The Blizzard Store and the Monthly Fee. What you need to realize.

[Huehuecoyotl]

I am pretty sure the old Tabards, Mounts and Pets... in the CCG and few dozen IN GAME items sold in the last 6 years used some resources too.

But you had no problem with it because they were made by Cryptozoic and even sold on ebay at ridiculous prices, but NOW that Blizzard introduces a few of these fluff things in their cash shop they are .. evil...

... So to YOU it is a problem that Blizzard gets the money instead of Cryptozoic or just another 3rd party (in which you never saw anything negative early on).

Which proves you are a simple Blizzard hater while not even playing their games ... (Fans couldn't care less about merchandised stuff, on the contrary).

BTW: designing, producing and distributing merchanised stuff takes resources too from a company. Blizzard is bigger than a bunch of digital encoders.

So making T shirts, mice, mats, in game items sold by 3rd parties has been happening since the start of WOW. You simply are terrified Blizzard is now being paid by selling them on their website (instead of someone else getting rich by selling Spectral Tigers at 500 dollars each).

and if i left because of TCG, you would have accused me of over-reacting to a small thing and jumping to conclusions about the direction.

you are right, the TCG thing was an early indication of something wrong. we should have reacted to it, but as a group of players we didnt. that was our mistake. and as a result of that mistake, Blizzard have decided to take it further and further. taking advantage of the emotional investment its players have in the game to milk its players in every way they possibly can. and it will have an effect on the game design decisions in the future, you only have to look at the gigantic mess that D3 was to realise how badly it can go wrong.

oh, and classic posting btw. you put a bunch of fluff in first that is irrelevent to my post, then end it by restating your original premise in a slightly different format, despite the fact my post had refuted this completely. do you even read what you are replying to, or is this posting style just an affectation?

[Deleted]

You pay a monthly fee to be able to log in to your account and play; nothing more, nothing less.

So you would be perfectly happy to defend your supporting of that view and from now on pay your subscription fee just for logging in the game + 2€ for every quest, 1€ for every hairstyle change, 4€ for every epic that drops (even better would be the outbidding system on bosses, where you submit real amounts of cash for the items!)?

If not, then no, you dont just pay for your account to log in and play. The login screen and loading screens are free. You play a monthly fee and you should get access to all in-game content with that money. At least that's how it used to be. If you cannot find anything wrong with it, you are but a conformist.

I also find it funny that the people who used to complain about game difficulty and loot accessibility now support another version of "snowflakeness". Only now you need to have money to feel special. It used to demand skill and time. Let the casuals take over!

To think of all those immersive and challenging things they could have added into the game that rewarded all those cash shop items. Would have been good for the game.

[Darklordvyperx]

People will always find something to complain and whine about. If people want to shell out a certain amount of cash for a certain item that Blizzard sells in the Item Store online, then by all means, that's their decision. Crying about their decision is just being childish, and is proving where a lot of WOW's player base is in regards to mental development. People are allowed to spend their money in whatever way they see fit, and Blizzard is allowed to charge however much they want for their services. I'm willing to bet that Blizzard could raise the subscription fee to $25 a month, and people would still pay for it. WOW is THE most successful MMORPG in history, and millions of people around the world would still pay to play it if the subscription fee was raised. So quit crying about people spending their OWN money on pets, mounts, or cosmetic items, and quit crying about Blizzard implementing them in the Store. Your voices don't mean anything when it comes to business. It's just crying in the corner, banging your hands on the floor because you can't have something you want.

[HeedmySpeed]

I am pretty sure the old Tabards, Mounts and Pets... in the CCG and few dozen IN GAME items sold in the last 6 years used some resources too.

But you had no problem with it because they were made by Cryptozoic and even sold on ebay at ridiculous prices, but NOW that Blizzard introduces a few of these fluff things in their cash shop they are .. evil...

... So to YOU it is a problem that Blizzard gets the money instead of Cryptozoic or just another 3rd party (in which you never saw anything negative early on).

Which proves you are a simple Blizzard hater while not even playing their games ... (Fans couldn't care less about merchandised stuff, on the contrary).

BTW: designing, producing and distributing merchanised stuff takes resources too from a company. Blizzard is bigger than a bunch of digital encoders.

So making T shirts, mice, mats, in game items sold by 3rd parties has been happening since the start of WOW. You simply are terrified Blizzard is now being paid by selling them on their website (instead of someone else getting rich by selling Spectral Tigers at 500 dollars each).

TCG loot was meant to promote TCG.

Tabards are probably one of the most easiest things to design in game.

These two reasons are primarily why I don't think anyone had much of an issue with them.

It also wasn't wide spread back then. There were few items available through TCG back then compared to what you can get in the Shop NOW.
People lack foresight so that's why there wasn't much commotion about it.

