Why doesn't blizzard do something like GW2 Gems?

[TJ]

Blizzard would make MORE money. Not less. There is 0 ways they would lose money.

Unless I'm severely misunderstanding the system here, please explain to me how they would make more money.

[Mercarcher]

Unless I'm severely misunderstanding the system here, please explain to me how they would make more money.

There would always be some of the currency in circulation not being used. For every one they have in circulation that is $ for something they haven't done.

[vindicatorx]

Why would you quit? Nothing new is offered other than the ability to buy the current services with gold from another player who pays $.

it is still selling of currency. It's not hard to make money in this game. I refuse to play games where currency is bought and sold which is why I quit playing Diablo III as soon as the RMAH went live. It's also the reason I report everyone of those guys offering to buy and sell game cards in trade.

[SamR]

Blizzard would make MORE money. Not less. There is 0 ways they would lose money.

The outcry over Blizzard selling gold directly would positively dwarf the outcry over D3's RMAH.

[ares1023]

Blizzard would make MORE money. Not less. There is 0 ways they would lose money.

That statement made me laugh, did you do the math and predict the financials of Blizzard to find out how profitable they would be? Just because one system works for one game doesn't mean it can work for another, especially when you are comparing GW2 to a game like WoW which is in a league of it's own.

[huth]

There would always be some of the currency in circulation not being used. For every one they have in circulation that is $ for something they haven't done.

Unless that amount of currency is always growing, Blizz still wouldn't be making more money longterm.

[Drihan]

It's a good concept, but I would need some more time to think over all the possible repercussions before I fully support it being added tbh.

From first glance, all I see is people purchasing the privilege to transfer the character from one server to another, change factions etc and sell them for gold. It wouldn't do anything to the economy, playability or balance in the game. It's basically just like adding a mount; you buy a cool, rare mount for gold on the AH and you prance around in it and look cool, except here you would be able to change the race of your character, or name, or server, or faction.

I kinda feel sorry for the guys who are raging that they are going to quit if something like this gets introduced. Then why not rage every time Blizzard adds a BoE mount to a loot table? Just as silly.

[Deleted]

I have to shake my head at the number of people who fail to grasp this system, really.

I`d like to see it in WoW, but the number of goldsellers and their shenanigans (including credit card fraud) would pretty much destroy the system before it even starts.

[Terahertz]

I would like it a lot, but Blizzard's not gonna do that, they would lose a lot of money.

I don't see how Blizzard loses money by adding this feature. If anything they'd make MORE money. People with not much money irl but with lots of it in-game will simply buy the gems (or an equivelant) from players who payed 15$ for the gems for like 20k gold.

The person with the gems makes xtra money in-game while the other gains access to the servers once more.

[Deleted]

I liked the gem system and the ability to spend gold to transfer between servers and stuff.
Recently migrated and my alts are all on the wrong server, 20 euro x7 to move all my 85+ chars just seems extreme.

Also it would kinda help on the war against chinese gold sellers.

[lordjust]

Because no company wants to invest in something that is so unstable, can't keep subs stable for more than 2 consecutive quarters, and a genre that is half dead, and a payment model that is so dead that this is the last successful mainstream game using it.

It's not hard to figure out that there's a bloody good reason Vivendi would want to sell their shares. If nothing was wrong financially, why the hell would they just up and throw away billions of dollars long term profits? Because the long term isn't good. They know this, and they want off the boat with all the spoils before it sails.

They want to sell their share because they need a lot of money fast. Activision produces only about 30% of Vivendi's revenue and they need about 4 billion dollars to buy some other telecommunication companies before they become so big that they lose costumers to them. Activision makes a lot of money but when Vivendi doesn't buy these other companies the losses will be bigger as what Activision is worth.

You have to think in a bigger scale. They want to sell their share to make the real money and not "peanuts" like they do with Activision. Vivendi also said that they want to buy new game companies and publishers after they bought the other more important companies.

[Deleted]

I don't get OP's points, at all.

- The sole purpose of gems (or microsoft points or theme park currency) is to trick customers into paying more, trying to exploit them.
- GW2's gem system rewards only a small minority of players, the rest suffers from stupid-small bank spaces, a leveling experience that's perfectly balanced around XP-boosters etc. People need incentive to buy gems, or the system would fall apart. pay-to-win, or at least pay-to-not-suck-so-much.
- Implementing an pseudo currency in WoW would require items or services with pseudo-currency costs. Mounts, pets etc. are nice, but players can already buy those things via Blizzard's pet shop or the trading card game. So why additional currency?
- connecting in-game and real life currency has huge risks. Botting, exploiting, duping can lead to a serious loss of money, if something goes wrong, your whole economy is trashed.

There is only one type of player that would benefit from your suggestion, players with tons of ingame money (we know that's a minority). GW2's gem system (and EVE's PLEXEs) are designed to keep a core group of dedicated players happy by giving them "free" services and extras to keep them playing. They would pay less for certain services, others would "pay double". WoW's user base is so dedicated, people are already paying 10 bucks/month. There is no need to give players with 15k achievement points "free services" to keep them happy, they already are.

