Why do YOU FEEL that micro-transactions are immoral in WoW / P2P game?

[Lumineus]

Wish they'd stop calling things that are half the price of the retail box for the current expansion - or more! - "micro" transactions. Even the pets barely qualify.

[Deadite]

You know, it is rather common that a multi-company wants money. I wouldn't call it greedy, as long as they don't start chopping it up into DLC's and selling gear for current content.

So they want money but they are not greedy? They want to wring every penny they can from you. I don't fault them for that. It is just good business. If they could make more money from people buying current gear and DLC that they would lose from people leaving then the cash shop would be full of it.

[PaladinBash]

Buy more tokens so I can get more shit cheaply for Heroes and Hearthstone with useless WoW gold. Seriously. Don't stop buying the damn tokens.

[Noomz]

It's just greedy when the box costs a certain amount and there's a subscription fee on top of that for them to be charging extra for things that you can't get any other way. It's a symptom of a much larger disease and it says a lot about a company and proves that above all else they want money.

A company wants money?! NO WAY DUDE!

Now tell me, what content are you missing out on because of this? None at all, that's what.

Have you played any other MMO's? I'm telling you if you haven't that they are much, much worse with microtransactions than WoW is. WoW barely has any micro-transactions to speak of if you compare the game to every other MMO.

[SirCowdog]

The biggest problem I see with loading micro-transactions or cosmetic items(such as mounts, skins, pets, etc) on top of a subscription is that it comes off as a cash-grab rather than a quality of life upgrade. People who are paying a subscription are doing so under the impression that they're paying for a more or less full service version of a game. They've already shelled out the cost of the box, and literally can't play the product that they've purchased unless they maintain a subscription. So when that same company comes along and starts separating out parts of the game that you then have to pay MORE for on top of the Box+Sub, it rubs customers the wrong way.

Additionally, I think people would have less of an issue with cash shop or microtransactions in a subscription model if the things being sold for extra were also obtainable within the game normally, within the normal sub. Paying to skip the work or time to obtain a cosmetic item is generally considered acceptable. Locking items behind an additional pay-wall when people are already paying each month comes across as....questionable. I think if Blizzard is going to sell items for an additional cost on top of the box price and subscription fee, they should start giving people who are subbed a certain amount of tokens or points each month that can be used for cash-shop items or other micro-transactions.

What's interesting is that this is sort of what they're doing with the WoW token. The main problem with the WoW token, however, is that the economy of it is set by the players, not by the business. A player's ability to earn enough gold to make use of the wow token for micro-transactions and other cash shop purchases fluctuates heavily based on their ability to earn gold, and the economy of the game itself.

All in all, my personal opinion is that Blizzard is coming off as greedy as hell. WoW already makes money hand over fist between the price of the box and the monthly sub. While it's true that so far everything is optional, any cosmetic stuff in the cash shop should also be obtainable through normal gameplay as well(not through farming wow tokens).

[Onikaroshi]

I honestly don't care about cosmetics or minor boosts like leveling being there, hell purchased them myself from time to time. Why is it always wow though? (I know Jay said P2P but people just bring up wow) FFXIV has a much more robust cash shop then wow, sporting not only pets, mounts and boost, but also clothing and emotes, and I barely hear complaints about it. They even have per character mounts for 18 bucks (and account mounts for 25). Boosting a full character will cost you 50, only 10 bucks less than wow (face it, you're not just going to by the 25 dollar job boost, you're also buying the 25 dollar story boost cause who want's to do a level 1 quest at level 60).

All of this is fine, optional, only thing that would make me sigh is if they listed non-cosmetic gear there.

[Echocho]

Now tell me, what content are you missing out on because of this? None at all, that's what.

How about all the mounts in the game I can't get even though I paid for the game and for the subscription for over 10 years? If you could get them ingame it would be fine but exclusive cash shop mounts is just plain wrong in a game with a payment model like this. They make so much money off of us as it is.

[xanzul]

It's just greedy when the box costs a certain amount and there's a subscription fee on top of that for them to be charging extra for things that you can't get any other way. It's a symptom of a much larger disease and it says a lot about a company and proves that above all else they want money.

You can buy them with gold now. Get the fuck over it already.

[Deleted]

Not a hard answer tbh, it's bad cause you are paying a quantity of the price for the job designers are doing via the game AND the subscription, then they are selling you that job AGAIN with microtransactions.

[xanzul]

Actually came here to say exactly this, almost word for word. Especially because such thing are unobtainable elsewhere. Though I only have this issue with mounts/pets/helms. Other services are fine because they act like a time-saver (say, server transfer or race change). Anyone can just re-level on a new character so the option is at least there.

There are many, many, many, many, many items in Wow that can not be obtained in game. This isn't new.

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This kind of response is nothing more than a generalized personal attack. It's useless and honestly should be infracted.

I agree with Embriel - when you pay a box fee AND a sub fee it feels like a bit much to charge for things that are mostly database updates (they don't require human intervention - if they did, the cost would be easily defensible).

