future. “I don’t want to put the scare out there that it’s somehow subscription based because we’re not gonna do that,” he clarified even further.

Battle.net might possibly have smaller “microtransactions”, however, as “value-added services.” Pardo did not give any examples on how this could work on Battle.net, only referring to WoW’s character name changes and the like.