8 ms·

Why the Movie Industry Can't Innovate and the Result is SOPA

236 points by grellas 15y ago

TheCapn 15y ago
I think government and the populous as a whole play a large part in this natural progression of things as well. When it comes to innovation and changes to the way the world works we're faced with two competing sides: 1) Let innovation take over and increase all things good to the consumer 2) Protect jobs Once the MPAA/RIAA or whatever finally realize that their role is no longer to play the middleman between the artists and the consumer there will be massive job loss. Its not my job to envision where these workers will migrate but its an unfortunate truth of life when processes become automated and require less people in the whole scheme. And that's primarily how people maintain support for the associations instead of piracy or streamed content. Those ads in the theater of the key grip going "piracy is killing my job" is the pity response they're trying to drive from us. The Key Grip in reality shouldn't be hurting MPAA should be. They haven't realized yet that their role in the process isn't worth the same amount as it was 10 years ago and they're refusing to take a pay cut as a part of things.
- pfraze 15y ago
  Somebody on HN once described the state of the music industry as a transfer of wealth from the record labels to the internet companies. That made a lot of sense to me.
PaulHoule 15y ago
I think Hollywood is very interested in the internet as a distribution medium. Already it's clear that advertising CPMs are several times higher online than on conventional television -- and online advertising isn't even fully mature! Hollywood isn't opposed to the "internet" as a technology; they just want to control it.
- pfraze 15y ago
  I agree, and it frustrates me more, because -- as the article points out -- they don't innovate. That said, lack of innovation could be related to the historic divorce from distribution channels; their business is content, not medium, and that's why they don't put resources into medium development. I don't know enough about the industry to say for sure, though.
- kin 15y ago
  Drives me crazy that they do this. Take Pay-Per-View for example. Why is it that on demand services like Vudu don't have the ENTIRE library of movies? Why not? Why would a movie not be on there? Because greed. Because Vudu won't charge $5 for a classic movie but the studio wants to charge more than a bargain bin for a 24-hour rental for some reason. Or maybe it's some lame reason like pride.
jonnathanson 15y ago
I've worked at studios and networks for a large part of my career. They have hired plenty of people over the years with "skill at managing disruption." They've poached talent from the Microsofts, Googles, Facebooks, hot startups, etc., of the world plenty of times over. The problem is that they tend to place these folks -- or any of their people ostensibly charged with "innovation" -- in isolated silos. Typically they'll hire a handful of "innovation" people, most of them ex-McKinsey consultants, but a lot of them tech people, and put them in a sort of internal consulting group. This group will have no P&L of its own, and no real authority to change or mandate change. And it will be tasked with influencing the rest of the company to change. As you can imagine, it's a recipe for failure. And even this is a symptom of a bigger problem: silos, silos, silos. Every department might as well be competing with the next -- because nobody talks to one another, people are constantly politicking against one another, and nobody wants to fund a win that shows up on somebody else's P&L. The whole thing is very reminiscent of "Game of Thrones," actually. Each studio is host to a bevy of competing fiefdoms, and the heads of the fiefdoms are constantly plotting each others' downfalls. And even the studios are, themselves, fiefdoms within much larger media conglomerates. The head of the Disney movie studio, for instance, still answers to the head of The Walt Disney Corporation, and competes for his favor with the heads of ABC, ESPN, Theme Parks, Licensing, etc. And the head of The Walt Disney Corporation is beholden to Wall Street and quarterly reports. (Big risks and disruptive strategies are extremely hard to implement when you've got quarterlies to answer for). If you ask me, these companies have grown too big and unwieldy to innovate properly. I'm not saying that in an antitrust-activist sense, but rather, in the sense that it's extremely hard to get everyone within a giant conglomerate on the same agenda when the goal, business, and job description of each P&L leader is so wildly different from the next. None of this is meant to be an apology for the entertainment conglomerates, but rather, an observation. It's an observation born out of intense personal frustration, of course, at having seen the same patterns over and over again. At the end of the day, "innovation" is a very easy word to preach, but a much more difficult word to implement. At the same time, I get the sense that a tipping point is very close at hand. Producers, writers, actors, directors, and other talent are themselves getting very tired of the same old studio game. And many of them are seeking out innovative deals with tech firms, brands, and other direct-to-consumer channels. All it takes is a handful of breakout hits -- shows, movies, or what have you -- that occur outside of the established Hollywood distribution system. The second you've got a legitimate hit series only on Netflix, or a direct-to-Amazon smash hit, or a Facebook series drawing in more viewers per week than a network show (very feasible), Hollywood will take notice, and it'll start getting serious about rethinking its approach. It may be too little and too late by then, but that's how these things go. [Sorry for the tl;dr text wall!]
