The Blizzard Store and the Monthly Fee. What you need to realize.

[Deleted]

That said, my "resistance" to quitting just got lowered by this announcement. If I have to deal with F2P "mechanics" might as well play a F2P game. GW2 has a Mac client coming up ...

Too bad all other MMOs out there are garbage. The only quality indicator about them being Horrible Disgusting Garbage - Nice Smelling Garbage.

[Duster505]

Companies might as well stop having a PR department.

There is so many fanboys who will readily defend their company and apologize and tell you they did no wrong that it's laughable. Diablo 3 was a prime example for that, this thread is too.

Dont' forget that BLizzard invited many of the fan sites to Irvine few weeks back talking exactly about this new business model. Their goal was obviously to influence the fansite to take this with open arms and with as little negative effect as possible. The PR machine is doing their job. And it would not surprise me to see that PR machine try to influence the discussion on many of the fansites by having a small army of their own trying to turn the discussion into more acceptable outcome for them.

Blizzard knows very well they are breaking the principle that WOW was built on. They also know they will be breaking the principle of every MMO game if they have both ingame shop and sub. But that doesn't mean they are not willing to search for all possible means to make it happen.

[Deleted]

Dont' forget that BLizzard invited many of the fan sites to Irvine few weeks back talking exactly about this new business model. Their goal was obviously to influence the fansite to take this with open arms and with as little negative effect as possible. The PR machine is doing their job. And it would not surprise me to see that PR machine try to influence the discussion on many of the fansites by having a small army of their own trying to turn the discussion into more acceptable outcome for them.

Blizzard knows very well they are breaking the principle that WOW was built on. They also know they will be breaking the principle of every MMO game if they have both ingame shop and sub. But that doesn't mean they are not willing to search for all possible means to make it happen.

Argues about principles knowing Blizzard is a company based upon making money. Legit.

[Anjerith]

I would say that the sparkle pony probably had more of an actual impact on the game than some helmet models for transmogs. I mean, theoretically, the pony could at least be someones FIRST FLYING MOUNT that they didnt spend gold on - thus cheating, from a point of view.

All the helmet transmogs do is look sparkly. Hopefully anyone that wanted to use them has put a hat on in-game before.

[mickybrighteyes]

Believe me when I say this... 15$ a month is pathetic amount of money for as much time, and fun I get out of WoW.

All you haters need to understand how many billionaires are in the world, and find out HOW LITTLE 15 bucks is in 2013.

You have a point... but then times like ICC come around where you get 5+ months of nothing new. 75 dollars to sit with the wow player base? So not worth it.

[Jessicka]

I wasn't the one saying I would quit. Just explaining why people would wait until now to quit.

That said, my "resistance" to quitting just got lowered by this announcement. If I have to deal with F2P "mechanics" might as well play a F2P game. GW2 has a Mac client coming up ...

I'd like to know why. As I already pointed out above, TCG stuff was around long before Rob Pardo made that statement; the cash purchases we had at that point when he made that statement were more exclusive and a lot more expensive. How is their making those things more readily available, and cheaper, making it worse?

[Deleted]

