Blizzard's Power Leveling Stance 1 Year Ago

[lappee]

Blizzard adds option to game -> people whine on forums
Blizzard doesnt add option to game -> people whine on forums


nuff said.

[Icaras]

One blue, one year ago...it doesn't mean jack diddly dude. Blizzard is a pretty big company.

Also, I personally change my mind on stuff all the time...its human to change your mind. Why would/should Blizzard be immune to this?

[weedburst]

i hear what you're saying... but money, man.

[adorich]

This is a weak argument for blizzard basically doing a 180 over what they called integrity.

That's a great point. Blizzard didn't just say, "no," "not now" or "maybe in the future." They gave a fairly emphatic response stating why they won't do it and totally reversed their opinion.

If anything, Blizzard's reversal of opinion shows that anything is possible in the future i.e. gnome hunters and classic servers.

[Deleted]

That's Blizzard for you.....

"We don't want to allow people to move servers........until we can make money out of it"
"We don't want to allow people to move from PvE to PvP servers.......until we can make money out of it"
"We don't want to allow cross faction transfers.....until we can make money out of it"
"We don't agree with gold selling.......until we can make money out of it selling BoE pets"
"we don't agree with power-levelling......until we can make money out of it selling instant 90s"

Are we sensing a pattern yet? Everything that seems to be a principle of a "company of gamers that produce games for people like us. Gamers" can go west when there is the chance to make more money. And remember, this isn't a struggling company trying to make enough cash to keep going; this is a multi-billion dollar company that makes a fortune out of this game. They choose to ditch principles not because they need the money, but because they can. And the longer that they have a complacent player-base that is willing to put up with it, the worse it will get.

Except they're giving us free level 90s which suggests this isn't about money, and more about the fact that level is a trite, unnecessary part of the game and everything that's fun about it can be achieved by other means. And more to the point they're actually losing money by making the boosts $60. They make less money per boost than they would letting people buy new accounts and transfer the free 90s over (which is what the paid boosts prevent), and due to the high cost of the boost it's less accessible and appealing to the general player base. Selling them at $30-$40 would have been money grubbing. The current model actually shows remarkable amounts of integrity.

[Jtbrig7390]

Except they're giving us free level 90s which suggests this isn't about money,

The Xpac costing $10 more makes that "Free Bonus" not free anymore.

Also they are not losing money by making the boost $60 because the money was never there to begin with and they know those who want it will buy it no matter the price.

[coldrain]

Think it's time for a reminder why blizzard doesn't have to explain any of the flip flopping contradictions

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/legal/wow_tou.html

I hope the people flushing their money down the toilet on microtransactions pay close to attention to the ownership part. cash shop doesn't belong in a game where you own nothing. you're paying extra for virtual goods you will never own on a game you already pay monthly just to access

[Daws]

This is actually easily explained from the part -

"a company of gamers who create games for folks like us"

This should now read

"a company of business men who want money from folks like you"

[Jtbrig7390]

Think it's time for a reminder why blizzard doesn't have to explain any of the flip flopping contradictions

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/legal/wow_tou.html

I hope the people flushing their money down the toilet on microtransactions pay close to attention to the ownership part. cash shop doesn't belong in a game where you own nothing. you're paying extra for virtual goods you will never own on a game you already pay monthly just to access

That really dose sum it up and is one of the reasons why I refuse to sub to a MMO anymore.

Box price is fine "Like GW1/2" but not paying them monthly anymore. To me you get a choice ether monthly sub or cash shop not both. I love rift I play it for free and I support the game via its cash shop.

I refuse to Give WoW Box Price+Sub and also anything from the Cash shop. You ether get a sub "No Box Price" a B2p "Just Box Price" or Free 2 Play "Cash shop" with me personally.

There is only one MMO I have even considered subbing to "Not going to name it" and I even considered doing one of rifts subs for the bonus every once in awhile. But I like being able to hope in and out of Rift/GW2 without having to drop a sub fee on top of it.

Quailty of Content depends the person and I personally feel GW2/Rift has been doing great with there content. There is Zero Reason why at the end of each Xpac WoW has no content for 8-13 Months.

If blizzard stepped up the rate they release content and the amount I would consider resubbing but now the price hike on WOD. I just can't be asked to deal with blizzard anymore. They shitted all over Cata/D3 and now they are doing it to WoW again.

I don't care if they sell levels/Gear/Xp pots or whatever but you can not have a Box price a sub fee and a fucken cash shop all at the sametime its greedy and its tripple dipping.

You want to do Box price/Cash shop with no sub go for it. Gw1/2 has run this way and works well. But you can't have all 3. Pick 2 of the three and roll with it.

F2p+Shop+a p2p spot like rift is fine as well.

/My 2 cents.

Edit: Sorry went slightly offtopic there.

[YumYum]

Gosh darn…some of you are just realizing that the mythical Blizzard integrity is just that a myth…they have wholesale contradicted themselves in this manner repeatedly over the years…you should have been here when they strongly defended not being able to get mounts until level 40, defended circular flights paths and no player flying, defended class quests and countless other time sinks in the game, defended removing the LFG channel when they brought in LFD after previously defending the benefits of forming parties for dungeons and raids as promoting interaction in the game…the list goes on and on…and the fanboys defend them every single time (that's about the only thing that hasn't changed)..Blizz has always been about the $$$$ and the blues are just corporate shrills that tow the company line until the company changes their position and then the blues equally vigorously defend the "new" stance…


it amazes me some are just realizing this and others blindly defend it and don't have the intellectual honesty to admit their faith in blizzard is sorely misplaced

^vote4sticky

Seriously, the "it's done when it's done"/"Games for gamers from gamers" died at the very latest when they merged with Activision and it's gotten worse and will get even worse since Kotick et al took the reins as majority shareholders last year.

