Blizzard's Power Leveling Stance 1 Year Ago

[Randec]

And?
Imagine you try to get a friend into the game to raid with you. They're spending over 100 dollars and still have to work before they can start work that even matters, they're going to be behind from the start and will probably never catch up, and as a result will probably never actually be allowed in your raid unless you're leading it - and even then, why should anyone carry him just because he's your friend and might not even be there next month?
When they can pay that 100+ dollars, jump right into the current expansion, and actually play with their friends, it gives them incentive to start.
The typical new game costs 60 dollars. It'll cost over $100 before they even get to level 100, and then more money every single other month they want to play it. 15*12=180+~100 is almost 300 dollars for one year of one game.

They're also talking about power-leveling services, which has been the same since day one, which means someone plays your character for you. Getting a boost to 90 =/= power-leveling service, so your entire post is pointless.

I don't understand your rebuttal. That third link I posted states.

Use of these "bots" negatively affects the World of Warcraft game environment, since they allow characters to progress without player control.

In this statement they acknowledge that having an advantage over another player that has played the game when you haven't hurts the "game environment", but it magically becomes OK when they're cashing the check. It demonstrates hypocrisy.

https://eu.battle.net/support/en/art...itation-policy

[Redmage]

I'm pretty much irrevocably pissed off at blizzard for this, the final starcraft expansion is the last dime they will get from me.

[Jtbrig7390]

I'm pretty much irrevocably pissed off at blizzard for this, the final starcraft expansion is the last dime they will get from me.

They mite get money from me for ROS or I want for the Ps4 version. But I do refuse to get WOD.

I was 50/50 on getting it and checking it out. The free level 90 was a huge bonus because it would let me start over on a RP server but a price hike $10 or not is a big no.

I don't care about the pay level crap if they want to do it fine.

But don't feel me shit and tell me its chocolate.

[Bigbamboozal]

This is a weak argument for blizzard basically doing a 180 over what they called integrity.

Qft! People can inject all the bullshit they want, but that is EXACTLY what's going on here.

That said...if you didn't get it from boosts, if you didn't understand it from the in game store, if it went over your head with battlenet balance being usable with all blizzard games, (the majority of which now have things to buy ie: small transactions), you should have realized it when gc jumped ship....or possibly from the vid for hos alpha...shit is now for sale, and it's increasing and the integrity is on the backslide.
Hold your hands over your ears and yell "la-la-lala!" As you try to rationalize and compromise (oh it's not bis gear being sold), but it's pretty clear, the only way this isn't turned into a f2p micro transaction game, is that we still pay a sub.
Ah ah ahhhh, you say?
Well, what was the state of these things in vanilla? In tbc? Wotlk? Cata? Store and boosts and such, think back ( or realize you didn't play then and be quiet as you really have no frame of reference to be of use here).
What state are we at now? Store and boosts and such.
How much further do you suppose it will be pushed by the end of wod?
If you can deny blizzard has done an 'integrity 180', you are in denial, mentally deficient, or a super-ultra-mega-lightening-troll.
Yes, they are a biz, yes they are aiming to make money, yes, I get that.
Doesn't mean they have to turn all E.A.games or anything though does it?
Like, do they need to turn into the kind of company that does shitty biz? Really?
Or couldn't they continue to turn a profit without selling out and turning into the walmart of video games?

[criminy]

...but there is very little value in any accomplishment if it was simply handed to you

I think the thing Blizzard changed their mind about is that leveling to near maximum level is no longer a huge achievement in the game.

I have mixed feelings about leveling in WoW. I think it would be nice if leveling was a more important part of the game, but if you aren't close in level, it's difficult to find fun things to do with other people. They've had the goal of making it easier to play with friends in the game for a long time. They decided that improving that aspect is more important than the sanctity of earning all of the experience points by yourself.

They've had Recruit-a-Friend level granting for a long time anyway. This isn't so very far from that. I don't think it's as big a deal as some make it out to be, although as I've already mentioned, it would be nice if there was another way to make it easier to play with friends while at the same time making the leveling process a more significant part of the game.

[Vacuous0]

Blizzard had a policy a year ago. That policy has changed. Simple.

I'll reserve judgement as to whether or not 60 bucks for a 90 is good or bad...or if it even affects anything at all. If so many of you want to cry your little eyeballs out and use dramatic words like integrity and contradiction, go right ahead. But that's all it is: drama. If they've had a change of heart or policy for whatever reason, that policy is liable to change. You can disagree with said policy and not feel compelled to question integrity. Oh wait, this the internet where you can scream and shout and then hide in a hole when you're wrong.

