Cross-Realm Dungeon Feature Coming Soon

Originally Posted by Gurbz

That is the stupidest thing I think I have read in this thread so far. Better gear is a gameplay perk because it directly affects the performance of your character, whereas this feature does not. If you are going to provide counter-arguments, at least come up with one that doesn't make you look like an idiot.

The point is that blizz/activision is inching closer and closer to the point where it really does effect gameplay. The paid pets and mounts are of 10x quality that ANYTHING you can get from actually earning it is (seeing as how most rewards these days are palette swaps of old stuff thats easy), then they added the Mobile Auction House, which allowed people to have even more control over the AH market, and now this.

Each time, its a small step towards that point where we say "we told you so", but by the time it gets there people like you will say something like "well they've been doing this stuff for years now, why are you bitching about it now? You should have said something when X happened", and then someone will link back to this thread, or one of the other 1000 and then you'll think of some half-assed remark, and then I'll respond with some remark about lazy casuals and stupid kids with money and it'll go no where... and the people that made this game what it is today will be fucked over once again.

So yeah. Fuck you buddy. Fuck you, fuck DLC, fuck "premium" content in a FUCKING SUBSCRIPTION GAME THAT RAKES IN MILLIONS EVERY FUCKING DAY LIKE ITS A GOD DAMN PRINTING PRESS, and fuck activision for being corporate demons, fuck blizzard for selling out, and finally fuck the general populous for ruining this genre.

/thread

I'm honestly looking forward to playing with some old guildies again!

Waitwut.. Premium based...?

Originally Posted by advan

Are you serious? What content are you missing out on?

Dungeons? No.
Raids? No.
PvE Gear? No.
PvP Gear? No.
Achievements? No.
Guild advancement? No.
Reputation gains? No.
Experience Points? No.
Gold? No.

Whatever content you THINK you are missing out on must be the case right now, today, as you sit here. Because nothing this would add subtracts what you already have.

You guys are acting like they are removing 50% of the game from you because 0.001% of the WoW population might be able to group with 0.001% of the WoW population...

You are missing out on an update to one of the game's core features.

OT: It surprises me that WoW has taken this long to implement cross-realm grouping because other MMOs have had one massive server cluster since launch, letting you group with anyone at any time.

I don't understand why people are so upset by something that is their fault. If you bought ANYTHING from the online store, if you pay to use the mobile ah or gchat this is your fault. Your stupidity let bizzard know that they can sell anything and only two things will happen: 1) People will complain but keep paying monthly ) People will not complain and still buy it. Losing 600ksubs hurt more than most realize and they will use any chance they can to make more money. I can't say that I blame them really, they can literally sell a turd non combat pet that raises your stats buy +10 while it is active and most of you will flock to the online store to get. So don't complain, enjoy the game you created.

Originally Posted by ZyngaFail

Time travel to 6 months later: "Also, once again, premium gear is NOT a gameplay perk. It does not affect gameplay AT ALL. Only what gear you can wear in the game."

"I'm 20,000 in debt, and I'm six months behind on my credit cards, and they're going to sue! Might as well declare bankruptcy now!"

"OMG! I could get hit by a train on the way to work tomorrow, what's the point in living?" *shoots self*

Reacting out of fear of what may happen is a bad policy for life.

I think this is going to cause enough dissension within the player ranks to keep Blizzard honest about the competitive advantage aspect.

This is why Blizzard lost 600k subscribers. Nickel and dimeing improvements to the game that should be standard in order to keep up with their competition's offerings.

Originally Posted by drakonblayde

You cannot possibly be that naive.

You don't pay your subscription fee as a maintenance fee. Sure, some of it goes to overhead like power and bandwidth and salary. Quite a bit of it goes to profit, as well.

You're not paying these guys to cut your lawn. I mean, hell, you're paying them a monthly subscription fee to develop new expansions, right? Why should you have to pay for that?

God damn communists.