mgkimsal 15y ago
I will point out that while the cries of "it'll ruin us" (meaning, our business model) have been going on for some time, each time it seems to get closer to the truth. When the original business model was "people going to theaters", new technology options meant that fewer people might go to movies. And that does happen from year to year, and may be on a downward trend for a variety of reasons. Other markets open up but it can take time to adjust (and rather than adjust, big studios seem to just fight). I do think they're pretty close to the mark on music these days. The cry of "radio will destroy us" is rather silly in hindsight because radio is still a physical limited system. I can only tune in X stations, signal isn't always good, and I'm limited by the realtime aspect of station X only playing Y songs per day. Instant access to all music (or, a very large subset) all the time means ... a big shift in how people consume and think about music. Bigger than most big companies are ready to deal with. What I'd like? $10-$20/month for instant streaming access to all movie content from X major studios. Another $10-$20/month for instant streaming access to all OTA/Cable channels. When I say all I mean all - every movie in an archive going back to the dawn of time. Every episode of every TV show that was aired (and maybe some that weren't). I'd even be content with not having access to current stuff. I don't particularly care about being "up to date" with whatever the latest shows are - I much prefer going through entire series after the fact. Index everything - make it searchable. Let me search up actor FOO, find the shows he was in, and go watch those scenes. We're close on some aspects of this, but still so far away. All of this content exists, somewhere. Yes, it'll take time to convert it to online. But that's a one time expense (big as it may be). And the 'long tail' effect I believe would justify people spending a nominal amount per month to get at all the old stuff whenever they want. There's no value in movie X sitting in a vault.
- dexen 15y ago
  > Instant access to all music (or, a very large subset) all the time means ... a big shift in how people consume and think about music. Once all the technical barriers are gone, there still remains limitation of one human's capacity and ability to cope with huge number of titles, artists etc. Try as I might, it's not feasible for me to consume more than about 16h/day of music and movies, regardless of technological progress. Moreover, it takes nontrivial amount of time and effort to just find music and movies matching your taste, limiting the theoretical 16h to way less. Back then all one had were his and his friends' LPs and a handful of radio stations. Now I /teoretically/ could access any music -- but I'll rather listen to something my friends, or (a business opportunity here!) an advisor recommends for me. There is, and will be, a natural scarcity in multimedia in any foreseeable future, with our cognitive capacity being the ultimate limiter. And there will still be mad money to be made by picking the right track and show for the consumer.
enobrev 15y ago
While I'm not a fan of the industry tactics, which seem to essentially amount to throwing a tantrum anytime the world decides to do things a little different, this article seems to show an amazing resilience. It baffles me how these slow anti-tech companies continue to remain well planted as the "owners" of our content. Especially considering how well developed the internet has become, I can't imagine how these companies have continued to thrive.
gerggerg 15y ago
The movie industry does innovate. They've been innovating like crazy. Tons of new tech and innovations come out of the movie industry. It's the MPAA that doesn't care to innovate. The MPAA doesn't produce anything. They just want/need control. Their sole job is to make money and any time you have an organization whose sole purpose is to make money, they're just going to want control. The problem isn't the movie industry or piracy, it's the relentless fight for control that the pushers of a dying business model want over you.
- bad_user 15y ago
  MPAA's actions can be attributed to its members. MPAA cannot exist and act without its members' approval. Witness how BSA initially supported SOPA, but then backtracked, probably because some of its members weren't too happy about it. Their sole job is to make money When freedoms are attacked because some fatso feels those pesky pirates are affecting his bottom line, then "making money" is not an excuse. And governments should be careful as they are walking a very thin line. A French revolution can always happen again.
  - gerggerg 15y ago
