Charging $35 for a character copy is why people say Blizzard is greedy

[Zeta333]

Do you think those services should be completely free? What mechanisms would you put in place to prevent abuse?

No but i dont think they should be 10/25/30 dollars.

[HansOlo]

Firstly, you should thank private servers because if it wasn't for Nostalrius then you wouldn't have classic WoW. Secondly, I own my copy of WoW. I still have the box with CD's or DVD's. I haven't opened that box in a while, but I do own the game. Also I spent what added up to be over $2k since 2004, so I don't have any remorse for what you consider to be circumvented trademark rules. Thirdly, you could learn a lot from how private servers function. Might teach you how Blizzard does it.


More importantly is I didn't pay. There's a huge difference in having a small group of people running a server compared to Blizzard who writes every expense they pay off on their taxes. Activation Blizzard didn't pay any taxes in 2018.

SQL databases to be exact. But it's still a file or bunch of files sitting on computers. There isn't a guy named Dave sitting at these things manually entering your data from one Realm to another. It's still a script executed automatically.


But you don't know what you're talking about. Many online games function just fine without the need of a steady stream of income. Guild Wars gets along just fine without a monthly fee, though they did add micro-transactions. Also yes a lot of private servers have micro-transactions but not all of them, and not because they need the money to keep the server going. A little known private server had broken a rule by selling things in game and they were quickly separated because of this reason. People who know, will know what I'm talking about.

Pretty obvious that classic content is popular and Blizzard has started to break some unspoken rules. The monthly fee alone is more than enough to pay for all the things needed for server maintenance, including server copying and transfers. If it isn't then why the hell am I paying the fee for?

- - - Updated - - -


Bobby Cotex's paycheck is hard to ignore. I'm not the only one saying this, but Investment group says Activision CEO Bobby Kotick gets paid too much.

Am I using those other said projects or services? If not then why should I care? Not that I care for future Blizzard Activision projects as they'll be some awful online game that's full of micro-transactions. Or worse, mobile games.

Trick question, all businesses are greedy. This is capitalism which the only goal is money. No business exists to be a charity. The question is will this hurt Blizzard's bottom line? Kinda.. maybe? We've said this about Word of Warcraft for years and nobody thought anything about it, until half of the player base goes missing this early in Shadowlands expansion. TBC is set in stone and is hard to screw up what's already a finished and well received product. After WOTLK classic is released is when Blizzard's greed will get the better of them... again.

Blizzard wouldn't release TBC now to cannibalize Shadowlands unless Shadowlands was doing poorly. Let me know when future Blizzard products are worth it for me to pay attention to.

I did and you're still wrong. Where's my cookie?

Lame answers. You are not even up for a real discussion - because you know that in the end - this is a buisness - just like any other. And it's not about some greedy goblin sitting on the throne - it's about investors who wants to earn and projects that demands money. Again this is buisness...

You know what - I might call you greedy for complaining actually. Who are you tell what's expensive - when you pay 1500$ for a phone or 100$ for a shoe.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

It never ceases to amuse me how often people rage and whine and complain over things they do not have to participate it.


Also considering who this OP is and how many troll threads he makes... I 100% believe he has 0% actual shit to give about this topic.

[Ashleyxoxo]

This is a sub game with a cash shop. Cloning should be free.

[anon5123]

Investors don't work that way.

"nooo the game is dying it's dying it doesn't matter that it's grossing a shitton of money, it's dying!!!"

ok doomer

[Crimson Spears]

"nooo the game is dying it's dying it doesn't matter that it's grossing a shitton of money, it's dying!!!"

ok doomer

More it shifts from providing the best experience possible to players to monetizing players the most effectively.

[Vash The Stampede]

I'm not surprised that Blizzard/ATVI didn't pay taxes. There's a laundry list of companies that do this, and it's not a good thing IMO. That said, it doesn't preclude them from charging for their services.

If they can write off expenses like electricity on their taxes then their servers practically run without any real cost to Blizzard. The only reason they're spending any amount of money is because they decided to use their latest game engine to bring back WoW instead of using the old 2010 client. Which doesn't allow me to use old mods from that time period.