Actually, the core idea of the sub fee and mmo's in general was that it was not only a massively online world, but one that also changes. Changes = new content. Seeing as how the MMO model "works" with as few as 25k subs, a game like WoW which has 10million+ has no reason to be charging anything extra to consumers, expansions included. The cost per player stays relatively the same, so with every new sub, comes the same flat amount of net profit. So even if $10 of the $15 sub is to server/customer support costs, that's still $5 per person that is free to be used for future content or pure profit. If an expansion's content costs $20 million to develop, then in ONE MONTH it only takes FOUR million subs to completely pay for the costs of the said expansion. Blizz/Activision are pulling in a far higher number than this, and since customers were perfectly content with the sub fee, they decided to try their luck with charging a little extra for this, then that, and so on, until they extent their reach so far that the entire game is a micro-transaction hell. It's basically the DLC model that consoles have turned towards. Bullshit that used to be free that the mass populous eat up because they don't know any better.

Originally Posted by advan

I think a whole bunch of you are mis-'quoting' Blizzard saying they will "never release paid content that alters gameplay" - I do believe they only said they would never release paid content that provides a competitive advantage.

If you think running randoms with people on your RealID list of the same faction is a competitive advantage, I guess you could consider this a bad thing.

Considering some of you have already canceled your subscriptions on principle for a change that is likely months away, I can only assume you were already committed to canceling for other reasons. If you don't pay for this service I cannot imagine how it changes anything about your current game-play.

However, I do agree that the grey area they've been playing in with downloadable content is creeping closer and closer to the edge (obviously as this thread closes in on 1,000 replies). As other posters here have pointed out though, the remote auction house is so much more of a competitive advantage than this ever will be.

Honestly? Well said. And I could be considered on the opposition of this statement.

In the defense of the side I'm supporting in an armchair fashion I'd like to say that, while optional as the feature is, it that good ol' Blizzard "Sell the car for gas money" in terms of effective implementation. When cross server LFG was going out the door a bunch of those apart of small or large communities that wanted to play together (like those at MMO-Champion), only to see that it wasn't to be. Now the the option is available and LFG seems to be, warts and all, service just about every player uses...there's now a part of it that's tied behind a paywall.

It is a gate. Whether or not it's the beginning of going down a slippery slope, it, in itself, is a very seeable, very unwelcome gate.

Originally Posted by ZyngaFail

OT: It surprises me that WoW has taken this long to implement cross-realm grouping because other MMOs have had one massive server cluster since launch, letting you group with anyone at any time.

It doesn't really surprise me. I saw you mention earlier that you're a server admin, so you'll probably understand what I'm about to say.

This all goes back to their archaic design methodology. Servers are deployed as a cluster, sharing a common database backend cluster. Each server and database cluster was isolated from each other. This is why we have the concept of battle groups - the realms in the battle group all share a common database backend. This is also why when they upgraded the hardware prior to Burning Crusade, those happened by battlegroup. This is not surprising, considering that developement on World of Warcraft was started back in 99, and they essentially followed the same model for deployment as Everquest. Those of you who were around for launch will remember they did a horrible job of capacity planning, and the servers (in particular the database servers) were utterly slammed the first few weeks until they finally got enough servers online to provide some relief.

I'm guessing their database backend wasn't designed for interoperability with the other clusters, and enterprise grade database implementations are not something you make changes to in a cavalier manner, and this is why our interactions between realms is somewhat limited. I doubt that hardware is a bottleneck anymore, but the data paths interconnecting everything very well might be. While they certainly have the resources to get the technical talent in place for a redesign, drastic changes with a complex codebase are rarely a good idea, particularly if it involves the company cash cow.

Lol hope this is some kind of joke.

This strikes me as a failure on many levels.

My first reaction while I was reading - "Hmm, this is a bribe that might actually get me to use RealID for something, I can see it as a potential tool and would consider using it. It will make a feature I had no interest in before a tempting tidbit."

