Post regarding carry culture and its affect on game development

[Seratox]

Ran into an interesting post on the wow forums, the post is located here and is as follows. I think the post is relatively insightful and highlights a fairly predatory yet extremely effective business practice. Applying this model to many of Blizzard's more questionable decisions seems to make their decisions make more sense.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...quality/840483

==========BEGIN POST==========
Many players nowadays seem to agree that–with some exception–the game as a whole seems to have gone downhill over the years in terms of quality and enjoyability.

A couple of the more popular complaints, particularly in the last few years with the introduction of Mythic Plus, has been the amount of paid carries (M+, Raid, PVP) to get gear and the ease-of-access of these carries causing unrealistic item level expectation and unreliability of competence that comes with someone purchasing achievements instead of having actually done the fight.

Unrealistic item level expectation is demonstrated by posting such as “N Casthe Nathria LFM 210”, and the unreliability of competence is demonstrated by people linking AOTC: Nzoth achievement to get into a Heroic Nzoth, but having no idea how to do the fight.

Many tend to see this problem as simply a community issue and while, to an extent, that may be true, it is worth noting and analyzing the actions and inactions of Blizzard that have only made this game worse.

Back in Warlords of Draenor, there was an interview with one of the developers in regard to the Demonology spec for Warlocks in which the developer in question had stated that the reason for the neglect of the Demonology spec was because that they simply didn’t think people should be playing Demonology. This interview, combined with later interviews, gives us a picture that Blizzard routinely alienates and overpowers a rotation of specs to, as they say it, “force players to try new specs and new classes, giving them a more complete experience of what the game has to offer”. However, we have realized that this is a fluffy say of saying “To keep people playing more often”.

The constant rerolling that is done by the player base compounds the issue caused by paid carries in a way that has been made even more obvious by the structure of the Shadowlands expansion. Players not getting invited to content they don’t outgear was bad enough, but the implementation of the new-and-improved PVP loot system has become a very desirable source of high item level gear. However, there is one unique factor to the PVP system that compounds every issue with paid carries in the worst way possible, the need to fight other players. Currently, the PVP loot system mixed with the paid carry system creates a system where individuals who are just now wanting to get into PVP have to fight 2400–or even rank 1–players who are being paid to do carries to get to even 1600.

Using the above evidence, it is possible to ascertain certain predatory aspects of the business model Blizzard uses in World of Warcraft.

1 The lack of QA testing has created a scenario where players pay Blizzard for the ability to test an obviously incomplete product.

2 The constant lack of balancing and finished product causes a need for many players to reroll and then either have a slow process getting caught up or use their in-game gold (earned via WoW token or otherwise) to catch up.

3 Assuming an individual buys WoW tokens with real money to pay for their carries, an individual who purchases an AOTC Denathrius achievement pays Blizzard $80 by current market standards. An individual who buys a +14 key pays Blizzard $40-$60 by current market standards. An individual who buys an 1800 carry pays Blizzard $160 by current market standards.

4 Real-Money Paid carries in World of Warcraft have always existed, but were always bannable. However, these are not bannable anymore as long as you use Blizzard’s WoW-token as a medium. The carrier no longer gets paid for the Real-Money Carry, Blizzard does.

5 The above stated fact explains how Blizzard essentially uses the High-End World of Warcraft players (the ones who perform carries) as unpaid, unofficial employees to add to their bottom line. Blizzard ensures the “employment” of these players by combining time-gating content with the introduction of time/gold sinks such as the Caravan Brutosaur to ensure these players will have downtime on wow and something to spend gold on.

At work today, I had a conversation with one of my coworkers who had said that he spent $300 on wow tokens because he wanted to reroll from his DH since it is obvious that Blizzard is going to leave it neglected and he wanted to play something stronger. This discussion prompted a deep dive into the market rates and how much money Blizzard has made on the gameplay of its Higher-End players.

I did 1800 carries for gold during much of BFA and for the entirety of Shadowlands thus far. This combined with Mythic Plus keys and N’zoth kills, over the last year has earned my friends and I a total of approximately 100,000,000 gold. This broke down to roughly 25,000,000 gold for each of us. At the current exchange rate, of 110,000 gold per token, this comes out to each of us having 227 tokens worth of gold. or $4540 per person. Assuming only half of those paid carries used gold from the WoW token, that would mean that over the last year, Blizzard made $2270 off of each of us individually, or $9080 for the year from the whole group.

So every time someone complains about the balance of the game. Every time someone says “its ok, Blizzard will balance the classes next patch”, every time Blizzard promises that its next expansion is gonna be “alt friendly”…

Just remember: No it won’t. They will change just enough to make people reroll and keep the whales paying and the carriers making Blizzard money as unofficial, unpaid Blizzard employees.

