Blizzard Employ "Forced Scarcity/Temp Availability" Tactics on Digital Goods Now...

[beelgers]

I don't get the big deal really. All businesses do "limited time offers!". Doesn't make them evil. Just a business. Its not like they're selling a new rank of Frostbolt or something for a limited time. Just a couple cosmetic items. Not like cosmetic items acquired in game don't go away sometimes too.

Blizz has done a lot of dumb crap with their design of the game over the last 4-5 years. I'm going to save my rage for that rather than misplace it on this.

[stigz]

This shouldn't really be a surprise. With the introduction of the digital store it's just common sense they would employ marketing strategies to fluctuate the values of what's in that store... just like any other store.

The time to bring out the pitchforks was when they first introduced it, but nobody could see past the harmlessness of buying a cute little pet that supported cancer research or whatever.

Some people are missing the point... it isn't the prices or the fluctuation of said prices of the store (or "just don't buy them"). It's that it even exists at all.

What this marketing strategy shows me is that they're not above eventually introducing weapon transmog sales etc. and then eventually actual gear with stats that could be BiS. Why wouldn't they? That would be a huge profit. And that's all they're about now. And that's supposed to be "okay" ?

I don't care what people say.. but this isn't the Blizzard I came to love or want any part in supporting anymore. There's no more passion or love for the players enjoyment or for the game anymore. It's all about financial analytics and profit margins. Uldir will be my last Cutting Edge, and then I'll be moving on with my life until they return to their philosophical roots.

[Nerovar]

it simply about being decent human beings and not some sad sacks of hate and shit.

Looks like the humanity gene pool improved with this. Survival of the fittest in its finest.
Traveling in some third world country filled with lawless riff-raff, you don't even need to be a woman to find yourself with a knife in your back for a couple of dollars, being woman is a bonus intensive there.

Feel free to visit your tourist paradise anytime, the less likes of you we have around the better.

Please teach us more about how to be a decent human being!

[Deleted]

I don't get the big deal really. All businesses do "limited time offers!". Doesn't make them evil. Just a business. Its not like they're selling a new rank of Frostbolt or something for a limited time. Just a couple cosmetic items. Not like cosmetic items acquired in game don't go away sometimes too.

Blizz has done a lot of dumb crap with their design of the game over the last 4-5 years. I'm going to save my rage for that rather than misplace it on this.

If people are "raging" about this they are dumb.
For me personally its just a case of "i can see what you are doing a mile away, you cant fool me"
Im not mad though.

The problem here is that this are VIRTUAL items that take no space and waste ZERO resources to maintain selling them.
This business tactic in a virtual scenario makes it 100% obvious that is a "tactic". A business tactic.

And thats all

If this was SONY saying "guys we will stop selling Playstations 3 as of next month"
OBSOLUTELY NO ONE will get mad at that. No one!

Because its a old product wasting space and resources to the company.
We actually feel bad and sorry for the company ont this case.

In Blizzards case of this bundle......the fact that is 100% transparent that is a business tactic makes it cringy. Because its VIRTUAL dude. It takes no space or resources.

[Sosuke Aizen]

My point is they're using the "artificial scarcity" and "temporary availability" to trigger the "Fear of Missing Out" reaction in consumers so they'll leap on the purchase without thinking about it.

"Oh no! I may never see these items again (or will I?)" (done tongue-in-cheek, because they put that disclaimer up there... they're never going to turn down an opportunity to sell them again if it presents itself)

The sad part is that I already had all of "soon to be gone" items

- - - Updated - - -

If people are "raging" about this they are dumb.
For me personally its just a case of "i can see what you are doing a mile away, you cant fool me"
Im not mad though.

The problem here is that this are VIRTUAL items that take no space and waste ZERO resources to maintain selling them.
This business tactic in a virtual scenario makes it 100% obvious that is a "tactic". A business tactic.

And thats all

If this was SONY saying "guys we will stop selling Playstations 3 as of next month"
OBSOLUTELY NO ONE will get mad at that. No one!

Because its a old product wasting space and resources to the company.
We actually feel bad and sorry for the company ont this case.

In Blizzards case of this bundle......the fact that is 100% transparent that is a business tactic makes it cringy. Because its VIRTUAL dude. It takes no space or resources.