    I agree. All I'm trying to say as that blaming it on the 'Movie Industry' is not being able to see the real problem. Many independent and main stream movie industry workers don't support SOPA and don't feel the MPAA acts in their favor. We need to vote with our dollars and not support organizations that support the MPAA. And we need to vote with our mouthes and make it clear that as culture consuming citizens we feel an organization like the MPAA is more harmful to culture and business than it is beneficial. Now I understand that rights protection organizations are useful and necessary in many cases, again all I'm saying is that if you feel that the MPAA is being abusive and of little value then you should speak up to free yourself from them.
- geebee 15y ago
  I had the same thought. I worked briefly for a software company in hollywood that did film compositing/editing software, and it's an amazingly innovative industry. It's also an industry that recognizes and rewards technical talent... sure, we aren't movie stars, but I worked with programmers who had academy awards (the technical kind, of course). And they were super cool people, very willing to sit down and help a newbie out. I also remember Kathy Sierra's post about the "hollywood model" (your job security is your reputation, based on your past projects), an approach that only works when talent is identified, recognized, and credited (how many programmers at silicon valley get to put their names on the product?) I'm not saying all is peachy in hollywood, but it is indisputably an innovative place for technology and technology careers. This is why it kills me to see a different wing of the movie industry essentially pitting itself against high tech. I'm not going to dispute another key point here - much of the legislation being pushed by the studios could be very harmful to technical innovation. We're at the point where people on hn are starting to talk about boycotting not just those corporations but the people who work for them. Sad to see this in an industry that does such wonderful, innovative tech work in many ways.
Jun8 15y ago
I don't know about "can't" but the reason why the studios won't innovate alternate business models is simple and is another example of the classic Innovator's Dilemma. The studios are huge companies embedded in other, even bigger companies, so there's a large amount of inertia. The MPAA is just the symptom of this. Go through the list Blank mentions: none, I repeat , none of those advances came from the industry itself, it was always some outside influence that the movie business resisted and then had to eventually deal with. But the inertia of the studios is only part of the story. Large actor's unions, e.g. SAG, also oppose drastic changes, because they understand the current model and don't want it to be disrupted too much. This is similar to how teacher's unions are generally against efforts like the Khan Academy. Remember that many actors (e.g. Charlie Chaplin) in the 20s were against the introduction to sound to movies due to precisely the same kind of intellectual and business inertia. One of my favorite quotes: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."
- ams6110 15y ago
  Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. Not only preserve it, but increase it if they can.
- tintin 15y ago
  This is why I think Apple is more or less behaving the same as the movie institutions. I think it's strange because Apple can be innovative. But lately they try to sue everyone to preserve there dominant position. Maybe large companies do this because they fear change because change is much harder for large companies.
johngalt 15y ago
Gaming killed them. WoW has made more money than any movie ever will. As the top shelf creative types realize the winds have changed, you will see a brain drain. The next Spielberg or Lucas will work for a game studio, and the movie industry will never get them back.
- ScottWhigham 15y ago
  Do you have a link that shows WoWs revenues? That's the first I've heard that WoW has outsold all movies in history.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    > Do you have a link that shows WoWs revenues? As far as I know, there's no such thing, only estimates based on e.g. the subscribers base. These estimates are generally in the $1bn to $1.5bn range (edit: per year), and usually on the lower end of that range, since ~2008. Which definitely does not put any given WoW year at the top of grossing movies (but still in a healthy position, 10 movies so far have gone beyond a billion gross). Still I think a fairer comparison would be to movie franchises, if we put WoW's total revenue around 5~6bn it would rank #2 behind the Harry Potter franchise ($7.7bn) and before James Bond ($5.1bn). However, I think it's fair to say WoW is an anomaly in terms of revenue. Even more so than billion-grossing movies.
    - tsotha 15y ago
      >However, I think it's fair to say WoW is an anomaly in terms of revenue. Yes, and it may be WoW has to fade away for another MMO to succeed at that level, which limits upside growth for the industry. People who see movies will see multiple movies over the course of a year, but MMO players tend to play one at a time. It's a different model - service vs. product.
      - masklinn 15y ago
        And MMORPGs seem to be moving towards "freemium"/"free to play" models: Guild Wars has been from the start, EQ2 recently switched to freemium following what was apparently a successful "Everquest II Extended" experience, Clone Wars Adventures is a freemium, City of Heroes added a freemium mode (City of Heroes: Freedom) this year, ...), and both of Turbine's recent MMOs — D&D Online and LOTR Online — are now freemium, which makes a new WoW (in terms of revenue) unlikely, apart from WoW2 (or Starcraft Online) maybe.

