Blizzard needs to F**K right off with Cashshop Transmogs

[Nutri]

Yeah, we had P2W shop mounts for mount collectors, P2W pets for pet collectors, - P2W transmogs for transmog collectors.

Pay2Win achievement points? Is that what you're worried about? None of these impact the game in any way. I'm not doing extra dps the more achievement points I get.

Also, let people spend their disposable income.
Do remember it benefactions the game. Revenue from the cash shop could even leverage periods with lower subscriber counts while overhead costs continue.

[Beefhammer]

Blizzard will not turn WoW F2P. They learned long ago that they can stick their fingers into both pies. They figured out that you can charge people a $60 box price expansion every 2 years AND $15 a month AND sell them $25 race changes AND sell them a $25 mount once every 3 months. Also, as a matter of pride, Blizzard doesn't want to admit that their game is dying. When the game's population began to decline, they refused to merge servers, as that would be an admission of defeat. They instead let servers to continue to depopulate and forced people to pay $25 to transfer off of their dying servers. When subs plummeted after a brief surge with WoD's launch, Blizzard tried to obfuscate the true status of the game by no longer publishing subscriber counts. To go F2P would be to admit that they are scrapping the bottom of the barrel and would greatly damage Blizzard's prestige.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the cash shop far more egregious in FF14. I'm not sure I've seen you rip that game apart for being a sub based, B2P game, with a million more options of stuff to buy in their cash shop?

Sub counts only matter for forum wars. I was subbed but didn't play for a few months. How is that an accurate reflection of anything? Whens the last time FF14 released one? Oh right never. SE has only released accounts created numbers for all combined online games.

[Bladesyphon]

How is it that same people can condemn Blizzard for their cash shop and then turn around and praise other well-known MMO's that have a monthly sub and a cash shop that is about 100X bigger? What the actual fuck? There's more than one that does this.

Just never access the shop. It's not that hard. If you're not skillful enough that you have to be boosted through content well, that's on you isn't it? Even then, farm the gold. You'll live if you don't get your free ride through a raid.

I agree, I've never understood this. People screech from the high heavens about how bad WoW's cash shop is, yet completely ignore that XIV's objectively worst. *Every* unique mount, including the only multi-seaters, can only be obtained in the cash shop. Armor that doesn't look like a reskin of previous raid designs, or ones that are devoid of any real color, are ONLY available in the cash shop. Hell, even previous year's festival cosmetics (which, you know, you can just earn in WoW by doing the stuff in that festival when it comes around again) can only be acquired if you miss them by, you guessed it, the cash shop. Want the ability to sell more items on the Auction House? Cash shop.

But Blizzard selling a cosmetic set of armor once in a blue moon, or as a pre-order bonus, or more often then not attaching it to your six mount sub (you know, along with most of the new mounts that have been released)? OUTRAGEOUS! HOW DARE THEY NICKEL AND DIME US! I'm really starting to think the people constantly shitting on WoW, and praising XIV for not doing the same exact shit Blizzard does, both in the actual game play, as well as their cash shop, either haven't played the game, or are still on their honey moon phase and haven't left the free trial yet.

[Dristereau]

We're long past the days of the Cash Shop not being there, it makes too much money for Blizzard especially with the WoW Token and the Boosting 'communities' that exist nowadays and spam trade chat.

From a personal perspective, whilst I dislike the Cash Shop I make enough Gold in the game to not have an issue with purchasing tokens for Gold and buying Shop items like that so for me it's just a rather pricey mount, no different to things like the Brutosaur, the Mechagon Exalted mount, the Nazmir Frogs and more.

I think one of my bigger issues right now is they removed the ability to get the 6 Month bundles using Gold/Battle.Net Balance so I will not get those anymore until a New Year Sale when I usually purchase most of the shop mounts. Also they normalized Game Time prices so you can't get discounts for buying in bulk :/

[Lochton]

Eh.. I do not really care. It is not really P2W, nor is it interfering with the game.