To be completely fair, these assets do take space - not much but they do. I guess business is business. For the people that will or did buy it, that's their audience. The ones that are pissed off at this are not the targets of this campaign.

[bigbleach]

https://www.wowhead.com/news=289324/...u-later-bundle

This limited-time bundle includes all pets, mounts, and helms that are about to enter hibernation in the Blizzard Archive on January 6, 2019. Get them all now, in one fell swoop, before it’s too late!*

Items in the See You Later Bundle will enter hibernation on January 6, 2019 and will no longer be available in the Blizzard® Shop or in-game shop (until further notice). These items may return at some point in the future.

This is a dynamic bundle, which means the bundle’s total price will be reduced if you already own one or more of the items this bundle contains. Log in to see your price.

I am in utter awe of the tone deafness here.

Ends a week after the end of the Q4 financial quarter.

I think they are items that do not sell well, so they are making a bundle for them. I see only 2 that could have potentially still sold well, which are :1 the bat 2: lil XT. The others are all kinda meh and nobody cares about the helms. They were hot items when they were released but I rarely see people using them. They may be trying to clean up clutter from the store. Idk. Or they could be pushing for the last bit of sales they can get before the end of the quarter. This deal brought the wow token up to 135k, which is the highest I've seen it all expac. So it seems a lot of people were interested in the deal. I'm considering it since I have millions and millions of gold. 3 tokens and 5 bucks IRL or 4 tokens to get 1 good mount, one decent, 1 trash, a few xmog helms, and 1 decent pet isn't too shabby for what would be free to me or at most cost me 5 dollars. I really don't get the hate. You do realize their end goal is to make money... right? I mean, they don't do this from the bottom of their hearts for gamers... If anything, this bundle has made more people happy than it pissed people off. Blizzard literally can do nothing right. All wrong always lol.

[Deleted]

Szechuan Sauce was not a digital item and it never cost anything, my dude. This might be the worst analogy anyone has every come up with.

Amazing that people still don't get it:

You are not paying Blizzard for digital items. You are paying for access to services.

Try reading the EULA you agreed to sometime, it should be pretty enlightening.
Long story short: Your account, and everything that is on it, including all "your" characters, titles, achievments, mounts, whathaveyou, is, was, and forever will be, the sole property of Activision Blizzard. No amount of money you throw at it will change that.

The money you pay them, is a SERVICE FEE, that provides you with access.
Access to the game itself (aka. Gametime), access to certain cosmetic items within the game, access to certain pets and mounts, access to certain special services (renames, transfers, etc.).

It's important that you understand the fundamental legal difference between a service fee and a buying price.

When you pay for access to a certain mount or cosmetic xmogg head in WoW, the transaction is no different, legally speaking, than you paying an airlines transport fee, or putting stamps on a postcard...you pay for a SERVICE, not for GOODS. There is no change of ownership involved!. You don't own the plane you buy a ticket for, and you don't own the post office for putting stamps on your letters.

So all this talk of "digital items" is nonsensical in the first place, because the word "item" implies ownership, which implies a BUYERS TRANSACTION, which is not what is happening in WoW, and never has.

[shadowmatrix]

False equvilency.

1) They always bring it back during various promotional times.
2) It's an actual physical product.
3) Being a physical product means distributing costs.
4) Limited stock means once the shipment is sent they don't require back up units, this lowers cost.
5) by keeping it on rotation, it stays an item people will want every year during the promotion.

You're comparing apples to racecars.

No I'm comparing sales tactics which are basically the same regardless of what your selling. Here is limited time cereal, limited time car, limited time clothing, limited time digital items, same concept goes into all of them which is try to sell people things based on company manipulated limited stock. It isn't new and it isn't evil.

[Flurryfang]

Yes, because this is a traditional store with limited shelf space. Even if I were to lend credence to your idea that it's cluttered or whatever, they could have just as easily put the old stuff in a different tab and called it something that means old stuff. Don't be obtuse about why they did this.

Even with more tabs, you are making the menu cluttered, filling more and more space on your screen. Items that are not selling, are just obscuring the items that people actually want, so it is obvious to remove items that are not currently selling.

Again, this is only a problem if you are a player who would actually want these items and i am sure, that Blizzard is proberly using more money on server space than they are actually getting through the sale of 3-4+ year old mounts and items.

