Store is ALOT cheaper than many of the gold sinks ingame. What is the problem???

[gaymer77]

I’m still mystified by the obsession with mounts anyway. You can only ride one and most people already have 100+. Then again I’m the guy who started playing in wrath and had a guildie make fun of me cause I was still riding my first bat mount in WoD.

I mean, a mount is for getting around, it feels weird that even the most accomplished adventurers would be like “summon my finest steed!” every time they go to the grocery store. A gettin around mount like a simple bat makes a lot more sense.

I also have hundreds of unopened loot boxes in overwatch. Guess I shouldn’t complain, everyone buying pixels makes the game cheaper for me.

I rode the BC bats until I hit exalted and got the hippogryph fron Cenarion whatever in Zangermarsh and used that on my priest until I got my RAF 2 seater rocket and used that until I got my Love Rocket a few years ago. When it came to land mounts, my undead priest proudly rode her raptor in vanilla because that shit was a feat within itself to get another faction's riding skill. When all races could ride the rest of their faction's mounts I ended up going with raptors on most of them for my Horde characters and Nightsabers on my Alliance side because I liked the looks of those. But there was some truth to the "summon my finest steed" in BC & Wrath because there were certain mounts that were 310 speed while everything else was only 280. If you had a 310 mount, you used that shit even if you didn't like the look of it.

A big company like Square-Enix or Blizzard pull things that could/should be obtainable as ingame rewards and sell them for real currency for no other reason than they've seen the kind of numbers freemium MMOs pull in and want to have their cake and eat it.

Can't speak for SE but Blizzard offers several games that are 100% free to play that have regular monthly costs to run. Hearthstone doesn't cost crap to play or charge a monthly. D3 only costs a one time payment to buy then its free for life to play on their servers. Starcraft, HOT, OG StarCraft, COD MW, are all free to play and no subscription. Blizzard uses money from other games to keep those game going because there are people who want to play it.

Well if it was the same thing as buying it with gold, then it should be on a vendor and let the person decide whether they want to buy a token or not.

Everyone talks about buying with gold like that's a set price. If everyone would have to buy tokens, I wonder how much things would skew and what the impact would be. I wonder how token price would change if your only option was to buy it with tokens. The fact is that having it in the shop IS different from buying it with gold.

It would also most likely sell less if it was just with gold. For example, I have all the shop mounts and pets. But I don't have all the gold mounts ingame - because I'll get them "eventually". Probably because making it with gold mentally registers as something you have to grind towards, not actually buying it. While being at the shop means "buy it now" to our minds.

As you can probably see from what I've said before, I have no issues with buying mounts or anything else. They also make great gifts. However, let's not pretend it's the same thing as being ingame, it's not.

I don't think you understand how you "buy with tokens" so I'll explain it to you. You use your gold to buy a token in the game. That token has a value of either $15 or $20 (don't know because I've only been on the selling end of tokens). When a player buys the token the set dollar amount is applied to their Blizzard balance immediately and turns into real life dollars in you Blizzard balance. You use that Blizzard Balance to purchase stuff from the store. Its that simple.

[erifwodahs]

I’m still mystified by the obsession with mounts anyway. You can only ride one and most people already have 100+. Then again I’m the guy who started playing in wrath and had a guildie make fun of me cause I was still riding my first bat mount in WoD.

I mean, a mount is for getting around, it feels weird that even the most accomplished adventurers would be like “summon my finest steed!” every time they go to the grocery store. A gettin around mount like a simple bat makes a lot more sense.

I also have hundreds of unopened loot boxes in overwatch. Guess I shouldn’t complain, everyone buying pixels makes the game cheaper for me.

What a rebel - be careful with the edge.
The same reason people personalize their houses and make them look like they want it to look. It's the same but just in digital world. If you fail to understand why people like different mounts then I guess you don't understand why people like different meals - it's just your daily energy intake. Or why people care about a color of the car - it's just a tool to get from a to b. Or why people enjoy different jobs - it's just a means of earning currency for survival.
It might be a bit of a hyperbole but it makes a point and pretending not to understand why people like different things makes you look deliberately ignorant at the best and straight up stupid at worst. Not "out of the box" or edgy.

[crusadernero]

I’m still mystified by the obsession with mounts anyway. You can only ride one and most people already have 100+. Then again I’m the guy who started playing in wrath and had a guildie make fun of me cause I was still riding my first bat mount in WoD.

I mean, a mount is for getting around, it feels weird that even the most accomplished adventurers would be like “summon my finest steed!” every time they go to the grocery store. A gettin around mount like a simple bat makes a lot more sense.

I also have hundreds of unopened loot boxes in overwatch. Guess I shouldn’t complain, everyone buying pixels makes the game cheaper for me.

