What makes official WoW worth it's money?

[Thorbalt]

Gabe Newell from valve once said that "Piracy is the result of bad service of game companies". He said that some pirates are doing a much better job at providing a good service than the game companies.

For a very long time I thought that official WoW offers such service in a form of "stability". What I mean with "stability" is that "once item is unobtainable, it stays unobtainable forever", but official Blizzard post about possible return of PvP Elite set transmogs (they "canceled" that idea now) made me realize that any digital item can be brought back to the game at any point. So why would I waste my precious time getting such exclusive items, if they could return them to the game as casual items at any time in the future.
The reason why I don't play on private server is because they could just simply decide to start selling items, or they wouldn't take any action against duplicated items. But Blizzard already returned many items back to the game with BMAH or simply by making them obtainable again like vanilla PvP titles.

So my question is, what makes official WoW worth it's money, if they can't offer such stability? I'm scared of spending my time in WoW from now on. I don't want to find out that everything I was working on is going to be obtainable without much effort in the future. I love WoW, but I don't trust Blizzard anymore, unless they tell us what is their long term plan about that.

you dont randomly lose your characters when some jackoff decides he wants to screw the other dudes he was just working with

[Deleted]

For example I've invested $750 into one F2P game, cuz it was extremely enjoyable at that moment. And what now? ...

You must either have a very well paid job or never worked for your money.

[Raelbo]

For a very long time I thought that official WoW offers such service in a form of "stability". What I mean with "stability" is that "once item is unobtainable, it stays unobtainable forever"

Honestly, I cannot understand why this kind of "stability" is in any way whatsoever a good thing.

So why would I waste my precious time getting such exclusive items, if they could return them to the game as casual items at any time in the future.

For the same reasons you should be "wasting" your precious time getting them in the first place. Because you enjoy the process and the challenge and the sense of satisfaction that comes with achieving a testing goal in the game.

So my question is, what makes official WoW worth it's money, if they can't offer such stability? I'm scared of spending my time in WoW from now on. I don't want to find out that everything I was working on is going to be obtainable without much effort in the future. I love WoW, but I don't trust Blizzard anymore, unless they tell us what is their long term plan about that.

I highlighted the important bit. The drivel about making some hard-to-get-now stuff easy-to-get-later is absurd. Get over it, it's not the game's fault if you choose to take issue with silly things.

[SirBeef]

P2 in this case has a mount that's not obtainable anymore and it cost him lost of time to get it. How would you think he would react if the item became obtainable once more, with something like BMAH? I can tell you, he most certainly would not feel good.
Some people do actually play for the rewards and are hooked even more to the game when it's a limited time thing.

It's the same thing when you have been working your whole life just to make enough money to properly around and your lazy ass couchpotato friend suddenly is a billionair without even lifting a finger.

This shit never bothered me. I spent tons of time clearing raids on the highest difficulties, obtained rare items and mounts while the content was current. It had no effect on me when people could solo raids and get the same stuff. Likewise in real life, I had a couple of friends get their student loans paid off and houses bought for them by their parents, basically 23 and living the easier life without having to live with those burdens. I had no hard feelings.

Life is too short to get upset over stupid shit like this. And let's be real, the number one reason for piracy is cheap ass gamers.

[Deleted]

I'm reading all replies, I see your points too. But I'm sure we would all benefit from knowing what's Blizzard plan for future. Maybe this is the key? To let players know what is the long term plan with those special items, instead of giving us shockers like: "hey, we are removing this and that item tomorrow and making Elite sets obtainable with marks of honor". Not good for my heart.

[SirBeef]

You must either have a very well paid job or never worked for your money.

Actually it's all about living within your means.

[Raelbo]

Yeah, "stability" is best word. You must be sure, that money, invested today, won't be just lost tomorrow. Many game developers tend to say, that you pay for entertainment - same as for movies for example. May be it was true in the past, but not today, cuz even free games may provide same level of entertainment. So the only thing, worth investing money - is future. You invest money into being sure, that game won't collapse withing just a year. Or game developers won't change this game to a point, when it no longer will be enjoyable for you, so you'll have to quit it.

Hmm. I guess that by that logic I should never watch any movie until I know ALL the sequels will be great.

Fuck, I can't believe I was ever STUPID enough to watch movies like the Terminator, Alien, Star Wars. All that money wasted because of stupid sequels which simply didn't measure up and have now retroactively ruined my entire mispent childhood. Thanks George, Ridley, and James for wrecking my childhood for me. I think I should sue.

