Transmoggable Helms - What side are you taking?

[Zeelot]

Why don't people make such a fuss over more mounts/pets that get added in the shop? They're purely cosmetic as well as the helms. It doesn't affect gameplay and helps my favorite game thrive, which are both fine with me. The people who complain about the new helms will get mad for no reason while the rest of the world (of warcraft) carries on with their lives.

[Grrdian]

My stance is the same as it was when I first got wind of the cash shop. I don't pay a monthly fee to have a cash shop. Period. If I wanted to play a game with a cash shop it wouldn't be a decade old and have a subscription fee. If the cash shop is implemented in North America anything so much as XP boost I'm out.

[Duster505]

My stance on this is very clear.

WOW is a subscription based game. ALL content in the game should be available if you buy the box + buy the expansions + pay subscription.

This includes ALL items. Cosmetic or not. Same goes for mounts and pets. There should ALWAYS be means to get any item in the game by paying the sub and playing the game.

If not... then the players of the game are not playing on equal grounds and then the subscription principle is no longer valid. Subscription should then be removed. PPL should NOT be paying sub if the game is not balanced and designed with everyone paying and playing on equal grounds. And this is one of the reason IMO why WOW is loosing subs at this point.

If Blizzard want to take up F2P model - then fine. But they can NOT have the very worst of F2P and then add the very worst of Subscription (limiting players to log into the game) and expect ppl to accept that.

[DenniZ]

Totally agree ^^

You cannot have a store in a subscription game. That is just rude to us players. We already pay. You want a store? Go F2P.

[Duster505]

Why don't people make such a fuss over more mounts/pets that get added in the shop? They're purely cosmetic as well as the helms. It doesn't affect gameplay and helps my favorite game thrive, which are both fine with me. The people who complain about the new helms will get mad for no reason while the rest of the world (of warcraft) carries on with their lives.

PPL have made alot of fuss about it. WOW has lost 1/3rd of the player population since Mounts and Pets were added to the webstore. At the same time Blizzard have been releasing patches like 4.1 with only 2 redone dungeons. They get more money... and it gives the the excuse to not do their job and bring LESS quality content to the SUBSCRIBERS.

[Stoker]

I wont be buying these, I've never bought anything from the store. I have been gifted some of the stuff but thats it.

Altough in my opinion it would have been better to have these models as some sort of hard to make crafting recepies or rewards from raids or that new proving grounds stuff.

[Sainur]

Against it. All they want is money. People who still play WoW and buy every single thing Blizzard has to offer, well, I've got bad news for you. Blizzard will milk you dry.

[Deleted]

PPL have made alot of fuss about it. WOW has lost 1/3rd of the player population since Mounts and Pets were added to the webstore. At the same time Blizzard have been releasing patches like 4.1 with only 2 redone dungeons. They get more money... and it gives the the excuse to not do their job and bring LESS quality content to the SUBSCRIBERS.

./sigh

What total utter bullshit.

Pets for money have been in the game since launch (collectors edition) and there has been vanity loot for money since the TGC launch which was 6 months into Vanilla.

Pet store was launched 1 year before WoW subs peaked.

Stop joining two things that are total and utterly unrelated to try and prove your point.

So using your logic since subs peaked 1 year after pet store launched, pet store actually INCREASED wow subs.

[Duster505]

Why are so many playing the more money = more content card.

It is simply not true. They have a huge chunk of profit! You imagine them to spend all of the fee on advertisement, server maintenance and customer service. You got to be kidding me.

The maintenances can't be that high and they are definetly not Blizzards money sink. If they were they could easily merge realms what the community is demanding anyway. They could shut down servers and merge them without losing subs, no maybe even increasing subs as there would be more to do with more ppl (like pugging raids, which some realms simply don't have). No they don't as they want their realm transfer cows.

Also they stated themselves the development is not limited by money but limited by available people fitting into their development team.

They didn't publish recent earning/spending numbers online afaik and I've only found an article of 2008 right before WotLK happened so I can't give you the direct numbers.

