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

[RedBrood]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfri.../#1f05bf634f10 there's the top google search.

And I even pointed out that the SWTOR model is predatory so I'm not sure why you felt the need to further talk shit about it. ESO's model is far better.

I should of pointed out, I was just bitching about SWTOR F2P in general. Mb dude.

[Sezh]

My entire post was tongue-in-cheeck. But you can't deny that the resemblance to scummy Chinese mobile games with cutesy anthropomorphic animals is there.

Yeah, fuck those.. What are they called? Taoren? Tauren? That's some furry shit right there. Back in my day we had Orcs and Humans, that was enough. Then Blizzard up and inserts some weird cow people into the horde from absolutely nowhere. It's an atrocity is what it is.

[Devilyaki]

What is wrong with cute fox people?

[TheRevenantHero]

Yes it is. What a nonsense argument

Viewing it as a completely separate game is ridiculous. I stand by my statement that it offers as much of a difference in gameplay as Diablo 3 Hardcore mode does in comparison to the standard game. Tell me how Classic differs enough from Modern WoW to be considered a completely different game.

[hyphnos]

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?

Why does it matter which part of the expansion content a player plays? If someone hates questing and levelling and likes max level content so the fuck what?

What if someone got to max level and never did a pet battle? Or a battleground? Or any other part of the game they hate?

The "content" of an expansion as far as questing/story goes is crap and it's why the can charge people to skip it (when the full boost becomes available).

But as far as it "hurting the game", that's horseshit. You can literally sit in Legion Dalaran and level from 110-120 with pet battles if you want. Is that "better" than paying to skip questing? What about dungeon or Bg levelling. All those allow skipping some part of the game.

The only thing the boosts hurts is the pocketbooks of the people who buy them.

At OP: Also agree that shit is scummy in a sub game, but it's not like it's a secret that that's how gaming companies work these days.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I like how you call them tactics as if this is a war.

Jus don't buy that shit, problem solved.

[Th3Scourge]

Viewing it as a completely separate game is ridiculous. I stand by my statement that it offers as much of a difference in gameplay as Diablo 3 Hardcore mode does in comparison to the standard game. Tell me how Classic differs enough from Modern WoW to be considered a completely different game.

Classic and retail are so far removed it's hard to even put them in the same category of games. Retail resembles more of an ARPG than it does an MMORPG

Different World
Different map
Different zones
Different classes
Different specs
Different Talents
Different abilities
Different professions
Different graphics
Different systems
Different raids
Different dungeons
Different story
Different game mechanics

[TheRevenantHero]

Classic and retail are so far removed it's hard to even put them in the same category of games. Retail resembles more of an ARPG than it does an MMORPG

Different World
Different map
Different zones
Different classes
Different specs
Different Talents
Different abilities
Different professions
Different graphics
Different systems
Different raids
Different dungeons
Different story
Different game mechanics

Literally the only thing accurate is graphics, talents, and....well...that's basically it. Everything else you listed is the exact same in Modern. Classic plays absolutely no different than Modern aside from using auto-attack way more.

[ping-pong]

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.

It pays off salaries, servers, marketing, etc. Thrre's nothing in there that you pay for that gives you any sort of edge over other players, so wth does it matter? Are you just generally a whiney, spoiled, "but mooom" person with nothing to do?

[Raisei]

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.

Not even sure what you consider scummy F2P tactics.

Store Mounts are a thing I tend to disagree with, but they don't hurt me or the game. I won't pay 25 € for a mount, other people might, but I don't care. As long as some of the coolest mounts are gotten by farming ingame stuff or achieving ingame goals (take the Bee and the Curve Mounts for example) I have no problem with that.

Boosts are just time savers. They do not enrich the game or detract from it. Some people will value the time they need for leveling enough to pay 60 € to get around it, others just grind the levels. Leveling takes a long time at the moment so for some people it is a reasonable choice. Personally the only boosts I used were the ones I got with the expansions. Now I got all classes at lvl 120 so I don't need more.

Removing stuff probably refers to the Bronto. I remain on the opinion that unless you need access to the AH every 5 minutes it is ludicrous to pay 5 million gold (which translate into litterally YEARS of sub time) for it. But people that do play the AH mainly do have this gold, so let them have something special. It again neither hurts me nor the game if there is one more or less Bronto.

