Transmogable gear added to in game store, sigh - here were go...

[paralleluniverse]

Blizzard lost all credibility when they sold the guardian cub, allowing rich people to buy gold from other players for real money.

But even as far back as when they sold the celestial steed, people were saying it's all cosmetic so it doesn't matter. Nonsense. Even back then I had argued that cosmetic microtransactions could get out of hand, and now they have. With this change, why not add the following:
1. $15 for improve spell graphics and animations.
2. $15 for armor dyes.
3. $25 for updated character models.
4. $30 for adding glows and sparkles to weapons and armors.
5. $40 for dance studio.
6. $60 for player housing.
7. A real-money-to-gold player-driven AH to provide the same functionality as the guardian cub.

This is completely outrageous. They are using subscriptions to fund the development of content to sell it again. They're selling what's already bought.

[Thimagryn]

TCG has much worse mounts and mostly reskins, pet store mounts have different models than anything else in game... look at heart of the aspects/bat.

For the time the TCG mounts came out, they were of the quality of other mounts in the game. The current buyable mounts are of the quality of the best mounts available in game right now as well. Some can argue that they are better because they have unique models - but if they weren't unique models you wouldn't pay money for it now would you?

The same goes with Transmog gear. It's completely optional content. The argument that this takes away from pay-per-month resources is a fallacy, considering these optional items more-than cover the costs to make them, and the time invested.

[Deleted]

Wow... they really loose no time... here we go, expecting huge waves of items and the ingame store in next months...

[Serissa]

These new helms look better than most of the stuff we see dropping from bosses today though :/

That's just your opinion. Personnaly I think all 3 helms looks... shitty (at level of wotlk greens) and doesn't worth even 10c in blizzstore but that's my opinion and I'm sure some people will gladly pay 10$+ for this. Opinions... they are different

[Thimagryn]

Blizzard lost all credibility when they sold the guardian cub, allowing rich people to buy gold from other players for real money.

But even as far back as when they sold the celestial steed, people were saying it's all cosmetic so it doesn't matter. Nonsense. Even back then I had argued that cosmetic microtransactions could get out of hand, and now they have. With this change, why not add the following:
1. $15 for improve spell graphics and animations.
2. $15 for armor dyes.
3. $25 for updated character models.
4. $30 for adding glows and sparkles to weapons and armors.
5. $40 for dance studio.
6. $60 for player housing.
7. A real-money-to-gold player-driven AH to provide the same functionality as the guardian cub.

This is completely outrageous. They are using subscriptions to fund the development of content to sell it again. They're selling what's already bought.

Isn't that like arguing why they release expansion packs and collectors editions for expansion packs? You're already paying $15, I'm guess you should be entitled to everything, including a free ticket to Blizzcon?

[Kaleredar]

Blizzard lost all credibility when they sold the guardian cub, allowing rich people to buy gold from other players for real money.

Yeah, and how far did that go? Because I recall people saying that would destroy the WoW economy.

And years later... it's YET to be destroyed.

It's the perfect frame for how BASELESS these fears are. NOTHING happened from the guardian cub. The Economy didn't tank, Bill Gates didn't come to own the Sargeras server. Everything is pretty much the same. I haven't even seen anyone with a guardian cub out for quite some time.

But even as far back as when they sold the celestial steed, people were saying it's all cosmetic so it doesn't matter. Nonsense. Even back then I had argued that cosmetic microtransactions could get out of hand, and now they have. With this change, why not add the following:
1. $15 for improve spell graphics and animations.
2. $15 for armor dyes.
3. $25 for updated character models.
4. $30 for adding glows and sparkles to weapons and armors.
5. $40 for dance studio.
6. $60 for player housing.

I dunno, why not?

Does it affect game play in any way? I'd probably pay for player housing, if it were large enough, had customizability, allowed weapons/items to be displayed, and had cooking/smithing facilities with added extra storage space if that was the only way we could get it.

Hell, that's perfect. So many people complaining about Player Housing being "worthless," well there you go; they don't have to buy it.

15 dollars for a permenant set of armor dyes? I could totally get behind that. Would make it much easier to switch up transmog pieces.

This is completely outrageous. They are using subscriptions to fund the development of content to sell it again. They're selling what's already bought.

You know how else they do that?

Expansion packs.

[Phlegethon]

Probably the fact that blizzard are being money hungry again and would rather make amazing looking helms which people can buy rather than just put the ideas into the next tier sets....

IMO, blizzard should have just added these as the new tier set helms for DK, Warr and Pala... enough of this "oh buy this on the store"... money hungry..

Imo, they look stupid. Good thing they are not tier items.

Also: Blizzard is a company, they want to make money (you know american dream, capitalism and shit like that) so they try to sell you crap you don't need.

[Dontrike]

Blizzard lost all credibility when they sold the guardian cub, allowing rich people to buy gold from other players for real money.

But even as far back as when they sold the celestial steed, people were saying it's all cosmetic so it doesn't matter. Nonsense. Even back then I had argued that cosmetic microtransactions could get out of hand, and now they have. With this change, why not add the following:
1. $15 for improve spell graphics and animations.
2. $15 for armor dyes.
3. $25 for updated character models.
4. $30 for adding glows and sparkles to weapons and armors.
5. $40 for dance studio.
6. $60 for player housing.
7. A real-money-to-gold player-driven AH to provide the same functionality as the guardian cub.

This is completely outrageous. They are using subscriptions to fund the development of content to sell it again. They're selling what's already bought.

And all of those would be perfectly fine as they do not affect game play at all and you don't need to buy them to play the game.

[Ausr]

Yeah, and how far did that go? Because I recall people saying that would destroy the WoW economy.

