The slippery slope has finally ended.

[BenBos]

You think no one will buy copies of the expac just for free level 90s?

Everyone will buy it BECAUSE it has a free lvl 90 included.

Take a class you never played OR take your preferred class and put it on a PvP server etc ...

Since when are players communists ?

LOL.

I laugh so hard at those who complain about it... How silly.

[Deleted]

They are catering to the majority to remain as dominant as possible in mmo market. Your opinion (which is the same as mine) is irrelevant since we are the minority of the wow community.

[Mx]

So WoW bleeding subs is my personal opinion then? How curious..

And if it's not, do you think it's losing them because of good and popular changes Blizzard has made to the game?

WoW "bleeding" subs isn't what you said, and isn't what was in my quote. You claim the reason the subs are "bleeding" are because of unpopular decisions, which decisions, and how certain are you about those decisions?

What makes you so certain that "most players" are unwilling to pay for something like this?

You say "for most" the question they ask is, in your own words, "if I already pay my $15 a month, why are they asking for more for this?". What makes you think "most people" are asking that?

You then go on to say all of the unpopular decisions, which again in your own assumption, adds up to massive subscription loss. What makes you so certain? You need to have solid proof of something like all of that in order to not come across as one person that doesn't like a change crying fowl, it makes you look like you're just throwing out assumptions like I said.

And to answer your question, obviously good and popular decisions go both ways, what I may think is a good and popular decision may not be a good one to you, its an MMO, millions of people play it and not everyone is going to be pleased with a decision. But to be completely honest with you, my biggest assumption (something you do well), is that the game is simply aging and people move on naturally.

[Phaty]

how does this effect any of you all and YOUR enjoyment of the game? its completely optional. you can still choose to lvl YOUR alt 1-100. why do you care what someone else does? maybe you all should mind your own business and stop worrying about how other ppl choose to play, you will probably be happier ppl. if not, then there's no hope for you.

[Zalraki]

how does this effect any of you all and YOUR enjoyment of the game? its completely optional. you can still choose to lvl YOUR alt 1-100. why do you care what someone else does? maybe you all should mind your own business and stop worrying about how other ppl choose to play, you will probably be happier ppl. if not, then there's no hope for you.

It's/was an MMORPG, not an MMO-buy-with-no-effort. You can already see the type of people who joined the game due to the easy mode in LFR, now imagine how many more would join if the effort to perform is even less. And that DOES effect my enjoyment of the game.

Again, you can choose to ignore the trend... until it's too late

[Giscoicus]

how does this effect any of you all and YOUR enjoyment of the game? its completely optional. you can still choose to lvl YOUR alt 1-100. why do you care what someone else does? maybe you all should mind your own business and stop worrying about how other ppl choose to play, you will probably be happier ppl. if not, then there's no hope for you.

I don't enjoy not being as competitive as somebody else because I dont drop more on the game than them. I don't enjoy others gaining an advantage over me. I dont enjoy low level zones being dead and low level queues being stupidly long.

I'm sorry you are naive enough to not see how one persons actions in the game can affect another. We play in a multiplayer game, and it is my business when it affects me.

Everything you said could still be applied to selling gear. You can still run the raids, why does it matter if dropping 45$ gets you a heroic warforged set? Selling gear is not okay for a game that already charges you a sub fee and the cost of expansions to even get online.

[Hardkorr]

Selling level 90s impacts you how, exactly? I'd say most people already have 90s of all the classes they want, not like leveling takes long, it's just incredibly boring and redundant.

Comparing it to selling gear is stupid, because they're totally different. Selling level 90s when the level cap is 100 only exists to save time so you don't have to do more pointless level grinding which isn't fun to begin with. Selling gear that actually impacts the end game and impacts how you play the game at max level is completely different.

That being said, I wouldn't personally care if they sold LFR gear or honor gear, since neither of those really matter in the true end game of heroic raiding and high end arenas/RBGs. But I don't think they ever will, even though it wouldn't be that bad if they did.

