They're paying for a service, dude. They're paying for it to get delivered.
You pay $15 a month for a $50 expansion, and you're telling me there's still shit that you gotta pay for after that?
Of course it doesn't hurt the wallet much, but you're still paying someone to not offer you everything you already paid for, just to have you pay some more for that last little bit.
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Wonder how many times you've complained about capitalism on Twitter.
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Something tells me you have no idea how business, economics and video game development works.
No, because we already know this then takes art time from sets that can be acquired ingame. Look what happened with mounts. Blizzard has plenty of time to create store mounts every few months but gives us the same reskinned horse for the twelfth time.
Also of course the best looking sets come from the hardest content. If you want these sets then just wait 2 years and you can one-shot every mob in the instance. There are already so many sets in the game you can easily get that I don't see your issue.
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I look down on it because supporting this practice harms people who don't pay for these optional services.
Yes, I am fine with Blizzard doing cash-shop xmog as long as:
- Cash Shop sets are unique and not obtainable otherwise in game
- Ingame vanity sets like PvP Arena GLadiator set, or Mythic Raiding Set are not obtainable through cash shop. (same principle as mounts).
- They do not compromise on ingame set quality and design because of cash shop set.
To the naysayers, this system is already partly in place through the BMAH, which is effectively a cash shop.
It would really depend on if the optic enhancements bliizard would sell appeal to me and if they fit my tastes. Get me some bonewings ? Im all for it.
Sub games should not have cash shops. I'll buy the shit out of xmog sets in say GW2 since it's a 1 time purchase and after that f2p but I will not pay a sub fee and then more on a cosmetic item.
How does it harm anyone if it is not compromising quality of ingame items?
It is a cosmetic item with no impact on game play. Same principle as mounts. There are cash shop mounts and ingame mounts. Many ingame mounts (like Lucid nightmare, Mail muncher etc) are as good as any cash shop mount. They have released pretty decent ingame mounts in BFA already in addition to the cash shop ones. (and unique ones like Hivemind mount). And no, not all of them are reskinned horses.
Optional services to support the bottomline is always beneficial to game development. Then execs dont have to lay off a bunch of artists/devs in order to meet their profits if they have reasonable income through some endeavors. As a publicly traded company, they will always look at improving their profits even at the cost of internal staffing.
So, I would rather people who can afford it help buy such things from the cash shop, if it would mean keeping a developer/artist from losing their job due to profits not meeting expectations.
TLDR,
Some people buy Collector's editions. Some don't. If it is not game breaking, allow the consumer to chip in and decide what they want to spend their money on.
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Wow and FFXIV are the only two currently active MMOs which have subs. And they both have cash shops. FFXIV has very comprehensive set of "xmog" items available in their shops. And people buy them a LOT. If consumers want to spend on such things, why shouldnt they be allowed to do so? It is not game breaking.
If it is against your principles to not support such things, then dont buy the items from cash shop. But dont block others who are willing to support artists for their hardwork from buying such items from cash shops.
As long as WoW has subscription there's no place for in-game cashshop.
Go f2p if you want cashshop in your game.
But...they already did this (Selling Xmog in the shop) - There were helms you could buy.
It didn't bother anyone then, it wouldn't bother anyone now.
Thing is, if Blizz do that, they will be seen as greedy fucks. Whereas when FFXIV do it, it's fine..
I don't mind having shop only sets if they are silly and not linked to a certain, class or race. Those should be obtainable in-game, %100.
The immersion and game fantasy for transmog went down the drain when the Yeti onesie was implemented, maybe even before that.
Maybe because FFXIV has always had the cash shop (since release or close to it); while in case of WoW it was a new thing. I agree with you completely that it is completely mind boggling how much negative press Wow get from such things.
Yet the same people wont hesitate to buy wow tokens and spending thousands of gold buying carries or buying BoE. Through the BOE system, most of wow is p2win anyways. Guilds buy mythic training FFS. As in they hire high end raiders to teach their guild how to get CE!!! And then whine about game breaking systems???
Same in arenas.
Cosmetic items is not the thing to whine abt at all.
So why deny people/casuals who have money to spend on getting cosmetic items which don't harm anyone at all?
This. I also never used it and i never will. When they make the game free to play, i might consider it once or twice but that's all.
Free to play with shop
OR
Pay to play without shop
That's how i see it, and if they start to make amazing sets exclusive to the shop and keep giving us ugly skins from raids and mythics.. I'm out.
Last edited by Ghostile; 2020-06-15 at 08:24 PM.
Adjusted mean just that. Adjustment can happen without raising the fees. It will just be counted in the current fees.
Profit = Revenue - Cost
in the simplest representation. As a Publicly traded company, blizzard is always looking to increase profit. That's how capitalism work.
So there are two ways to improve revenue.
Either cut cost (by removing key ingame features, or removing internal resources i.e. devs/designers/artists etc).
Or increase revenue.
They increase revenue by several ways:
1) More active subs (very very hard these days with so many options to choose from. WoW is not the only decent game around). As their earnings show, their sub numbers taper off significantly after the initial burst at the start of expac.
2) Introduce other means of income - e.g. cash shop and cosmetic items. They already have some of it through wow tokens BMAH and BOE system.
3) Increase monthly sub rate. (not possible as you correctly pointed out. No MMO does this).
TLDR--
When you make a product, you dont just build an awesome product and hope it will make millions because consumers will just fall in love with it. You need to find ways to make a sustainable profit.