[Deleted]

People will always find something to complain and whine about. If people want to shell out a certain amount of cash for a certain item that Blizzard sells in the Item Store online, then by all means, that's their decision. Crying about their decision is just being childish, and is proving where a lot of WOW's player base is in regards to mental development. People are allowed to spend their money in whatever way they see fit, and Blizzard is allowed to charge however much they want for their services. I'm willing to bet that Blizzard could raise the subscription fee to $25 a month, and people would still pay for it. WOW is THE most successful MMORPG in history, and millions of people around the world would still pay to play it if the subscription fee was raised. So quit crying about people spending their OWN money on pets, mounts, or cosmetic items, and quit crying about Blizzard implementing them in the Store. Your voices don't mean anything when it comes to business. It's just crying in the corner, banging your hands on the floor because you can't have something you want.

I don't think most people here are arguing against their capability to spend their money on whatever they want, rather pointing out that their doing so will even further such tendencies from Blizzard and eventually hurt the game substantially by making the same people pay even more for the content that should be "baseline". And let's not forget that very often paying for something results in regret much much later than the transaction occurred. I bet you my arm that most people did not even think this through, they were just bewildered by the possibility to get these items NOW, without having to do any grind or nothing. In short: they were the victims of marketing.

If you take all the people who spent their OWN money on these helms, you get a lot of people who have hurt the game and its future, further fueling Blizzard's intention of continuing with such malpractices.

[Deleted]

Go burn WoW mice, keyboards and T shirts too because Blizzard makes MONEY by selling them too. just like my new fluff helmet, which absolutely has NO added value other than ...for me.

WTF

The Wow mouse is made by Steelseries. It is Steelseries who pay all of the development costs for making this mouse. All Blizzard does is agrees to have the Wow logo on the mouse. They both then split the profits.

i could use the same explanation for all the other MERCHANDISE that u listed.

Basically speaking these 3 helms were created by the Wow dev team, a dev team which is being paid by everyone who pays a subscription to Wow. Everything u listed is not created by the Wow dev team, and that means theyre not being paid by the subscribers.

Benbos, we all know ur extremely good at not understanding anything on these forums but this mistake is just hilarious.

[Outofmana]

I had a tank today with the helmet, I let him die and refused to heal him. The 15mins of him raging that followed were amazing. In the end I votekicked him using my own name (party turned against me, fml) as the reason and they insta booted the tank not noticing it was me kicking him.. I'm actually starting to like the item-shop now, you can have so much fun with it ingame .

[Darklordvyperx]

I don't think most people here are arguing against their capability to spend their money on whatever they want, rather pointing out that their doing so will even further such tendencies from Blizzard and eventually hurt the game substantially by making the same people pay even more for the content that should be "baseline". And let's not forget that very often paying for something results in regret much much later than the transaction occurred. I bet you my arm that most people did not even think this through, they were just bewildered by the possibility to get these items NOW, without having to do any grind or nothing. In short: they were the victims of marketing.

If you take all the people who spent their OWN money on these helms, you get a lot of people who have hurt the game and its future, further fueling Blizzard's intention of continuing with such malpractices.

Let's face it. If Blizzard simply put these items into the game, without charging for them, acquiring them would involve months of monotonous daily quest grinding, which people would then whine about. As long as the store items are only cosmetic, then as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't affect game-play, and therefore should not be frowned upon. Saying that the store items affect the game and it's future has no basis in fact and is simply an opinion. There is no "malpractice" involved by the way. Saying so is implying that Blizzard is doing something illegal. Which they aren't.

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I had a tank today with the helmet, I let him die and refused to heal him. The 15mins of him raging that followed were amazing. In the end I votekicked him using my own name (party turned against me, fml) as the reason and they insta booted the tank not noticing it was me kicking him.. I'm actually starting to like the item-shop now, you can have so much fun with it ingame .

That's very childish of you. Very pathetic too.

[Durandro]

I had a tank today with the helmet, I let him die and refused to heal him. The 15mins of him raging that followed were amazing. In the end I votekicked him using my own name (party turned against me, fml) as the reason and they insta booted the tank not noticing it was me kicking him.. I'm actually starting to like the item-shop now, you can have so much fun with it ingame .

Well aren't you a special little snowflake? Have a cookie for being so big and smart!

[WarpKnight]

Obviously not gonna read 50 pages, but

what you need to realise is that I'm a consumer and I vote with my wallet. I'm not buying any $15 hats because that's fucking retarded

[But I Hate You All]

I had a tank today with the helmet, I let him die and refused to heal him. The 15mins of him raging that followed were amazing. In the end I votekicked him using my own name (party turned against me, fml) as the reason and they insta booted the tank not noticing it was me kicking him.. I'm actually starting to like the item-shop now, you can have so much fun with it ingame .