Actually, it is the same thing. See back in the day, people didn't focus so much on ilvl, because it was all about leveling. Back then, character levels gated instances, raids, pvp brackets, and generally everyone had something to do at all levels. Now the paradigm has shifted, and everyone and their grandmother cares only about ilvl because its seems that the game only begins at max level (years worth of content and lore be damned). It seems evident that in order to combat power creep and the long haul for new and old players, Blizz is just pissing away years of content and instead of making it about the journey, they are making sure everyone is having fun at the destination, even though all there is to do is the same few raids over and over and over again for months on end.

Also, there are so many catch up mechanics in game that most of these 90's will probably be SoO lfr geared within a week (or however long they take grinding Timeless Isle gear to supplement that). Since they will be playing on the same gear level as other players who aren't doing heroic, it will affect all aspects of the game. From pvp randoms to pve pugs, it'll change the player pool and thus all game aspects which involve other players.

P.S. This is assuming that people who boost 90's will try the method of least resistance to get gear, which is lfr and timeless isle and are complete roflstomps.

[kail]

That's not even remotely selling them.

What do you call it then?

[roahn the warlock]

Hey look, the generalization that anybody who wants this is spending somebody else's money. And no, cosmetic extras should not "be part of the fucking service you pay for." Clearly you have no idea what your subscription actually pays for. It pays for access to their servers. The game. It does not give you access to things they specially made for the purpose of selling. Extra time went into it. I'm not sure what you understand.

There's nothing principled about it. You're whining about something you're just wrong about. Its pretty simple.

Funny, the amount of people that pay for x box live is far higher than wow. and that only costs 60 bucks a year. My sub pays for patches, that is what I sub for. And uhhh what is the extra time crap you are talking about? Did they somehow invent a way to add extra hours to the workday? I don't know what you think you understand. Each developer is payed to work I would guess 8 hours a day five days a week. I highly doubt they work overtime just for the store mounts. It takes time away from development, every bit of it.

Blizzard is the one that constantly says "Anything we do takes away from MoP development"

[Huehuecoyotl]

My deficiency is time, not money. I'll spend money to save time, and that's actually intelligent for someone with more money than time.

I want to play end-game with more classes, not level more classes. This is a video game, the goal is to have fun and play with your friends.

The aim of a video game is to have fun playing it. Which you seem to want to avoid by spending money. And as is usual with people that have too much money, you appear to simply not care what impact your use of that money has on other people who have less; it doesn't bother you that rather than improving the levelling experience for everyone (which costs money) they will allow people to skip it if you pay more. Great for you, terrible for everyone else. Maybe stop thinking about yourself, and look at the bigger picture?

[Djuntas]

Yep, Blizzard and wow aint the same as they we're back inn 2005 thats for damn sure.

Not a postive thing to give away 90's like that. Rather remove lvling once say you got 2 90's, or make the lvling procces completely new inn some way that would cut it down alot, but still teach you all you need to know once max.

[roahn the warlock]

The aim of a video game is to have fun playing it. Which you seem to want to avoid by spending money. And as is usual with people that have too much money, you appear to simply not care what impact your use of that money has on other people who have less; it doesn't bother you that rather than improving the levelling experience for everyone (which costs money) they will allow people to skip it if you pay more. Great for you, terrible for everyone else. Maybe stop thinking about yourself, and look at the bigger picture?

This, soooo much this. remember that whole 10 20 30% they knock off the leveling process. say goodbye to that come paid level 90s

I think this is just the mindset of people. I got a new app called Flow. and it's fun so far. And I notice it has like 5 hints for a dollar. I'm like Why the hell would I want hints? I wanna pay for the game to beat the puzzles for me?

[Hardkorr]

how does this effect any of you all and YOUR enjoyment of the game? its completely optional. you can still choose to lvl YOUR alt 1-100. why do you care what someone else does? maybe you all should mind your own business and stop worrying about how other ppl choose to play, you will probably be happier ppl. if not, then there's no hope for you.

