WoW is a subscription game - why employ scummy F2P tactics?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

It doesn't hurt the game directly - it hurts the players.

Nothing makes me want to play WoW less than seeing friends neglect their real lives to chase limited time achievements just because Blizzard arbitrarily (and without a warning) decided to nuke Deepwind Gorge.

timed exclusivity is the one thing on the list id say actually does hurt the game.

[Wilfire]

Here's the problem with these threads: Having worked in the industry for over 15 years I can tell you with a fair amount of certainty why this happens from a business standpoint. Unfortunately then people come out of the woodwork and accuse me of being a shill or a "Blizzard White Knight" even though I am not defending the practice, but explaining why it exists.

Ultimately it of course comes down to money, and the fact that publicly traded companies have exactly 1 job: maximizing profit.

Blizzard was founded as a company of geeks making games for other geeks. If they can't stick to their original vision and put games first and money second, they should drop the name and call themselves Cash Grab the Company. What they're doing right now is completely fucking disrespectful to the original team that created the Warcraft IP.

[McNeil]

Because they can get away with it. The gaming community has let these practices gone unpunished for far to long, now its the norm for most new games to be riddled with them. One of the main reasons that I gave up on modern gaming and will only buy games from who I know that doesn't treat me like i'm made out of money.

Buying a game like Witcher 3 makes me feel like I am robbing them instead, which is actually a weird feeling. The game is about as expensive as most AAA games and has so much fun and engaging content, you can easily sink in 100+ hours while most games don't last longer than 8 hours. There are no microtransactions or anything, just very solid expansions.

As for WoW i'm strongly opposed of them using all of these practices. The store has no place in the game, and IMO its only been hurtful. It feels like all the best artists are fulltime on just designing everything on the store, and its obvious that every item has far more quality than nearly everything you can earn in-game. Having unique items in the store also loses its prestige since so many people will have them without having done any effort for it. The level boosts are also hurtful, I fully blame them for Blizzard not even bothering to revamp the old zones again.

[beanman12345]

FFXIV has a massive cash shop, they're a sub game.
Idk any other sub games to compare.

[Tyris Flare]

Character boosts hurt the game quite a bit tbh. Just think about it. Why should anyone play through the content of an expansion when they can just drop 60$ or whatever it costs and get to max level?

The time players spend leveling is like .01% of their total game time in an expansion. I think I took 12ish hours to level or something, and those characters will have many days played by the end of the xpack.

[Codah]

So that no lifers have things to bitch about on forums.

[Soon-TM]

Is anyone bitching about ff14s store at all? You know the one with a million cosmetics multiple types of boosts AND a cute catgirl and bunny race? You know since its like the only other big subscription MMO on the market.

FF14 forums are that way ======>

This is a forum about WoW, and no, other companies doing... um, questionable things doesn't mean that Blizzard is right by doing the same.

[Destriel]

Blizzard was founded as a company of geeks making games for other geeks. If they can't stick to their original vision and put games first and money second, they should drop the name and call themselves Cash Grab the Company. What they're doing right now is completely fucking disrespectful to the original team that created the Warcraft IP.

That Blizzard which you refer too has been long gone. Stop acting like the cash shop is hurting the game, there's nothing forcing you or anyone else to buy the stuff. If people want to buy it, it's their money and they have the right too.... or be like the smarter people and farm gold off people who don't know better and buy tokens which diverts someone else's money into your gain.

TLDR: Suck it up, quit whining over nothing.

[Cyanu]

I'm talking about utter crap like:
-store mounts
-character boosts
-"get this now before it's too late and we arbitrarily remove it"
-purchasable cosmetics
-whale targeting
-cute fox people

I mean yeah sure it allows Activi$$ion Bill$$ard to rake in more money but it damages the integrity of the game. You'd expect to see crap like this in games like League of Legends and all of those billions of mobile "clash of clashes" clones. Not a monthly-sub based game like WoW.

Listen up, Kotick. If you want to suck $$$ out of your hapless victims then by all means do so but do it in a separate mobile game that is clearly designed to bleed the whales dry. Leave WoW alone and let us have our fantasy RPG.

true but not sure how it matters...

why would i or you care whether someone else purchased a boost, or some silly mount?... it does not affect us in any way

[Temp1on2]

Character boosts hurt the game quite a bit tbh. Just think about it. Why should anyone play through the content of an expansion when they can just drop 60$ or whatever it costs and get to max level?

They don't hurt the game though. The levelling process outside of the current expansion was entirely redundant - which is why people wanted the option to skip it. Blizz acknowledged this hence why they are redesigning levelling in the next expansion.

