What makes official WoW worth it's money?

[Deleted]

Gabe Newell from valve once said that "Piracy is the result of bad service of game companies". He said that some pirates are doing a much better job at providing a good service than the game companies.

For a very long time I thought that official WoW offers such service in a form of "stability". What I mean with "stability" is that "once item is unobtainable, it stays unobtainable forever", but official Blizzard post about possible return of PvP Elite set transmogs (they "canceled" that idea now) made me realize that any digital item can be brought back to the game at any point. So why would I waste my precious time getting such exclusive items, if they could return them to the game as casual items at any time in the future.
The reason why I don't play on private server is because they could just simply decide to start selling items, or they wouldn't take any action against duplicated items. But Blizzard already returned many items back to the game with BMAH or simply by making them obtainable again like vanilla PvP titles.

So my question is, what makes official WoW worth it's money, if they can't offer such stability? I'm scared of spending my time in WoW from now on. I don't want to find out that everything I was working on is going to be obtainable without much effort in the future. I love WoW, but I don't trust Blizzard anymore, unless they tell us what is their long term plan about that.

[Polarthief]

How odd. I have this massive sense of urgency (read: feel rushed) to do things because I never know what's going to be taken away/made limited time only and what isn't, essentially the exact opposite of your point.

[Cæli]

Well, first Blizzard is the creator of all this, all the artists, composers, work at Blizzard and gets their money off this. WoW is historical. Of course it's worth the money.

Also playing on the official means you play on the official "game file" which is priceless given the time devoted to have a decent progression. Basically playing on something unofficial nullifies the satisfaction you could get from collecting because that collection could be a.gone anytime b.not legit in every way

So why would I waste my precious time getting such exclusive items, if they could return them to the game as casual items at any time in the future.

Play for yourself, ignore others, but I can understand if you want to compare with others. to get a terrific satisfaction, just get everything in the game, if you're good enough, a few retired items makes absolutely no difference in the ocean of what you could do to your account to take the most pleasure out of it. Just make sure you don't miss them yourself.
Let's say some get your precious exclusive items later, so what ? look at their character and see does they have something else than those exclusive items ? are you completely destroying their progression with yours ? yes ? good, keep going

it's about the total progression, not ONE item.
lucky dude got invincible ? awesome right ? now just how many rare mounts does he have ? 1 ? and you, 54 ? mmh .......

[Vichan]

Gabe Newell from valve once said that "Piracy is the result of bad service of game companies". He said that some pirates are doing a much better job at providing a good service than the game companies.

For a very long time I thought that official WoW offers such service in a form of "stability". What I mean with "stability" is that "once item is unobtainable, it stays unobtainable forever", but official Blizzard post about possible return of PvP Elite set transmogs (they "canceled" that idea now) made me realize that any digital item can be brought back to the game at any point. So why would I waste my precious time getting such exclusive items, if they could return them to the game as casual items at any time in the future.
The reason why I don't play on private server is because they could just simply decide to start selling items, or they wouldn't take any action against duplicated items. But Blizzard already returned many items back to the game with BMAH or simply by making them obtainable again like vanilla PvP titles.

So my question is, what makes official WoW worth it's money, if they can't offer such stability? I'm scared of spending my time in WoW from now on. I don't want to find out that everything I was working on is going to be obtainable without much effort in the future. I love WoW, but I don't trust Blizzard anymore, unless they tell us what is their long term plan about that.

your post makes 0 sense, just because they make some transmog sets available again doesn't mean "stability" is gone. your really grasping at straws for something to bitch about. also maybe you should consider playing the game for fun, now what it "rewards" you

[Lady Atia]

Tbh I hate it when they take stuff out. The potential removing of artifact weapon skins makes me sick, and I really hope they decide against it. Taking content out makes this game worse, not better. I couldn't care less for "prestige" items - they are prestige if you get them while current, otherwise they are just cosmetic.

[micwini]

Bad service is more than just "stability". While it might be your reason, the reason why other people play the game "ilegally" is because of something else.
The fact that the game changed so much since 2004 is just a reason of its own. There is a demand to play the older versions of WoW because they are very different from the way the game plays today. Hell, even the difference between vanilla and TBC is huge.
The fact that blizzard doesn't answer this demand makes people pirate the game. To be fair, if blizzard did actually have some separate servers for each expansion, the piracy would be way less.
The only reason why people then would play on private servers would be because they don't think its worth the money.

