Activision's push to get you to buy more WoW tokens is here

[kaminaris]

The whole manufactured outrage is ridiculous. No casual is ever getting the mount, to even get 2 million gold in BfA means that you aren't one, let alone 5 million. But what really gets me are the people that blame Blizzard for voluntarily buying 20+ tokens just to get a mount.

It's not manufactured that is for one. People are simply not as dumb as blizzard thought they would be.
Second, being casual have nothing to do with gold you have. Someone proficient at AH flipping could earn it in couple of months with near zero played time.
Third, even casuals could have multiple alts in WoD/Legion and amass milions of gold.
Fourth, people blame blizzard for:
1. Not announcing it will be limited at the start of expansion.
2. NOT ANNOUNCING IT AT ALL - that's absurd we had to catch them red-handed.
3. Removing it for zero reason, since there was no real reason - it's pretty obvious it was cash-grab.

[united]

No it's not a good thing. It's extremely bad thing. The whole point of collector things is to 'catch em all'. Not being able to complete everything feels bad. And it feels especially bad when that 1% looks awesome compared to 95% of garbage and 4% of cool stuff that are still obtainable.

There's no way anyone collects everything available in WoW, unless they've been playing since day one, do a bunch of content and haven't unsubbed for a single day since. This argument is invalid. BfA has been out for over a year, and only 3% of the playerbase had the brutosaur mount. Even if they weren't removing it, most people will never, ever own it.

[PedroloGeo]

They did the announcement what, yesterday?

Yes. The first moment is when more people go crazy about it. If after 3 or 4 days there has been no impact, it won’t have an impact in 3 months magically.

[kaminaris]

There's no way anyone collects everything available in WoW, unless they've been playing since day one, do a bunch of content and haven't unsubbed for a single day since. This argument is invalid. BfA has been out for over a year, and only 3% of the playerbase had the brutosaur mount. Even if they weren't removing it, most people will never, ever own it.

Your argument doesn't hold up. It is because of shit like this, new players are simply not coming to wow since more and more content is being unavailable.
Nobody gives a shit that you got something unique and time limited.
They do give a shit when they can't get it anymore.

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Any collector would surely recognise that is everything was easily attainable, or even attainable - that diminishes the value of having it. Absolutely no one is impressed by you wearing mythic uldir gear for example, because it's not hard to get - people are impressed by people using challenge mode gear, because it shows you did something relatively difficult at a different point in the game. If challenge mode armors hadn't existed, much less people would've bothered with them.

I get that you might want to 'catch em all' but if you didn't do everything in the game at the appropriate time to do that, tough.

And your other point is irrelevant because what looks 'awesome' and 'garbage' is completely subjective.

That is absolutely artificial "value of having it".
People are NOT impressed someone have challenge mode gear from mop. They are disheartened they will never be able to get it.
And for the record, I do have challenge modes done both from MoP/WoD. As well as ALL 36 mage towers. And still think this is stupid and drives new players off the game.

You are being absolutely delusional. Nobody gives a flying fuck what YOU have.

[Polarthief]

That is absolutely artificial "value of having it".
People are NOT impressed someone have challenge mode gear from mop. They are disheartened they will never be able to get it.
And for the record, I do have challenge modes done both from MoP/WoD.

You are being absolutely delusional. Nobody gives a flying fuck what YOU have.

This is 100% true. It's better if it's hard to obtain but still obtainable. Back in Vanilla when I was just a dumb kid, I was always like "wow look at that guy in epics, so cool!", knowing that I could eventually get there. It was a goal, something to look up to and eventually have and look back on how far I've come. Now if I look at all the CM sets I missed (I did get one set though), I'm like "Awesome. So glad I missed out on that shit for my new mains".

No one gives a shit about others having exclusive stuff. Desirability is only a thing when you can actually obtain the desirable thing, otherwise it turns into disheartenment, annoyment, etc.