[crusadernero]

oh yeah token CHANGED the game
people were buying gold/items/boosts for decade, and then the token came and ...people kept doing the same

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theres none, there is datamined image showing armor in a bundle so it MIGHT one day became obtainable on shop
it might take years (like some datamined moutns did) or it might never even get into game (like some other datamined mounts and other things) but why not get pissed for no good reason now, right?

oh yeah sure, people have always done that. But do you seriously mean that it was as rampant as after the wow token were put in the game? With the token we have gotten inflated & stupid high prices for most things in the game, the boosting services has exploded and theres more bots than ever before.

You see no difference to making wow token available to EVERYONE in seconds legally, in game, then having people to think atleast two or three times about going to third party websites and do it? The barrier is gone and as such the game suffers.

Prices for ingame mounts are stupid high, stuff on the AH has sicko prices. LFG channel is literally filled to the brim with advertisers. Thats NOT how it used to be.

With your argument we should be able to do everything in the game, that people did back in the day. Why cant we pay for a bot in the shop? That plays the game for us while we are gone.


The token fucked this games playerbase and apparently many seems to have no problem with that.

[Zigrifid]

what cash shop armor?

[Venziir]

Honestly who wants this?


These transmogs are way more visually striking and most likely will offer more particle effects and other enhancements than in game items. Honestly everyone needs to protest this crap before it gets out of control. These are new appearences that can be used for unique events like Mage Tower 2.0 or other game feats of strength.....


How are people ok with this?

Judging by the insane amounts of people I've seen wearing both the yeti-pyjamas and the sprite darter outfit, I'd wager that litterally everyone and their mom wants it.

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Yeah, we had P2W shop mounts for mount collectors, P2W pets for pet collectors, then we had P2W tokens for buying boosts and now last thing - P2W transmogs for transmog collectors. Why should we even play this game, if every valuable reward can be bought for $$$? Some guys would say, that $$$ rewards won't give you "prestige and respect", but who cares about virtual e-peen "prestige"?

That's... Erm.... Not how P2W works.

[Gaidax]

Well, I absolutely think that tokens are pretty much P2W and IMO denying it is silly. You can get boosted for gold all the way down to full mythic clear cutting edge. Heck, as previous season showed - paid Hall of Fame and unique raid title boost is not beyond reach with this whole Chinese guilds spinning off a little hustle on the side there. There is no more win that that really, it's pinnacle game achievements right there.

And you are not going to convince me that the guys that get a boost just went and picked some flowers, it's a total "c'mon man" thing.

Now for me the upside is that I earn my upkeep ingame by passively boosting with our guild boost runs, but overall this is unhealthy shit, IMO. Blizzard should find a way to clamp on it or it may go out of control like it already does in China.

[huth]

oh yeah sure, people have always done that. But do you seriously mean that it was as rampant as after the wow token were put in the game? With the token we have gotten inflated & stupid high prices for most things in the game, the boosting services has exploded and theres more bots than ever before.

We got inflated prices due to mission tables, Boosting services happened at a different time than tokens and bot numbers didn't suddenly explode when it was introduced either. You're just throwing everything you dislike together without establishing any actual link between them and then claim it's all due to token ex nihilo.

At the same time, it achieved it's main goal; making people trading gold for real money less likely to get hit by fraud and account stealing.

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Well, I absolutely think that tokens are pretty much P2W and IMO denying it is silly. You can get boosted for gold all the way down to full mythic clear cutting edge. Heck, as previous season showed - paid Hall of Fame and unique raid title boost is not beyond reach with this whole Chinese guilds spinning off a little hustle on the side there. There is no more win that that really, it's pinnacle game achievements right there.

And you are not going to convince me that the guys that get a boost just went and picked some flowers, it's a total "c'mon man" thing.

Now for me the upside is that I earn my upkeep ingame by passively boosting with our guild boost runs, but overall this is unhealthy shit, IMO. Blizzard should find a way to clamp on it or it may go out of control like it already does in China.

The problem is that not having token wouldn't change shit about that. We had gold buying for years before the token. So unhealthy or not, Blizzard is stuck with it.

[Gaidax]

We got inflated prices due to mission tables, Boosting services happened at a different time than tokens and bot numbers didn't suddenly explode when it was introduced either. You're just throwing everything you dislike together without establishing any actual link between them and then claim it's all due to token ex nihilo.