It will also proberly create more value for players who already have them, as they will become an exclusive item for them. That is proberly also a thing that pushes for the removal of the old items.

- - - Updated - - -

Amazing that people still don't get it:

You are not paying Blizzard for digital items. You are paying for access to services.

Try reading the EULA you agreed to sometime, it should be pretty enlightening.
Long story short: Your account, and everything that is on it, including all "your" characters, titles, achievments, mounts, whathaveyou, is, was, and forever will be, the sole property of Activision Blizzard. No amount of money you throw at it will change that.

The money you pay them, is a SERVICE FEE, that provides you with access.
Access to the game itself (aka. Gametime), access to certain cosmetic items within the game, access to certain pets and mounts, access to certain special services (renames, transfers, etc.).

It's important that you understand the fundamental legal difference between a service fee and a buying price.

When you pay for access to a certain mount or cosmetic xmogg head in WoW, the transaction is no different, legally speaking, than you paying an airlines transport fee, or putting stamps on a postcard...you pay for a SERVICE, not for GOODS. There is no change of ownership involved!. You don't own the plane you buy a ticket for, and you don't own the post office for putting stamps on your letters.

So all this talk of "digital items" is nonsensical in the first place, because the word "item" implies ownership, which implies a BUYERS TRANSACTION, which is not what is happening in WoW, and never has.

I can sell my account for some amount of money. Wups, it just became a good i have.

[Gaidax]

Let's be real, they are not doing this to free up space, even I can see that, despite not having my panties in a twist raging and fainting over the whole thing.

They do this to sell otherwise old or simply unpopular stuff that barely sold anymore and they won't be really missing that either.

IMO, it's fine.

[PenguinChan]

Let's be real, they are not doing this to free up space, even I can see that, despite not having my panties in a twist raging and fainting over the whole thing.

They do this to sell otherwise old or simply unpopular stuff that barely sold anymore and they won't be really missing that either.

In other words, water is wet. I don't understand how anyone is upset about this - besides maybe Blizzard finally doing what every other company with microtransactions that are old as hell.

[Nymfomania]

If i was chasing pets or mounts i would grab this discount. Lot of the mounts are legit looking.

[Gasblossom]

Riding a shop mount is embarrassing. They should be paying players to ride them not charging for them.

[Byleth]

Riding a shop mount is embarrassing. They should be paying players to ride them not charging for them.

You can continue thinking whatever you like as I blow right past you on my fancy mount. No F's given.

[Gasblossom]

You can continue thinking whatever you like as I blow right past you on my fancy mount. No F's given.

Only rare mounts are cool and fun to see. A mount you buy just isn't, sorry

[rhorle]

Um... how is WoW in its current state 2 years of content? We only get one raid every 8 months if we're lucky, and that's about it... I know WoW has other content besides raids and stuff, but it is in no way 2 years worth of content...

The expansion cycle is 2 years (plus or minus but 2 for simplicity). If you subscribe for the entire cycle you have access to the content for 2 years. That doesn't mean every day of those two years you have new content. You are still paying for content. It is still a low cost investment if you play the game a lot. You do not need new content all the time in order to still enjoy the game.

Of course people that are jaded or don't feel like loging in will have a lower value to the cost of the game. It might not be worth it. However it is still a low cost compared to other entertainment products.

[bloodmoth13]

Imagine the rage they'd get if they just pulled those items from the shop with no notice or sale. They're old items, probably not selling well, and they want to get rid of them to replace with something that might do better. The "See you later" bundle is basically their clearance sale.

Clearance sale? you make it sound like digital items are stock and they actually need to clear room for something. Digital items can be replicated at zero cost, they are as abundant as it gets, this forces scarcity is a devious trick to make them seem more valuable than they are.

This isnt even a free to play game, you pay subscription costs, having the cash store is already sleazy enough without these tactics.

[Checkt]

Oh no. Evil blizzard, something activision. /Thread.

repeating cus people kept commenting after the thread ended

[Deleted]

"See you later"

Probably not, in all fairness, Blizz.

[Byleth]

Only rare mounts are cool and fun to see. A mount you buy just isn't, sorry

Well, good thing that's just your opinion.

Personally I prefer a mount that matches the aesthetic of the toon I'm playing over something super rare for the sake of it.