Starcraft 2 was one complete game ripped apart into 1 game + 3 addons...

D3 was -anything- but done, they just recently attempted to add proper end game itemization and ladders remain a dream, both the features that made D2 LoD the succeess that it was

Cata they chose to emphasize on altering existing content for launch and then added content as sparsely as sub retention would allow

MoP they created one batch of assets and then recycled them throughout the content patches full of scenarios with few if any actual additions. That's why it does not feel like the addon with the most content ever even though it is by sheer numbers and this is how they could keep up the speed of content delivery and why it's now come to a sudden halt: they can't put scenarios set in Pandaria with MoP art assets into an addon about Draenor...

"It's done when it's done" is
"It's done when market analysis decides it's time to sell, the reputation we earned a decade ago is still going strong"
and "Games for gamers by gamers" is
"Games for people with compulsive/gambling tendencies by people who engineer games specifically to exploit those"

At this point it's the same kind of asshats running Blizzard that are running EA and it's absurd how many people choose to whiteknight a multibillion corporation as if it still had any kind of identity or integrity and wasn't just a muppet of a grey blop of shareholders that care about return of investement and not about "Games for gamers"

[Deleted]

The Xpac costing $10 more makes that "Free Bonus" not free anymore.

Also they are not losing money by making the boost $60 because the money was never there to begin with and they know those who want it will buy it no matter the price.

Have you not been reading the blue posts on the topic? The paid boosts were implemented to stop people simply buying additional accounts and then transferring characters over. If they did that, I believe people figured out that it would cost in the region of $80. So yes that money was already there. If Blizzard was really being money-grubbing here, they could have charged that price or else not provided paid boosts at all, and anyone who wanted one would have to pay $20 extra. This move doesn't make them money, it potentially loses it. I applaud Blizzard's integrity here.

[Pull My Finger]

At this point it's the same kind of asshats running Blizzard that are running EA and it's absurd how many people choose to whiteknight a multibillion corporation as if it still had any kind of identity or integrity and wasn't just a muppet of a grey blop of shareholders that care about return of investement and not about "Games for gamers"

Resistance! Viva la revolución! Stand up against The Man!!!

I bet you put on your 2$ plastic Guy Fawkes mask just to type that.

[lunchbox2042]

Not like they haven't changed their stance on things before. There was 2008 when Rob Pardo came out and blasted games MMO's that had microtransactions. Not long after, Blizzard started offering more and more microtransactions, be it more services like race change and faction change or Blizzard Store mounts and pets. Blizzard does what it can get away with to increase their profit margin like any other company whether you like it or not.

[Huehuecoyotl]

I applaud Blizzard's integrity here.

You are right, the paid service they have put in the game (level 90 boost) to stop the abuse of another paid service that they have put in the game (account transfer) makes them a model of integrity for the whole world. Of course, the "free" level 90 they decided to offer couldn't have been put in purely as a way of introducing paid level boosts without them looking bad could it?

No, of course not. No company with the sheer integrity of Blizzard would do such a thing.

[Deleted]

Since when were people not allowed to change their opinions?

stalwart defender of Blizzard, stand your ground against all odds and logic

[worstpvperus]

stalwart defender of Blizzard, stand your ground against all odds and logic

Like him maybe I just think they have a right to run there game the way they want and if I don't like it well... Ill just quit. Rather then complain constantly.

[OneSent]

Because they had to make up for them subscription losses, bro!

Making up for lost profits > the integrity of your game. When people start seeing less money coming in, they start changing their mind real quick.

I was fine with the free lvl 90 they proposed with the expansion a few months back. It would have been sort of a nice "thanks for your support all these years, this one's on us!" But noooo... they had to go and make a service out of it. "Buy as many as you like!"

But what else is new. Blizzard has systematically been back-peddling on their original intentions and running the integrity of the game into the ground since 2009.

[Detheavn]

People are still surprised that Blizzard changes their stance on things after all the changes in the past?

Once there were tales of never getting realm transfers, which changed to "Characters from PvE realms cannot transfer to PvP realms" and realm transfers can only be done once per 6 months... Which is now 3 days.
Also never forget the fact that you couldn't have 2 character of different factions on a single PvP realm, and who would ever have imagined people switching races on the fly?

Yeah, I am hardly surprised anymore and am prepared for the worst

[Arrowstormen]

Because they had to make up for them subscription losses, bro!

Making up for lost profits > the integrity of your game. When people start seeing less money coming in, they start changing their mind real quick.

I was fine with the free lvl 90 they proposed with the expansion a few months back. It would have been sort of a nice "thanks for your support all these years, this one's on us!" But noooo... they had to go and make a service out of it. "Buy as many as you like!"

But what else is new. Blizzard has systematically been back-peddling on their original intentions and running the integrity of the game into the ground since 2009.

The original issue was that you could get the same effect from making more accounts and give them WoD, and then optionally transfer the 90's to your own account and leave the other account in the dust.

[Deleted]

Since when were people not allowed to change their opinions?

No one is saying they cant change opinions, it does however illustrate a move toward profit over game integrity - something up until now alot of people are denying is happening.

- - - Updated - - -

I read: "power levelling = somebody else play your character". Oh yeah..and a lot about gold selling.

Even if you want to rub it in and insist they changed their stance, it is rather about "Okay..so if you are willing to pay third parties to power level your toon, you might as well rather pay us. because it is our intellectual property"

Even you are going to have a problem coming up with an argument that suggests they havn't changed their stance.