Many of the items on the shop were for charitable organizations as well. Some earning millions in donations.
Get a job at Burger King and deal with some impatient jerkoff who hands you a $20 bill, and then emphatically states that act entitles him to one of everything on the menu and one of everything BK adds to the menu in the future. When you explain that it does not he screams, becomes irrational, makes whiny forum posts and even tweets #burgerking talking about what an asshole you are and how he's not eating there anymore and how you should lose your job. Now breathe in, and take a moment to full absorb how utterly, hilariously ignorant that situation would be.
Here's the kicker: some of you are just like that guy. The kind of 'customer' I wouldn't want within a hundred miles of my business.
You scream and you bitch about your $15 and what it entitles you to, when what you get for it is EXACTLY what you knew you were getting when you signed up: access to WoW.
Rather than continuing to throw these little hissy bitch-fits and cluttering up the forums with countless, useless topics like this one, simply unsub from the game and spare yourself the stress - and in the process, spare everyone else your whining.
I still don't understand how cosmetic items affect anything major? Do they help me do more dps?
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I would have put it less harshly but if you are comfortable with giving blizzard 15 bucks then whatever they do with the money is up to them. Unless there is some contract somewhere that says no cash shop items.
Care to explain how it is diff- oh, sarcasm, mmmyes.
That's pretty much my point exactly. The only real difference is that RaF is, I suppose, a little more frustrating. With the exp boost potion, you'll most likely just chug it and get the boost - nice and simple. With RaF you either had to a). coordinate with someone else when to play, or b). set up two accounts (excuse me if I'm wrong here, I've never used this feature). At the end of the day, it's spending a little extra for a boost in-game, which sounds quite a bit like the exp boost potion.
Go into Macy's and buy a shirt that you like. Then you see another that you link but of course its a separate, optional purchase. Would you contact Macy's corporate and ask for an alternative way to earn that additional shirt?
If you did they'd say no (and probably laugh at you) because the shirt you bought is what you are entitled to with your money. The $15 a month you pay for WoW entitles you to access to the game whenever the servers are live (which is almost all the time, anymore), access to whatever expansions you've purchased and up to 50 characters per account.
WoW has never increased in cost, not even 1$, not even a quarter, and there is more to do than ever before in game so it could be strongly argued that you're getting MORE for your 'buck' than ever before.
No matter how badly you want the Blizzard store stuff, no matter how much you wish there was alternative methods to get it (and I'm not saying there shouldn't be, mind you), the fact of the matter is this: it is perfectly reasonable for them to sell additional optional services and non-essential items outside of the game.
If they were selling tier tokens, heroic raid gear, weapons, raid unlocks, etc on the Blizzard store I would understand (and join in) the rage. But 3 helms that have about the level of detail as stuff in vanilla? lolno.
Last edited by Mirishka; 2013-07-16 at 05:19 PM.
The point is, if all the nice shiny stuff slowly moves over to the cash shop, the sub is simply not worth hanging onto anymore. Claiming that the sub is used for server costs AND content patch development is currently only a half-truth, as a part of content (being cosmetic stuff in this case), is being moved away from being purchased with your subscription, but the cash shop instead. Before the time of Sparklepony, 100% of content created was bought by subscribing to the game. If you now wish to get 100% of the content, your subscription is maybe 60-70% of the money you'll have to drop, the other 30-40% being in microtransactions. Meaning either you have to pay more (a LOT more), or you'll relatively have a less 'complete' game for your money.
Yes, a cash shop is a great thing, but there is no sense to make you pay for content twice... If cash shop sales were to drop to none right this moment, and Blizzard would include all these items in the game obtainable for free, attached to an achievement or something, it's not like they'd stop making a profit. But people buy it, so they continue to throw a higher percentage of appearance stuff onto the cash shop, and simply make more profit.
Also, the whole "nobody forces you to buy it" is not an argument that belongs here. That is related to the "Pay to Win vs Free to Play" discussion. Nobody is saying that WoW is becoming Pay to Win, except for some tiny vocal low-IQ minority. The thing people get annoyed by, is the normally absolutely unacceptable mentality of combining Mandatory-Subscription-based and Cash-shop-based business models. The acceptable thing has always been one thing or the other, not both.
-Old WoW: buy once, then subscription.
-GW2: buy once, then some cash shop.
