Patch 4.2 Hotfixes - July 14, Blue Posts, Artworks

[Deleted]

I could imagine a monthly fee of ~3 Euro for that service.Everyone who doesn't pay, only gets to do 7 dungeons a week with their real ID friends.Sounds reasonable for blizz standards. Uphauling, but possible

[RokFenris]

So running 7 troll heroics isn't considered trivial? Interesting..

Most important, running the old raids is considered more trivial than running normal Heroics...

[mordras]

Uphauling, but possible

I think the word you are looking for is "appalling".

[Deleted]

I love how mentioning the word "premium" has people leaping to all sorts of conclusions.

They already have premium services in terms of the mobile AH AFAIK. Look how much they charge for that.

Also all they've said so far is "aspects of it will be premium based"

This says to me that certain features of it will be premium based but other features won't be.

So this says to me they may have a free version and a less commonly used set of features that will be premium based. I have also not seen anything anyway to say this would be an extra service over and above the existing premium services. It could be that those who are also paying for the mobile AH get a limited series of extra perks.

Mobile AH is slightly different. Its not an ingame feature while the realid invite is ingame only. Its abit similar to shop pets and mounts, but still different. I cant find the right words to explain it. Will try it later when I´m awake.

[pawsitive]

i would potentially pay for a premium service if it allowed me to join a raid cross server. that would be cool.

[Novaro]

i would potentially pay for a premium service if it allowed me to join a raid cross server. that would be cool.

Why would you do that? World of Warcraft in no way should introduce a premium service. Ok we put up with it now because they are minor but where does it end? I feel we could have another CCP incident on our hands (frankly I am surprised we haven't already).

[xilla]

WoW is going for premium features. I bet it will be soon like Knight Online lol. Good job blizzard for being greedy.

[Soapie]

The current subscription is supposed to cover all features inside the game. I understand and am ok with charging for things such as the mobile armory as that is outside the actual game. Real ID is something that is in game, was forced upon everybody, and if its going to be used as an in game feature should be part of the standard subscription. In essence by charging people for an in game feature, which is supposed to be covered by the subscription fee, customers would be getting double charged.

[Crazypants]

Sigh.

Again with the people not understanding the feature or what it takes to make various different systems work with each other to make this possible. I see lots of people waving their hands in the air about premium services and how they already paid for the game and this should be free. I understood quite clearly when registering my trial account to see what the game was like, that if I wanted to play with my friends and boyfriend, I had to create a char on the server that they are on, failing that, I would have to pay money to transfer it to where they were if I made it elsewhere.

This feature is not taking content away from anyone. You still have access to every piece of content new and old with this feature as you did before it was implemented. They aren't turning off heroics or offering RealID buddies different sets of content. No one knows what it will cost, or what features of it will even be premium.. but as you can see people are already asking for it to work with arenas, BGs, raids, and even making parties with people of different factions... but it should all be free right? You can't be assed to do follow how Blizzard set it up (be on the server with your friends, transfer or create a new char there if you want to play), they give you additional options so you can stay with your server/guild and still play with your friends, but you are entitled to it for free, because you pay your subscription. There are realms for a reason, but you all want the technology and ability to bypass them at no cost for playing with friends.

I really hope Blizzard gets on the ball and implements ALL the things people are asking for, and charges for them, so people who feel so entitled to every little thing for free can just bugger off. I can't wait until you can do all sorts of ridiculous shit in PvP with this feature and see the outrage from it.

Oh god oh god the world first races are going to be so fun if not only people from multiple servers can join raids, but both factions. That will be comedy gold for the raiding community and how much they love to debate on which tactics to achieve world firsts are legit. ~ Does vodka deserve the rights because their 25m was pure or the few guilds who joined together that got it first by stacking racials/classes from both factions and various servers? 15 page nerdrage thread ~

---------- Post added 2011-07-15 at 06:41 PM ----------

The current subscription is supposed to cover all features inside the game. I understand and am ok with charging for things such as the mobile armory as that is outside the actual game. Real ID is something that is in game, was forced upon everybody, and if its going to be used as an in game feature should be part of the standard subscription. In essence by charging people for an in game feature, which is supposed to be covered by the subscription fee, customers would be getting double charged.

RealID isn't only in WoW, it's a completely seperate entity that is used as a communication tool throughout various Blizzard products.

[Yasuda]

so people who feel so entitled to every little thing for free can just bugger off.

You're missing the point. It's ridiculous to most of us because we are already paying $15 per month. The whole point of playing an MMO with a subscription fee is to ensure that new and improved content and features will be regularly added into the game, that are both better quality than and at a rate that is quicker than free-to-play MMOs.

For an in-game feature such as cross-realm parties, yeah, it should be "free."

[Crazypants]

You're missing the point. It's ridiculous to most of us because we are already paying $15 per month. The whole point of playing an MMO with a subscription fee is to ensure that new and improved content and features will be regularly added into the game, that are both better quality than and at a rate that is quicker than free-to-play MMOs.

For an in-game feature such as cross-realm parties, yeah, it should be "free."

There are realms for a reason. There are already ways to go about playing with RealID friends without this feature. Some cost money, some cost time in leveling a new char. Nothing is owed to you just because you already pay a subscription fee. They are giving you a way to have your cake, and eat it too, and you just want the whole bakery because you paid for a cake. You want the special frosting at no additional charge because you've already paid for the basic cake that every single other person gets for that price, but you want more and more, no matter what time or cost it may be to the bakery, it must be yours because you paid for that cake.