236 points by grellas 15y ago

I think government and the populous as a whole play a large part in this natural progression of things as well. When it comes to innovation and changes to the way the world works we're faced with two competing sides: 1) Let innovation take over and increase all things good to the consumer 2) Protect jobs Once the MPAA/RIAA or whatever finally realize that their role is no longer to play the middleman between the artists and the consumer there will be massive job loss. Its not my job to envision where these workers will migrate but its an unfortunate truth of life when processes become automated and require less people in the whole scheme. And that's primarily how people maintain support for the associations instead of piracy or streamed content. Those ads in the theater of the key grip going "piracy is killing my job" is the pity response they're trying to drive from us. The Key Grip in reality shouldn't be hurting MPAA should be. They haven't realized yet that their role in the process isn't worth the same amount as it was 10 years ago and they're refusing to take a pay cut as a part of things.

pfraze 15y ago
Somebody on HN once described the state of the music industry as a transfer of wealth from the record labels to the internet companies. That made a lot of sense to me.

PaulHoule 15y ago

I think Hollywood is very interested in the internet as a distribution medium. Already it's clear that advertising CPMs are several times higher online than on conventional television -- and online advertising isn't even fully mature! Hollywood isn't opposed to the "internet" as a technology; they just want to control it.

pfraze 15y ago
I agree, and it frustrates me more, because -- as the article points out -- they don't innovate. That said, lack of innovation could be related to the historic divorce from distribution channels; their business is content, not medium, and that's why they don't put resources into medium development. I don't know enough about the industry to say for sure, though.
kin 15y ago
Drives me crazy that they do this. Take Pay-Per-View for example. Why is it that on demand services like Vudu don't have the ENTIRE library of movies? Why not? Why would a movie not be on there? Because greed. Because Vudu won't charge $5 for a classic movie but the studio wants to charge more than a bargain bin for a 24-hour rental for some reason. Or maybe it's some lame reason like pride.

jonnathanson 15y ago

I've worked at studios and networks for a large part of my career. They have hired plenty of people over the years with "skill at managing disruption." They've poached talent from the Microsofts, Googles, Facebooks, hot startups, etc., of the world plenty of times over. The problem is that they tend to place these folks -- or any of their people ostensibly charged with "innovation" -- in isolated silos. Typically they'll hire a handful of "innovation" people, most of them ex-McKinsey consultants, but a lot of them tech people, and put them in a sort of internal consulting group. This group will have no P&L of its own, and no real authority to change or mandate change. And it will be tasked with influencing the rest of the company to change. As you can imagine, it's a recipe for failure. And even this is a symptom of a bigger problem: silos, silos, silos. Every department might as well be competing with the next -- because nobody talks to one another, people are constantly politicking against one another, and nobody wants to fund a win that shows up on somebody else's P&L. The whole thing is very reminiscent of "Game of Thrones," actually. Each studio is host to a bevy of competing fiefdoms, and the heads of the fiefdoms are constantly plotting each others' downfalls. And even the studios are, themselves, fiefdoms within much larger media conglomerates. The head of the Disney movie studio, for instance, still answers to the head of The Walt Disney Corporation, and competes for his favor with the heads of ABC, ESPN, Theme Parks, Licensing, etc. And the head of The Walt Disney Corporation is beholden to Wall Street and quarterly reports. (Big risks and disruptive strategies are extremely hard to implement when you've got quarterlies to answer for). If you ask me, these companies have grown too big and unwieldy to innovate properly. I'm not saying that in an antitrust-activist sense, but rather, in the sense that it's extremely hard to get everyone within a giant conglomerate on the same agenda when the goal, business, and job description of each P&L leader is so wildly different from the next. None of this is meant to be an apology for the entertainment conglomerates, but rather, an observation. It's an observation born out of intense personal frustration, of course, at having seen the same patterns over and over again. At the end of the day, "innovation" is a very easy word to preach, but a much more difficult word to implement. At the same time, I get the sense that a tipping point is very close at hand. Producers, writers, actors, directors, and other talent are themselves getting very tired of the same old studio game. And many of them are seeking out innovative deals with tech firms, brands, and other direct-to-consumer channels. All it takes is a handful of breakout hits -- shows, movies, or what have you -- that occur outside of the established Hollywood distribution system. The second you've got a legitimate hit series only on Netflix, or a direct-to-Amazon smash hit, or a Facebook series drawing in more viewers per week than a network show (very feasible), Hollywood will take notice, and it'll start getting serious about rethinking its approach. It may be too little and too late by then, but that's how these things go. [Sorry for the tl;dr text wall!]