And just so we're clear, next fall the game will feature 10 years and 100 levels of content to level through. Reeeeally not that surprising to see a paid feature like this. Let's not forget the 60 dollar price. Most old players have so many 90's it won't matter and most new players probably aren't willing to shell out 120+ on a game they're just starting. Take a breath, I promise you'll be fine.

[Deleted]

This is just one example of the integrity of the game becoming less and less important. In 2006 or 2007 bots appeared somewhere and after a while they were gone, never to be seen again. In 2009 or 2010 bots could farm bgs or the same spot every days for months and would stay there till the end of the expansion.

Somebody must have decided that botters pay subscriptions too, fighting bots is too expensive or other stuff is simply more important.

[Randec]

If so many of you want to cry your little eyeballs out and use dramatic words like integrity and contradiction, go right ahead. But that's all it is: drama. If they've had a change of heart or policy for whatever reason, that policy is liable to change. You can disagree with said policy and not feel compelled to question integrity. Oh wait, this the internet where you can scream and shout and then hide in a hole when you're wrong.

The Blizzard rep. I quoted used the word integrity. I never did. He was referencing the integrity of the game, and not the integrity of the company.

[Sainur]

And even here the Blizzard Defence Police kicks in.

Face it, they don't care about you, or anyone else. All they want is money. Lods of moneh. They cannot keep their promises and pretty much everything they said at Blizzcon about the development has been nothing but lies to create hype for the fanboys.

[Kaleredar]

And even here the Blizzard Defence Police kicks in.

Face it, they don't care about you, or anyone else. All they want is money. Lods of moneh. They cannot keep their promises and pretty much everything they said at Blizzcon about the development has been nothing but lies to create hype for the fanboys.

If you're going to try and insult people, at least make some sort of argument.



Y'all should probably stop caring about level 90 boosts. It'll be better for you, frankly. It's in the game, and it's not going to change. In fact, it's even going to have even less of an impact as time goes on, especially when the level cap moves.


You know that Frozen song "Let it go" that the internet is in love with? Never seen the film or even heard the song, but I'm sure it applies somehow.

[Azrile]

It's amazing how your views can change in a decade when your multi-billion dollar cash machine begins to sputter a bit. :P

Not sure if you noticed, but WOW made almost a Billion dollars last year, more than ever. People are confused because of the dip in subscribers. The dip in subscribers was mostly China... which is why revenues and profits are still sky high yet subscribers dropped ( they lost all those internet cafe accounts to a f2p game last year). Blizzard is not struggling, the stock is at record highs.

To the OP. The problem with the 3rd-party boosts ( ie, paying someone else to level your character) is that it often resulted in hacked accounts and GM calls. That is the reason your comments also talked about gold-selling, which is also done from hacked accounts.

But again, if something is a judgement call, it doesn´t mean there aren´t valid arguments to be made for the side you chose against. A lot of decisions in life are 51-49 where you can make a laundry list of valid reasons on the 49% side of things but still go with what you feel is the right answer. At the time that post was made, maybe it was the 51% side of things.. but probably their marketing dept showed that a large number of BC and Vanilla players are not coming back because they don´t want to level from 60 to 90 before they can start playing the new content... so that 51% shifted slightly to 49% and the decision changed.

- - - Updated - - -

This is just one example of the integrity of the game becoming less and less important. In 2006 or 2007 bots appeared somewhere and after a while they were gone, never to be seen again. In 2009 or 2010 bots could farm bgs or the same spot every days for months and would stay there till the end of the expansion.

Somebody must have decided that botters pay subscriptions too, fighting bots is too expensive or other stuff is simply more important.

Are you crazy? Bots have been around forever. They were crazy notorious in vanilla, MUCH worse then any time else. Gold spammers hit their peak in BC.

Your perceptions are off if you think bots are anywhere near the problem now as they were back then.

[RoKPaNda]

And even here the Blizzard Defence Police kicks in.

Face it, they don't care about you, or anyone else. All they want is money. Lods of moneh. They cannot keep their promises and pretty much everything they said at Blizzcon about the development has been nothing but lies to create hype for the fanboys.

I like how whenever people disagree on this subject they're a "white knight" or fanboy or the blizzard defense force or whatever. News flash: I disagree with Blizzard frequently, when there is a real issue. Such as the privacy issues that arose back in 2010.