But the game is not cheaper, if you are talking about wow. You still gotta pay for the base game, the xpacs and sub.

I dont like the store at all and the item I dislike the most i the token. The sole reason certain mounts cost ALOT of gold is because of said token. I wonder how much money Blizzard has made of tokens in BfA after the frog mounts costing 333,333 gold and the bronto for 5 mill gold.

[Lolites]

Players who cannot afford to pay an upfront cost for a 6month sub or a future player will/do not have this "free" option available to them.

they can buy it with gold earned in game, i think that was the whole point of post, what is difference between mount (or mog) on store and on vendor for gold?
surely, in ideal case all those things should be behind some kind of content, but if its on vendor for gold its not realy different from cash shop...

[BigZik]

The only time I had problems with the store mounts was in WoD when we pretty much got reskins of the same 6 mount models for the whole expansion and two mounts that would have fitted the Shadowmoon Draenei and the Laughing Skull Orcs perfectly were put in the store. I normally do not care that much about mounts, but this has always bothered me.

Other than that I don't have a problem with the store because, to me, most of the items sold there are pretty lame. And what the OP means, and most people do not seem to get/ignore, is that the items in the store are, per definition since the introduction of the wow token, earnable through in game means without spending a dollar.

[Lolites]

Fact that you alredy giving ingame gold real life currency value shows how toxic token is to the game. No matter what you buy flash or mount its hold real life currency value whihc is insane to have in freaking video game. Imagine you buy flask. Look i just spent 50 cents on flask from what a joke.

thats kind of stupid, considering you can pay for gametime and expansions with gold, so you dont have to spend ANY real money ever...

[Mask]

It just kinda feels shit when the game says that you can grind in real life to get in-game rewards.

That ship sailed as soon as the wow token for battle balance was introduced in 2017.

Whether this transmog set is $20 cash to buy, but you can convert in-game gold to battle.net balance for it - or it's 150k gold from a vendor in Boralus to buy, but you can spend $20 cash for a gold token to buy it is the same thing from a consumer standpoint. It's the same amount of gold or $$ either way.

Any outrage really should be directed all the way back to that 2017 decision to take the wow token from being ONLY gametime to being straight up blizzard balance like it is now. There is no going back from that.

[Lord Pebbleton]

I am against in-game shops fueled by real money of any kind. I am also against paid DLCs. These things just make me feel like I still need to buy parts of the game after buying the game, and I hate it.

I'll concede that WoW has tied real money to in-game currency, so it's a bit tamer.

[RobertMugabe]

IMO I hate the shop items and personally would have them remove it, but also I don't really care either way...

I do get the "protest" against it and I support it, but there are limits to everything.

[Lolites]

The "It's only cosmetic argument" doesn't work - some of the best motivation for doing certain tasks or activities in-game is the potential of being rewarded something that looks awesome or makes your character stand out in some way. Sadly, this ship has long sailed.

and that would be ideal, BUT the comparison being drawn is between items on cash shop and on vendor for gold - lets say nazmir frogs, its not an achievment having them, its literaly just sold, so how is that different from cash shop? you can earn gold and use it to buy shop mount too, so you literaly just have to make currency exchange and thats all the difference

- - - Updated - - -

The problem is that every store mount / xmog / pet etc is one more potential in-game reward that doesn't come to fruition.

they already have crapload of mounts just on gold vendor bcs they dont want to lock it behind content... and those shop mounts wouldnt be in-game rewards if there was no shop, they would simply not exist...

not liking the cash shop in sub game is fine, but this reason is just objectively wrong...

[Bullerick]

That's all well and dandy but we're paying a sub fee already. There's not even a loyalty programme in the game

[loras]

Wherever it is a new store mount, charity pet or a 6 months bonus the argument "It should have been earnable ingame" Always comes up

And I am completely flabbergasted. IT IS EARNABLE INGAME IS IT NOT??? Can't you buy a WoW token and convert it into balance? A US WoW token goes for 150K gold a piece which buys literally anything in the store besides an entire expansion pack (And even at 300K gold its still very cheap). Compare that to the Brutosaur for 5 Million gold or the Spider for 2 Million gold. Hell I've used that ammount on just repairs throughout BFA Alone

What exactly is the problem again? Most people I know have that kind of money, and If you aren't the laziest person in the world like me getting it isn't that hard. And even if you're lazy, then you wouldn't have been able to earn it if it was earnable ingame anyway. Let's even talk about the new wings. You get it for subbing for 6 months. What is the problem? You literally get it for playing the game.

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Let's also steer clear of real-world politics and the like, no need to derail this thread with unrelated political discussion or arguments.