-Tera/SWtOR/DCUO/Planetside: cash shop, with completely optional subscription service that gives you extra goodies.
-LoL/DoTA 2/TF2 (not MMOs of course): cash shop only.
-SC2/D3: Buy Once only, playing online is free.
Having a mandatory subscription, an as-good-as mandatory expansion purchase every 2-1.5 years, mandatory initial buy-in, AND a cash-shop is simply never done. The Secret World tried it, but already had to drop the subscription part: It simply can't be done unless you already have a massive fanbase who simply accept it.
Ex-GM and Raidleader of the MoX Purple Kittens Raidteam on Twisting Nether (formerly Grim Batol), RIP, Winter 2010 - Spring 2013.
Armory. WoWProgress. Might start streaming Soon(tm) http://twitch.tv/szem/
There is absolutely no sound argument anyone can make that justifies allowing players to earn store items in game being objectively 'right'. And there is also absolutely nothing wrong there being pages of transmog gear on the store. That would only mean players have more options and that is a good thing. And let's be real, the $15 we pay each month to play is chump change, it's just pennies compared to other expenses and personally when I weigh it against the enjoyment I get from WoW, it feels almost stupid that it only costs $15. If people are so concerned with having to spend what will probably be even less on a piece of transmog gear then their financial priorities are most certainly not in order.
Except that in an ideal world, this is a reward for subscribing. Not for paying more money than someone else. And sure, if you'd exclude the cash shop, WoW isn't getting more expensive. But the % of thing they put in the game that you get for that amount, is reducing. And that's an issue, if you get less % of the content with your sub+expansionbuys, the price of the sub or the expansionbuys should decrease.
Ex-GM and Raidleader of the MoX Purple Kittens Raidteam on Twisting Nether (formerly Grim Batol), RIP, Winter 2010 - Spring 2013.
Armory. WoWProgress. Might start streaming Soon(tm) http://twitch.tv/szem/
People have been welcoming it, or bitching about it. No one has even questioned whether or not they will stop here. But overall, if you can still get cool things in-game, and there are a few things from the store, so what? More sources of cosmetic items isn't a bad thing in many people's opinions.
If you don't like it, boycott it. Don't want it, don't get it. Don't want to support them, don't. That simple.
3 hints to surviving MMO-C forums:
1.) If you have an opinion, someone will say that it is wrong
2.) If you have a source, there will be people who refuse to believe it
3.) If you use logic, it will be largely ignored
btw: Spires of Arak = Arakkoa.
Except that ALL of it hasn't moved to the shop. There are over 20,000 items in World in Warcraft, countless more if you consider 'of the eagle' type variants. 3 mog helms are coming to the Blizz shop. Do the math there.
Almost 300 mounts, how many at the Blizzard store? 5? 6?
Over 700 pets in game, how many at the store? 7?
So yeah, no offense, but spare me the 'all the shiny stuff moving to the store' crap. If you have $100 and misplace a single $1 bill, do you scream OMG I'VE LOST ALL MY MONEY!!!! ?
But compared to other forms of similar entertainment (read: other games), no, not at all. You can buy a full-priced game with a ton of replayability for a max of 60 bucks, and you can play that completely without ever having to pay more. You can get a free-to-play game with a cashshop for completely free and still enjoy the hell out of it.
WoW simply is one of the most expensive games to play unless you're buying into something silly expensive like train simulator with it's thousands of expansions that all cost the price of a full game.
Ex-GM and Raidleader of the MoX Purple Kittens Raidteam on Twisting Nether (formerly Grim Batol), RIP, Winter 2010 - Spring 2013.
Armory. WoWProgress. Might start streaming Soon(tm) http://twitch.tv/szem/
In an ideal world there wouldn't be murder.
In an ideal world our goverments wouldn't conceal things from us.
In an ideal world women would be treated equally in the middle east.
In an ideal world I could leave my house without fear of it being broken into, or being attacked.
In an ideal world there wouldn't be parasites who spread deadly diseases.
In an ideal world we would have cured AIDS and cancer.
In an ideal world children would always be happy and healthy and have the things they need.
There are significantly more important things to consider when discussing the ideal world, than HEY Y I GOTTA PAY EXTRA FOR THS VIDEO GAME MOUNT?
It's always started like this in other games. People are skeptical and I can't blame them. We'll see if Blizzard will do things differently.