mgkimsal 15y ago

I will point out that while the cries of "it'll ruin us" (meaning, our business model) have been going on for some time, each time it seems to get closer to the truth. When the original business model was "people going to theaters", new technology options meant that fewer people might go to movies. And that does happen from year to year, and may be on a downward trend for a variety of reasons. Other markets open up but it can take time to adjust (and rather than adjust, big studios seem to just fight). I do think they're pretty close to the mark on music these days. The cry of "radio will destroy us" is rather silly in hindsight because radio is still a physical limited system. I can only tune in X stations, signal isn't always good, and I'm limited by the realtime aspect of station X only playing Y songs per day. Instant access to all music (or, a very large subset) all the time means ... a big shift in how people consume and think about music. Bigger than most big companies are ready to deal with. What I'd like? $10-$20/month for instant streaming access to all movie content from X major studios. Another $10-$20/month for instant streaming access to all OTA/Cable channels. When I say all I mean all - every movie in an archive going back to the dawn of time. Every episode of every TV show that was aired (and maybe some that weren't). I'd even be content with not having access to current stuff. I don't particularly care about being "up to date" with whatever the latest shows are - I much prefer going through entire series after the fact. Index everything - make it searchable. Let me search up actor FOO, find the shows he was in, and go watch those scenes. We're close on some aspects of this, but still so far away. All of this content exists, somewhere. Yes, it'll take time to convert it to online. But that's a one time expense (big as it may be). And the 'long tail' effect I believe would justify people spending a nominal amount per month to get at all the old stuff whenever they want. There's no value in movie X sitting in a vault.

dexen 15y ago
> Instant access to all music (or, a very large subset) all the time means ... a big shift in how people consume and think about music. Once all the technical barriers are gone, there still remains limitation of one human's capacity and ability to cope with huge number of titles, artists etc. Try as I might, it's not feasible for me to consume more than about 16h/day of music and movies, regardless of technological progress. Moreover, it takes nontrivial amount of time and effort to just find music and movies matching your taste, limiting the theoretical 16h to way less. Back then all one had were his and his friends' LPs and a handful of radio stations. Now I /teoretically/ could access any music -- but I'll rather listen to something my friends, or (a business opportunity here!) an advisor recommends for me. There is, and will be, a natural scarcity in multimedia in any foreseeable future, with our cognitive capacity being the ultimate limiter. And there will still be mad money to be made by picking the right track and show for the consumer.

enobrev 15y ago

While I'm not a fan of the industry tactics, which seem to essentially amount to throwing a tantrum anytime the world decides to do things a little different, this article seems to show an amazing resilience. It baffles me how these slow anti-tech companies continue to remain well planted as the "owners" of our content. Especially considering how well developed the internet has become, I can't imagine how these companies have continued to thrive.

gerggerg 15y ago

The movie industry does innovate. They've been innovating like crazy. Tons of new tech and innovations come out of the movie industry. It's the MPAA that doesn't care to innovate. The MPAA doesn't produce anything. They just want/need control. Their sole job is to make money and any time you have an organization whose sole purpose is to make money, they're just going to want control. The problem isn't the movie industry or piracy, it's the relentless fight for control that the pushers of a dying business model want over you.

