And Activision rears its ugly head...
And Activision rears its ugly head...
I would hope to god if EA did that to Bioware, Bioware would have the sense to up and walk away from the game just as Mythic basically did with Warhammer, but Blizzard's official company stance until they merged with Activision was that they would only charge you for content and maintenance and felt that paying for additional service "perks" wasn't fair to the community as a whole. It's unfortunately but it seems that they've strayed from alot of their core principles since their acquisition by Vivendi and subsequent merger with Activision.
All of Blizzards paid services are money grubbing. There's absolutely no reason that monthly fees and 3 expansions shouldn't have already included the feature to play with friends from any server in any instance. When you meet new people IRL that play the game, you still can't play with them because they're on a different server. Blizzard benefits by having people socialize (more socializing = more likely to keep paying monthly fees) yet they're going to charge for the feature. This is pure bullshit and even the janitors at Blizzard know it.
Dissecting sentences means squat if you don't even know what the big picture is. Should know that as well from law school.
To me it seems they are milking this as hard as they can. "Titan" is on the horizon, and with the decline in subscribers to WoW I can see how it makes sense. But it really f-ing hurts me as a player and as a fan of the company. My perception of Blizzard has changed dramatically since Vanilla, and while some things are better, overall it's been a drop.
Here's hoping: They could always do a reversed bait-and-switch kind of strategy here though, where they drop a complete (to the players) nonsensical feature, such like this premium thing, and then switch to side with the fanbase to gain instant loyalty from the very people they are messing with.
But premium in-game services are coming. Seems to be sooner rather than later.
Mythic had no sense anyway, they ruined everything they touched. They had such a great game (Daoc) ruined it so quickly by not listening to what the players wanted. Loss players, continued not to change, continued to lose players and now its like 1,000 people who play it.
I thank god that GW2 and SWTOR are coming out, Blizzard has lost me permanently as a customer and I refuse to buy D3 or ever come back to WoW.
Eff you Activision. This is a HUGE feature that your customer base would love and come back for, but you require MORE money. Haven't we paid you enough?
Go to hell, I'm quitting after this xpac wraps.
Guess who will have my attention. Guild Wars 2, where they'll be including this feature right away. Guess how much I'll have to pay each month for the privilege. $0. When I get bored with the game, I won't feel guilty not continuing on later either because it only cost me a one time buy in.
Last edited by Kaeleena; 2011-05-18 at 01:14 AM.
Mythic is also to blame they are not shielded from it. They gave false promises as much as EA does. EA has never been a good company either but they're somewhat better then Activision. Activision has betrayed everyone they helped them in pursuit of money, honestly Blizzard needs to get out right now if they want to save their reputation. Continue to work with Activision will only lead to World of Warcraft: Black Ops.
Rezzing when you're dead is not a convenience. It is mandatory to continue playing the game. If you can't get you character back to combat readiness, you have no reason to play the game, hence you have no reason t give them money. That makes it a necessity.
Respec, regem, reenchant.... you already do pay them RL currency for that. It's part of your monthly subscription fee. What you're not recognizing is that those functions allow them to essentially infinitely recycle the same content with very little overhead. In essence, it allows them to sell you the same thing over and over again as microconsumption, instead of requiring you to go full consumption. Take for example if you wanted to play an Arms warrior, and you were a Fury warrior. If you couldn't respec, you'd have to start over from scratch. People aren't going to put up with that kind of thing, and they'd quit, hence you'd lose your revenue stream. Letting people respec keeps them interested, and therefore, PAYING. Regem and Reenchant - those require either money, or a time investment in order to make use of. the money in and of itself is a time investment. Your in game money/materials costs your time. In order for you to have that time in game, you have to pay real money. The more time you decide to spend in game (relatively speaking, obviously blizzard would be perfectly happy to take your subscription fee and not have you login), the more money Blizzard makes.
Some things you do because you have to keep the lights on. Those are your basic services and conveniences. Sometimes they add to those, because to not do so would be to risk hurting your revenue stream. Take dual spec for example. The frustration with being confined to one spec in a game where multiple roles are needed for success boiled up to a point where it was an issue of contention. Blizzard could have tried to make that a premium service, and it would have blown up in their faces (after all, for hybrid classes, the ability to dual spec is a MAJOR advantage over those who can't). They knew this.
Things like faction changes, and realm changes didn't come about until several years into development. By then, everyone had accepted that was just the way things were - you rolled horde, you stayed horde. You rolled on Arthas, you stayed on Arthas, unless you wanted to start over. So when these paid services came available, people thank them for it!
Now we fast forward a bit. Now people have gotten complacent and demanding. It is now a GOD GIVEN RIGHT to be able to group with my friends, whatever realm they may be on!
This is a far cry from the days when you were confined to your own server for groups, AND players had to take the initiative to form their own groups! All of these services have been provided as part of your base subscription fee.
Given all of the services they have added to the life of the game, I'm honestly surprised Blizzard hasn't raised the subscription fee. I certainly would have.
I honestly think they're being somewhat benevolent in NOT forcing everyone to take a price increase for every added new feature, and relegating some stuff to premium service. It's a money grab, no doubt, they see a chance for profit at very little expense (because let's be honest, they'll use this technology for other games besides this one, the development will be done one way or another, but they can monetize it now). By relegating it a premium service instead of forcing a subscription price increase, they're basically limiting the cost increase to people who are willing to be taken advantage of. I don't know of many companies that would be that kind.
Last edited by drakonblayde; 2011-05-18 at 01:24 AM.
sure, so would I. Except that I live in the real world, and need to pay my bills.
Bioware doesn't have the choice to walk away from EA. They're a wholly owned subsidiary. The individual members of the Bioware team could certain say screw it and leave, and maybe even go out on their own and do something else (go ask those nice gentlemen who left their big conglomerate companies to make games like Hellgate London and Vanguard how well that worked out).
So while I fully agree that the world would be a better place if folks stood up to their corporate overlords and said no, history has shown that's a pretty rare occurrence. This world runs on enlightened self interest, not noble ideas.
This is complete bull... So last year's Blizzcon where they promised this as core BattleNet functionality, hence the overhaul, we have to pay for it? They can keep their money. This game is dying anyway, with Cataclysm being their "lets make everyone pay for crap they've already paid for". Put some cracks in the ground and sprinkle some fire into it, job's done!
GG Blizz. You've lost my business.
LOL Blizz. April 1st was almost 2 months ago!
This is a joke right?? LOL Premium Services...
My $15 a month isn't better than your $15 a month.. so you wanna throw me $5 more? and I'll pretend you're better than the rest.
Bob Kotic is a awesome troll, he just trolled you all, kudos to him.
So.. we are paying subscription to the developers to develop new stuff.. and now we have to pay for stuff they develop with our subscription money? Come on bli$$ard.. It's like if you pay for Windows, but Paint and Notepad are premium...
"Bobby Kotick said to his shareholders in public, and I know a lot of people heard this, 'We're going to take the fun out of making games. These people don't take this shit seriously. We're going to make sure that they're serious about making games.'"