[Yasuda]

There are realms for a reason. There are already ways to go about playing with RealID friends without this feature. Some cost money, some cost time in leveling a new char. Nothing is owed to you just because you already pay a subscription fee. They are giving you a way to have your cake, and eat it too, and you just want the whole bakery because you paid for a cake. You want the special frosting at no additional charge because you've already paid for the basic cake that every single other person gets for that price, but you want more and more, no matter what time or cost it may be to the bakery, it must be yours because you paid for that cake.

Your analogies are going all over the place.

Realms weren't created to seclude players from one another. They were created because WoW is a hugely played game, and having everyone on the same server would be absolutely ridiculous. They're not "giving" us anything by doing this. They're offering us another option, should we offer them more of our money. $15 a month from millions of people should most certainly be enough for additional updates between expansions at no extra cost.

Point is, as previously mentioned, they most certainly do not need the extra few bucks from this. There already exists the paid service to change realms, factions, names, and appearance. Blizzard is just scraping for cash at this point. Charging for this feature is something I'd expect from a free-to-play MMO, but not one that already charges a subscription fee. Content wise, this whole expansion has been a bit of a letdown, especially when new features are being introduced with an additional price tag.

On Blizzard's part, this is not a good way to make your customers feel valued.

[Deleted]

this is why blizzard is so shite

Agreed, dumbest change until now in all of WoW's history.

[Deleted]

From the view of a player, subscriber and just a consumer:

The RealID "premium" feature is just a rip-off in order not to milk more money out of us, but to somehow replace the lack of subscriptions, which were lost in the last 2 months. Even if Blizzard states, that they only lost about 600 000, the truth probably is that they already have lost about 0.8-1.2 million subscriptions, aka 12 000 000 $ lack of "budget" monthly.

Why do I think so?

1. The Blizzard are now desperately trying to get more "new" subscriptions by lowering the total cost of expansions, more content for the casuals, much more easier max level gaming experience, improved (and perhaps even overpowered) Recruit A Friend program. Seriously, you really think that after almost 3 months of Cataclysm they willingly lowered the expansions total cost by merging Classic and TBC? Nope, they did this in order to replace the "hole" in their subscriptions.

2. Well, pretty much Activision|Blizzard happened. Since they don't get additional sum of money out of SC II or Diablo III (You only pay for the disc), their only way is milking the Pay 2 Play game, aka WoW. Blizzard, however, remember their previous attempt to raise the price of monthly subscription ( which resulted in hugeeee hole in their wallet), so their only logical way is to create an unneeded feature, WHICH will be so wanted, that even if 40% of the player base would bought it, this resulted in a perfect replacement for the lost 12 000 000 $.

3. The RealID feature is interesting, and also useful, when you are dealing with PuGs, which are just so annoying. Thus, this feature isn't a Core mechanic, because the cross realm gameplay is still accessible with LFD tool. Much like the mobile AH and GC, they are more comfortable, but you can play without them. But, if they had to choose between features that are not affecting the game power/balance, the development of a new pet/mount is just silly, since it only awards money once. Then we might have some features including improved Encounter Journal, which wouldn't be an increase in power, since it's only a little additional information perhaps. But they don't have the time to create something brand new. So they take and recycle (sounds familiar, wink, wink?) the existing cross-realm play codes to create a feature, which will be favored by loads of solo-typed players.

Even thru we understand, that this feature must be a free service included in our monthly fee, Blizzard, however, won't listen to us, because they probably will say the following:

"Just like the mobile Auction House, this feature is not affecting your gameplay, you can still meet with your RealID friend in either RL or WoW, but without the Premium Service, the chance of clearing a dungeon in WoW with your desired RealID friends will be much lower, we just are offering you a more comfortable way of using this possibility. Also, this feature does not affect the late PvE or PvP content, since it won't work for gathering Raids and Arenas/RBGS."

So game-wise, they just offer a new unneeded service, instead of a feature, which could improve the speed of gearing up significantly.

[Melilithia]

Please DO NOT make us have to pay for the Real ID Party feature...You can't put a price on something invaluable. That and I already pay 15$ a month for WoW...

Regardless, if BLizzard makes this feature pay-to-use, I see more people quitting WoW than paying for it. They'll lose more money than they would if they just keep it free.

Also, that picture of the LK is awesome.

[Deleted]

Point is, as previously mentioned, they most certainly do not need the extra few bucks from this. There already exists the paid service to change realms, factions, names, and appearance. Blizzard is just scraping for cash at this point. Charging for this feature is something I'd expect from a free-to-play MMO, but not one that already charges a subscription fee. Content wise, this whole expansion has been a bit of a letdown, especially when new features are being introduced with an additional price tag.

On Blizzard's part, this is not a good way to make your customers feel valued.

I will accept the extra fee to group with your friends across servers if Blizzard lowers the monthly fee by several euros / dollars. And yes, I know that'll never happen...

But are we entitled to anything at all? We signed an agreement and I'm pretty sure there's some clause in there that makes sure we, as customers, have the option to either take it or leave it. Despite all the complaints, regardless of whether or not they're justified, Blizzard has itself covered completely in a legal sense. If you want to make a point, stop playing. It's all these big boys listen to: a drop in income.

I agree though that Blizzard is making some really weird moves here and I'm starting to dislike it more and more. Making money is fine, that's how the world works, but you can do that in a dozen different ways, and it appears Blizzard is determined to go the money-grabbing way. I also smell a lot of Activision influence though and I somehow hope the core Blizzard employees are at the very least ticked off every time they're told to announce stuff like this. I can't imagine Ghostcrawler for example jumping for joy at the direction Blizzard is headed...

[Brutes]

Yeah we appreciate all your feedback we wont listen to you anyways