The other issue is that these are NOT micro transactions. Microtransactions are, almost by definition, for small amounts - $5 for X, $2 for Y. Server transfers, race changes etc range from $25 on up. In the context of a $50 box which gets you an entire expansion or a $15 sub which gets you 30 days of playtime, $25-$60 for simple, automated things like this feels excessive.

What I'd like to see is this - each expansion you get 1 free service. Whether that's a race change, server transfer, whatever. Over that 1, I'd like to see the prices be more in line with the sub prices - mostly $15. Bundling should get you a sizeable discount (doing a race and server xfer for example). You should also be able to get discounts for doing a lot of characters at once so that it might be $15 to transfer 1 character to another server but its $10 for the second done at the same time. $5 for the third, etc. That way if you want to just move 4 characters it's reasonable as long as it's all at once and to the same server.

Now, would I do this if I were Blizzard and I was seeing good revenue from services as is? Not unless I could make up the lost revenue in volume. If I wasn't very sure of this, there's no way I'd give up millions in revenue just to be nice. Nor would anyone else here despite what they might say.

So don't fucking pay. It is that fucking simple.

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Keep it to optional mounts / pets / transmogs like now (they aren't going away at this point so I "tolerate" it, I don't buy it all anyway).

Don't sell power items ever.

The subscription/expansion buy-in also keeps a certain type of player away from the game, which isn't always a bad thing.

Services are too expensive imo, with the current state of the game, but at least there's an option for using gold.

It is almost as if services are meant to be expensive. The only 2 times services have been on sale for 50% it was proven for once and for all that the price is a deterrent. When that sale started you could literally watch your realms and factions empty out in minutes and many of these realms never recovered. If anything Blizzard just needs to scrap these services entirely because all they have ever done is harm the game and its population.

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I'm absolutely opposed to any and all microtransactions in a single-player game.

In a multiplayer game that has an entry cost, it just comes across as price gouging. Especially with the sub fee.

My issue is that the services in WoW are ridiculously overpriced. I'm sorry, but moving a character from one server to another is an easy, automated process. Making a character level 100 is even more brainless. Charging the price of full games for these things is completely absurd.

I'm fine with the mount and pet shop, however, as these are just a few options in a veritable ocean of pets and mounts available in game.

Tell that to Blizzard customer support as they spend hours every day correcting various issues that come up during the process of transferring characters. Yes the services themselves are automated but the support for them is not.

[clevin]

Thats what they are doing already; the free boost to max level from the last expansion pack. Personally I think they should change it to the way you are saying it, giving it to ANY service. Leveling to 100 can be done quite easily nowadays in a matter of 1 - 2 days, depending on how much you are playing.

Yeah, that's what I meant - 1 service of any kind you want. Because not only is leveling easy, some people have all of the characters they want at max level so getting free one at max level (for the prior expansion) is kind of useless. But if you could redeem it for anything then it might have some use.

[xanzul]

I'm okay with services like name changes and realm transfers, but taking away content from the game and selling them on the store is a rather greedy move. They didn't even try to hide this during WoD where they were placing mounts on the store that should've obviously been rewards in-game, like the Grinning Reaver that are used as the racial mount from the Laughing Skull Clan who now sell generic wolves instead. Obviously a lot of work goes into these mounts and pet and they even go out of their way to make them a lot more special than the ones you can get in the game. These kind of micro-transtions don't belong in a game where you already pay the full box price and monthly sub. Its not just with Blizzard games where I hate having these shops around, it happens in a lot of full priced games and more often than not it hurts the actual game in a way. This model is only okay for F2P games in my opinion, using it in B2P games is just double-dipping.

Mounts and pets aren't content and again all of these things are now obtainable with gold and these types of items have ALWAYS existed in Wow even before Vivendi bought Activision and merged them with Vivendi Games.

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We're not talking about if it's pay to win or not, we're talking about greed. And it's 100% greed to charge extra for something like that. With a subscription based game every pixel should be available through in-game content and no other method. When you've paid for the game and paid for the subscription you should have access to 100% of the game, you shouldn't automatically get everything you still need to put in the work to acquire the items but they shouldn't be inaccessible to you just because the company have a raging boner for cash.

Who says? You? No. It is none of your god damn business how and why Blizzard prices things the way they do. You have the greatest power a consumer has which is to not buy. Use it and shut the fuck up already.

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IMO the problem is not the company, they couldn't possible do that if people were not literally fucking stupid as shit. People need to stop buying stupid dumbfuckery so this kind of practice stops. Companies didn't invent that, first they make a market research, realize people are willing to buy 100% useless stuff that looks like shit, so companies just give them the shit they want.

The problem is always the masses. Brainless sheeple.

To answer the OP's question. I don't care about cosmetic microtransaction, so far what blizzard has done in their game is fine, it's not pay2win.

So companies shouldn't sell products their customers want? Do you not understand what a company is?

[Klingers]

I'll use Dead Space 3 as an example, as it's the first time it made a big difference to me.

