The thing about F2P games, is that people forget that video game developers don't like to work for charity.
They want paid for their efforts.
Not to mention, the servers that are built and hosted, require things like internet connections, and those can get expensive when trying to buy bandwidth good enough to run an MMORPG. And then there's hosting fees, you gotta put these bigass server machines somewhere.
This all boils down to a lot of money.
And I can't think of any single company on the face of the Earth that likes to blow money left-and-right and not make any in return.
So, this F2P game... it needs to make money somehow.
If you're not paying for a subscription, then what are you paying for? Micro-transactions to buy stuff? Then you get lots of players complaining that you have to open your wallet to be competitive, and/or you get the frugal people who will drag their teeth across the ground to grind up their equipment without paying a dime. Those people are effectively wasting resources by not contributing money.
Now, even F2P games usually ask you to plunk $50 down, but how far do you think that initial surge of money goes? It probably doesn't go far, surely.
Now, compare that type of game to a game like WoW -- you pay a monthly subscription fee, and WoW just happens to a behemoth of an MMORPG, with millions of subscribers. Even after losing all of those subs since its Peak during Wrath, the game still has a quite healthy playerbase and Blizzard has been running various programs to get people to return to the game or for new players try the game.
MoP was already developed and is due to hit Live Servers in just over a week -- I've heard many praises about how it is simply packed with more endgame content than any previous expansion to date, including the often-praised expansions like Burning Crusade and Wrath. Solo-friendly content? There's no less than 50 dailies you can do per day, and Pet Battles. Small-group/casual group? Scenarios and Heroics. Larger groups? LFR. Hardcores? Challenge Modes, which I've heard are actually fairly Hard. And then there's still the old-style 10/25man Normal/Heroic Raids.
I think MoP will do fine. It is certainly looking better than Cataclysm. Cataclysm's main selling point was "revamped 1-60 zones!"
Now, the 1-60 zones were in desperate need of a revamp, as the 1-60 content was the #1 thing on people's hated list of why they had trouble leveling new characters. But yet it made the endgame suffer. Thankfully, we're past that dark chapter in WoW history and things should definitely be looking up from here on.
Edited, Sep 16th 2012 7:57pm by Lyrailis