That's a great Idea.

[Jalen]

To think of all those immersive and challenging things they could have added into the game that rewarded all those cash shop items. Would have been good for the game.

Yes, and people would complain because said "immersive and challenging things" would actually be challenging. Not everyone would get it because of the challenge needed to access it, and people wouldn't be happy about that. It seems to me that Blizzard can't win in these types of situations. They release something to make themselves more money (smart business move, IMO), but people don't like it because of how they implement it.

So you would be perfectly happy to defend your supporting of that view and from now on pay your subscription fee just for logging in the game + 2€ for every quest, 1€ for every hairstyle change, 4€ for every epic that drops (even better would be the outbidding system on bosses, where you submit real amounts of cash for the items!)?

What does this have to do with what they're doing with the vanity helmets? Blizzard isn't ever going to charge you money per quest, per hairstyle, or per epic drop. While I suppose I can't guarantee that, I highly doubt it would ever happen.

I also find it funny that the people who used to complain about game difficulty and loot accessibility now support another version of "snowflakeness". Only now you need to have money to feel special. It used to demand skill and time. Let the casuals take over!

Blizzard used to be a company of gamers creating games, for gamers. It's no longer that, and they're adapting with the way gaming in general is going. It's a much more widely acceptable thing to be a "nerd" and play games, meaning many, MANY more "casual" players coming into the gaming world. The gaming world is no longer filled with strictly hardcore, super gamers. It's a mix of everyone, and that needs to be something they take into account. If the game stayed the same as it was in vanilla, Blizzard, almost certainly, wouldn't be the game it is today. Sure, there would still be some super hardcore people playing, but I highly doubt it would've reached it's 12? million subs in WotLK.

Back on topic. The monthly fee you pay is simply for access to your game account. You don't own any part of it. Not your character, your epic gear, the extra little things you might've paid money for previously. You own the discs (if you bought them), otherwise you don't really own anything about your WoW account. If you would like proof, I would like to point you to Blizzards terms of use, section 5. Absolutely no where in there (or the EULA) does it say anything about "if you pay a subscription, we will give you access to everything in the blizzard store not including other games". It does not guarantee you ANYTHING. You aren't even guaranteed to be able to play, even when paying (see almost every Tuesday). So why would you have access to vanity items simply because you pay a monthly fee? Because you feel that's your "right"? It's not, and Blizzard pretty clearly says that when you agree to making an account. You simply have access to an account you created for the sole ability to play the game, nothing more, nothing less. As was said by ACES.

I'm neither for, or against the store. I personally don't purchase anything from it, but I won't chastise someone else because they do.

[coldrain]

idle time leads to results such as this

[Deleted]

snip

I'm not delving into discussing semantics or whatnot with you. We are just so remarkably in disagreement about what's best for the game that this is bound to bear no fruit. But I will however say that this Terms of Use you refer to does not guarantee you will not be charged on a per-quest or per-item basis in the future. They can even change it whenever they wish. Unlikely, you say? Well the situation we are at, seemed to me extremely unlikely 8 years ago as well.

Also, by your logic, with WoW becoming increasingly casual, the peak subscription numbers should have increased past the 12 million mark by now. What's happening???

[Deleted]

Obviously not gonna read 50 pages, but

what you need to realise is that I'm a consumer and I vote with my wallet. I'm not buying any $15 hats because that's fucking retarded

Cant agree more whit this.

[Bellatryxx]

I'm not delving into discussing semantics or whatnot with you. We are just so remarkably in disagreement about what's best for the game that this is bound to bear no fruit. But I will however say that this Terms of Use you refer to does not guarantee you will not be charged on a per-quest or per-item basis in the future. They can even change it whenever they wish. Unlikely, you say? Well the situation we are at, seemed to me extremely unlikely 8 years ago as well.

Also, by your logic, with WoW becoming increasingly casual, the peak subscription numbers should have increased past the 12 million mark by now. What's happening???

First, you're engaging in the "slippery slope" logical fallacy. You're saying that Blizz will do X in the future because they are doing Y now without actually proving that to be true. If the Pet Store is the cancer that is killing WoW and it's going down the tubes or whatever, jump off the sinking ship now and stop giving Blizz your money. You certainly don't owe it to them.