- - - Updated - - -

your post makes 0 sense, just because they make some transmog sets available again doesn't mean "stability" is gone. your really grasping at straws for something to bitch about. also maybe you should consider playing the game for fun, now what it "rewards" you

Your post makes 0 sense.
Possible occurence:

P1: Hey man where did you get that awesome mount?
P2: Man that was a long time ago, I remember farming for months just to get this mount.
P1: Holy shit that's cool. You're crazy for farming month's for just that mount.

P2 in this case has a mount that's not obtainable anymore and it cost him lost of time to get it. How would you think he would react if the item became obtainable once more, with something like BMAH? I can tell you, he most certainly would not feel good.
Some people do actually play for the rewards and are hooked even more to the game when it's a limited time thing.

It's the same thing when you have been working your whole life just to make enough money to properly around and your lazy ass couchpotato friend suddenly is a billionair without even lifting a finger.

[Eon Drache]

So by that definition all good movies are really bad, hulu and netflix are really shitty and any popular game is actually bad as they all get pirated.

Official wow is worth it if you enjoy the game. It doesn't matter if something can be obtained by someone else. You can actually make the argument that taking things away makes the game worse as those that didn't get it might feel worse about it. Where as someone that did earn it just has an ego.

[bison91]

Gabe Newell from valve once said that "Piracy is the result of bad service of game companies". He said that some pirates are doing a much better job at providing a good service than the game companies.

For a very long time I thought that official WoW offers such service in a form of "stability". What I mean with "stability" is that "once item is unobtainable, it stays unobtainable forever", but official Blizzard post about possible return of PvP Elite set transmogs (they "canceled" that idea now) made me realize that any digital item can be brought back to the game at any point. So why would I waste my precious time getting such exclusive items, if they could return them to the game as casual items at any time in the future.
The reason why I don't play on private server is because they could just simply decide to start selling items, or they wouldn't take any action against duplicated items. But Blizzard already returned many items back to the game with BMAH or simply by making them obtainable again like vanilla PvP titles.

So my question is, what makes official WoW worth it's money, if they can't offer such stability? I'm scared of spending my time in WoW from now on. I don't want to find out that everything I was working on is going to be obtainable without much effort in the future. I love WoW, but I don't trust Blizzard anymore, unless they tell us what is their long term plan about that.

The quality and blizzard history. I mean Warcraft 3 ofcourse. its quality of gameplay and mostly lore gave a huge push. without it WoW would be llike any other mmo's. the continues of Warcraft storyline in WoW that we can experience keeps us online and want us to spend money on that. Greedy Blizzard.

[Skulltaker]

Gabe Newell from valve once said that "Piracy is the result of bad service of game companies". He said that some pirates are doing a much better job at providing a good service than the game companies.

For a very long time I thought that official WoW offers such service in a form of "stability". What I mean with "stability" is that "once item is unobtainable, it stays unobtainable forever", but official Blizzard post about possible return of PvP Elite set transmogs (they "canceled" that idea now) made me realize that any digital item can be brought back to the game at any point. So why would I waste my precious time getting such exclusive items, if they could return them to the game as casual items at any time in the future.
The reason why I don't play on private server is because they could just simply decide to start selling items, or they wouldn't take any action against duplicated items. But Blizzard already returned many items back to the game with BMAH or simply by making them obtainable again like vanilla PvP titles.

So my question is, what makes official WoW worth it's money, if they can't offer such stability? I'm scared of spending my time in WoW from now on. I don't want to find out that everything I was working on is going to be obtainable without much effort in the future. I love WoW, but I don't trust Blizzard anymore, unless they tell us what is their long term plan about that.

I think what Mr Newell was referring to was 'constant quality to constant cost'. A couple of years ago, if you bought a tripple a title, you knew what you got. These days you'll so often get an unpolished unfinished mess of a game, with promised features outright vanished. And this is something that Blizzard hasn't done - yet. The moment preorders are up, you have a rather good idea what you will get for your money. Not a guarantee that you will enjoy it, of course, but then again, there is no guarantee for joy in anything you do. That's why I'd not consider pirating a Blizzard game. EA and Ubisoft, on the other hand, are most famous these days for dragging their ass over the line inbetween 'disappointing game' and 'basically fraud'.