If WoW looses 7 million players and is forced to adapt an F2P model, then your suggestion would make some sense.

TL;DR: OP has tons of (useless) in-game gold and trouble keeping his subscription running, confusing his needs with the needs of Blizzard and 10 million other players.

[vindicatorx]

I kinda feel sorry for the guys who are raging that they are going to quit if something like this gets introduced. Then why not rage every time Blizzard adds a BoE mount to a loot table? Just as silly.

This is in no way the same thing at all. You spend in game currency you earned on a BOE mount is no where near the same as buying shit with real money and selling them in game to someone else for the gold and using that bought currency to buy something. This system would destroy the value of normal in game currency.

[Mercarcher]

This is in no way the same thing at all. You spend in game currency you earned on a BOE mount is no where near the same as buying shit with real money and selling them in game to someone else for the gold and using that bought currency to buy something. This system would destroy the value of normal in game currency.

It wouldn't destroy it, it would make it more valuable. Not to mention it would create another gold sink if blizzard puts heavy taxes on it like GW2 has.

[betterjs]

- GW2's gem system rewards only a small minority of players, the rest suffers from stupid-small bank spaces, a leveling experience that's perfectly balanced around XP-boosters etc. People need incentive to buy gems, or the system would fall apart. pay-to-win, or at least pay-to-not-suck-so-much.

Calling you out, imYemeth, since you are spouting lies.

GW2's gem system does not reward a small minority of players, at all. When the game first came out, and for a while afterwords, gems were so cheap it was ridiculous.
Now, even with people hording them, it is about 2g for 100 gems. You make 2g a game session passively, just by playing. If you farmed, you can make MUCH more. A bank slot is 600 gems. So in 6 days, you have a new bank slot. Please tell me how that only caters to a minority?
Oh, and BTW, 800 gems is $10. So in 8 days of playing a video game you literally made $10 (WITHOUT farming!). Personally, I think that is the shit. If anything, gem prices are STILL too cheap. And the way gem prices work, the price goes up as people buy gems, and it goes down as people sell them for ingame gold, so it evens out with inflation!


Ok. now let me comment on your observation about the leveling system worked around XP boosters.
L A W L.

This pretty much outs you as one of two people.
1. A person who has never played GW.
2. See 1.

Leveling in GW is so ridiculously easy I can't believe anyone who has played for more than 0 minutes could argue this. The only zone you don't out level is your races beginning zone (unless you are a norn).
Every other zone you out-level if you so much as try to complete more than half of it. I'm working on my 3rd 80. He is 74 atm, and he has YET to enter a zone leveled over 50 because of trying to get 100% map completion. And guess what? He still gets enough XP to level up CONSISTENTLY.
And what does /age say?
"You have played this character for 115 hours and 44 minutes over the past 3 months"
That is about five days. I leveled an engineer to 6 levels below max in 5 days, without ever entering a zone that was level appropriate or over level 50 (and skipping over 4 low level zones). And the fastest 1-80 I have heard of (other than the less than a few hours guy who did every crafting to gain 70 levels) is around 2 days. Two days to max level!!! Can you say that about ANY OTHER GAME? No, no you cannot. The leveling in this game is in no way, shape, or form, built around xp boosts. Xp boosts are actually a ridiculous waste of gems, and the only reason anyone has them is because of the black lion chests.
I have actually used an XP boost on my first character, and it was not what I would call necessary. I now have 6 sitting in the bank (that I got for free, mind you) because I'd rather wait until special events and throw them in the mystic forge than waste them on their intended use.

Oh, btw, you get free black lion chest keys throughout the game, which open chests that drop random boosters, and I have only ever used 3 boosts total (an xp boost, a regeneration buff, and a karma boost). The rest, like the xp boosts, are sitting in the bank waiting to be fed to the forge (except the karma boosts).
Boosts are not needed at all. They are not pay-to-win, and they are not pay-to-not-suck-so-much. They are pay-because-you-suck. The only one that is really any use is the karma boost since it boosts all karma gain. But you can just stockpile jugs of karma and save the boost until you plan to drink them all (and you will get multiple free ones through a play through) and it isn't necessary at all, unless you waste karma are want to shoot to 500k as quickly as possible.

Seriously, the only real argument you have is the bank slots being hard for noobs to get, but should everything really be super easy when you just start a game? Also, the extra bank slots are hardly needed until you have gotten a good bit into the game.

I understand why you don't like the gem system, imYemeth. It is not for every game, and wow already has a shop so the need for it isn't much. But please, please, don't just spout lies because you are trying to prove a point. I am raging over this just because if anything I think it is so easy to get max level, and to read how it is built around xp boosts makes me want to laugh and yell at the same time.


TL;DR imYemeth has to lie in order to prove his point when it would have been plenty valid without the anti GW2 slander.