Well it's good to see the keyboard activists in full effect. Doing the laziest, most asinine thing they could think of off the top of their heads and calling it justice while making no difference.
"Terror, darkness, power? The Forsaken crave not these things; the Forsaken ARE these things."
Except it won't. People aren't going to be conditioned Pavlovian-style against cash shop items because they were booted from groups. All it's going to do is sour them to you, not to Blizzard or the cash shop. To think otherwise is to afford far too much import to what some random douchebag booting you from the group has on someone.
Be seeing you guys on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA!
This...is true, but only because they're trying to recover from yet another massive drop in sales.Blizzard as a company is trying to make as much money as they possibly can, with as little work as possible.
A lot of High population and even full servers are transitioning down to low/medium pop. I know everyone should and loves to shove Moon Guard under the rug, but it's been a full RP server for years, no matter the time. Now during peak times, it's only High population. Wyrmrest Accord, another high population RP server transitions to Medium population until peak hours in the evenings. Almost all the medium population servers are completely dead. And it's obvious that WoW is losing subscribers at an alarming rate. I'm not saying WoW is dying, just that it's in a decline right now.
As for people's speculations about why WoW is declining, it's not because of another MMO or video game or even completely Blizzard's fault. WoW is an old game that can really only defeat itself at this point. A lot of nostalgia, which kept old players playing, was removed for newer and faster content that doesn't resonate well with older players. Newer players are scared off by the massive amounts of grinding and overall boring and lackluster payoff at the endgame. It's a stale game, by this point. And no matter what they release, it will feel stale. We've been doing the exact same thing for years.
With this being said all this will do make you look like a jackass in addition to probably make the LFR/LFD tool to be modified thus making it even more harder removing the ones that are actually DO have an effect on the players I mean really people I've afked in fucking LFR and I just imagine OH THESE GROUP OF PEOPLE HAVE THAT SHIT TERRIBLE fanboy helm lets kick them. ''What about the person whos afk 99% of the time'' Fuck that he/she didn't buy that helm thus he/she deserves to stay err... that doesn't make sense
VOTE TO KICK the people who have the helm
WITCHHHHHHHHH
YOU HAVE BEEN REMOVED FROM THE GROUP
OUT
Justice is served
Okay; I read your post. This, "Where does this end? Where should the people opposed to such a path start to protest? When you deem that Blizzard has officially gone too far? Then it would be too late." is a slippery slope argument. Even though your question is obviously a rhetorical one, I will answer it anyway by repeating what I said earlier. The moment a microtransaction gives even 1 DPS, HPS, or EHP, I will be the first person to get out a pitch fork and condemn Blizzard. And the idea that it will somehow be "too late" is speculation on your part with no evidence to back it up. It's never too late to complain and get something changed when you're the one keeping something afloat. If complaining on the forums doesn't work, I will speak with my money and unsub if and when microtransactions provide an in game benefit.
Also, "Instead of Blizzard improving the quality of their game, to make more money, they throw items at the player base for a quick buck. That's why they are doing it, and that is the only reason, and you're letting them do it.
So, people opposed to the micro-transactions, aren't just against some Transmog Helmets, they are against Blizzard making a quick buck, rather than improving the quality of the game and bringing more subs t the game."
Making more money by improving the quality of the game and making more money by adding microtransactions are not mutually exclusive. The team that designs the helmets are not the same people responsible for programming the raids, or writing the story, or translating the game into other languages, or cleaning the office cubicles or anything else that a game company needs to make shit happen.
You realise that people getting kicked out of LFR/LFD wont change anything right? The people who bought it wont change their opinions next time because of that, if they like the item they will buy it. Blizzard wont suddenly stop selling stuff on the store because of a few kicks either. Basically its just being a dick because you disagree with someone else's view.... way to be a dick.
Neither one of us knows that. They could reconsider it, but they could just as easily continue it. It really depends on how many players get banned in the process. If only a few get banned and everyone stops, then it would more than likely be the latter. Keep in mind that the argument was based around if it became a huge deal as I doubt Blizzard would take action at less than 10 people doing it.
I don't see it as that, well at least, not just that. From what was said in this thread, people were getting upset that other players were obtaining items they couldn't. That's jealousy, maybe a little of it, maybe a lot.
My Gm just got a warning about 5min ago from something like this that happened in LFR. His repeated messages and kick of a player from LFR was deemed a form of harassment and will be followed by a 3-day ban if it happens again. It must be a touchy subject because he has said other things in LFR but only hours after we did LFR, he was contacted and warned.
It looks like Blizzard is taking this very seriously.
I agree, but it has turned to fact. Pets to mounts to transmog items, that's a slope no matter how you wish to dress up what the items are for. It started with an in game pet that did nothing, nothing at all but looked cool and counted towards and achievement, it then went to mounts, that did something for your character. It saved you in game currency and added towards an achievement.
Now it's gone to a Helmet, a costume item. The look of your characters in an RPG is one of the most important parts of a ROLE Playing Game. You play to improve your character including it's looks.
That right there is a slippery slope. Slippery slopes do not always have to boil down to an Armageddon, just an unwanted/unintended result. We don't need to determine where the slippery slope may go, just that it's there and has started and it really should be stopped now. Micro-transactions do not belong in a subscription based game, ever. Instead of trying to earn a quick dollar, the company should be working to improve the game's quality to bring back subscribers or bring in new subscribers.
I'm going to die laughing if Blizz started monitoring LFR chats for this sort of thing due to people in this very thread bragging about their antisocial behavior.
I doubt that's what happened, they probably noticed an assload of vote-kicks surging since the items released, but even so--be funny as hell if these people dug their own graves.
Be seeing you guys on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA!
No surprise there. It hits their bottom line. Which actually pisses me off no end that players can treat one another like crap on a repeated basis and Blizzard does very little about it other than to tell people to make reports. When it might affect their revenue they're likely to be all over it. Which is right. But it should have been right before as well.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
As for my answer to the topic, players feel a deep hatred and resent for something Blizzard said would never happen - Selling gear for real money. Although these add no special benefits, I think the deep hatred comes from the price tag. Instead of adding meaningful content that players would be satisfied with, they added a trio of helmets that's 15 dollars each.
That's a full month of game time and an extremely ridiculous charge for a useless product. It makes us think that Blizzard thinks we're all dumb cash cows to milk until we're dry and sheep to shear until they're completely bald. It's insulting, on some odd level. And you can protest by not buying a shit product, but regardless of your protest, people will still buy a damn product. In a way, showing that some of your fellows would pay for such a cheap, poorly constructed cash grab enrages you. Automatically you want to dissociate with that person to show that you're against this blatant milking. It's a normal human reaction to disassociate with people you think are doing wrong.
So am I against people being kicked? No.