If Blizzard starts selling gear for real money

[Mongoose19]

99% people on these forums will say it's business and they are allowed to make as much money as they want.

[dryankem]

99% people on these forums will say it's business and they are allowed to make as much money as they want.

That's their right and ours to walk away when we don't think we are getting our money's worth.

[Ytlayol]

I don't think they'll start selling gear yet for money. I thought about how they would sell coins though, and lower the drop rate om them or increase the amount of them needed for whatever they use em for. But, I would most likely seeing them selling raid lock outs or transmog sets of the raid gear.

[Neotokyo]

For mog stuff fine, a set of max level starter catch up gear thats 1-2 tiers behind... ok, anything more than though hell no.

[vindicatorx]

The backlash from this would be immediate they would notice thousands of subs being dropped the minute they announced this and more than likely millions over the course of it going live. WoW would become the joke of the gaming community overnight.

[ringpriest]

That's their right and ours to walk away when we don't think we are getting our money's worth.

That still doesn't make it good game design. Just like it's painful to read someone who types in all caps or doesn't use capitalization correctly, it's unpleasant to see Blizzard (potentially) making abysmally bad game design decisions for the sake of 'moar money'. I'm not going to dispute their 'right' to do so, but I damn well can call it an unsound and ethically questionable decision.

[Bluesftw]

Like in diablo 3 when they made the drop rates so low for gear, that everybody that wanted to progress in the game was forced to buy gear with real money.

what? cleared d3 on inferno before they even added paragon lvls and never felt forced to buy gear... seriously some people jumping bandwagon.

[SL1200]

I wish they would sell me heroic gear. I wouldn't feel the need to raid anymore.

[Raelbo]

Just out of interest, why not sell LFR gear too, then?

Because it is current content which a significant number players still do in order to get gear. The whole point of a paid level 90 is that players can move to doing current content without having to wade through old content which is no longer relevant. 5 man heroic dungeons are obsolete. LFR is not (yet).

A guy who wants to raid normals would surely appreciate that, no?

So what? There are lots things we all think we would like, but they would be detrimental to the game. For a feature to be justifiable it's not good enough to simply demonstrate a demand. The impact needs to be assessed and found to be acceptable.

And that would be merely skipping time, because you can quite literally AFK in LFR, I saw many guys do just that - and noone can votekick them because of Blizzard's protections.

This is a gross exaggeration and you know it. No one has ever denied that it is possible to "play" the system like this, but the reality of LFR is that it is a very small minority who does so.

So, why not LFR gear? It's "just" time (and nothing but time, if you do your solo rotation, you are already a hero). Simply trying to understand the logic.

Good, then you should be able to understand this

If a significant portion of the playerbase is still spending their "progression" time doing some activity, then paying to save that time is putting you ahead of them. If the vast majority of the playerbase has already spent their time doing some activity (and progressed beyond it), then paying to save that time is catching up.

WoW is, and always has been about progression. Winning (in the context of the term "Pay to Win") is measured according to how far advanced along that progression path you are relative to others.

The vast majority of players and even their alts are level 90 and 496 ilevel. That is the status quo by which you can at present measure the acceptability of a paid boost (whether it be gear, currency, tokens, levels etc). Pushing someone to level 90 and ilevel 463 will save that person a lot of time without actually changing the progression status quo.


Think of a motor race. You have one guy who is right at the back, almost a full lap behind the guy coming second last. Now something happens and a safety car comes out, allowing him to close the gap and be right behind the guy coming second - that is paid level boost + 463 gear. He hasn't gained any places, but at least he is now in a position where he can fight to overtake the next guy, and if he does manage to do so it will because he is the better racer.

Giving the player LFR gear for cash though, would be like paying a race official to force a bunch of cars to move over and allow the guy who was at the back to start overtaking, even if their cars are faster.

[rda]

Because it is current content which a significant number players still do in order to get gear. The whole point of a paid level 90 is that players can move to doing current content without having to wade through old content which is no longer relevant. 5 man heroic dungeons are obsolete. LFR is not (yet).

...

If a significant portion of the playerbase is still spending their "progression" time doing some activity, then paying to save that time is putting you ahead of them. If the vast majority of the playerbase has already spent their time doing some activity (and progressed beyond it), then paying to save that time is catching up.

OK, I understand your criteria. I don't agree with it (in fact, I don't even agree that it is a useful or practical criteria to have), but fine, I understand the intent.

[ro9ue]

Here are some realistic scenarios where I see Blizzard treading in the P2W area:

1. They sell sets of "Timeless" gear that are so low enough below the raid gear threshold that no major Anti-P2W uproar will occur, but rather be a suitable way to catch up players who have missed a few raid tiers, or allow newly max-level alts to jump into the raid scene quicker.

2. The sub numbers are sub-1 million. When the game gets to this point, probably in like 2020, they will most likely have other big revenue generators, possibly Titan, and WoW will be really old. This is when they will let themselves get a little more creative and break a few rules and use WoW as a testing-ground for their higher-valued games. At this point the reward is much greater than the risk. If WoW is F2P, it will be even less of a risk. They might lose 100k anti-P2W players from their 1 million, but in return get some extra cash from selling the gear, but most valuable of all, using what they learned from doing it on WoW and possibly figuring out a way to safely monetize gear for their now bigger Titan or whatever they might have by then.

3. Sort of indirectly 'selling P2W gear', but the most likely scenario: Selling bonus roll coins.

[Deleted]

They wont sell gear, they will just do another timeless island token with an occasional burden idea when the time is right.
This worked pretty well, still some effort and nice way to catch up.

But as kisho said, just to entertain the OP.

If they sell gear @ normal ilvls. Than there wont much pug raids to be found thus the game will die and the our world comes to an end as North Korea launches nukes.

You also forgot that Half Life 3 would be confirmed.

[ContentsMayVary]

If my brother was a girl...

...he'd be my sister.

[dryankem]

That still doesn't make it good game design. Just like it's painful to read someone who types in all caps or doesn't use capitalization correctly, it's unpleasant to see Blizzard (potentially) making abysmally bad game design decisions for the sake of 'moar money'. I'm not going to dispute their 'right' to do so, but I damn well can call it an unsound and ethically questionable decision.

Good point. I just feel that people are overreacting to the level 90 boost. The impact is going to be very minor and it helps to retain new players because without new players the game is done.

I don't really see how adding a min class toon on the blizzard store equals blizzard selling gear or even a max level toon. And if they do I will have to evaluate that decision and see how it affects me and then decide if I wish to play or not. However they haven't even brought up selling gear or max level toons.