Secondly, there are a multitude of factors as to WoW's drop in subscriptions. One obvious reason is that the subscription-based MMO market in general has all but evaporated with WoW being the last great hold-out (a tribute to just how good the game still is). There's also the fact that people tend to just get bored of things after a while and nothing remains interesting forever. It's why tv shows eventually lose ratings and go off the air or hot songs on the radio eventually go out of circulation. It runs it's course and people lose interest. WoW is not exempt from that. The fact that it still has as many subs as it does after like 9 fucking years is another tribute to how good it is. But to point to any one thing and say "this is why WoW now sucks" is narrow-minded and silly.

TL;DR: If you don't like the Pet Store, don't buy from it. If you don't like Blizz' business decisions, stop playing or suck it up. Blizz owes you nothing.

[Killadrix]

Every time Blizzard announces something new for the pet store we see the same threads come up about how a game with a monthly sub fee shouldn't have a microtransaction store. I get really frustrated when I see these posts because some people just don't get it.

You pay a monthly fee to be able to log in to your account and play; nothing more, nothing less.

Blizzard is a business and they have to do with that money whatever they feel will be most profitable. This can be anything from developing PvE and PvP content to developing items for the Blizzard store. The purpose of the former is to keep people subscribed to WoW and maybe even bring old people back/new people in. The latter is designed to bring in additional revenue to be able to develop more content.

The most important thing to realize is that Blizzard will NEVER make Tier Sets or any current content gear available for cash; they are not stupid enough to do that and you can mark my words that it'll never happen.

The Blizzard store is not a slippery slope, it is a smart business move to bring in more money for the company. The more resources Blizzard has, the more content they can develop and the better off we are as players.

Wow, this post is dead on, and I feel like I've been the only one saying the same thing, and have been getting shouted down by people who feel threatened by Blizzard selling hats.

Just did a blog on it: http://killadrixexplainsthings.wordp...ust-chill-out/

[Jalen]

First, you're engaging in the "slippery slope" logical fallacy. You're saying that Blizz will do X in the future because they are doing Y now without actually proving that to be true. If the Pet Store is the cancer that is killing WoW and it's going down the tubes or whatever, jump off the sinking ship now and stop giving Blizz your money. You certainly don't owe it to them.

Secondly, there are a multitude of factors as to WoW's drop in subscriptions. One obvious reason is that the subscription-based MMO market in general has all but evaporated with WoW being the last great hold-out (a tribute to just how good the game still is). There's also the fact that people tend to just get bored of things after a while and nothing remains interesting forever. It's why tv shows eventually lose ratings and go off the air or hot songs on the radio eventually go out of circulation. It runs it's course and people lose interest. WoW is not exempt from that. The fact that it still has as many subs as it does after like 9 fucking years is another tribute to how good it is. But to point to any one thing and say "this is why WoW now sucks" is narrow-minded and silly.

TL;DR: If you don't like the Pet Store, don't buy from it. If you don't like Blizz' business decisions, stop playing or suck it up. Blizz owes you nothing.

You responded more eloquently than I think I would've been able, and said almost exactly what I think about the situation.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. If you don't like something about the game, that's fine with me. I'm not here to persuade people to think one way or the other. I just don't understand why people are considered bad, or getting kicked from dungeons/raids, simply because they're purchasing something cosmetic and playing the game how they like, and want to. Which, I thought, was the goal to all games. Enjoying them and playing how you want.

[Killadrix]

You pay an initial fee.
You pay a subscription fee.
You are still locked out of content within the game.

All facts.

It's an insult to peoples intelligence to try and spin that any other way, and it's disingenuous to give the excuse "oh they are only cosmetic".......

99% of the things in the game are cosmetic. From the way my character looks, the way he attacks, casting animation, the way gear looks. "It's only cosmetic" is a piss poor excuse for a disgusting business practice that is only succeeding because of the gullibility of the majority of blizzards "fanbase".

So answer me this: Your initial fee, and subscription fee doesn't allow you access to many other in-game rewards, items or achievements. So why is this different? Because I work for a living, am I "locked out" of server or world firsts? Am I locked out of Heroic Progression raiding? Am I locked out of Gladiator titles because I am not good enough? Arena Master?

Your initial fee and sub fee guarantee YOU NOTHING BUT ACCESS TO THE SERVERS.

[Deleted]

So answer me this: Your initial fee, and subscription fee doesn't allow you access to many other in-game rewards, items or achievements. So why is this different? Because I work for a living, am I "locked out" of server or world firsts? Am I locked out of Heroic Progression raiding? Am I locked out of Gladiator titles because I am not good enough? Arena Master?

Your initial fee and sub fee guarantee YOU NOTHING BUT ACCESS TO THE SERVERS.

What ur forgetting (and everyone defending the Cash-shop) is that items have been datamined which show Blizzards longterm objective with the cash-shop.

The Elixir which gives 100% EXP boost was important enough for Blizzard to come out and explain why it is there. That item was intended for the cash-shop.