Blizzard may rethink WoW sub-fees in the future

World of Warcraft's lead designer Tom Chilton has said that it may not "make sense" in the future for the game to have a subscription fee.

Speaking with PC Gamer, Chilton said the free-to-play model being adopted by western MMOs hasn't gone unnoticed, yet Blizzard's not in any hurry to change the subscription plans.

"We're not spending a lot of time thinking about it. It's not something that's a reality for us in the near future," said Chilton.

"If another game comes along and blows us away it may not make sense for us to have a subscription fee. Or even further down the line, when we have another MMO out.

"I feel like they're doing that to compete with other games that are on a similar subscriber level to what they were at. I imagine that when one of them went free to play it cannibalized some of the other subscribers. I can definitely imagine that being the case with World of Warcraft."

Chilton said in the past that it's possible that Blizzard could "do some kind of micro-transaction stuff".

WoW: Cataclysm is slated for sometime this year, with an "unannounced" Blizzard MMO in the works as well.