The last I had seen, they used a hosted NoSQL service but who the fuck knows how outdated that is. Either way, hosted DB's aren't cheap, scaling is expensive, and if the clone were free they'd basically be accepting that scaling cost for people who have little/no intention of actually playing. $35 was too much, hell, $15 should still cover ALL characters, but whatever.

And the script(s) you're referencing require compute cycles, which cost money.

The computers they use today are far better than the computers they used in 2007. Compute cycles are dirt cheap. I also doubt that classic TBC is going to have 10 million users like they did back in 2010. They're not updating the games content like they did in 2007. They're not patching the game to balance things like in 2007. So what's my $15 doing if it isn't giving me free character copies and transfers?

You literally just listed examples of either games that don't charge but have an abundance of micro-transactions, or private servers that grew and started offering services. I'm not sure if you're trying to help make my point, but thanks?

Guild Wars didn't always have micro-transactions. Dark Souls doesn't have micro-transactions. Splatoon 2 doesn't have micro-transactions. Many games have online multiplayer and no micro-transactions or monthly fees. A lot of games do nowadays but nobody likes them.

Anyone thinking there are "unspoken rules" with Blizzard and Classic is just naive. The same people responsible for the state of Retail's "value added services" are making decisions on Classic. If people came back to Classic under the current Blizzard thinking they were "Indie Again", I've got a bridge to sell them.

If Blizzard incorporates enough Retail into Classic then I could see people leaving. A lot of people left retail just to avoid the monthly fee and didn't like the grind pushed onto players. Who can forget Azerite farming? Not like ShadowLands is a huge improvement. Believe it or not but the player bases growth is stunted by Blizzard greed by either forcing fees onto players or forcing a grind to keep the players logged in and paying their subscription fees. Some of it is nostalgia but a lot of is because it isn't Retail. Nobody wants to see micro-transactions and nobody wants to be told to pay a fee to keep a copy of their character so they can continue to play classic with their friends while also experiencing TBC. Lets be honest here, you'll end up vendoring half the stuff in your inventory when you start upgrading all that gear in TBC, unless you have T3 level of gear. T4 kinda sucks. So you're paying a fee so that years of work doesn't go out the window, and so you can still play with your friends in Vanilla. Blizzard knows this and that's why they're charging a fee because they know you'll pay. In bird culture they call this "dick move".

Lame answers. You are not even up for a real discussion - because you know that in the end - this is a buisness - just like any other. And it's not about some greedy goblin sitting on the throne - it's about investors who wants to earn and projects that demands money. Again this is buisness...

I don't know, but Bobby Kotick's does kinda look like a Goblin to me. Here's another one.

You know what - I might call you greedy for complaining actually. Who are you tell what's expensive - when you pay 1500$ for a phone or 100$ for a shoe.

Actually I bought a used Moto X4 for $65 and flashed LineageOS onto it, making it better than like 100% of iPhones. Also I bought a bunch of shoes when Payless was going out of business for like $20 a pair. I don't need to buy shoes for a very long time. You know what they say when you assume.

[facefist]

This is a sub game with a cash shop. Cloning should be free.

This is a game that tries to maximize profits. Just like most games are.

[Nzx]

I've seen some pretty fucking weird arguments in here. Like "people who have Naxx gear and Scarab Lord mounts will feel psychological pressure and be forced to pay". I think some of you need some perspective on what's important in life if a $35 one-off cost is unachievable for you but you're dedicating enough of your time to a ~16 year old video game to acquire Scarab Lord/clear Naxx and feel like those things are significant enough achievements that you'd like to idolise them in perpetuity. Like, it cost me $35 to catch an Uber home last night, how can you possibly feel this strongly about a service you'll pay for literally once?

[MoanaLisa]

I wouldn't pay more than $15 to clone a character.

You're in luck.

[Speedlance]

Lets be honest here, maybe 1 out of 1000 will play both lol. Not a problem.