==========END POST==========

[cparle87]

1. Thank you for looking into Blizzard HQ for us to let us know that they shipped the product to us incomplete.
2. There are hotfixes every day. If you're so neurotically fotm that you need to reroll with every hotfix that's a you problem.
3. There is no market value on gold because the process only goes one way. Once you turn your rl money into a token there's no getting it back. Arguments like yours trying to claim the game is p2w because of tokens is patently intellectually dishonest.
4. Because your account and everything on it belong to Blizzard. I'd be pretty pissed off too if someone sold stuff that belongs to me for their own profit. Besides, are you honestly saying you'd rather give your money to some guy who most likely is using the stolen account from someone else who bought gold or boosts from him and then got hacked?
5. I think a city in the midwest needs their tinfoil back. Aren't conspiracy theory threads banned here?

[Brazel MMO]

I think people don't want to go through the effort on multiple characters and look for easier ways --> carries.

Why do people want gear?
a). To flex on people.
b). Cause they want BiS
c). Makes PVP easier
d). Makes PVE easier
e). It makes them feel like they beat the game
f). Looks cool.
g). It's what you do in games.
h). ???

There are probably more but those are off the top of my head. I think it's mainly a, b, and c.

I think there are two ways to fix this:
1). Make gear not affect stats in PVP, basically a bare knuckle, only skill mode.
2). Separate PVP and PVE gear completely. There is no cross over between loadouts.

The problem with PVP is gear matters sooo much. (yeah there are some broken classes but I won't address that). What happens is some people get geared and then shit on players that queued for a random BG because they out gear the person. Rightfully so the person with 40k hp beats the 2-3 noobs with 20k hp, this is just how the game is designed.

This creates a barrier of entry to PVP - I don't want to play on alts cause I only have 30k hp and everyone else is pushing 45k. I just die so fast and it's not fun.

With a bare knuckle mode (or complete PVP revamp) would make it much more accessible to new players and alts since the ilvl of the person is not affecting the outcome, its all skill (or sheer numbers in pvp with the occasional OP class). Removing the importance of ilvl through removing gear affecting pvp stats would remove the need to get gear through carries.

[Seratox]

1. Thank you for looking into Blizzard HQ for us to let us know that they shipped the product to us incomplete.
2. There are hotfixes every day. If you're so neurotically fotm that you need to reroll with every hotfix that's a you problem.
3. There is no market value on gold because the process only goes one way. Once you turn your rl money into a token there's no getting it back. Arguments like yours trying to claim the game is p2w because of tokens is patently intellectually dishonest.
4. Because your account and everything on it belong to Blizzard. I'd be pretty pissed off too if someone sold stuff that belongs to me for their own profit. Besides, are you honestly saying you'd rather give your money to some guy who most likely is using the stolen account from someone else who bought gold or boosts from him and then got hacked?
5. I think a city in the midwest needs their tinfoil back. Aren't conspiracy theory threads banned here?

1. The poster is right, its not hard to see that Shadowlands was an unfinished product.

2. He speaks more about specs that went from A or S tier to the gutter in one hotfix. To an extent, is cant expect to be fully viable or favored by groups if you play a crap spec like Demo lock or Surv hunter

3. People sell gold through third party sites all the time. You're just flat out wrong here.

4. Thats like saying that anyone who advertises a good or service on Facebook should have to pay Facebook a royalty for using their platform.

5. Less conspiracy and more of a commonly taught business practice that increases throughput by using your clientele as your employees. Think Amazon, here.

[Soon-TM]

1. Thank you for looking into Blizzard HQ for us to let us know that they shipped the product to us incomplete.
2. There are hotfixes every day. If you're so neurotically fotm that you need to reroll with every hotfix that's a you problem.
3. There is no market value on gold because the process only goes one way. Once you turn your rl money into a token there's no getting it back. Arguments like yours trying to claim the game is p2w because of tokens is patently intellectually dishonest.
4. Because your account and everything on it belong to Blizzard. I'd be pretty pissed off too if someone sold stuff that belongs to me for their own profit. Besides, are you honestly saying you'd rather give your money to some guy who most likely is using the stolen account from someone else who bought gold or boosts from him and then got hacked?
5. I think a city in the midwest needs their tinfoil back. Aren't conspiracy theory threads banned here?

Lol the BDF arrived real fast. Maybe they are getting more generous with various bonuses, who knows

More on topic, I don't think it is all the consequence of a malignant mastermind that carefully engineers this type of issues. But it is quite safe to assume that Blizzard is more than OK with carries being so widespread, because they imply either more time played (thus padding those sweet "engagement" metrics) or directly more $$$ in their bank account, via token sales. Remember, P2W (even in its current, relatively mild form) is only bad when someone or something other than Blizz can benefit.

Paid carries have existed ever since vanilla.

It was considered cheating back then. Big difference.

[Kokolums]

Paid carries have existed ever since vanilla.

I always felt the satchel was a great idea to get high ilvl players to enter pug groups and help them out. The satchel used to have lots of gold and a chance at mounts and stuff. They gimped it now. That's too bad, I think its an idea that can make a positive community.

[Otimus]

This drug PSA sums up the reason why people actually pay for carries and shit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgRHyL5ie9k

[Kralljin]

This whole "people shouldn't play Demo" thing in WoD was most likely just a smokescreen because they wanted to avoid that players played a spec from WoD - Legion that would go through such a heavy rework.
After all, Legion heavily reworked Demo and took one of its core abilities, Metamorphosis, and gave it to DH.