At the same time, it achieved it's main goal; making people trading gold for real money less likely to get hit by fraud and account stealing.

Haha, you think that was the main goal of the Token? That's hilarious.

The whole WOD table is ancient history, time has passed. What you see now as boosts are all them CC swipes right and left. It's just a reality check thing.

[Makabreska]

WoW has so many problems nowadays, and yet some peeps decided to go after cosmetic shop items that don't affect them in any shape or form.

Well, no. They actually are affected by these. They got mad triggered when they see a char with shop mog/mount and spam /vote kick in PUGs on them.

[Gaidax]

The problem is that not having token wouldn't change shit about that. We had gold buying for years before the token. So unhealthy or not, Blizzard is stuck with it.

That's just nonsense. Buying gold could get you banned and Blizzard absolutely could clamp on that with better detection tools and more assertive GM and support team.

The moment Blizzard legalized the gold purchases through their shop - the floodgates have opened. That is why you have this insane amount of boosting going on relatively recently all around to the point they have to do stuff like tying LFG tool capabilities to authenticator and what not what else down the road.

Boosting now IS an absolute menace and it IS because Blizzard effectively sanctioned gold selling themselves and profit very nicely from that as well. So don't tell me they made token out of concern for players, that's hilarious denial of reality.

[Thelxi]

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

[iinverse]

I don't mean, that having cash shop = F2P. F2P is direction of development mentality. It's about low quality of core game, while making it better for $$$. It's the same, as watching ads in free apps - "You can use it for free, if you can suffer it, but if you respect yourself - then pay $$$". For example now more and more players are expected to buy tokens to buy raid/M+ boosts, because playing for free is way too "competitive" for them, like being unable to find guild or static.

Of course the worst case scenario - is when you pay $$$, but still need to watch ads. And that's, what actually happens with many parts of IT industry now, including games. I call it "mixing payment methods". This guys try to claim, that amount of money, you pay for their product, isn't enough to run it's development. They're poor indy guys, who have nothing to eat, blah blah blah. But it's obviously not true. It's like robbing you. You pay money for their product, but they still silently collect telemetry about you to determine your "preferences", sell it to 3rd parties and try to push targeted ads here and there, like if it would be "free cheese only in a mousetrap" free product, you deliberately agree to use with this conditions. And this brings them even more money from you. But they do it without asking you. And you just can't opt out of this garbage. It's obviously 3rd party service, like selling cars, that IT guys use to get extra profits. But they use their monopoly position to force it on their customers. In most cases current people are way too incompetent to even realize this.

Same with cosmetics in MMOs. It's ok to have poor quality of content and to sell cosmetics in shop in games, who live only via this shop sales. But it's not ok, if you also charge 60$ for box and another 15$/month. This should be more than enough to run core game itself.

As I already said, having shop/transactions in any form in payed games is a reality, so its not right to blame Blizzard for it (its the overall game publishing sh*t now). You're late for 10 (or maybe more) years with it. Sorry. Now all you can do is deal with it or stop playing.

[Raven]

So much you could blame Blizzard for and apperantly people are still so desperate to blame Blizzard that they need to make up stuff, all the legit stuff isnt enough.

[Raetary]

Anyone care to link me the transmog so I can see what it looks like?

There is no link, as its not on the shop yet.

You can see it in the datamined bundle promo image on the front page.

[Makabreska]

As I already said, having shop/transactions in any form in payed games is a reality, so its not right to blame Blizzard for it (its the overall game publishing sh*t now). You're late for 10 (or maybe more) years with it. Sorry. Now all you can do is deal with it or stop playing.

Erm, not true. No one forced Blizz to follow monetization trends, this decision was entirely on them. You got other publishers who somehow managed not to put any in their games.

[Lex Icon]

i'd probably rather have some unique stuff in the store than it only be rewards for arena players like in the past.

[Dread Pirate Phayde]

I really need to start buying stock in the company that makes Preparation H, because every little thing Blizzard does these days seems to get many people's butt holes flaming.