After reading a lot of pages about this issue and thinking about it a lot lately i have decided to make blizzard know that this has crossed all limitis by unsubbing.
Here i will try to share my thoughts and facts why i think we should show them that this is not OK.
1st i wanna say that i dissagree with all the ppl defending blizzard and saying that this is ok because they lost money, the whole point of WoW and why there wasent a wow killer so far was the fact that when u enter WoW u can forget ur real life and be a virtual hero and dont get upset that u have a crappy job or live in a 3th world country or all that stuff. Even if ur life outside sucked u can still be a top notch player and feel good about it. I personaly started to lose that feeling long ago (3+years now)
Now the reality lets go into some basic maths and see how the real picture looks like : lets take a sample in the worst case scenario because a lot of ppl speculate that wow has alot less subs that the actual sayed number, lets say that they have 5 mil subs, each sub is 15 dolars
so that makes a total of 75 milion dolars/m from subs raw cash. now take worst case scenario 25 % of that for taxes and 10% for power and new PC and all this type of stuff u still have 48,75 mil dolars/m income wich totals in 585 mil dolars an year income from subs. now lets say blizzard has a team of 2000 developers wich imo is HIGLY skeptical but lets just guess it wildly and they have a salary of 60 k dolars and year, that totals of 120 milion for salary for this ppl, lets say u need to pay salary for 1000 GM - > another 60 mil and 1000 random staff wich is doing random shit like biling etc another 60 mil, so in total 240 mil for salaries, lets say that they need 50 mil to organize blizzcon or whatnot ->290 mil. From this point on i cant realy guess whats so needed to make a game but lets say another 100 mil for random expenses->390 mil wich leaves over 200 mil for whatever realy (my guess is ferarri and yachts).
So in my personal view i find an additional fee to the game greedy and not nessacery and it steals away the core plus of wow -> player equality in start.
Remember that all this numbers do NOT include the price of the actual game and the additional revenue from pain services wich are higly overpriced aswell(specialy since they are fully automated)
Anyway that was 1 of the things that i find unjustice, now the second one are the actual ingame features. I cant remember the last time that i actualy got excited about a world event and possible rewards from it. An WoW anniversary. A cool achievement reward that isnt a rework/repaint (with a few exceptions mainly pet battle i think that dev team is quite good).
Now i dont know about u guys but i feel like having 1 instance comming out every 6 months and possibly a dungeon doesnt realy keep a supposed staff of 2000 developers busy im quite sure that ammoth of ppl in the time frame could possible develop several games.
The reason for my unsubbing was a mix of the things above and the fact that i feel milked every time i log into wow. I litteraly feel like 1% of my money is actualy used to make this game more balanced and exciting and the rest of it goes to the bosses or whoever in blizzard to make their dream life come true. I can with a lot of sadness say that i think the ppl who are incharge of WoW arent gamers themself and do not care at all what happens to their BEST product.

[Duster505]

Argues about principles knowing Blizzard is a company based upon making money. Legit.

If the principle is just making money then fine... just dont act like it doesn't break the principles that WOW was built on in the first place.

We chose to go with the subscription-based model instead of that approach. We've taken the approach that we want players to feel like it's a level playing field once they're in WoW. Outside resources don't play into it -- no gold buying, etc. We take a hard line stance against it. What you get out of microtransactions is kind of the same thing and I think our player base would feel betrayed by it. I think that's something else you have to decide on up-front instead of implementing later.

--Rob Pardo, Blizzard's Senior Vice President of Game Design (2/20/2008)

Rob Pardo said it himself. The player base have every right to feel betrayed now that they change the basic principle of the game.

[Nephili]

It may be a business move, but it is not a smart one. It is incredibly short-sighted, and was clearly pushed through by someone who knows little of the trends of the Gaming industry. No game with a mandatory subscription has *EVER* found success with microtransactions, and the only reason it hasn't proven to be a bigger issue with Pets and Mounts, frankly, is because most players don't seem that involved with them.

Can't do links. google "Celestial steed Profit".

>2 Million in 4 hours.
>Most players not that invovled.

>Cinder Kitten Raises More Than $2.3 Million
>Most players not that involved.

[Deleted]

Are you guys, defending blizzards moves toward micro transactions, really still wearing those rose tinted glasses?
Do you really think Blizzard puts all the money they milk out of us for:

horrendously overpriced character services, monthly fees, "vanity stuff" on the store,
expansion packs (basically bigger patches +artificially held back features for more $)

into efforts to make the game in any way better? With a revenue of a WoW one could pay several studios to develop more than just one content patch every 4-6 months.

Like BUFUXX stated some posts before, at least a third of WoW's revenue is to cram it into the butts of the executives of atvi/blizz.
Following Duster505's quote on Rob Pardo I think micro transactions are a move of the executives of atvi/blizz and not the dev team itself.

[Zenny]

Any person that complains about having a cash shop for optional cosmetic items is a total loon.

As long as the base game is unaffected, why should you care? Cash mounts/pets have been in forever and MoP hasn't suffered for it.

[Deleted]

As long as it doesnt give anyone an advantage in either PvE or PvP and is just for vanity stuff, i'm fine with blizzard store.