Cosmetics are unclear, if you mean Race Changes and so on, then yes, you have a point. They are very expensive but it is my own fault that I have bought like 5 of them already. No one forced me to. I wanted to have my characters that I have used for years to be Void Elves, I could have easily leveled new ones, but I didn't want to.
However, other games like SWTOR charge you real money for even the services we get from the barber for a little gold. So unless you constantly feel the need to change your race this is not a big problem.

Vulpera have nothing to do with this at all.

See, generally I do not mind paying a little extra for this game. I spend like 12 € a month and play, what, like hundreds of hours every month, the cost for the amount of entertainment I get is very small. Normal single-player games cost around 60 € by now and can entertain you for maybe a month until you finish everything.
This does of course not mean that I throw all my money at Blizzard to buy their store empty, but if there is something I feel I want enough to pay for, I will.

It's always a choice, no one is taking that from me. There is no P2W in this game, if you believe there is, then you need to read up what it means.

[valky94]

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.

because in the last 15 years that wow has been a thing, the sub price has stayed the same (with some exceptions caused by local currency inflation), the dollar lost 36% of its value since wow launched, if blizzard kept rising the prices with the inflation todays sub would cost 20.5$ instead of 15$, so yea, they "need" aditional sources of income because blizzard is making less money per player in 2019 than they have been making in 2004

[munkeyinorbit]

Once again, someone doesn't understand the root problem.

Every person they have designing, modeling, or animating the store mounts is a person not working on the same for a raid, a boss, or even mounts we can earn in-game.

Someone doesn't understand capitalism. Those people making those imaginary in game mounts would not be making those imaginary in game mounts. They won't be making any raid assets. They won't be doing anything. There are already people doing that. There won't be more of them, content won't come out faster. It will come out at the same pace with the same amount of original assets for the same cost but there will be more unemployed people out there. These unemployed people will not have their salary to spend so other businesses in the area will have to lay off workers. That real estate agent. The guy that details cars. The girl from subway. There is a knock in effect. Maybe that girl from subway needs to turn to stripping because she can't afford tuition anymore. Maybe she gets hooked on drugs and dies of overdose. All because you dont understand capitalism and throw hissy fits when blizzard is doing exactly what it is ethically bound to do. Make as much profit as possible. If you don't like it, you come up with an idea that the market will spend their money on. I hear plenty of people complain but noone doing anything about it.0

[Djuntas]

You don't hafta buy anything.

Sure I don't, but if I wanna stay competitive with mounts....Your prolly just some 14k achieve point casual player, so you play the game differently compared to me.

[RaZz0r]

its simple really cause people keeps buying those things.
Blizzard is a company after all and the main goal of any company is to make money.
Why would they turn down essentially free profit even if less then like 10% of the player base.
Where to pay for these things they are still extremely profitable as they don't really cost much to make / maintain

[Daymanmb]

People who level normally don't know how to play half the time, little timmy having no idea whats going on doesn't change because he walked though 120 levels of easy leveling.

Yes it does, are you high? Its amplifies it dramatically....

[Blackmist]

You'll notice that none of this started until WoW plateaued and started to decline in late Wrath.

Thing is the investors like money. They don't like decline. If you can't get more players, then strap the addicted ones into the milking machine and see what you can get away with.

[froschhure]

Imagine you play for ehat you want, wi5hout cheaty gold?

[HumbleDuck]

Oh my, when did your ban got lifted?

nvm, you got banned again...

[Tiwack]

These are not the same nor as bad as each other in comparison. To me things like timed limited availability and artificial exclusivity content is the worst for a game asking for a monthly sub just to play it, let alone asking for more money every 2 years to upgrade the pack of content just to make it current and up to date.

[Seranthor]

If WoW switched to a F2P model akin to ESO I can guarantee they would both get far more players and make far more money from the cash shop.

If the numbers in front of Blizzard bore out what you are claiming, then Blizzard would be F2P already.

- - - Updated - - -

Your affordability argument is just conjecture, and anecdotal. Can you provide any data on wow sub cancellations and affordability? So now it's Blizz's responsibility to provide a free game? Maybe they should just get better jobs.

And yes, Classic is quite literally a separate game and a separate experience. Using D3 softcore and hardcore as an example is nonsense. I don't even know why you think that's comparable.

Blizzard have analysts, I'm sure they've crunched the numbers and decided it makes more financial sense to continue with the sub model

I can not disagree with you at all.