As someone who played for over 8 years (from launch to just a few months after mists came out) I respectfully disagree with this statement. Yes there are more ways for blizzard to collect money. None of those features are necessary though. Either they are for convenience (race changes, realm transfers, etc) or they are for vanity (such as pets). None of these features provide ANY kind of advantage over another player.
At the end of the day, blizzard's job is to make a great game. And in my opinion they do make a great game. Sub losses could be from various reasons, maybe it's because people see blizz as greedy, maybe people don't like the direction of the game/story, or maybe some people got tired of playing it however long they were playing it (it's why I stopped). There's numerous reasons, and I highly doubt that blizz is trying to grab at more money because sub numbers are down from what they were. They makes millions of dollars every year from subs alone. Heck, they could maintain a huge income from probably only a few million players.
Blizzard needs to make money, that is their main goal (as well as making a good game). These services you talked about are just that. Services. Services SHOULD be paid for. They aren't mandatory.
As someone who lurks the forums, I'll kindly suggest that I think you should try taking a break from the game. You seem like you're really invested in it, but almost every post I read from you is either bashing the story direction, or blizzard itself. Maybe the game isn't for you anymore? Anyway, as I said I respectfully disagree. I don't think blizzard has become greedy. At least, no more greedy than what they already were (they are a company after all). Calling a company greedy is like calling the sky blue >.>.
You have already had many well written and compelling arguments used against you. I'm trying to help you by asking you to stop.. sometimes people need that you know...
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Value is subjective. And saying "No man, those options are OPTIONAL, don't use them if you don't want to pay!" isn't attacking someone. I know you have a victims mentality Pann, but get serious.
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Thats in no way stealing.
I was interested in the conversation until you spat out the stupidity that is the sentence I quoted. They aren't charging anyone for updated race models and you'd have to be inept on so many levels to think that they would.
So you go ahead and 'call it now' - and when we start getting them for free, I'll be sure to send you a PM laughing in your face.
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WoW is profitable for Blizzard at/around 1 million subs. So yeah, you're right. At 7.7m they're pretty much drowning in cash. Which, incidentally, would be a hell of a wonderful problem to have wouldn't it?
"Help! Help! I fell into all this money and I'm drowning in it!"
I say blame capitalism. As long as there are people who're willing to pay for stuff, Blizzard or any other company for that matter will sell stuff. You're giving examples like Tera, Guild Wars, etc. Do you think those games wouldn't sell stuff more expensive if they had WoW's subscription numbers. Or look at games like Swtor, Lotro, Age of Conan all started out with subscribtion based games, only later turned to free 2 play model. Do you think those companies made their games available for free out of kindness of their heart?
You don't like to hear it but it all comes down to don't pay for it if it feels so much. As long as companies are happy with their profits they sell stuff, when they're not they'll find more ways to bleed customers.
There is nothing REALLY wrong with Capcom that simply throwing out the upper-echelons wouldn't solve. They have the talent and that talent has the dedication to their franchises. Sadly, Capcom Uppers have developed this insane formula where their games must sell an INSANE number of copies in order to be seen as successful.
This translates to them publicly claiming X game in Y Series didn't meet expectations, even if it outsold the previous title in the series. Resident Evil games are a prime example of this. They reach an increasingly larger audience per game, but they continue to fall short on the money the big guys want to see. The SF series largely worked off of arcade funds 15 years ago, Capcom wants to see that revenue with the current franchise - they EXPECT a continual flow and it can only work like that with DLC - something they semi-pioneered, which worked against them.
This is also mostly what happened to the Megaman franchise - they want 8 million units sold per title in a series? Megaman has *never* accomplished anywhere near that in a single game. It never will. So they dropped it.
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Blizzard .... I am not even sure how a parallel can be drawn between the two when they have more or less three franchises that they put a ton of time and energy into, regardless of the vocal minority opinion that floats around on the internet. A few microtransactions for vanity items in WoW, out of the millions of items your characters can find for free (minus time) do not a Capcom make.
Likewise, the RMAH in D3 was put in to try to provide a continual flow of capital to support that game. It didn't work out, so it is being removed. If it was Capcom, they would charge players a removal fee.
Yes, because the people complaining that their servers are empty are going to be thrilled when a popular guild moves to a different server and drags 50% of the server population with them. That's going to work out wonderfully. :P
Realm transfers have a cost partly so people won't do it en masse in response to petty things or even just rumors. I'm sure if someone started spreading a rumor that a realm's datacenter was under threat of being shut down for a while (for whatever reason), a lot of people would move out to Illidan or some other high-pop server. Letting people move freely only results in two things: empty servers at the source and queues on the other end. So, no: that's not a good idea at all.
Nothing ever bothers Juular.
Which why I said that I understand people not having an issue with the price. I am not talking about people saying the services are optional there has been some incredibly rude posts in this thread including homophobic comments (which have thankfully been removed), comparing those that are complaining to the victims of sexual abuse and just the general level of rudeness that is unfortunately the norm from many posters as soon as someone says something that is not praising their favourite company. You really need to grow up.
I need to grow up? I haven't said anything abusive. To the contrary, the OP started out with hostile actions. I haven't seen any homophobic comments personally. I've just seen people disagree (rightfully) with Trassk and explain why.