And years later... it's YET to be destroyed.

It's the perfect frame for how BASELESS these fears are. NOTHING happened from the guardian cub. The Economy didn't tank, Bill Gates didn't come to own the Sargeras server. Everything is pretty much the same.



I dunno, why not?

Does it affect game play in any way?



You know how else they do that?

Expansion packs.

Yeah, I remember the complaints about the Guardian Cub. "Oh people are going to sell these things for hundreds of thousands of gold, the economy will crash and WoW is going to go down a dark path it can never come out of!!"

Reality? Rare to see a Guardian Cub go for more than 100g.

[Deleted]

Wow... they really loose no time... here we go, expecting huge waves of items and the ingame store in next months...

I think it comes down to how high your acceptance limit for such things is.
As long as they offer nice looking, purely cosmetic things, I have absolutely no problem with paying money in addition to the monthly fee. After all, it is optional and mostly quite cheap.

I just hope they keep this treshhold regarding "purely cosmetic". At least for a while.

[Deleted]

Who said anything about negating? Every mount or pet from the store could've been a rare drop/spawn in game. It SHOULD have been, because it's from the subscription that they pay for the development of such things. Same with cosmetic armor now. It could have been a rare drop, or something that you can achieve by doing something hard. It should have been. Is it, though? Seems not. Seems subscription pays them to develop things that ALSO cost money.

.

Could not agree more. If we pay each mouth, Then all items they added should we be able to get without Paying more. AND NOW they freaking even also ads Gear and cool things like transmaq gear.

[paralleluniverse]

Isn't that like arguing why they release expansion packs and collectors editions for expansion packs? You're already paying $15, I'm guess you should be entitled to everything, including a free ticket to Blizzcon?

Subscriptions are to pay for developing new content and maintaining the game between expansion packs. Expansion packs pay for a mass of new content. So your comparison fails.

There's nothing wrong with Blizzard charging for expansion packs. But there's something utterly wrong when they charge for a flying mount at over half the price of an expansion pack ($25). A mount which we've ALREADY paid them to develop.

- - - Updated - - -

If Blizzard can't afford to make this game at $15 a month, they should increase it to $20 or even $30. They should NOT be doing microtransactions. Increasing the subscription fee by 100% would be far preferable.

[Kaleredar]

Subscriptions are to pay for developing new content and maintaining the game between expansion packs. Expansion packs pay for a mass of new content. So you're comparison fails.

There's nothing wrong with Blizzard charging for expansion packs. But there's something utterly wrong when the charge a mount at over half the price of an expansion price ($25). A mount which we've ALREADY paid them to develop.

And your subscription also pays for their morning coffee, air conditioning, Morhaim's Faberge egg addiction, and probably some chunk of future Starcraft developments.

Frankly, your 15 dollars is something you pay them to access their servers. Anything else you "construe" out of that is either something Blizzard does to keep customers (I.e, develop new content) or something you just "make up" as a code or creed you think they must stick to and owe you.

[Outofmana]

It's a disgrace that the tier gear looks so SHIT these days and the store-items of course look amazing again, I'm just gonna call this company Activision from now on. The beginning of the end.

[Deleted]

If Blizzard can't afford to make this game at $15 a month, they should increase it to $20 or even $30.

Can you even imagine how much bigger the outcry in this case would be?

[Diablade]

I think they should've implemented this a while ago. There's nothing 'bad' or 'money hungry' about a business offering optional services to their customers at an additional cost. It's a pretty clean and intelligent business practice.

What I do agree with you on though is that T16 is arguably the worst raid set (maybe 2nd to T9) and at the same time they release buyable transmog gear on the Blizzard store. It could just be a coincidence, but I hope it's not the start of an awful pattern of making all of the in-game rewards pale in comparison to what you can buy. (Even though it would benefit me a lot since I have more money than time to spend - just wouldn't think it would be good for the playerbase overall.)

What he said.

[DenniZ]

Subscriptions are to pay for developing new content and maintaining the game between expansion packs. Expansion packs pay for a mass of new content. So your comparison fails.

There's nothing wrong with Blizzard charging for expansion packs. But there's something utterly wrong when they charge for a flying mount at over half the price of an expansion pack ($25). A mount which we've ALREADY paid them to develop.

I totally agree. And on top of that we are paying a sub fee. We bought the original game, we bought the xpacs, we pay the fee and now we have to pay for the goodlooking mounts and gear items. Its getting to be ridiculous.

[Thimagryn]

Collectors Editions
Blizzcon
TCG
Annual Pass

All predated the shop, all (with exception of annual pass) required paying a premium to obtain special in-game content. Some have even sold/bought the content on ebay for hundreds of dollars, yet very few people actually complain about this. As soon as Blizzard makes this non-exclusive and direct, it's considered selling out. I just don't get it.

[TJ]

I totally agree. And on top of that we are paying a sub fee. We bought the original game, we bought the xpacs, we pay the fee and now we have to pay for the goodlooking mounts and gear items. Its getting to be ridiculous.

I don't agree with the principle, but you don't HAVE to pay for anything..

[Deleted]

I'm more pissed they still have transmog restrictions even though they add this. "Here you go, you can transmog with all amor types, but only if you pay for it."

Collectors Editions
Blizzcon
TCG
Annual Pass

All predated the shop, all (with exception of annual pass) required paying a premium to obtain special in-game content. Some have even sold/bought the content on ebay for hundreds of dollars, yet very few people actually complain about this. As soon as Blizzard makes this non-exclusive and direct, it's considered selling out. I just don't get it.

Those didn't conflict with ingame restrictions, this does.