As for you, it affects OUR enjoyment of the game. At least if you raid with randoms (lfr & flex/normal w/pugs), pvp (anything that isn't a premade now), buy from the AH (mats will be bought out to power level professions), and other aspects of the game wherein all it takes is one rich fucktard to ruin everyone else's fun.

[Deleted]

because leveling characters is a challenge and not a chore.

[Wolfman31]

I'm not against them selling instant lvl 90's; I'll probably purchase a few myself because I'm a rabid altoholic. All the points Bashiok raised to counter the pay-to-win argument recently are valid. However, the slippery slope has not "finally ended." Blizz will continue to artfully walk the line between optional micro-transactions and pay-to-win services. They've been testing the waters to see how much they can get away with while allowing the community to acclimate to the idea of micro-transactions in WoW. If you think it's going to stop with instant 90's, you're fooling yourself. Just wait until they start selling things like fully leveled guilds.

[Trubo]

The aim of a video game is to have fun playing it. Which you seem to want to avoid by spending money. And as is usual with people that have too much money, you appear to simply not care what impact your use of that money has on other people who have less; it doesn't bother you that rather than improving the levelling experience for everyone (which costs money) they will allow people to skip it if you pay more. Great for you, terrible for everyone else. Maybe stop thinking about yourself, and look at the bigger picture?

I would not mind leveling again if the experience could be improved. However based on the only improvements has made (reduced XP and Cata) I am hesitant to hope that Blizzard could make leveling enjoyable again.

This, soooo much this. remember that whole 10 20 30% they knock off the leveling process. say goodbye to that come paid level 90s

I think this is just the mindset of people. I got a new app called Flow. and it's fun so far. And I notice it has like 5 hints for a dollar. I'm like Why the hell would I want hints? I wanna pay for the game to beat the puzzles for me?

Why would Blizzard revert the leveling XP reductions they've implemented? Or are you suggesting that there won't be additional ones in WoD because you can skip straight to 90? Even then I doubt they wouldn't offer an XP nerf halfway through the expansion so as to encourage people to level characters.

[Majestian]

"Have you run Blackwing Lair for months, and just can't get those Judgment Gloves to drop? Well, now for only .99 cents per item, you can finally complete your transmog set by purchasing old items via the Blizzard Store!"

[Prag]

lol. How incredibly short-sighted of you.

What a waste of a response. Why bother?

As one could easily ascertain from 1 day of playtime, there are already shitty players in the game. What difference does it make if there are shitty players who paid to get to the level cap?

I'd still love to hear a reasonable argument as to how leveling 1-90 made anyone a better player. Leveling hasn't actually mattered since TBC when you had reputations started to help the dungeon gearing process. Now? It's about as useful a venture as your post. Congratulations, you managed to spend a few weeks running through dungeons with 4 silent people in heirlooms where everything was one shot and the abilities that matter don't matter until max level.

[BenBos]

It's/was an MMORPG, not an MMO-buy-with-no-effort. You can already see the type of people who joined the game due to the easy mode in LFR, now imagine how many more would join if the effort to perform is even less. And that DOES effect my enjoyment of the game.

Again, you can choose to ignore the trend... until it's too late

Seriously, just reread what you wrote.

How can anyone who paid for his lvl 90 character have ANY effect on your enjoyment ???

btw: since DAY 1 people have paid for leveling services ... how did it influence the enjoyment of YOUR leveling fun?

tldr: grow up. this is a game.

If anyone wants to pay for a character 90: good for him. I play my game, you play yours.

In fact if he pays it to Blizzard, good for me too as he upped the resources to put in the game.

These are arguments of 13 years olds, thinking they "earn" something by playing a video game.

Good Lord have pity on these chaps.

[Trubo]

"Have you run Blackwing Lair for months, and just can't get those Judgment Gloves to drop? Well, now for only .99 cents per item, you can finally complete your transmog set by purchasing old items via the Blizzard Store!"

Until this option actually appears there's little sense mocking it as nothing in the last six years of the Blizzard store has come remotely to obtaining in-game items with real cash.