[SirCowdog]

So lets turn your question around. How will blizzard make a proffit of this? sell a couple of tokens more, at the cost of a lot of player rage.....yeah nope....not even blizzard is THAT stupid. That is bethesda level stupid.

You described how Blizzard profits from this: Making it exclusive and exploiting FOMO. Players who might not have cared before, thinking they had unlimited time to earn the mount, now do not. And so they'll spend more time in the game trying to get it. In turn, people will buy/sell to them, stirring up more activity. The closer we get to the cutoff, the more action this will spark, eventually leading to a flurry of token sales in the last month/weeks.

And it costs them literally NOTHING to make this happen.

Stop thinking in overly simplistic terms. It's not JUST about a short-term spike of token sales. That's not even the goal. It's a long-term play.

[baskev]

You described how Blizzard profits from this: Making it exclusive and exploiting FOMO. Players who might not have cared before, thinking they had unlimited time to earn the mount, now do not. And so they'll spend more time in the game trying to get it. In turn, people will buy/sell to them, stirring up more activity. The closer we get to the cutoff, the more action this will spark, eventually leading to a flurry of token sales in the last month/weeks.

And it costs them literally NOTHING to make this happen.

Stop thinking in overly simplistic terms. It's not JUST about a short-term spike of token sales. That's not even the goal. It's a long-term play.

Dude lets agree to disagree.....

But agian...you go from the assumption that people spend ages saving up for this mount. If they really wanted it...they would have save a lot of it up already. And again if its their choice....its their choice to spend money on it. They do not have to.

Yes, and its cost them no money to give everyone the famed title. It takes no money away from them to give everyone the invincible mount etc etc

And i am thinking simply??? your the one only thinking: blizzard is bad....blizzard is only in it for the money..... And long term token sales....again....people know how much a token costs. and how much they need to buy it. If you need 2mil at the end. and a token sells for 200k...you know you need 10 tokens ( aka 200 dollars) to buy it. If you want it...you buy it.
And before you say: but people who are saving for it...can not buy it intime....
There are many mounts that you can buy/need help with getting. 1 gaint dinosaur is worth a couple of boost runs in raids for mounts + frog mounts + warframe from argus and you still have money left.
There will always be expensive mounts. So people will always need a lot of gold to buy them. We do not hear people be mad about that...do we?

And there are more ways to get gold. If people really want this mount and start saving up for it right now. They could farm some of the more expensive mounts to sell on the AH to make the money. And its not removed from the game btw...if people still want it...they can go on the BMAH...i god a very expensive mount by luck for less then 50k...

People like you are mad...because the exclusive expensive farrari goes out of production. If you did not have it, and could not afford it. Why are you mad? because you might earn enough money sometime in the future? or win the lottery??

[Caus]

If buying tokens is your only way of getting this mount, then tough luck. The rest of the 99.9% of the community that doesnt care about the mounr, doesnt care about your collectorissues either.

[rhorle]

if only it didn't exist as video by what is possibly most known gaming news domain, or many other

One of the most overpaid does not mean he is the most overpaid. The very source you use to prove your claim also has EA as being more overpaid at 371 times the average salary. Activision Blizzard CEO is only 306 times. The source IGN pulls from lists Activision Blizzard as 45 out of 100. The list is also odd because EA makes more and has a bigger excess but is 98 out of 100. https://www.asyousow.org/report/the-...ppendix-a-2019

But this is all irrelevant to anything. CEO's make a lot of money at larger corporations. Big deal.

[SirCowdog]

Yes, and its cost them no money to give everyone the famed title. It takes no money away from them to give everyone the invincible mount etc etc

You just compared two very different things. Giving every player invincible would harm Blizzard, if only in a minor way. Players still log in every week to farm for that mount. Giving it to everyone takes away a reason to log in.

Conversely, moving the brutosaur to the BMAH creates MORE activity over the following year. A time frame in which Blizzard knows things will be slow, with nothing new releasing in their other titles. So they focus on maximizing as much as possible in WoW.