By the end - "Why would I pay for this, to use a feature I previously had reservations about, and get minimal gain? Whatever..."

I tend to support developers "wasting time" on features that aren't "needed"... but this seems like a tragically failed concept from the start. I wonder who made the decision to charge for it. I'd say they are making enough money from remote AH/Guild Chat that the bean counters took notice.

A wonderful idea, shattered by poorly thought out implementation.

Premium?

No fucking way. Ridiculous.

Considering subscription hasnt gone up in 6 years, its totally reasonable to ask for a bit here and there for completely OPTIONAL features. If you dont want to pay for it then you can pretend this post was never made, as it will have zero effect on your gameplay.

Originally Posted by drakonblayde

I'm guessing their database backend wasn't designed for interoperability with the other clusters, and enterprise grade database implementations are not something you make changes to in a cavalier manner, and this is why our interactions between realms is somewhat limited. I doubt that hardware is a bottleneck anymore, but the data paths interconnecting everything very well might be. While they certainly have the resources to get the technical talent in place for a redesign, drastic changes with a complex codebase are rarely a good idea, particularly if it involves the company cash cow.

All battlegroups in a region have been connected since Cataclysm released. They were talking about it about 1/2 way through Lich King but the backend was finally fully implemented at the beginning of this expansion cycle. Battlegroups have been obsolete and the only thing they are referenced for now is for rated battlegrounds. Why they kept this functionality, I could only speculate that they wanted to keep some nostalgia of the old battlegroup system, but as of December LFD battlegroups and unrated BGs have been linked region-wide. Server architecture is definitely not a bottleneck for this anymore; all servers in WoW currently share region-wide cluster just like every other MMO. The fact that they implement this functionality on the server back-end and then proceed to charge their players for usage of this service that all other modern games offer for free is just another issue I have with this debacle.

Originally Posted by Bashiok

Final Phase - Completed 11/9

Battlegrounds
All realms linked for battleground matchmaking

Dungeon Finder
All four dungeon finder groupings complete.

Group A
Whirlwind
Emberstorm

Group B
Stormstrike
Nightfall
Retaliation

Group C
Reckoning
Cyclone
Bloodlust
Vengeance

Group D
Ruin
Vindication
Rampage
Shadowburn

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...97535489&sid=1 was the forum archive link but it's outdated now and redirects to main forum page.

Paid premium services... Bobby Kotick says hi.

Its sad that no matter what we say or complain, blizz isnt going to make this feature free... =/... i was happy for a few seconds till i saw "premium service"... oh well... hope they dont charge us money to mail BOA's cross realms T_T

i cannot wait to see what totalbiscuit has to say about this..

Originally Posted by MakeMeLaugh

Its sad that no matter what we say or complain, blizz isnt going to make this feature free... =/... i was happy for a few seconds till i saw "premium service"... oh well... hope they dont charge us money to mail BOA's cross realms T_T

When there was near universal outrage in response to blizzard's plan to reveal your real name with the new forums, they were forced to backpedal. If the response is overwhelmingly negative, it can impact their decision making. But if enough people are ambivalent or support it, then you can basically count on it happening.

You watch, this is real names on the forum all over again. I doubt they ever really planned on making it a paid service, they're going to pretend to fold in a few days-weeks to appease the playerbase to the tune of "oh, so Blizzard DO listen to us!"

Originally Posted by Maklor

Terrible, terrible argument.

If anything it should get cheaper over time.

How so? Does your cable get cheaper every year? It costs money to run a company. You paid for a FRACTION of what cata cost to make when you got it, but you didnt pay for 4.1 or 4.2 or anything else. $15 per month is a tiny expense for the amount of features and content blizzard rolls out. And on top of that, they employ the best in the business.

If you dont like that you have to pay for this, dont use it. If playing with your friends was so important, youd have swapped servers by now (and spent the money). If blizzard never posted this you would have nothing to bitch about, so pretend they didnt.