Same thing also happened to SV, it was downright not viable in HFC and also received a heavy rework in Legion.

I don't think it has anything to do with Blizzard wanting to get people to reroll every patch, but Blizzards lack of ability (or resources) to properly balance it.
Don't attribute something to malice that you can also explain with incompetence.

In regards to boosting, while i believe that they've absolutely have a negative impact on the game, i do not believe that Blizzard actively buffs / nerfs spec so people start rerolling, so people are buying boosts.

The WoW Token <=> Boosting implication is obviously there, but one could also say the same thing about Multiboxing, yet Blizzard does on occassion put the game's health first.
The WoW Token is hardly a decent mechanic to milk wales because there are limits to it, you can only buy 10 token per week and only 36 Token within two years, while it is quite a lot of money, it doesn't generate nearly enough gold to consistently buy boosts every major patch (at least multiple ones).

The whole boosting scene is in my opinion more driven by the RMT market nowadays as on those sites, they don't even take your order unless you buy something like 500k+ gold and most boosting services start at something like 250k+.

[Seratox]

Lol the BDF arrived real fast. Maybe they are getting more generous with various bonuses, who knows

WARNING: ANTI BLIZZARD BUSINESS PRACTICE THREAD DETECTED. BLIZZARD DEFENSE FORCE ACTIVATE.

https://youtu.be/dNQs_Bef_V8

[Cathbadh]

Paid carries are nothing new, whether they're carries for gear, carries for progression/achievements, or just carries for mounts. I bought a M Archimonde carry years ago for the mount once I saw my guild was not going to get to the boss, and I remember literally every guild selling both H and M SoO carries for Garrosh for the mount.

The only real change I've seen is the amount of advertising and the creation of boosting communities. Both of these things are related, and the fact that boosting communities will pay referral fees to advertisers is the biggest part of it. All those people you see advertising all day long in trade chat won't be involved in any carries most of the time. They're just hoping to make 10k or 15k by spamming a macro and getting someone to go buy a carry.

Blizzard needs to do more to remove the sales from group finder. That said I have no problem with it in trade chat. That's literally what the channel is for - trade. Plus its better than nonstop anal jokes, memeing, anti-Semitism, and politics. Its annoying, sure, but that's where it belongs.

[Seranthor]

.

So what are YOU planning to do about this? What are you suggesting other people do about this?

[Seratox]

So what are YOU planning to do about this? What are you suggesting other people do about this?

Reading something doesn't necessarily mean you're pushing to do something, does it?

[Ange]

A couple of the more popular complaints, particularly in the last few years with the introduction of Mythic Plus, has been the amount of paid carries (M+, Raid, PVP) to get gear and the ease-of-access of these carries causing unrealistic item level expectation and unreliability of competence that comes with someone purchasing achievements instead of having actually done the fight.

I wish there was a way to see how many hunters PAYED in vanilla for the class quest RHOK/LOK.
The simple fact, that there were quite a few Thunderfury wiedlers in vanilla, from players that actually not raided outside of MC should tell you everything about the the NEW carry culture.

If you think WoW and carries are a new thing, you are new to the game or did not pay attention.

[msdos]

"This is nothing new" is constantly used as an excuse for inaction. Recycling stuff over and over isn't a justification for anything, I don't get how people unironically keep presenting it as if it justifies anything.

[Seranthor]

Reading something doesn't necessarily mean you're pushing to do something, does it?

So this is nothing more than a blog post? Duly noted.

[Seratox]

So this is nothing more than a blog post? Duly noted.

So how much does the BDF pay these days?

[Atherions]

The only big problem I see with the carry culture today is the massive amounts of tradechat/LFG spam that comes with it.

Blizzard should create a looking for boost UI only for people selling and buying boosts, and make it against ToS to advertise anywhere else.

[Nalam the Venom]

The only big problem I see with the carry culture today is the massive amounts of tradechat/LFG spam that comes with it.

Blizzard should create a looking for boost UI only for people selling and buying boosts, and make it against ToS to advertise anywhere else.

It's already against the ToS to advertise in LFD or on a level 1 character (a character only created to advertise boosting)

Saying something is against the ToS is not gonna stop people, unless you ofc back up those rules with action, But blizzard is never gonna follow through with punishment on these accounts, and also these sellers will always advertise in the channel with the most exposure, this currently being the trade chat

[WowIsDead64]

...

It's profitable for Blizzard, as it's hidden F2P or even P2W. What is F2P monetization about? You grind or you pay. Same here. But you don't pay directly for that things in Wow. There is intermediate agent, called gold. And this argument "You can grind gold in game" masks F2P nature of this industry. Yeah, Wow turns from just game to play into big industry of services. Paid services. This wouldn't be so bad, if this game wouldn't be P2P.

[Razion]

So this is nothing more than a blog post? Duly noted.

If someone doesn't have an immediate solution or proposal, maybe they're looking for one. This is a forum for discussion. It would be more constructive to talk about what could be done or why it isn't feasible. Like, can the WoW token be abolished? Would it even help? Should we ask them to crack down more on gold selling services and botting?