I completely agree, most people just do not like being confronted with the actual value of the things they do.
And practically i can think of no better way to illustrate the absurd pruces of various in-game mounts, whether through the shop or not.

[Kithelle]

People just like to complain, if they don't like the price then they don't have to buy it...not gonna kill them to not have a costume

Most games...sub or not have in game stores, why should WoW be any different? Even FFXIV sells stuff yet I don't see people whining about that

[Lolites]

let's not pretend it's the same thing as being ingame, it's not.

its not the same, but its REALLY fucking close...

- - - Updated - - -

That ship sailed as soon as the wow token for battle balance was introduced in 2017.

that ship sailed in vanila when first gold seller appeared...

[Butterland]

Imagine you work your normal 9-5 office job and make 70000$ / year. Suddenly Timmy, the boss' nephew, gets a job equivalent to yours for the same pay even though he clearly lacks the necessary skills & experience. You shrug your shoulders because that's just life. But then comes your performance review and you get bumped to 75000$ / year. "Not bad", you think. Until later that afternoon Timmy brags about finally making 100000$ / year. That's life.

"Why do you care? It doesn't affect you."

No matter how proud you are of the job you've done, it's now stained. You feel cheated in some way, even though you're making 5000$ more than you were. Timmy's financials don't affect you, but it's probably enough to make you change job simply because you don't feel compensated fairly.

A lot of people play games to escape shit like this. They enjoy the clear separation between real life and games. In games, everyone starts on an equal footing and works their way to some in-game objective of their choosing. No shortcuts. No innate advantages. Just you and the game. The gold sinks are fine because gold is acquired in-game (if we ignore tokens). When someone uses micro-transactions, it connects real life to the game. It stains it. Timmys run around boasting about their new mount or transmog or mythic gear they bought through tokens.

Saying stuff like "Why do you care? It doesn't affect you." is so tone-deaf. Timmys effectively make the game less rewarding. That's why players are fine with legit gold sinks (no tokens) but draw the line at micro-transaction. If you can't see that, I'm afraid you'll never understand why most players prefer games to remain pure with no micro-transactions.

[loras]

Imagine you work your normal 9-5 office job and make 70000$ / year. Suddenly Timmy, the boss' nephew, gets a job equivalent to yours for the same pay even though he clearly lacks the necessary skills & experience. You shrug your shoulders because that's just life. But then comes your performance review and you get bumped to 75000$ / year. "Not bad", you think. Until later that afternoon Timmy brags about finally making 100000$ / year. That's life.

A lot of people log on into WoW to escape shit like this. They enjoy the clear separation between real life and games. In games, everyone starts on an equal footing and works their way to some in-game objective of their choosing. No shortcuts. No innate advantages. Just you and the game.

The gold sinks are fine because gold is acquired in-game (if we ignore tokens). When someone uses micro-transactions, it connects real life to the game. It stains it. Timmys run around boasting about their new mount or transmog or mythic gear they bought through tokens.

Saying stuff like "Why do you care? It doesn't affect you." is so tone-deaf. Timmys effectively make the game less rewarding. If you can't see that, I'm afraid you'll never understand why most players prefer games to remain pure with no micro-transactions.

Replace "Timmy" with "Hunter" for increased American relevance, but i digress. ^^'

There is a deeper thing below it though, it's what i tend to call the "good dog" principle.

It's as simple as people being conditioned by means of reward to consider some activity as being "valuable" and/or "good", in real life that generally is work and in game it is, for the context of the shop and other goodies, making gold. So far nothing new.

However when the actual source of creating new value (irl: the actual value creation, in game: arbitrary) starts to diverge from the things the people consider to be good or valuable (irl: i.e. workers being replaced by superior technology and changing demands if the world altering the value of doing and not doing certain things, in WoW: a shift from (perceived) skill based rewards to time/money investment based rewards) that will eventually lead to some not unexpected grumbling as people are no longer rewarded despite likely unchanging dilligence and effort from their part; the dog starts to snarl as he values being rewarded for the things he thought valuable, as opposed to "being rewarded" for doing things that are valuable. The dog cannot know the difference for it is a dog, it just wants to be fed, pet and called a good boy for doing the things it was taught are good.

People must know better. In real life that means understanding the difference between rewards (which are granted by people) and achievements/acquisitions/whatever you want to call it (which is "granted" byvthe world; english lacks proper words for these matters i think); i.e. if you're paid you're rewarded, if you make a profit you've achieved. It's a somewhat subtle difference.

Now comes the crux though: in videogames you never achieve, you're always rewarded as the standards that determine success or failure are always set by people as everything in a game is made by people. The rate at which things are rewarded is, by definition, arbitrary.
So one should always look very sceptically at the real value of the tasks completed to determine how much actually is asked of you, to determine whether you are being ripped off for your time in example.