The level boosts? This is the first addition in awhile that I'm not too keen on, but it's not damaging to the game. It's not hurting the game (beyond LFR for a week or so.) at all. It will have roughly the same impact that the cosmetic helms did, none, other than making some players that enjoy it happy. The only reason it's so popular right this moment is that you can get a level boost just for picking up the expansion. If everyone had to pay the $60 for it and didn't get it just through pre-ordering, you wouldn't even notice it.

It must be nice to be able to just make assumptions about whether a statement they made was honest or dishonest. You assume that they lied to you at Blizzcon, when it's more logical to think that they ran into an unforeseen snag, which happens all the time with Alpha software, and aren't making progress as quickly as they'd like. You call it being a fanboy or blizzard defender or whatever, I call it being realistic.

Edit:

The dip in subscribers was mostly China... which is why revenues and profits are still sky high yet subscribers dropped

Are you crazy? Bots have been around forever. They were crazy notorious in vanilla, MUCH worse then any time else. Gold spammers hit their peak in BC.

Your perceptions are off if you think bots are anywhere near the problem now as they were back then.

The Asian MMO market is something that you'll never be able to explain to a western MMO player. It's completely and totally different. WoW's western subscriber base has stayed very stable over the years. The huge huge huge bleed offs have always been in eastern markets. When a western company release a F2P MMO, it's usually a microtransaction cash grab affair that's low quality. (The previous western scam was to release a sub based MMO, milk that until it wasn't profitable, go F2P after 6~ months or so, and then close up shop when that wasn't profitable anymore.) - In the eastern market however a F2P MMO can actually be a really well made and fun game which puts most big budget western MMOs to shame. :/

PvP bots were the worst they've ever been in MoP I'd say, and gold farmers were at their peak in WLK, but other than that, spot on.

[cFortyfive]

Stances easily change as soon as the right amount of money is involved and the climate among the otherwise playing facebook games clientele is right. There is no other interest at play than that.
Expect every kind of payed services and micro transactions in their next generation mmo. You can't stop the gaming mainstream just look at projects like Star Citizen.

[cptaylor38]

Amazing how you can directly quote something Blizzard says, and people still combat it because it isn't the current stance held by them. Yet, any other time Blizzard makes a statement, people will post it in every thread repeatedly comment after comment as if it's engraved in stone written by the highest power in the universe!

I had forgotten all about this but I remember reading it now. That is pretty hilarious. And why are people getting immediately defensive as if they work for the company? Why do so many of these kids not realize that they are paying customers and have a right to voice their opinion about a product? (This doesn't really apply to this thread, but many many others in which people will just argue with circular logic or quote Blizzard directly to no end.)

Personally, I don't care if they offer boosts. But you can't say that an opinion like this changed in a year's worth of time isn't hysterically hypocritical and fear for the next wave of financial epiphanies.

120 dollars to get best in slot gear at level 100? Not a big deal, a patch with better gear will come out in 6 months so it's not pay to win.. it's just to help you get better prepared and play catch up until that patch drops!

[Azrile]

You at least got to admit they're contradicting themselves. Their own statement against powerleveling is an opinion that is shared by a lot of players, which is why there is such an outcry over the buyable level 90s. People feel betrayed. If you go against your own statements, you'll lose credibility.

Situations change. A returning player going from having a lvl 60, buying WOTLK and having to level to 70 before they start new content isn´t as big of a deal as someone having a lvl 60 character, returning to the game and having to level to lvl 90 before experiencing new content with their friends.

this is the problem with the world today, people don´t realize that times change, or even that views can evolve based on new situations. And most importantly, that even though there are valid reasons for one thing, it still may be better for the game to do something else.

Just because the devs mention a valid reason for one thing, doesn´t mean their aren´t 5 valid reasons to do the opposite.

[Deleted]

oh the drama. the feature is allready here - now ignore it or do something about it. IF you still enjoy WOW - then great!
IF it has ruined the fun for you, to bad - then you should really just leave WOW. Its just a game, not something that really matters...

I have been playing wow since the beta of vanilla, and i still likes it - got my sub frozen since january while waiting on WOD - and im still looking forward to it!

[Azrile]

Amazing how you can directly quote something Blizzard says, and people still combat it because it isn't the current stance held by them. Yet, any other time Blizzard makes a statement, people will post it in every thread repeatedly comment after comment as if it's engraved in stone written by the highest power in the universe!

I had forgotten all about this but I remember reading it now. That is pretty hilarious. And why are people getting immediately defensive as if they work for the company? Why do so many of these kids not realize that they are paying customers and have a right to voice their opinion about a product? (This doesn't really apply to this thread, but many many others in which people will just argue with circular logic or quote Blizzard directly to no end.)