People like you are mad...because the exclusive expensive farrari goes out of production. If you did not have it, and could not afford it. Why are you mad? because you might earn enough money sometime in the future? or win the lottery??

Ad hominem won't help you. I could buy the damn dinosaur 10 times over. Keep your arguments on topic, and not aimed at me.

Why am I mad? Because the game has slowly been turning to shit over the past few expansions, fueled mainly by a business practice aimed directly at people who are too stupid or uninformed to recognize when they're being milked. Or worse, don't care about the effects of their spending habits on the long-term health or quality of the game.

[kaminaris]

I have every DPS mage tower, (don't tank or heal) and exactly 0 challenge mode sets, simply because I never bothered doing it in MoP. Do I think having those sets would be cool? Yup. Did I earn them? Nope. It's really very simple

Like I said, nobody cares what YOU have. People want to earn them themselves.

Like I said, having not even 1% of your games cosmetics being exclusive to people who did things at the time - is completely fine. You can call me delusional, but that doesn't prove anything beside the fact you easily label those you disagree with.

Your delusion is thinking that it's good for game to have exclusive content because somehow that makes players stay in game. No, unfortunately for you, being special snowflake is not good for game mostly because new players starting now, have no chance to get cool stuff anymore.

Saying 1% is absolutely a lie. Out of hundreds of weapon transmogs, maybe 5-10% looks good, rest is either: recolor, shitsticks.

I don't expect anyone to care what I have, I imagine my account is fairly unremarkable relatively speaking. I personally do think it's pretty cool seeing unobtainable shit, then again I'm okay with people having things I don't

Stop looking at things from your narrow perspective and broaden horizons. There are various people playing this game or games in general, and there is one group that cares = collectors.

I disagree. I really, really wish I had bothered getting some of the tank mage towers because I occasionally tank now and some of them are sweet - but I wasn't a tank at all in Legion so I missed it. It doesn't dishearten me at all, it makes me feel like I absolutely will make sure to pick up any cosmetics that might disappear in the future. I'm not so entitled to think I deserve something just because I like it now, but that's just me

It has NOTHING TO DO WITH ENTITLEMENT. Like zero, none, null. This word shouldn't be even used here.
Nobody wants mage towers for free and blizzard has technology to make it difficult again.
Cutting it "just because" is elitism, wanting it back as real challenge is NOT entitlement.

[Lime]

So, when is Blizzard removing my raid skins and mounts from being obtained? You know, the shit that actually takes effort to get while current?

Oh right, Blizzard is better off slapping a limited time tag on random items and mounts. The fact that they target such low effort items, while leaving the elite items untouched is evidence of this being FOMO.

Not everyone is playing right now and not everyone is going to hear of this news. This only screams "Please subscribe before you miss out on one of the few good things this expansion brought". It's a cashgrab at the expense of the playerbase. People will subscribe, like they do every expansion, just to grab some items before they're gone. Blizzard knows this and that's why they do this. It will happen in Shadowlands as well.

Blizzard is going to make bank off people resubscribing due to this, even if only temporarily.
Blizzard is going to make bank off people buying tokens to buy the mount. While not everyone is going to shell out the full $500+ for the mount, plenty will buy tokens to "fill the gap".

The cost of doing this? Their credibility, which they're fully aware of the fact that they shot that a long time ago. So it shouldn't be surprising to anyone. This is the bread and butter which Blizzard operates under. Go get the mount if you want, but stop acting surprised that this happens almost every expansion.

[prwraith]

I have every DPS mage tower, (don't tank or heal) and exactly 0 challenge mode sets, simply because I never bothered doing it in MoP. Do I think having those sets would be cool? Yup. Did I earn them? Nope. It's really very simple

I too enjoy being cucked out of gear because I couldn't get 5 people together during a very specific timeframe for wow to perform at a decent level. And or just happened to not be playing.

Who doesn't love a game full of shit you can't get anymore, that I pay for every month. Toxic as fuck.

