Originally Posted by
vizzle
The arguments here are really quite alien to me, but I guess it's because I haven't touched this game since early Cata (yes, "why are you here then", get it out of the way; I just like browsing every now and then).
The introduction of the cash token -- allowing players to buy gold legitimately -- really made this game something I know I could never return to, and I'm sure there are other ex-players who feel the same way.
When people like Asmongold say, "cash shop mounts/items are garbage because you buy them with $$ instead of in-game gold or in-game achievements", and you guys say, "oh but you can grind gold in game and then buy the cash shop items", you're missing the point so so significantly. It's not about jealousy or anything; it's not about, "why can you buy items with real money but you can't buy it with in-game work?". It's about the fact that you can buy it with real money invalidates the need to perform any kind of in-game work. Why should I spend 50 hours earning it in-game when I can spend an hour at a job to earn the same thing? Why should I play the game when the real world saves me time? This isn't an escape from reality anymore -- it's a decision that never makes sense.
The WoW world just stopped feeling like a separate WoW world when Blizzard legitimized real cash to gold conversion. I understand that people have been selling gold since Vanilla, long before the cash token was introduced, but this conversion was never legitimized by Blizzard; it was always "illegal" (regardless of whether Blizzard actively sought after gold sellers and gold buyers or not), meaning you always had the feeling that Blizzard cared about keeping up the fourth wall that kept the WoW world in a bubble away from the real world.
It's just not the same. In the time since I've quit WoW, I've gained a BA and a MA and started two businesses; I'm the type of player who happily whales for games if I like them. But just because I can buy everything on the cash shop and buy millions of gold without feeling it in my bank account doesn't mean I want to or like the idea of doing that. The charm of the separate WoW world was that cool things were earned by in-game effort. It was a separate world from the real world. But these days it's not, and the players who still play here -- namely the arguments on the first page -- seem to have forgotten that. Or maybe this shift in mindset is the only way you can still stand to play this game.
MMO cosmetics used to be about in-game prestige, with prestige mattering more than even the aesthetics of the cosmetics; prestige, because it depended on your in-game effort. I remember spending hundreds of hours doing everything necessary to get "The Insane" title in WotLK, before the nerf to it in Cata. I totally understood that whole prestige thing. But then you see the art team making the best cosmetics that can be earned immediately with cash, and it cheapens the experience, it cheapens the purpose and it cheapens the world.
At the end of the day, maybe this is just an older mindset or approach. MMOs used to be about creating a world and protecting the integrity of that separate world. But I guess WoW sees itself as a lobby game now, so it acts as lobby games act.