Personally, I don't care if they offer boosts. But you can't say that an opinion like this changed in a year's worth of time isn't hysterically hypocritical and fear for the next wave of financial epiphanies.

120 dollars to get best in slot gear at level 100? Not a big deal, a patch with better gear will come out in 6 months so it's not pay to win.. it's just to help you get better prepared and play catch up until that patch drops!

But you are saying that Blizzard changed their minds about what is quoted. You are assuming they changed their minds. They can still firmly believe what they said and at the same time realize that returning players are more important, and thus, they needed to get returning players to new content faster.

On my way home from work, there is this beautiful road I can take that skirts the side of a cliff and gives an amazing view of a volcano. Most days, I take the highway because it is 15 minutes faster. Does that mean I no longer think the view of the volcano is beautiful?

Blizzard values the leveling process. But at the same time they also read outside forums and see the repeated comments from vanilla and BC players about not wanting to come back because they don´t want to have to level up before playing with friends.

Also, the slippery slope argument about buying raid gear is stupid. Nobody is going to quit playing because Joe from 2009 came back to the game and his lvl 60 became a lvl 90 when most of us have multiple 90s in much better gear.

But in reality.. I have no idea why you guys cry about this now. This pales in comparison to the guardian cub. I am sure 2 years ago you were here crying about how the cub would wreck ingame economies, right? How rich players would use the guardian cubs to dominate AHs?

Lvl-90 boosts are a huge step backwards from guardian cubs, so maybe the slippery slope you want to talk about is going in the opposite direction. I mean, if they had guardian cubs 2 years ago.. by now, surely we should just be able to spend $5 to buy 100,000g from the blizzstore? right? isn´t that the way you talked about the slippery slope back then?

[Sensa]

Gosh darn…some of you are just realizing that the mythical Blizzard integrity is just that a myth…they have wholesale contradicted themselves in this manner repeatedly over the years…you should have been here when they strongly defended not being able to get mounts until level 40, defended circular flights paths and no player flying, defended class quests and countless other time sinks in the game, defended removing the LFG channel when they brought in LFD after previously defending the benefits of forming parties for dungeons and raids as promoting interaction in the game…the list goes on and on…and the fanboys defend them every single time (that's about the only thing that hasn't changed)..Blizz has always been about the $$$$ and the blues are just corporate shrills that tow the company line until the company changes their position and then the blues equally vigorously defend the "new" stance…


it amazes me some are just realizing this and others blindly defend it and don't have the intellectual honesty to admit their faith in blizzard is sorely misplaced

[MoanaLisa]

10 years and people still don't fucking get it. 100s of people work on wow. All have different opinions.

This is quite true and now that they've got everyone in Irvine tweeting at a madcap pace it's starting to show. A month ago, flying would be in at 6.1, now maybe it won't. It's all very contradictory and I don't think the quote in the top post is any different. They decided to allow people a free 90 with the expansion. OK, fine. Well, maybe not: it seems as if people are going to simply buy extra games so they can use the boost. They don't want to deal with people opening accounts just for this and then closing them which is silly so here we are. And they can justify all of it by talking about people coming back to the game and playing with friends. Which is perfectly valid and quite true but not the whole story by any means.

In any case, I can guarantee you that for every opinion that gets tweeted out of Irvine HQ, there's someone there working on the game that might disagree with it, even at the highest levels of the company.

It's not as if companies don't look at their business and make changes to suit their circumstances. Most people haven't believed that principles trump finance there for years and they're right. They'll do whatever they think is best for the survival of the game. They'll be wrong some of the time, too. It's not something that's specific to just Blizzard. Any good business course about the realities of large companies doing business will make you read books with dozens of examples of stuff like this.

[Huehuecoyotl]

That's Blizzard for you.....

"We don't want to allow people to move servers........until we can make money out of it"
"We don't want to allow people to move from PvE to PvP servers.......until we can make money out of it"
"We don't want to allow cross faction transfers.....until we can make money out of it"
"We don't agree with gold selling.......until we can make money out of it selling BoE pets"
"we don't agree with power-levelling......until we can make money out of it selling instant 90s"

Are we sensing a pattern yet? Everything that seems to be a principle of a "company of gamers that produce games for people like us. Gamers" can go west when there is the chance to make more money. And remember, this isn't a struggling company trying to make enough cash to keep going; this is a multi-billion dollar company that makes a fortune out of this game. They choose to ditch principles not because they need the money, but because they can. And the longer that they have a complacent player-base that is willing to put up with it, the worse it will get.