Wrath Classic WoW Token Now Available

[bloodwulf]

damn guess classic is now pay to win poor people wanting the old experience but get majorly fucked by blizz greed

If you believed that there was not already a huge RMT issue in Classic, you are living under a rock. Classic had worse RMT than OG Vanilla did.

[Gimlix]

Your kind are the reason why we are in this situation with the gaming world to begin with... you wait a few years after a terrible feature is added and then start spouting "oh but its normal now so its ok".

It will never be ok, you are enabling them to keep doing these bad decisions by defending them.

Yes it is normal, they are a company that wants to make money, they keep having to deal with goldsellers so instead of keep having to fight it, they create their own system that atleast makes them money too. We live in an era where quality isn't a companies first prio, it's how to make the most profit.

Sad but true. Don't blame Blizzard, blame the whole world.

[Jester Joe]

Your kind are the reason why we are in this situation with the gaming world to begin with... you wait a few years after a terrible feature is added and then start spouting "oh but its normal now so its ok".

It will never be ok, you are enabling them to keep doing these bad decisions by defending them.

This wouldn't have happened if it wasn't a move that would have made Blizzard money though.

It's not at all the fault of people who shrug and go "It is what it is", if you want to blame people it would be those who have been buying gold from shady sites for the entirety of WoW. If people didn't buy gold against the TOS, this would have never happened.

[Yakut]

Your kind are the reason why we are in this situation with the gaming world to begin with... you wait a few years after a terrible feature is added and then start spouting "oh but its normal now so its ok".

It will never be ok, you are enabling them to keep doing these bad decisions by defending them.

The moment you believed it was a "your kind" vs a "their kind" is the moment you lost the argument. Blizzard took this action not because of corporate greed. Yes, Blizzard is a for profit company. No, that's not a crime. If they didn't make money to pay for the infrastructure, staff, or work behind this game, you wouldn't be enjoying it in any format. So that argument is in and of itself hypocritical.

Working in cyber security as I do and having played the game back when it came out till now, there's a distinct security, financial, and privacy improvement by you buying the in-game gold from a reputable source. Not only is it likely cheaper (over time), it doesn't provide information to people who don't need it (e.g. questionable third parties in virtually any country in the world). It also provides a legal rejoinder to refunds as necessary. Whereas buying with the shady dealer, your mileage varies by country and their laws regarding it, not to mention the overhead of the credit card company. Buy it from a known and valid source, you have recourse.

It's not a terrible feature from a factual and objective measurement perspective. Now, if your personal opinion is that this is a terrible feature, you should probably support your opinion with something that has some credibility to it.

[exsanguinate]

Yes there was rmt before, but why encourage it?

[Coffeh]

Reading all these posts saying 'it's either this or endless bots'...it's so ridiculous.

Is Blizzard actually hiring GMs and policing the game not even a consideration? Nah, just legally gold buying and take a cut. By the way, there will still be bots. Tons of bots.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Well pack it up, Classic's over. Good thing there's already better options out there anyway.

[Kralljin]

It also provides a legal rejoinder to refunds as necessary.

I'd be surprised to learn that you could get a refund on a WoW Token.
The second you buy them and put them on the AH, they're gone within minutes and you receive ingame gold.

You could *maybe* push it through in some special circumstance but on a general level, it's rare given the nature of the product, because a WoW token isn't something you just leave lying around.

Blizzard took this action not because of corporate greed. Yes, Blizzard is a for profit company. No, that's not a crime. If they didn't make money to pay for the infrastructure, staff, or work behind this game, you wouldn't be enjoying it in any format. So that argument is in and of itself hypocritical.

That is an overly pro Blizzard view.

Blizzard isn't doing this pro bono, they're taking a sizeable cut of this, purchasing a WoW Token vs. Gametime is like how much more expensive, 33%?
Nevermind that this is also likely done with the intent that they can then cut back on costs to combat botting, as it's supposed to decline with the WoW Token (whether that actually happens, is another debate).

On top of that, thinking that without the WoW Token Blizzard couldn't support (or develop) the game is also a massive stretch, because it means that Classic has been somehow losing them money over the past years, which is just straight up false as they wouldn't have launched TBC or Wotlk to begin with.

Bear in mind, any person who exclusively plays Classic, pays Blizzard a three digit price tag just per year, you could by two Triple A games with that money.
And the cost to keep Classic running sure as shit aren't nearly as high as the development cost on that.

Reading all these posts saying 'it's either this or endless bots'...it's so ridiculous.

Is Blizzard actually hiring GMs and policing the game not even a consideration? Nah, just legally gold buying and take a cut. By the way, there will still be bots. Tons of bots.

A big part of the issue was that Blizzard has been very lax on actually banning goldbuyers.

Even if they caught you buying gold, actual account closures remained quite rare to my knowledge, usually it was just a temporary ban for like 2-4weeks.
Sometimes they even forgot to remove the bought gold from your mailbox - imagine that.

I think someone at Blizzard even tweeted that this is very intentional, as they prefer to ban goldfarmers over buyers, which in my mind is a very onesided strategy.
You can't just go after suppliers, it will just drive the demand up, you also have to go after people that create the demand.
Which in my view is simply a failure to enforce their own ToS, buying gold is against the ToS and should have due punishment but being lax on goldbuyers doesn't create an actual deterrent.

