Sorry, what does my extra $6/month get me? Seriously, in what way would this change a thing?
It doesn't matter how much more they would charge you, every company would eventually try to get more money from its consumers because that's how these things work, except now everyone is forced to pay an extra $6/month.
TL;DR: No and why?
Still wondering why I play this game.
I'm a Rogue and I also made a spreadsheet for the Order Hall that is updated for BfA.
I wouldn't, I don't care enough about their business model to be willing to pay that much for a subscription.
In what way does somebody buying a sparkle pony impact you negatively? You call it greed. But is it greed? Is a car manufacturer greedy because they sell more expensive versions of the same car under luxury brand names? Is Williams Sonoma greedy because they sell "up scale" versions of the same shit you find at Wal-mart? There's a market for these services and Blizzard is hardly predatory when it comes to offering them so I have a hard time attributing the existence of the cash shop with greed.
it's not cheap *in comparison to other games*. It's not expensive in real terms, you're right there. But I can buy three full price AAA games per year for what WoW costs... or a lot o smaller, indy games. So the question becomes whether WoW is a better use of that $180/year than other ways to spend your game dollars and that's obviously a personal call.
The problem is that business models in the AAA industry aren't driven by what's fair or what's needed to keep the game operating/updating, they're driven by how much the companies can get away with. A hike in the sub fee wouldn't occur so that they could stop pushing microtransactions, it would occur on top of pushing microtransactions if they thought people would be willing to pay it. That's why so many different aspects of WoW are unnecessarily monetised. It has box prices, the sub fee, paid account services, tokens, purchaseable in-game items, level boosts, and promotional items, when the sub fee alone would still be more than enough to make it a cash cow.
It's important to keep in mind that while video game production costs have increased in recent years (although that's largely a problem of the industry's own making as well), profits have skyrocketed even faster. It's a myth that aggressive monetisation models have become necessary in order to support development. What they've become neccesary for is to prop up the unsustainable increase in profit growth that shareholders have become accustomed to. It's no longer enough for video games to turn a profit each year. They have to turn an even bigger profit than last year. The effect that has on the consumer is not really a consideration unless it affects the bottom line.
Last edited by Wondercrab; 2019-11-24 at 06:33 PM.
The store is O-P-T-I-O-N-A-L. It's mounts and transmogs and obviously blizzard services. None of it gives someone a competitive advantage for purchasing it. Just let it go already.
No, fuck off.
Where is the "fuck no" answer? They are already asking a premium price for a mediocre game.
Forgive me, I've never been a fan of grass roots anti-capitalist rhetoric... especially when it's about a fucking video game where you slay internet dragons for imaginary loot. I'd just much rather let capitalism do it's thing as long as the company I'm supporting continues to create a product I personally deem is worth the price of admission. Blizzard has yet to overstep any boundaries with their cash shop in my opinion.
It's a success for the business. It's a problem for the consumer. You have to decide as an individual whether that bothers you or not. I don't like it myself because it results in a gradual degredation of the experience due to the influence it has on design decisions. Many AAA games today, particularly those that rely on live service models, provide particularly egregious examples of this. Even things that might on the surface appear completely optional still take up dev time that would otherwise have been spent elsewhere, or cast the game in an unfavourable light compared to others that offer similar services for free. As a consumer I'm not inclined to go to bat for companies whose goal is to make more money by providing me with a worse experience than their competitors do.
I agree when it becomes blatant enough to actively have a negative impact on the gaming experience. (Dead Space 3's monetized weapon upgrade system comes to mind.) But I personally don't see how a fucking 600x400 30 second looping video in the launcher enticing people to buy a new fancy prismatic mount is negatively impacting WoW or laying the groundwork for further predatory tactics (as is often the slippery slope argument against the cash shop).
I think a more apt comparison would be something like the hood or the other body parts which are "just cosmetic, bro", according to the blizzapostel.
Even though I still wonder why gamers are such idiots that spend thousands of dollars to get the latest games on the highest graphic settings, but then pretend that someone charging them extra for the actual files for those graphics is okay because "it's just cosmetic and not important". /smh
You are welcome, Metzen. I hope you won't fuck up my underground expansion idea.
My argument hasn't changed, I'm on my phone and I don't particularly care to individually address the hundreds of ad hominems you've used against me. Sorry to disappoint.
It stands to reason WoW's team was shrunk at the same time Blizzard began to expand its gaming portfolio. Remember, Overwatch rose from the ashes that was Titan, originally intended to be the MMO that finally killed WoW. The end result is that, unlike everything up until Cata, now Blizzard has multiple streams of revenue instead of just WoW.Since when was I anti capitalist, Even back in the Cata/WoTLK days, pre shop, when they were charging like 12 million people 9.99 a month and making insane profits I just accepted it because the game was good, it wasnt until Cata when the capitalist anti consumer moves came, cutting the WoW team size down to the bone and producing a garbage product, huge wait times etc, and then pushing it further by further subdividing their product up and selling parts seperately was the capitalist roots a bit too fucking strong for my taste.
Further, I don't think it's uncoincidental that you attribute "capitalistic tendencies" with content you deem is "garbage." To me, it seems like you're justifying your disengagement with the product with your own personal set of ethics. That's fine and all, but not everybody feels as strongly as you do about the direction Blizzard has taken the game post-Cata. I hardly agree with every move Blizzard has made but I understand some of the design choices were made for self-preservation and the fact that we're here having heated debates about a 15-year-old video game is evidence of its developers ultimately making the right moves.
This scenario you have invented is entirely in your head. Where is it written that all end bosses should drop mounts? And how do you correlate the existence of a cash shop mount with the absence of a raid mount? Sorry dude, I don't buy it.What you fail to see Ota is that Capitalism is a great thing, when its fair for both parties, Capitalism dosent have to equal fucking utter greed. If you think they havent overstepped their mark then maybe you should take off your rose tinted glasses. There have been patch defining raids where the final boss of the instance dosent have a mount drop, meanwhile they release a mount in the store to align with the release of that patch. So what, when we complete the hardest boss of a patch, on the hardest difficulty, you havent had your artists develop content to reward the players with for that, but you have used company funds to pay those same developers to develop content to be sold separately at the same time. What a joke. Get real.
Last edited by Relapses; 2019-11-24 at 07:44 PM.