Disagreeing with you isn't attacking you, nor is it an insult.
Now if only the other players could take advantage of the suggested free server transfer that the popular guild had just used to move servers?!
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Yes. What was you comment about a victim complex if it was not meant to be insulting? As I said the homophobic comment was removed (credit to the mods), in just the first few posts you, yourself, have called Trassk "paranoid" then are a few comments about him only complaining because Thrall is not Warchief as well as the obligatory "spoiled" comment. I know you struggle with the concept of politeness but none of these comments were needed in order to disagree with him or explain why, they are there to attack the poster rather than his argument.
All of the things you bring up, pay for transfer, name change, etc, have always been in the game (or if not in it, were not available at all). so they've never given it free only to charge later.
The removal of the RMAH in Diablo shows that they have learned a painful lesson and are trying to fix their biggest mistake. All of the problems in Diablo came from the RMAH. The Online only requirements were there to prevent cheating and that caused lag and login errors. The drop rates were monitored and throttled to sustain RMAH prices. The game was short and focuses on grinding items instead of having hard and interesting bosses and mechanics. The list goes on.
What the "Loot 2.0" system shows is that Blizzard realized that the 5% cut from RMAH isn't worth it in the long run. Releasing a subpar and unplayable piece of garbage is the quickest way to kill a franchise. They figured out that very few people are even considering buying the expansion pack (i know that i won't), if it doesn't have offline mode and better loot system.
This 180 degree turn in Diablo gives some me some hope about the future of Blizzard products. If they stop trying to milk their players and instead focus on expanding their player bases the company will have future. But the future doesn't look good for Blizzard. Starcraft 2 popularity is going down even in Korea where League of Legends is becoming the new top E-sport to watch. Diablo left such a bitter taste that few people will buy the next expansion. Warcraft is getting far too old and it's loosing hundreds of thousands subscribers every quarter. Blizzard's sources of revenue are dwindling and they will have to decide between investing in new and better games that will make people gladly return or continue down the path of milking their shrinking player base until there is no one left and they shut down like many other studios before them.
Calling someone paranoid in their posting isn't the same as calling someone a homophobic slur. And yes, I find that you think everyone is attacking you and such. It wasn't meant to be insulting, it was meant as a means to help you understand that maybe, just maybe you aren't seeing things that clearly.
If someone makes a public post on a forum asking what others think, mentioning I find his post and ideas as paranoid, and not clear thinking isn't wrong or bad. Calling someone a homophobic slur IS VERY WRONG, as I don;t even see how you could come to the opinion of Trassk being a homosexual, and why it would matter in this post.
You just seem to think anything and everything that doesn't include "YOU ARE AWESOME!!!" is somehow a horrible insult, a form of bullying, and abuse. Thats simply not true.
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I did not say it was.
Brilliant, you deny being insulting with being condescending.
The definition of being paranoid is being delusion or irrational and quite clearly has nothing to do with the subject of the thread. I do not understand what you are trying to say, there was a homophobic comment that was removed I do not see how you have come to the conclusion that this has anything to do with my opinion of Trassk's sexuality.
Really I do not and I have been through this with you more times than I care to remember and I have no desire to explain it to you again.
here is my opinion.
I would almost rather buy a game for 60 dollars than play wow. When I buy a game at Game Stop, I know what i'm getting. The game I enjoy now, I will enjoy in the future. Wow is different though. Over the years, the developers have slowly stolen away almost every thing that made the game I paid and continue to pay for fun and enjoyable. Considering I don't want an item squish, and with this being forced on everyone, regardless of consumer opinion, I feel that this is the final straw. I would rather buy another troy ounce of silver every month than continue to allow the developers dictate how I play the game I pay for. That's just not what I find acceptable.
As is my right as a consumer, I will not continue to pay fees to play a game that in my opinion has been destroyed beyond repair.
the boiled frog analogy applies. consider - its february 2007
sor is introduced, with a free instant-60 in great gear on a realm you may never have played on before. also free xfer
please note that as late a 2 years ago a person talking about instant-80-anything from blizzard would have been roundly ridiculed on this forum as a private-server player who was confused/trolling.
pet shop, with boe pets you can sell which are endorsed by blue as a good way to get some extra gold for cash vs. goldsellers
transmog gear cash shop
well they would have gotten on as a game but it would have been shocking to a lot of players. I cannot help but think it would have damaged the franchise at that time among players that would tend to become long-term subscribers.
Now, of course, its routine and just another day in the grind in Wow. So who can say how far will be too far? Give it time, and a future playerbase will gladly pay for things that this forum would mock or rant about now.
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well they went live in the first place with rmah which certainly says a lot about them as well. that said, I tend to think they will try to find smarter ways to implement a micro-transaction-pushed game format in future efforts. I don't know the game but everything I have read implies RMAH's potential greatly influenced some decision s on d3.
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it's true that WoW is pretty cheap when you compare how most people spend their cash on weekends / friday night out at a pub etc. Staying in one friday night & watching a movie, not drinking etc would save you enough money to sub for wow for 1 month easily.
The real question is, is playing the game worth your time in its current state.
Hi