But it does. Bonus to lesser charm of good fortune, is a bonus to PVP. But what people, and even i have to reconise. Blizzard does not give a flying shit about us, As long as just 100 people buy something each mouth, they will make money, and they could care less about how fair it is

[Duster505]

Can't do links. google "Celestial steed Profit".

>2 Million in 4 hours.
>Most players not that invovled.

>Cinder Kitten Raises More Than $2.3 Million
>Most players not that involved.

Its still very short sighted and based on profit rather than real vision for the long term game development. Blizzard is breaking the principle of what WOW was built on. When it happened is always up for debate. But there is no debate that by adding XP boosts and small lucky charms is breaking the basics of having every player on equal grounds. If they charge for cosmetic stuff is also always questionable since cosmetic is also about fun and enjoyment. Would you say that Blizzard is true to the basic principle of equal rights if they add new emotes in store? Is that much different than the seesaw? What about new player models? Would you find it acceptable to have them in store.

These are the question that NO WOW players should even have to ask or answer. WOW IS a sub based game - and as such is has the obligation to be true to the core of giving everyone that pays for the game the same chance to enjoy it. If you pay more... you are breaking the basic principle and the subscribers have every right to point that out and walk away.

The game CAN NOT stay true to the subscribers and still charge extra for in game items that change ANY of the experience. Thats just a fact.

[xindykawai]

as long as its stay cosmetic, i dont really care, since i pay for the content, not really for my player to look good (aka transmorg on store vs raid content)

[Duster505]

Any person that complains about having a cash shop for optional cosmetic items is a total loon.

As long as the base game is unaffected, why should you care? Cash mounts/pets have been in forever and MoP hasn't suffered for it.

MOP has the lowest amount of subs of any WOW expansion. Unless you have detailed information why ppl quit... you have no idea if the web based items are part of the reason why ppl lost faith in what Blizzard is doing with WOW atm.

- - - Updated - - -

as long as its stay cosmetic, i dont really care, since i pay for the content, not really for my player to look good (aka transmorg on store vs raid content)

Your opinion is as valid is mine. Just doesn't make yours more or less valid than mine.

[Durandro]

MOP has the lowest amount of subs of any WOW expansion. Unless you have detailed information why ppl quit... you have no idea if the web based items are part of the reason why ppl lost faith in what Blizzard is doing with WOW atm.

Actually, its known why there are low subs. China. A huge number of Chinese players unsubscribed recently, either due to changes in the law (which is common in China, it also happens in between TBC and Wrath for them with the game being offline for near a year) or because there's a huge number of domestically created Free To Play titles available there now.

Subs outside of China have remained relatively constant.

[whywhatwhowhenhow]

as long as its stay cosmetic, i dont really care, since i pay for the content, not really for my player to look good (aka transmorg on store vs raid content)

I think that people misunderstand the word 'content'. It's not just what you can actually do in the game, it's everything contained in the game.

World English Dictionary
content1 (ˈkɒntɛnt)

—n
1. (often plural) everything that is inside a container: the contents of a box.

So yes, buying anything from the store that is used in the game is paying extra for content.

[Jessicka]

But it does. Bonus to lesser charm of good fortune, is a bonus to PVP. But what people, and even i have to reconise. Blizzard does not give a flying shit about us, As long as just 100 people buy something each mouth, they will make money, and they could care less about how fair it is

I don't think lesser charms will fly as a micro transaction, it's essentially gambling for which there are very strict laws in many countries; especially in relation to minors.

[Durandro]

This quote should be in every major article about WoW mictrotransaction so people would know how Blizzard has changed and that it's not worth investing money into their games anymore.

He's not talking about cosmetic items. That's clear from the words 'level playing field' and 'no gold buying'.

So sorry, you can't use that quote against them.

[Duster505]

Actually, its known why there are low subs. China. A huge number of Chinese players unsubscribed recently, either due to changes in the law (which is common in China, it also happens in between TBC and Wrath for them with the game being offline for near a year) or because there's a huge number of domestically created Free To Play titles available there now.

Subs outside of China have remained relatively constant.

Not in the last earnings call. They admitted its also lowering in US/EU. Just not as much as in ASIA.