And that's Blizzard's mistake: coins help people see their poor grinding practices more clearly than any external factor ever could.

[kugarm]

Wherever it is a new store mount, charity pet or a 6 months bonus the argument "It should have been earnable ingame" Always comes up

And I am completely flabbergasted. IT IS EARNABLE INGAME IS IT NOT??? Can't you buy a WoW token and convert it into balance? A US WoW token goes for 150K gold a piece which buys literally anything in the store besides an entire expansion pack (And even at 300K gold its still very cheap). Compare that to the Brutosaur for 5 Million gold or the Spider for 2 Million gold. Hell I've used that ammount on just repairs throughout BFA Alone

What exactly is the problem again? Most people I know have that kind of money, and If you aren't the laziest person in the world like me getting it isn't that hard. And even if you're lazy, then you wouldn't have been able to earn it if it was earnable ingame anyway. Let's even talk about the new wings. You get it for subbing for 6 months. What is the problem? You literally get it for playing the game.

Active Mod Warnings in this thread:

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Let's also steer clear of real-world politics and the like, no need to derail this thread with unrelated political discussion or arguments.

It's simple, or the company works with a subscription program or sells cosmetics, never both.

[SoundOfGuns]

Wherever it is a new store mount, charity pet or a 6 months bonus the argument "It should have been earnable ingame" Always comes up

And I am completely flabbergasted. IT IS EARNABLE INGAME IS IT NOT??? Can't you buy a WoW token and convert it into balance? A US WoW token goes for 150K gold a piece which buys literally anything in the store besides an entire expansion pack (And even at 300K gold its still very cheap). Compare that to the Brutosaur for 5 Million gold or the Spider for 2 Million gold. Hell I've used that ammount on just repairs throughout BFA Alone

What exactly is the problem again? Most people I know have that kind of money, and If you aren't the laziest person in the world like me getting it isn't that hard. And even if you're lazy, then you wouldn't have been able to earn it if it was earnable ingame anyway. Let's even talk about the new wings. You get it for subbing for 6 months. What is the problem? You literally get it for playing the game.

Active Mod Warnings in this thread:

Since we've already had a thread on this topic go pear-shaped, this is a general warning to keep it civil and constructive in this thread as well. Don't fling insults, personal barbs, or anything else not related to the actual topic.

Let's also steer clear of real-world politics and the like, no need to derail this thread with unrelated political discussion or arguments.

The issue is likely less the practice itself, as much as you and everyone else should absolutely be offended by it on the basis of WoW being a subscription based game, but who is doing it now. Sure, yes, FF14 which might not be my thing but is arguably a great game, does this as well with great success and the game is not worse for it.

However we are dealing with Blizzard here. Im trying my best to not bash them to honor our dear moderator and keep it as civil as humanly possible, but Blizzard is absolutely not a company i entrust with maintaining quality for ingame items when you can buy the same type in a shop. Mounts are a good example here. There are outliers, no doubt, but there is a strong difference in quality between must of the shop mounts and the earned mounts of the same time space. The ones you get ingame are not winning out...

Trusting Activision-Blizzard with not dropping long term visual design for armor gained in game while selling transmogg gear is naive at worst and unreasonably optimistic at best. I would be fine with the transmog gear sold, if there wasn't a high likelyhood all other gear will look increasingly low effort in the long run.

I also really don't care if 20 bucks is affordable for X, Y and Z. That's missing the point a mile wide.

[DesoPL]

No problem is with people who says, that it is fine and you accept it or gtfo because you're hater. And they forgetting how much damage Activision allready did. Also keep in mind Activision allready sacrified Heroes Of The Storm, Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 to make only higher and higher profits for Bobby Kottick. They will not however sacrifice Hearthstone, Overwatch and WoW because they are still profitable for them.

I just laugh hard my ass at you all Activision die hards.

[Kaykay]

it all comes down to TRH:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCjuFpQ3EeA

The ingame shop takes away from awesome rewards in the game, why put it behind a 50$ pricemark when you could have it drop from completing 10k quests or doing 10k battelgrounds.

It's about where their focus lies, it's not on improving the player/customer experience, it's all about making a quick buck while devauling the remaining content in the game which dont see the detail and focus some of the store mounts/pets get. Some of the mounts are also so far away from the lore that no similar reward even exists in the game, and you end up having to spend real money if you want a mount that matches your race/transmog, because there's no equivalent in the game, wether it's a fox, bat, tiger form or a flying celestial horse.

That's the problem, the problem is the focus on making money and not on improving the game. Which now has taken over every part of the game except mythic raiding and high rated pvp, everything else is paytowin at this point, and they're making a ton of money off it.