[Azadina]

Lets be honest here, maybe 1 out of 1000 will play both lol. Not a problem.

Now with the price reduction, 1000 out of 1000 bots will dupe their gold to both versions guaranteed.

[Kolvarg]

Since there isn't at least one free use, I do think it's a bit greedy. However, overall, I wouldn't call Blizzard particularly greedy. WoW has been the same price for more than a decade-and-a-half (at least here in NA), which is absurdly cheap for 24/7 available entertainment, and a character copy isn't a necessary feature.

I see this fairly frequently, but I don't know that it's true. If you compare it to all entertainment and consider inflation - maybe?

Even then it's a push when you consider something like Netflix or similar streaming services, which also provide 24/7 available entertainment for similar or cheaper than WoW, without box price or any additional transactions apart from the subscription, and some at least are even shareable and usable simultaneously by multiple people.

Then, if you compare it to more similar entertainment (ie other MMORPGs) the trend has been to become cheaper, not more expensive. The vast majority either abandoned subscription models or made them entirely optional, with many going B2P or even F2P.

Finally, comparing it to gaming as a whole, I'd say that generally things have become cheaper. Sure, individual AAA titles at launch have increased price. But you now have AA titles launching at a lowe pricepoint when as far as I can remember in the PS1/PS2 era they were full price. You have dozens to hundreds of indie titles releasing every month at a low price point. You have bundles and steep discounts selling games at a fraction of the price, often not that long after release. You have subscription services like game pass which give you access to hundreds if not thousands of full games for cheaper than a WoW subscription.

And yea, arguably WoW has also gotten cheaper. The base game now includes the first month of subscription, and for the most part you only have to buy the most recent expansion, as all others are included in the base game. Although this affects mostly new players, not the recurrent ones. And yea it didn't increase too much in most zones despite inflation.

Ultimately the truth, at least in my opinion, is that WoW used to be more expensive than most games, and today it still is.

[SirBeef]

$35 is a bit insane, but at the end of the day, its Activision controlling the price and not so much blizzard. But also at the end of the day, they are a business. Businesses are allowed (and supposed to) make money. Without that money, they are unable to maintain a game that you want to play.

Should the price be lower than $35? Yes. $20 max IMO. But it doesnt effect me because I didnt play classic.

You sure about that?

[Nestoras]

Sure, call it greedy, call it outrageous and complain.

Also: I have a great solution to this! I just don't spend 35$ on that service. That is my way of telling them what I think about it.

But I guess for some people that also counts as white-knighting?

So you 're suggesting to just suck it, right?

Some people invested the time to create a fully decked toon and they wanna take it to TBC but also to have it in the Vanilla Classic Realm. Why you 're judging them for complaining? Are you taking pleasure from this?

In the end, Blizzard proved them right and yourself being on the wrong side by reducing the price to a more reasonable level. And i am very glad for this, how about you?

[Laz]

Price reduced to $15 dollars today, the arguing can stop…
Cheers!

[Cthulhu fhtagn]

Does this mean that bots can pool their money on one character then have that character carry the gold to both versions of the game and sell it twice?

Other than that i have no idea why it would cost any money at all when the whole service is automated. Surely people are more likely to keep playing classic if they end up not enjoying tbc or vice versa. Then again maybe they are trying to make bank on people who are afraid it happens and want to copy "just in case".

[GnomeEU]

Agreed. Putting a $35 price tag for a required feature is absurd. If only this was optional.

Ohwait

Playing wow is optional.
Paying for wow is optional.
Buying expansions is optional.
Having a good computer to play is optional.

Still it helps having all that "optional" stuff, don't you think

[ranzino]

Does this mean that bots can pool their money on one character then have that character carry the gold to both versions of the game and sell it twice?

.....

technically yes. question is if they still got so much customers on classic era.

[Twdft]

, I own my copy of WoW. I still have the box with CD's or DVD's. I haven't opened that box in a while, but I do own the game.

The only thing you own are the CDs. You have a licence to use the game.