[Dracullus]

Right - which is exactly what gives me a headache. Having to get the "must have" skins for transmog with 12 chars isn't really all that fun - or atleast I would enjoy it more without the "damocles sword". It would be easier if they could do changes to Balance of Power once you got it with your main char, atleast. Also they are lowering the honour you need to get to prestige 1 with 7.2, so that's a step in the right direction

Nighthold part of Balance of Power is actually quite nice and short, I must start to do this on second char to see it they did something with Nightmare part. Yeah, PVP ones (and hidden 100 dungeon color) are most problematic if you are completionist. My advice - set reasonable goal. If they don't change anything, I will get all colors only on my main, on my alts I will only get all basic skins. It's like elite pvp transmog - there is no way you will unlock all available cosmetics, so there is no reason to grind for extra color if you do it just to complete your collection.

And wait, they are lowering honor? By how much?

[Deleted]

I'm reading all replies, I see your points too. But I'm sure we would all benefit from knowing what's Blizzard plan for future. Maybe this is the key? To let players know what is the long term plan with those special items, instead of giving us shockers like: "hey, we are removing this and that item tomorrow and making Elite sets obtainable with marks of honor". Not good for my heart.

Blizzard aren't robots though, they can't plan the future perfectly. They're people with opinions and thoughts of their own. They're going to change their minds with decisions like this on a daily basis. Sadly as a player you have absolutely zero impact on these decisions and never really will. You purchased a licence from Blizzard, you don't have any say in what actually happens, just an opinion which they can easily ignore.

You're not always going to agree with every change made, you just need to get used to it if you're going to pay a monthly subscription fee.

[WowIsDead64]

You must either have a very well paid job or never worked for your money.

It's within around 2-3 years. At that moment I had some free money to tell myself "Ok, I have great mood today, I really liked to play this <hero>, I have all free variants - may be I should buy Hero one? How about buying camos and colors to add some customization?". And sometimes answer was "Yes". That's, how F2P games work. They just offer you, what you really want, for your money - not just say "we just take your money and will invest them, as we want".

[Lady Atia]

Nighthold part of Balance of Power is actually quite nice and short, I must start to do this on second char to see it they did something with Nightmare part. Yeah, PVP ones (and hidden 100 dungeon color) are most problematic if you are completionist. My advice - set reasonable goal. If they don't change anything, I will get all colors only on my main, on my alts I will only get all basic skins. It's like elite pvp transmog - there is no way you will unlock all available cosmetics, so there is no reason to grind for extra color if you do it just to complete your collection.

And wait, they are lowering honor? By how much?

Yeah, I'll do it the same way I did the MoP CM sets - picking out the stuff I really want first, and try to get the other ones later. Regarding the honour thing, it was a blue post:

"Thanks for the post. To address one issue you mentioned, in 7.2, we're reducing the amount of honor it requires to go from Honor Level 1 to 50 before prestiging the first time (aka Prestige 0). It will take roughly half the amount of honor as it does now. Prestige ranks 1 and higher will remain the same.

Hopefully, this helps everyone gain access to their honor talents faster"

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/7...reward-system/

[Nnyco]

official is not a buggy or laggy piece of shit like private servers are and i know that my character isnt gone suddenly because that server died or got closed

[Lochton]

I'm reading all replies, I see your points too. But I'm sure we would all benefit from knowing what's Blizzard plan for future. Maybe this is the key? To let players know what is the long term plan with those special items, instead of giving us shockers like: "hey, we are removing this and that item tomorrow and making Elite sets obtainable with marks of honor". Not good for my heart.

To be honest, they do give us good warning on the more important parts.

- - - Updated - - -

official is not a buggy or laggy piece of shit like private servers are and i know that my character isnt gone suddenly because that server died or got closed

I do hear they use modifiers too, which beats the point.

[Teri]

If anything blizz didn't remove enough from the game.

Old raid achievements/mounts/titles and heroic/mythic gear sets should have been removed the moment it gets old, especially 1 expansion later.

Make it Feat of strength so achievement collectors dont feel left out on points, and just add enough similar mounts with different colors to not upset collectors.

I was all for removing the black/plague proto drakes back then, and now the plague drake is back on Bmah, same as old tier3 sets.

[micwini]

the number one reason for piracy is cheap ass gamers.

It could be. For WoW private servers, especially those who offer the previous expansions, this is not really the case. Of course some could be there because they don't want to pay. However, I feel like there are a lot of people playing on those servers just because Blizzard themselves don't answer to their demand of legacy servers.

