I love the people who say the things you will be able to buy are only cosmetic, a blue post already said they are going to be selling extra roll on gear coins and other such things.
I did 'sales" in highschool and you want to know what they taught me ? Make the customers happy and they'll return. If a barmaid is friendly to a customer and chat's with that person, listens to opinions and works towards what the customers want, those will keep coming back AND even spend more. By ignoring game balancing issues, worse content and less polished work, you don't make customers happy. Enough people already quit the game due to becoming " the same all over again", "we all look the same", "don't have to do effort to get something"... Instead what they do is spend time on creating items and such which are OPTIONAL, but where a lot more time has gone into. Remember the "heart of the aspects" mount ? New ingame model. Same for the pets on the store. Back when they were released you only had Cockroaches/Moths and other regular pets, and then came those "good looking" LiL KT, Ragnaros etc pets. You see the effort put into those products ? The difference in work in comparison from the Store items and the ingame items is stupid.
I do get the point of people saying " don't like it, don't buy it". BUT would you like a company to spend time on things you want what you already "deserve (see= you pay subscription so you get to see things.) or want to pay a sub for nothing ? The dropping sub numbers are not a 100% accurate point in the game getting worse, but the increasing amount of posts here and on the official forums regarding "satisfaction" from this game are skyrocketing through the roof. Especially the ones where the "satisfaction-meter" is below 0.
I'm not sure, I think they could end up in the cash shop, and why not?
- They will make more money from them if the users have to purchase each race individually.
- You only buy the races you want, have no intention of ever playing a gnome, save €10. Not bad.
- They can sell optional skins/models anytime.
- People who don't want new models for their precious avatar since 8+ years gets an easy choice.
Also, I'm pretty sure the next expansion will sell with or without new models.
Anyway, I'm not saying I think its a good thing, but not sure if it would be all bad.
Edit: Maybe I should have replied to apepi instead, sorry.
I have...maybe 8000 of them. So for me, it doesn't make any difference.
I do however agree that they probably shouldn't sell them.
Not necessarily because I regard it as P2W by any means, seeing how extremely easy they are obtainable ingame...but because it somehow destroys the sole purpose why they were introduced in the first place.
They are NOT selling extra "roll on gear coins". They are selling lesser charms. You are limited to buying 3 "roll on gear coins" a week, no matter how many lesser charms you buy.
Just because it's NOT cosmetic does NOT mean it's NOT ok.
It's about the underlying principle: Does this break the game or give those willing to pay real money for these items an inherent advantage over those who aren't, and as such does it diminish the gaming experience of those unwilling to pay extra?
The answer is no. Completing the 25 odd daily quests a week it takes to get the coins you need to be "competitive" is not exactly that difficult. Plus there are a multitude of other sources for these coins anyway - just killing mobs rewards them so you need to do even less dailies than that. My main literally has about 4000 of the damned things - I lost count months ago. In short, if you are a player who is sufficiently competitive to make the argument that you "need" the 50 coins a week, you will easily acquire them without even trying.
They are selling these as "quality of life" items for characters to achieve some semblance of progression given a very tight time budget - which pretty means ultra casuals and alts. Neither qualifies in the "competitive" category, and it doesn't matter how many people out there are buying these things, it won't make an iota of difference to any competitive aspect of WoW (disregarding those 2 guys on some random server who are competing for world first to get to 10 Million Lesser Charms of Good Fortune).
There are more ways than one to make money. Not every company has the same strategy. Just to list two extremes:
1) You make a great game and thus you create a big fanbase that will probably buy your future games
2) You make a mediocre/decent game that has lots of microtransactions
The downside to 1 is that you might be holding back, you could possibly make more money
The downside to 2 is that you might piss off a big portion of your fanbase and thus you could lose profit in the long run
Anyway, I think many game companies have gradually shifted to option 2, and I wouldn't be surprised if we're going into a new videogame crash because of it.
Many of my friends just don't bother buying any game anymore, just because it's too expensive. Even free to play games are expensive if you want to be competitive.
And then there is the overpriced new consoles coming out while the PC only gets ports.
Yeah, I really don't see a bright future ahead for gaming if this continues much longer. Which company was it that was raising the normal established xbox or playstation game price by 10$? Yeah, just because a game is popular doesn't mean you can charge extra and get away with it easily. It might gain you some extra crash, but it also hurts your image. And image is a way to make money as well.
I think greed in the videogame industry might hurt the them eventually. Especially since they're raising prices of everything while many people aren't in such good financial situation anyway.
But I agree with the OP, microtransactions exists because people use them. It's as simple as that.
To be honest, I don't really care. Obviously it's wrong but it's the customers right to stop buying a product they find too expensive or using cheap, immoral business tactics.
Thing is, they're losing subs fasts and it's their answer to keeping the income high as long as they can. More, their reputation is already kinda dodgy since they merged with Activision and it wouldn't matter to fans if they had devils horns and a goatee, the fans would still defend them no matter what. So they lose subs anyway and everyone other than fans already think their products are not as high quality as they used to be and that they use greedy business tactics and milking fools is hardly illegal so why not?
Complaining about it doesn't really help anyone, voting with your wallet on the other hand does.. even if it's temporary and to send a message.
A lot of games have started going towards DLC. My crutch with Blizzard doing the same is that:
a) Players already have to monetize to play
b) The prices of Blizzard's DLC is extraordinarily high compared to pretty much every other game that does it. A single mount for ~$10-15??
"We" can not Besides, what does it matter to mr. We (or is it mrs?) anyway. You don't have to be a blind WoW fan to post. Besides, not all who quit for good or temporarily did so because they hate everything WoW stands for. I still like to keep up with the lore and sometimes even play for 10 days when I get those free offers. I'm just not going to give my money to them any more as I don't think I would get enough for it. On the other hand, if they would cater to my every whim, I'd be happy to return.. but it wouldn't happen without WoW 2 coming out.
its definitely our fault.
if people didn't pay for these items there wouldn't be a store, or it atleast wouldn't be as overpriced as it is right now. i dont understand how anyone can support a cash shop in a sub based mmo.
dragonmaw - EU
People who have left the game with the promise of never returning unless [something] happens still hanging around forums and making their dislike of the current game design known just baffle me. I understand you have the right to make yourself heard, but I cannot for the life of me grasp why would anyone willingly spend time arguing about games they don't like anymore. Specially when that does very little for the community itself beyond polarizing it even further.
It certainly shows you're still interested in the game itself, but if you're not playing it and know your vision for the game is very different from where the game is heading, why bother with this? Why not follow things from a distance and come back when WoW 2 is released (or the game goes F2P, or any other condition for your return is fulfilled)?
Nothing ever bothers Juular.
Fixed that for you. like colors = same content. Basically the only new fundamental part of the game feature wise from Classic to now is Pet Battling, everything else is just an easier or different way of doing something we always have been able to do, I think its funny you even include the Brawlers Guild as a feature, now that I think about it at least its better then counting an "achievement" as a feature.
Last edited by Barcasaur; 2013-07-17 at 04:17 PM.