[Lolites]

I'm talking about utter crap like:
-store mounts
-character boosts
-"get this now before it's too late and we arbitrarily remove it"
-purchasable cosmetics
-whale targeting
-cute fox people

I mean yeah sure it allows Activi$$ion Bill$$ard to rake in more money but it damages the integrity of the game. You'd expect to see crap like this in games like League of Legends and all of those billions of mobile "clash of clashes" clones. Not a monthly-sub based game like WoW.

Listen up, Kotick. If you want to suck $$$ out of your hapless victims then by all means do so but do it in a separate mobile game that is clearly designed to bleed the whales dry. Leave WoW alone and let us have our fantasy RPG.

considering you can get ALL of that, PLUS subscription for "free" via time commitment (gold farming) only, it doesnt hurt the game at all...

riddle me this, why arent you (and other anti-shop people) mad about the 500k white direhorn or three 333k frogs that you can buy ingame? it sure "hurts" the game as much as the shop mounts (hell, direhorn is MORE EXPENSIVE than shop mounts)?

(i let slide the fact that you ignore whole other side of argument (buying stuff and sub for token), bcs i know people like to ignore the side of arguments that doesnt support their theory, thats never gonna change)

[Donald Hellscream]

Because money, big businesses wants all the money, not just some but all of it.

[RenDefiance]

Meh:
-store mounts - If I like it I will buy it, can use gold to buy tokens for Bnet balance if you want, doesnt hurt me as most are dumb anyway. ymmv
-character boosts - Used it to boost a class I already had on a diff server and/or Other faction. Felt handy, Should only be available once you maxed at least 1 character. Normally they don't come at max level so you still need to level the current Xpac (I know we not get 120 boosts... but that is since we are halfway into BFA). Personally I feel neutral about this, and come Shadowlands, leveling will be a breeze, thus making boosts a less attactive proposition.
-"get this now before it's too late and we arbitrarily remove it" - If I wanted it I woulda had it by now... people tend to hurry towards stuff they are about to remove for some reason I can't fathom, surely if something is that amazing/good/great/awesome you would have worked towards it/earned it a long time ago, and at least they are giving a heads up these days!.
-purchasable cosmetics - See store mount comment.
-whale targeting - Dumb argument, whale targetting like in mobile games is a real practise, where you can keep purchasing the same item over and over again for more "competitive gain" that does not occur in wow.. I personally do not think Tokens fall in this category since they are not marketted in a predatory way. (there are videos on youtube where a mobile game dev explains just How they advertise and target people and a wow token does none of this.... there is no "you are below 100k gold, want to buy a token prompts or anything.... never mind the fact it's easy to earn)
-cute fox people - The dumbest of all reasons you cited as they will come part of the base game... no extra purchase needed...

edit: formatted the post dumb... sorry!

[jellmoo]

Blizzard was founded as a company of geeks making games for other geeks. If they can't stick to their original vision and put games first and money second, they should drop the name and call themselves Cash Grab the Company. What they're doing right now is completely fucking disrespectful to the original team that created the Warcraft IP.

They aren't that company anymore though. The people are gone. The company is now a completely different entity: a publicly traded multi-billion dollar a year video game publisher. They use the Blizzard name because it has value. If one day it's more valuable to use a different name they will. Until then, they use it as there is still value to that brand. They aren't going to rebrand themselves because you don't like it.

[Justpassing]

FFXIV has a massive cash shop, they're a sub game.
Idk any other sub games to compare.

That's ok beacuse catgirls.

[silverlightning]

Character boosts hurt the game quite a bit tbh. Just think about it. Why should anyone play through the content of an expansion when they can just drop 60$ or whatever it costs and get to max level?

people might be less likely to drop 60 bucks on a boost if they didn't have to slog through 110 levels to get to current content, that includes mobs with just a bit too much health and boring GCD rotations. 120 levels of that makes me want to fall asleep.

[taliey]

Damn shareholders

[tmamass]

I'm talking about utter crap like:
-cute fox people

#1 we have cow-, goat-, dog-, panda-people but fox-people are problem...
#2 fox-people are free and not f2p

[Schmilblick]

Because the whales are paying.

[Depakote]

people might be less likely to drop 60 bucks on a boost if they didn't have to slog through 110 levels to get to current content, that includes mobs with just a bit too much health and boring GCD rotations. 120 levels of that makes me want to fall asleep.

Leveling doesn't take long, the story for the most part is good not to mention a good way to earn easy gold & items for transmog.