Tbh I hate it when they take stuff out. The potential removing of artifact weapon skins makes me sick, and I really hope they decide against it. Taking content out makes this game worse, not better. I couldn't care less for "prestige" items - they are prestige if you get them while current, otherwise they are just cosmetic.

Love your blog!

[Dracullus]

Tbh I hate it when they take stuff out. The potential removing of artifact weapon skins makes me sick, and I really hope they decide against it. Taking content out makes this game worse, not better. I couldn't care less for "prestige" items - they are prestige if you get them while current, otherwise they are just cosmetic.

They don't quite remove skins in next expansion, they will add skins that you earned in Legion to the Wardrobe. At least, this is the plan right now.

[Lochton]

Gabe Newell from valve once said that "Piracy is the result of bad service of game companies". He said that some pirates are doing a much better job at providing a good service than the game companies.

Though, at times it might be right, at many times it is also wrong.

Eeeeh, I would more say that stability is more to the system, development and content progression.

[tikcol]

It won't be long now before there's more people playing on private servers than people actually subscribed to the game.

[Deleted]

I'm scared of spending my time in WoW from now on. I don't want to find out that everything I was working on is going to be obtainable without much effort in the future. I love WoW, but I don't trust Blizzard anymore, unless they tell us what is their long term plan about that.

Lol funny to see WoW like this. "working on..", "easier to get later" ... Dude its a game, you don't pay Blizz for your virtual treasures. It's part of WoW nature that most things are way easier to obtain later on. Don't draw your satisfaction from owning pixel, draw it from getting there and reaching your own set goal. Like now i am happy when i down Guldan heroic and get a great trinket. This takes effort. In 6-12 months it will not take effort and everybody will have the trinket or the set or whatever. Even i could have it way easier then. But i want it now, because its a goal to achieve that feels satisfying when reached. In 6-12 month when everybody has achieved it aswell maybe with no effort at all i don't care anymore. I'll have new goals then.

[WowIsDead64]

Yeah, "stability" is best word. You must be sure, that money, invested today, won't be just lost tomorrow. Many game developers tend to say, that you pay for entertainment - same as for movies for example. May be it was true in the past, but not today, cuz even free games may provide same level of entertainment. So the only thing, worth investing money - is future. You invest money into being sure, that game won't collapse withing just a year. Or game developers won't change this game to a point, when it no longer will be enjoyable for you, so you'll have to quit it.

For example I've invested $750 into one F2P game, cuz it was extremely enjoyable at that moment. And what now? All, developers care about now - is about selling new "heroes" in shop. No new maps, no new game modes, no hitreg improvements, no balancing, no fixes for matchmaker - due to terrible balance and non-existent matchmaker my matches are stomps and my stats, and of course rewards, are terrible, while my rating simply refuses to drop and allow me to play at my level of skill and earn proper rewards. Earning 20K of ingame currency, when normal value is around 150K and things cost tens of millions - is just nonsense, sorry. But worst thing - is being humiliated by Meta abusers. Result - game is unplayable. And I quit it about a year ago.

Unfortunately Wow isn't "stable" anymore. Constant negative changes, catering to some other players, forcing certain playstyles without providing any options, etc. So it isn't worth my money anymore.

[Deleted]

Gabe Newell from valve once said that "Piracy is the result of bad service of game companies". He said that some pirates are doing a much better job at providing a good service than the game companies.

For a very long time I thought that official WoW offers such service in a form of "stability". What I mean with "stability" is that "once item is unobtainable, it stays unobtainable forever", but official Blizzard post about possible return of PvP Elite set transmogs (they "canceled" that idea now) made me realize that any digital item can be brought back to the game at any point. So why would I waste my precious time getting such exclusive items, if they could return them to the game as casual items at any time in the future.
The reason why I don't play on private server is because they could just simply decide to start selling items, or they wouldn't take any action against duplicated items. But Blizzard already returned many items back to the game with BMAH or simply by making them obtainable again like vanilla PvP titles.