bad_user 15y ago
MPAA's actions can be attributed to its members. MPAA cannot exist and act without its members' approval. Witness how BSA initially supported SOPA, but then backtracked, probably because some of its members weren't too happy about it. Their sole job is to make money When freedoms are attacked because some fatso feels those pesky pirates are affecting his bottom line, then "making money" is not an excuse. And governments should be careful as they are walking a very thin line. A French revolution can always happen again.
- gerggerg 15y ago
  I agree. All I'm trying to say as that blaming it on the 'Movie Industry' is not being able to see the real problem. Many independent and main stream movie industry workers don't support SOPA and don't feel the MPAA acts in their favor. We need to vote with our dollars and not support organizations that support the MPAA. And we need to vote with our mouthes and make it clear that as culture consuming citizens we feel an organization like the MPAA is more harmful to culture and business than it is beneficial. Now I understand that rights protection organizations are useful and necessary in many cases, again all I'm saying is that if you feel that the MPAA is being abusive and of little value then you should speak up to free yourself from them.
geebee 15y ago
I had the same thought. I worked briefly for a software company in hollywood that did film compositing/editing software, and it's an amazingly innovative industry. It's also an industry that recognizes and rewards technical talent... sure, we aren't movie stars, but I worked with programmers who had academy awards (the technical kind, of course). And they were super cool people, very willing to sit down and help a newbie out. I also remember Kathy Sierra's post about the "hollywood model" (your job security is your reputation, based on your past projects), an approach that only works when talent is identified, recognized, and credited (how many programmers at silicon valley get to put their names on the product?) I'm not saying all is peachy in hollywood, but it is indisputably an innovative place for technology and technology careers. This is why it kills me to see a different wing of the movie industry essentially pitting itself against high tech. I'm not going to dispute another key point here - much of the legislation being pushed by the studios could be very harmful to technical innovation. We're at the point where people on hn are starting to talk about boycotting not just those corporations but the people who work for them. Sad to see this in an industry that does such wonderful, innovative tech work in many ways.

Jun8 15y ago

I don't know about "can't" but the reason why the studios won't innovate alternate business models is simple and is another example of the classic Innovator's Dilemma. The studios are huge companies embedded in other, even bigger companies, so there's a large amount of inertia. The MPAA is just the symptom of this. Go through the list Blank mentions: none, I repeat , none of those advances came from the industry itself, it was always some outside influence that the movie business resisted and then had to eventually deal with. But the inertia of the studios is only part of the story. Large actor's unions, e.g. SAG, also oppose drastic changes, because they understand the current model and don't want it to be disrupted too much. This is similar to how teacher's unions are generally against efforts like the Khan Academy. Remember that many actors (e.g. Charlie Chaplin) in the 20s were against the introduction to sound to movies due to precisely the same kind of intellectual and business inertia. One of my favorite quotes: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."

ams6110 15y ago
Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. Not only preserve it, but increase it if they can.
tintin 15y ago
This is why I think Apple is more or less behaving the same as the movie institutions. I think it's strange because Apple can be innovative. But lately they try to sue everyone to preserve there dominant position. Maybe large companies do this because they fear change because change is much harder for large companies.

johngalt 15y ago

Gaming killed them. WoW has made more money than any movie ever will. As the top shelf creative types realize the winds have changed, you will see a brain drain. The next Spielberg or Lucas will work for a game studio, and the movie industry will never get them back.

ScottWhigham 15y ago
Do you have a link that shows WoWs revenues? That's the first I've heard that WoW has outsold all movies in history.
- masklinn 15y ago
  > Do you have a link that shows WoWs revenues? As far as I know, there's no such thing, only estimates based on e.g. the subscribers base. These estimates are generally in the $1bn to $1.5bn range (edit: per year), and usually on the lower end of that range, since ~2008. Which definitely does not put any given WoW year at the top of grossing movies (but still in a healthy position, 10 movies so far have gone beyond a billion gross). Still I think a fairer comparison would be to movie franchises, if we put WoW's total revenue around 5~6bn it would rank #2 behind the Harry Potter franchise ($7.7bn) and before James Bond ($5.1bn). However, I think it's fair to say WoW is an anomaly in terms of revenue. Even more so than billion-grossing movies.
  - tsotha 15y ago
    >However, I think it's fair to say WoW is an anomaly in terms of revenue. Yes, and it may be WoW has to fade away for another MMO to succeed at that level, which limits upside growth for the industry. People who see movies will see multiple movies over the course of a year, but MMO players tend to play one at a time. It's a different model - service vs. product.
    - masklinn 15y ago
      And MMORPGs seem to be moving towards "freemium"/"free to play" models: Guild Wars has been from the start, EQ2 recently switched to freemium following what was apparently a successful "Everquest II Extended" experience, Clone Wars Adventures is a freemium, City of Heroes added a freemium mode (City of Heroes: Freedom) this year, ...), and both of Turbine's recent MMOs — D&D Online and LOTR Online — are now freemium, which makes a new WoW (in terms of revenue) unlikely, apart from WoW2 (or Starcraft Online) maybe.