Why? Are you really close to all the store mounts you have bought? I would think certain items, gear, mounts, pets & titles in a MMORPG would hold alot more value to you(or anyone else) when one actually put in effort to require it. With store mounts now, im sure for alot of people it goes like this;
- Buys store mount
- Gets excited for half a day
- Never uses the mount again
Repeats it when a new mount is launched.
Are you seriously mentioning operational expenses such as server costs as a justification for sub costs and box costs?
Guess how much does it cost to run one realm per month? Something within $1-3k bracket; this would include connectivity and generally everything. Even maintenance and scheduled updates. The only cost they have on top is development, support and marketing. Out of which only support is required for operations per se - and you all know that wow has close to nonexistent support.
So yes, they are super rich and neither sub costs nor extra shop items can justify anything
Id rather pay DLC prices for class skins and allied races. Unlock quests included obvs.
But let's be real, the game is already AAA price, plus 15 bucks a month. Everything should be earnable ingame.
I'm actually with you on this, but I'm more for the outlandish transmogs they currently release as opposed to something "really cool" as you suggest.
By that I mean just really weird shit; we've seen the faerie outfit and the yeti costume that came from a virtual ticket. The recent celestial looking mog and the one from the shadowlands preorder were a bit less silly and actually I find those to be less of what I'd want to see as a shop mog.
You know what I'd like to see - shop mogs that are not Warcraft. Like cross promo lost vikings outfit, overwatch looks, wild stuff like that. At this point anyone who says more work is going towards shop content as opposed to stuff you can earn in game has not played enough of this game, or has an extremely limited sense of taste.
I dont really have any justification for this, but what is currently in the store doesn't bother me too much. The sprite darter set was originally part of a promotion and the store is a secondary way to obtain it. Personally I'm fine with accessories like the murloc baby backpacks being sold. Im not happy about the celestial ensemble or the helmets but not enough to really care. As long as it is done infrequently, I will treat them the same way I do store mounts and only purchase the ones I want when theyre on sale.
I do not want the store to become the primary way to obtain "good" transmog. I've seen how that plays out in both FF14 and SWtOR.
I think transmog is the best item to have on the shop.
Blizzard has shown us that they're capable of producing high quality and unique mounts and transmogs, and they gate it behind an extra paywall. Infuriating really.
Personally I don't really care. I've never bought anything from the shop because I know I'll become bored of it within a month. That's the problem with having so many transmogs. You do become bored with the one you're wearing. I'm not gonna pay money to become bored with it.
Most of my favorite mounts to use came from the shop so ... sure, add a bunch of transmog as well. I'll get what I like and be happy with it, I'm sure. As long as they're not manipulating me into spending I have no issues with any game developer monetizing their game in any other way.
It is tragic that an entire generation of gamers have grown up having accepted cash shops and microtransactions as the norm.
Say you don't know anything about the datacenter enterprise prices without saying you don't know anything about datacenter enterprise prices.
Don't use your own personal VPS price brackets to measure what Blizzard pays for multiple datacenters of VPSs. Not to mention all the backups and the traffic.
A simple server for a simple mobile game can cost up to 5 digits a month on AWS for TRAFFIC alone.
All right, gentleperchildren, let's review. The year is 2024 - that's two-zero-two-four, as in the 21st Century's perfect vision - and I am sorry to say the world has become a pussy-whipped, Brady Bunch version of itself, run by a bunch of still-masked clots ridden infertile senile sissies who want the Last Ukrainian to die so they can get on with the War on China, with some middle-eastern genocide on the side