So my question is, what makes official WoW worth it's money, if they can't offer such stability? I'm scared of spending my time in WoW from now on. I don't want to find out that everything I was working on is going to be obtainable without much effort in the future. I love WoW, but I don't trust Blizzard anymore, unless they tell us what is their long term plan about that.

You realize you don't actually own your account right? You're renting a character on their servers. If they suspect you of cheating in any way, shape or form they can just close your account and there's literally nothing you can do it about it. So being worried about them removing a specific item shouldn't change your outlook much as this has been the case for over a decade now.

If you don't trust Blizzard to provide a service then it's not worth ANY of your money, so unsubscribe and move on. You shouldn't need justification or any reassurance from the forums to do so. Just pack your bags and move onto another game. But in reality if you're worried about the pixels on the screen being removed from your account, or changed in anyway then there's not a single game in the world that's worth your money, as none of it is truly yours anyways.

All in all I trust Blizzard to provide a service. By service I mean a fairly "cheat free", smooth, uninterpreted gaming experience. Which in my opinion, they do. Sure the servers have issues occasionally and they are brought down for maintenance etc but that's just all part of how things are, you need to be realistic about it. As long as content is coming in and I still enjoy logging on, then I'll pay a monthly sub. When the content slows down or I'm not happy, I simply unsub, keep track of future updates and resubscribe if I feel like it. For example I unsubbed in WOD for about 6-8 months due to the fact I had other games I was enjoying more combined with the fact the content wasn't up to my standards.

There's no need to confuse the issue and make it into something bigger than it is. If you're not happy with the game, unsubscribe and find something else to play that's worth your time.

[Deleted]

It won't be long now before there's more people playing on private servers than people actually subscribed to the game.

xDDDDDDDDDD

[Lady Atia]

Love your blog!

Thanks ^.^

They don't quite remove skins in next expansion, they will add skins that you earned in Legion to the Wardrobe. At least, this is the plan right now.

Right - which is exactly what gives me a headache. Having to get the "must have" skins for transmog with 12 chars isn't really all that fun - or atleast I would enjoy it more without the "damocles sword". It would be easier if they could do changes to Balance of Power once you got it with your main char, atleast. Also they are lowering the honour you need to get to prestige 1 with 7.2, so that's a step in the right direction

[SirBeef]

It's fun. I need nothing more to justify spending money on it.

[Rucati]

But... Nothing in game has any tangible value, so I don't really understand what the problem is.

If you're farming WoW for a super rare mount you really like the look of and you finally get it after months you'll probably feel really good and use it all the time. Now a few months later they add that item into the BMAH or something and more people have it. You still really like the mount, so you'll still ride it around. Or you've found a new mount and ride that one instead. This has zero impact on the game, on your preferences, or on the value of the time you spent farming it in the first place. If you enjoy farming mounts you're paying for the fun of playing, if you dislike farming mounts but are forcing yourself to do it anyway you probably should be checked out for insanity.

Personally I stopped using old mounts from raids because they're all so easily farmable. I used the Ratstallion at the start of the expansion because I was one of the first to get it, now I don't so much. Same with NB mount. I understand the fact of wanting to use a mount few people have. But if you're legitimately farming a mount for months while not enjoying yourself and only using it because it's rare I don't really know what to say. That's really a dumb way to play games, it isn't even my opinion, it's objectively stupid to do something you don't enjoy so that you can try to show off to other people that you wasted months of your life doing something you dislike. Who in their right mind would do that?

WoW is worth the money because it's a fun, and probably the best, MMORPG on the market right now. Nothing else comes close, it's enjoyable to play, gets pretty consistent updates, has a large playerbase so group finding is easy, and offers content for solo, small groups, large groups, PvP, PvE, collecting things, farming things, whatever playstyle you enjoy most. That's why it's worth the money, and that's why millions of people are still paying for it.

[Mosotti]

The problem is that most people have no idea how BUGGED and DIFFERENT the private servers are from the real deal. And even people that can spot those problems are willing to live with them because the original version is no more. There's no other reason to play a pirate server (except for those that don't afford the subscription, but in that case you have bigger problem in your life than a fucking game).

What Blizzard does with their game regarding the story and gear and dungeons and other content is their problem. Stability doesn't mean "they did something I wasn't expecting"... Want to see a game with stability problems? Play a Bethesda game that crashes randomly to the desktop for no apparent fucking reason