Lets not make this a legacy server thread btw. Im pretty neutral on that whole discussion, so no point fighting over that. I feel however that the piracy is not a thing in wow because of the "stability" of the game. The OP disagrees with me, but I think the only thing that comes close to what he describes is transmog. The only thing that Blizzard lacks in the service department is fulfilling the demand of ALL their players (i.e legacy servers).

I feel like their customer service is one of the best and MOST GM's are rational people and behave professionally and try to help you the best they can. I feel like with most other companies, the customer service is not really accessible and it takes a lot of effort to contact someone who can help you. I feel like this is a big +.

Also: for people that play almost only blizzard games it is pretty hard to gauge the quality of their games. Even if you don't agree with the directions the games are going, they still deliver the best quality out there. It wasn't until I played games from other companies that I saw how polished everything is that blizz makes.

Sounds too whiteknight for my taste, but I just feel this is how it is. The fact that games like FIFA and CoD let you pay 60€ every year for the same game with 3 new missions is just retarded. Not to speak about the DLC's shit.
Overwatch for example is 40€, not even the price of a normal AAA game and you don't even have to pay for the updates!

TL;DR
- WoW is worth its money because it's almost always pretty polished, even if you don't agree with the direction the game is going.
- Blizzard lacks in the service department with WoW because they don't fulfill the demand of ALL players (legacy shit)
- Blizzard has their stuff way more polished than most other companies.
- Blizzard is very kind when it comes to pricing on most games, when EA and the likes let you pay 60€ for the same game every year. Not to speak about the occasional 10€ DLC for 2 new maps on a certain FPS shooter game.

[Pull My Finger]

Gabe Newell from valve once said that "Piracy is the result of bad service of game companies".

He's wrong though. His statement sits in the "rich guy talking out of his ass" category. The truth is that opportunity makes the thief. People steal because they can. There's all there is to it.

As far as your reasoning goes: it's a bizzare, random criteria that you kind of made up for yourself. There's absolutely no senseful connection to be made between a specific detail like unobtainable ingame items and the real-money worth of the overall product.

Any product of competent work is worth money, because professionals have put in the time and effort. Doesn't matter if it's a loaf of bread, a massage or a video game.

A less "global" answer would be that WoW is a damn fine game with an immense production value.

[Cuppy]

The problem is that most people have no idea how BUGGED and DIFFERENT the private servers are from the real deal.

Oh it's different from live? Really? THAT'S THE POINT!
Some people gladly get bugs over horrendous development. Personally I'd rather have a balanced game than 100 new toys every fucking week.

And even people that can spot those problems are willing to live with them because the original version is no more. There's no other reason to play a pirate server (except for those that don't afford the subscription, but in that case you have bigger problem in your life than a fucking game).

Vanilla had bugs too, same with TBC. That shit was full of bugs, but gameplay rocked the current version 100-0.

What Blizzard does with their game regarding the story and gear and dungeons and other content is their problem. Stability doesn't mean "they did something I wasn't expecting"... Want to see a game with stability problems? Play a Bethesda game that crashes randomly to the desktop for no apparent fucking reason

Yeah they are doing w/e they want, and we can clearly see that in subscriptions. From 15million to 1million in few years. That's what I call reason/consequence.

[Deleted]

If both "official" and "pirate" service is equally unreliable, but one costs money and the second one is free, I understand why would people choose private servers.
I'm not even sure what is going to happen with artifact weapons and skins. Is it worth getting prestige rank 15 or not? It's going to take ages to get there and I don't want it to be a long waste of time.

[Amerissis]

Personally I'd rather have a balanced game than 100 new toys every fucking week.

Then you're not playing Classic. Classic was the most unbalanced era of this game ever. Whole specs were useless and others vastly overpowered. I loved Classic, but don't lie about it to make it look better. Classic was primarily fun because it was new and exciting.

[Fenderxx]

Personally, I pay for 2 reasons: New Content and playing with friends. If everyone stopped playing official WoW, then that's it. They are not going to finish the story or come out with new expansions.. its over. I loved classic WoW and many expansions and would even enjoy dipping my toe back in those waters if there was official servers for them. However, I want to see new raids and the were the story is going. All of that dies if there is no demand.

Also, as for the old gear coming back... I am not really sure what the issue is.. You can easily go farm old Mythics and get the best PvE sets... so why not let people go back and get those old PvP sets? Don't get me wrong, there should be prestigious items.. but really if they are sets that are 2-3 expansions removed... is it that big a deal? Do you really regret all of your time playing because 5 years later someone else has the same shoulders?

Sounds a little ridiculous to me.