Dead Space 3 features an ill-advised crafting system. You need to craft better gear to realistically progress through the game. Resources for that
crafting drop in the world. EA also made the decision to sell those crafting resources for real money.

"Oh, but you don't need to buy resources. You can just get them by playing the game!"

OK, sure... You can indeed get them. But at a pace EA was actively incentivised to dial back from Visceral's original design intention, fucking up the pace of heavily single player-focused story campaign by introducing boring, unnecessary and soul crushing grinding. Thus microtransactions have hurt my game experience whether or not I've bought them.

This is the problem. What 10 years ago would have just been a skill-based unlockable, or a cheat code, or hell... Just a chunk of game, is how actively segmented off by greedy publishers to raise game prices by stealth. It's mean spirited, psychologically manipulative and in the case of anything non-cosmetic it does have a real impact on the gameplay experience. I know I'm mainly talking about single player here but microtransactions in any kind of pay-to-play game are toxic.

[xanzul]

I dont mind micro transactions for completely awesome appearances or cosmetic stuff on any game, if you have the money to use then its up to you.

I dont mind micro transactions to give people a boost - to a point. But still your money your choice, P2W to the avg player will only get you so far,

What I fucking object to, is micro transactions for ridiculous money on smaller games. For example, take Jurassic park builder, great little time waster. Want the T rex or indo? Better fork up hundreds of dollars and that isn't an exaggeration. It isn't designed for those who are richer, its completely designed to target kids who want the cool dino. It's a scummy shitty tactic to make cash

Selling things customers want is a shitty tactic? Some of you really need to grow up and learn how the real world works.

[hrugner]

I wouldn't say immoral. But Since you're already renting your account, it seems like you aught to have access to the whole game rather than some of it. With lore behind a paywall in books, and some cosmetic stuff also behind a paywall, I can't justify also only having rented access to my account.

It works for some people though, so of course it should still exist. It's just not for me.

[therealstegblob]

It's just greedy when the box costs a certain amount and there's a subscription fee on top of that for them to be charging extra for things that you can't get any other way. It's a symptom of a much larger disease and it says a lot about a company and proves that above all else they want money.

A subscription payment is not a "give us more money lol" payment. It's payment for the server space you use and it's also, secondary to the server space, a means of paying for the content the game keeps giving you post-release.

[xanzul]

If you pay a sub everything you can buy in the shop should be available in game in some way. Either by some kind of value of cash shop currency given to subscribers to buy an amount of the cash shop items or they should be available in game through playing the game.

Cash shop should be a short cut to cosmetics, not the only path.

If that was the case I would have no issue but Blizzard is burning the wick at both ends and it is unfair to players who pay for the game+sub+cash shop. It's one of the reasons I refuse to play until the game is more reasonable. B2P+Sub+Cash shop is ridiculous.

Buy a wow token in game and apply it to your battle.net balance and use that to get whatever you want. These threads and complaints have always been asinine and lacking intelligent critical thought but it is even more asinine now since the token was implemented and all of these "issues" have long since been resolved.

[Daedius]

You're already paying to play the game via a subscription, buying expansions on top of that, everything should be attainable in-game...

At least now you can buy them with Gold, converting bought WoW Tokens into credit for your b.net balance.

[xanzul]

The only non-cosmetic transaction in WoW is selling a WoW token for gold. You are essentially, legally, buying gold. Now, personally, I don't mind it. I make plenty of gold and buy all my gear from the AH anyway. But I can't see someone spending $200 on tokens only to get into 875 gear. People should just focus on their own game, and spending, and allow others to do the same.

And even if players did this it wouldn't change anything because players have always been able to use items such as TCG cards to convert real life cash to gold.

[xanzul]

Undermines the whole purpose of the game. Don't give a fuck about morals. It's just stupid and people who would buy gear are players that do not contribute to the health of this game.

And yet wow is doing just fine after 12+ years of players buying gold to buy gear.

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You ever go to a stadium, lets say to watch a sports event, paying upward of 70$ for a ticket. and when you're in there, you find out that a plastic cup of mainstream beer is 10$? also considering at a typical bar, you'd get more of the same brand of beer for half the price.

It's kind of double-dipping and incredibly opportunistic. At least now most can be bought with gold thanks to being able to convert wow tokens into blizzard balance.

Do you complain when your cable provider charges you more than your monthly fee for ppv events? Do you complain when your insurance company charges you for life insurance when you are already paying for other types of insurance? No? Then why are you doing it here?

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I find them absolutely ridiculous, an entire expansion worth of content 60 bucks (and add that you need subscription as well), which includes what, an insane amount of sets of gear (unique per class), 30 pets, 20 mounts etc.. 1/6 of that price earns you a single pet, a quarter of that gets you a single headpiece and a little under half that gets you a single mount.

It is ridiculous, and I honestly can't even approve the notion that they are just cosmetics, when they are so overcharged.

Do you seriously think Blizzard doesn't put a significant amount of time into researching price points before setting prices for things like mounts and pets? No company not even Blizzard is going to "overcharge" for something out of greed when doing so nets them significantly less profit.