[kaminaris]

I genuinely think you're missing my point now, never mind. How can you tell me to stop looking at things from a narrow perspective when what you're saying is just as much opinion as what I'm saying? You're being a hypocrite. And how can I be a special snowflake when I'm literally saying I DON'T have certain things? Jesus dude, please use your head if you want to come at me

And again, talking about how things look is silly because that's subjective.

I am looking at wow from at least 5 perspectives: Heroic raider who didn't want to push more, Mythic raider who wanted to climb as high as possible, Mythic raider who couldn't care less anymore, Collector who like to catch em all, roleplayer, complete casual who logs in once a week, pvp player oh and addon developer/user.

And guess what, not matter which angle I look at, it doesn't hurt game and players to have items available all the time. BUT on some of those angles, especially collector it does fucking hurt. And by hurting the game I mean slowly bleeding out playerbase without any means to attract new players.

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Blizzard is going to make bank off people resubscribing due to this, even if only temporarily.
Blizzard is going to make bank off people buying tokens to buy the mount. While not everyone is going to shell out the full $500+ for the mount, plenty will buy tokens to "fill the gap".

The cost of doing this? Their credibility, which they're fully aware of the fact that they shot that a long time ago. So it shouldn't be surprising to anyone. This is the bread and butter which Blizzard operates under. Go get the mount if you want, but stop acting surprised that this happens almost every expansion.

Yeah well, until the moment people will say "screw this" and have massive sub drop, when it happens it won't stop. Last 2 expansions we had extreme exodus of raiders. Like, I met 3 people who came back for the game and only 2 new people while about 40-60 stopped playing.

[Dracullus]

I saw last Taliesin video about this topic. Of course it got zero critique, usual "if you care about this, you would get this already" defend. And so far no one came with logical explanation why the hell they would remove it in the first place, other than cash in from panicking people.

[Lime]

Yeah well, until the moment people will say "screw this" and have massive sub drop, when it happens it won't stop. Last 2 expansions we had extreme exodus of raiders. Like, I met 3 people who came back for the game and only 2 new people while about 40-60 stopped playing.

The reality is that few people are saying "screw this" and unsubbing due to changes like these. Those who quit are easily offset by the people resubbing and buying tokens for the item.

[kaminaris]

The reality is that few people are saying "screw this" and unsubbing due to changes like these. Those who quit are easily offset by the people resubbing and buying tokens for the item.

Not really, like ghostcrawler once said, people leave this game mostly because their friends are no longer playing or they dont have time anymore. Anyone who leaves for good can trigger chain reaction.

Blizzard is doing this desperate cash grabs because playerbase gets lower each year.

[Lime]

Not really, like ghostcrawler once said, people leave this game mostly because their friends are no longer playing or they dont have time anymore. Anyone who leaves for good can trigger chain reaction.

Blizzard is doing this desperate cash grabs because playerbase gets lower each year.

I never said that people aren't quitting. I said many aren't quitting over this. It's completely unreasonable to think they are. This will not cause a massive sub drop.

People who quit the game are typically quitting because they don't find the content enjoyable.

[Ooid]

I saw last Taliesin video about this topic. Of course it got zero critique, usual "if you care about this, you would get this already" defend. And so far no one came with logical explanation why the hell they would remove it in the first place, other than cash in from panicking people.

As usual T&E give a shit take. "If you don't already have it then get over it. You weren't going to get it anyway if you haven't bought it yet."
There is zero gameplay related reasons to remove the mount other than they're regretting giving players a way to access the AH from anywhere you can mount. The mount isn't a prestige reward from doing current content so removing it from vendors and putting it onto the BMAH is dumb.

[kaminaris]

I never said that people aren't quitting. I said many aren't quitting over this. It's completely unreasonable to think they are. This will not cause a massive sub drop.

People who quit the game are typically quitting because they don't find the content enjoyable.

I never said people will quit because of this. But removing stuff doesnt attract new players, it does the opposite while it may discourage existing players from playing more. This single decision may not be enough, but you know, dissatisfaction grows each time dey pull a stunt like this.