近期有不少新闻传出对之前访问魔兽主设计师时表示：魔兽可能成为免费游戏。实际上这可能是一个翻译上的误解，以下是原文及翻译：
“Anything I say now could easily five years from now end up seeming like, oh my gosh, that was an incredibly dumb thing to say, how naive!”
“我觉得引入微交易内容并非毫无可能。先不管WOW是否会走向这一路线，至少AnarchyOnline这样的网游已经开始实施免费游戏+微交易的运营方式。现在还很难说我们会不会转向免费模式。我说的这些东西五年以后再看的话真的会觉得好二”
（英文原地址：http://www.videogamer.com/news/blizzards_tom_chilton_on_the_future_of_wow.html?page=4）
节选：
VideoGamer.com: Will WoW always be subscription based? Could it ever have a micro-transaction/free-to-play model?
TC: I certainly think it's possible that we could do some kind of micro-transaction stuff. Whether or not World of Warcraft ever goes the direction of, I guess like Anarchy Online has gone the direction of going free-to-play with micro-transactions. Whether we ever shift to a free-to-play model is really too hard to say at this point. Anything I say now could easily five years from now end up seeming like, oh my gosh, that was an incredibly dumb thing to say, how naive!
（注解：微交易，买卖道具模式。）
虽然暴雪主设计师表示了对免费运营模式的认同，但是暴雪至少在近几年没有将魔兽免费运营化的打算，至于未来是什么样，也许那个时候的网游运营模式也会有更大的变化吧。(责编：大大)