If they had a good strategy on banning goldbuyers / farmers, i'd fully concede that point but it's clear that the didn't have that.

[MrFawlty]

Well, that's the end of Wrath Classic's legitimacy. Now just another p2w shitfest. What an embarrassment of a company.

Absolutely spot on - its an absolute disgrace.

Its bascially, you may not cheat in the game....unless we profit from it.

[Culex]

I KNEW this was coming, I really want to rub everyone's face in it who said it wasn't.

[Chilela]

I suppose this was an inevitability, though that doesn't make it any better. Real shame, early (vanilla) Classic was something special.

[micwini]

*Grabs Popcorn*

Who wants some?

Please hand me some, I was going to make a similar comment.
It's easy to be angry at this, but I don't see how it will functionally change anything thats currently already happening in more shady ways.

[Doombringer]

They couldn't beat 'em, so they joined 'em.

And really, it was the better route to go. They'd be maintaining staff just to chase bots. We still have bots, but probably a tenth of what we'd have if gold farming and selling were more prominent.

I'd like to see more GMs for actual game issues. I don't know if we'll ever get back to that... they see support staff as non-technical drags on their bottom line. We'll probably get AI Game Masters before we get human ones in any actual number, and that's sad. But at least the gold sellers are fewer and farther between.

[Khaza-R]

They couldn't beat 'em, so they joined 'em.

And really, it was the better route to go. They'd be maintaining staff just to chase bots. We still have bots, but probably a tenth of what we'd have if gold farming and selling were more prominent.

I'd like to see more GMs for actual game issues. I don't know if we'll ever get back to that... they see support staff as non-technical drags on their bottom line. We'll probably get AI Game Masters before we get human ones in any actual number, and that's sad. But at least the gold sellers are fewer and farther between.

I don't really see why this would lead to a decline in gold sellers unless Blizzard takes action against them. All this really does is add competition on prices. People who were already willing to purchase from 3rd parties will likely continue to do so.

[Kagthul]

You do know that RDF debhuted in Wrath right? It can't ruin what it was already apart of.

Ehh.. sorta. It was still limited to your Battlegroup. While that was a bigger pool than your single server, it was still limited enough that there were repercussions if you were consistently a shitlord. In fact, Battlegroups then were smaller total pools than single servers now, so…

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I'm okay with the addition of the WoW token, but only makes my disagreement with the exclusion of RDF stronger. RDF was not the problem. It being cross server was the problem.

Though even then, Battlegroups were small enough that it wasnt -awful-. It was when they threw it service wide that it went off the rails.

But an automated dungeon finder that is restricted to your server would be fine. All its doing is automating tedious bullshit at that point.

[JacobMarley]

Oh well when you fire 1000's of people from the QA team & can't deal with the bots I guess this is the only thing you can do. Crazy how small indie company they actually have become to the point they have to introduce this to the classic players. Staggering fall from grace.

[Hitei]

Oh well when you fire 1000's of people from the QA team & can't deal with the bots I guess this is the only thing you can do. Crazy how small indie company they actually have become to the point they have to introduce this to the classic players. Staggering fall from grace.

Is this the part where we pretend that the pre-downsized company was handling bots? What grace are you talking about here? The era where BGs were 75% bots? Legion's rampant herb botting problem? The atrocious botting issues pre-Cata?

[Aurabolt]

Yes it is normal, they are a company that wants to make money, they keep having to deal with goldsellers so instead of keep having to fight it, they create their own system that atleast makes them money too. We live in an era where quality isn't a companies first prio, it's how to make the most profit.

Sad but true. Don't blame Blizzard, blame the whole world.

It's unfortunate that is STILL the perception of so many people. Just because Blizz doesn't share in detail what they're doing doesn't mean they weren't doing anything. The WoW Token was a compromise and a bit of a last resort.

Blizz has a team dedicated to aggressively going after the shady websites but it's like whack a mole: For each website they shut down, two more take its place almost immediately.

The WoW token was basically their way of taking the Goldsellers' market from the shady websites with the added perk of allowing those who have a lot of Gold to basically use WoW Tokens to play WoW for free. The WoW Token was a body blow but not a deathblow to the shady websites mostly based in China. I heard a rumor one of the main reasons Blizz "suddenly" shut down operations in China is because the Chinese government refused to shut down the shady websites operating in their country and Blizz had had enough.

Blizz takes these shady websites seriously because they are scamming legit players out of their accounts. Worse case, people get their identities stolen and fraudulent credit cards are opened in their name.

[tikcol]

Don't ban gold sellers/buyers, normalize gold selling/buying. Give official way to buy/sell gold. Profit.

#Blizzard

[Gunmetal-Kitten]

People will blame bots and Blizzard but will never blame the assholes who BUY gold to begin with, whether its through bots, guilds or Blizzard themselves. The market exists for a reason.

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Don't ban gold sellers/buyers, normalize gold selling/buying. Give official way to buy/sell gold. Profit.

#Blizzard

It's impossible either way. Blizzard can't ban a bot unless the bot does bot things, and by then it's basically just clean up because the transactions have been done. How else would they even know to ban them? Pre-emptively ban by assuming some new account is a bot?

The problem is the people who buy gold. That's it. Blame them.