BUT: 2004 when WoW was released they got a stock price of round 3 EUR / Stock. At the release of BC (Jan 2007) they had a stock price of 7 EUR / stock. 2008 (high peak of subscriptions) they hit the 12 EUR / stock. Yes they did drop to 7 again for WotLK but as of recently (Today) they are at 11.52 EUR / stock again. Don't tell me that they don't have enough money the impression is different. Within 10 years (before WoW – 2003 it was 2 EUR / stock) they increased their value by 448.52%. up to 12 120 000 000 EUR. (Electronic Arts isn't even half the worth with 5 613 000 000 EUR)

In addition: the developments of an expansion is being paid mostly by the costs of the game.

MY POINT:

Transmoggable Helms is pure greed and I am totally against it. Getting those cosmetic items should be part of the game not part of drawing your credit card. Or at least there should be one way to get them in game as well for not too much effort.

Totally agree.

PPL act like Blizzard will do better job if they get more money with cash shop micro transactions. We have already seen them do less (like patch 4.1 and pretty much all Cataclysm). Fact of the matter is that Blizzard have ZERO reason to create ANY new content in the game if they can make the same amount of money with few cash shop items. They can take all the time in the world to release new content and just throw in new helmets and weapon transmorgs every 2 weeks to make up for it.

Thats NOT how a subscription based game should work. And thats why the ingame shop is simply NEVER acceptable if Blizzard is keeping the subscription fee and not giving players free access to the game.

- - - Updated - - -

./sigh

What total utter bullshit.

Pets for money have been in the game since launch (collectors edition) and there has been vanity loot for money since the TGC launch which was 6 months into Vanilla.

Pet store was launched 1 year before WoW subs peaked.

Stop joining two things that are total and utterly unrelated to try and prove your point.

So using your logic since subs peaked 1 year after pet store launched, pet store actually INCREASED wow subs.

There is a big difference having one or two items in web store.... or having 10 or 20. PPL are starting to see that Blizzard is using the pets and mounts and now helmets to make up for less revenues. I know of quite a few ppl that bought the first mount but then said - enough is enough when they saw the latest one.

PPL are not stupid. They can see whats going on. And their means to show their dissatisfaction is to stop paying their sub. Cause just like me - they have come to realise that these webstore items - and now ingame microtransactions WILL devalue the subscription and the money that ppl are paying per month.

My logic is simple. WOW is a sub based game. And as such all players should be playing on equal grounds. Thats what Blizzard said few years back and they can not expect their subscribers to all of a sudden find it acceptable now... when they said few years back that ppl would feel betrayed.

We chose to go with the subscription-based model instead of that approach. We've taken the approach that we want players to feel like it's a level playing field once they're in WoW. Outside resources don't play into it -- no gold buying, etc. We take a hard line stance against it. What you get out of microtransactions is kind of the same thing and I think our player base would feel betrayed by it. I think that's something else you have to decide on up-front instead of implementing later.

--Rob Pardo, Blizzard's Senior Vice President of Game Design (2/20/2008)

http://wow.joystiq.com/2008/02/20/gd...pproach-to-mm/

[Leare315]

I tend to be on the side that doesn't really think the sky is falling. Wow's had these "scary" changes before and yet the store remains cosmetic in the us. We might never get the experience boost, and if we do, i still feel like we can already do it, since RAF copies are maybe 5 in most places.

Store transmog armor does open a door: A door to awesome. Blizzard is always going to have projects for the store in place and in development, but the best thing about store armor/mounts is they don't have to be expansion relevant. We can get cross license gear, we can get lore figure gear, we can get "iconic" armor sets redone without harming the fidelity and legitimacy of the original versions. All kinds of stuff opens up. And as we've seen with the sparkle pony of old, there's nothing keeping them from using those assets on subscription content. I'm all for this.

[leaks]

The side that only worries about things that actually matter.

[Grunhither]

The only thing I dislike about it is that it recently seems like the coolest pets and mounts come from the Blizzard Store, and now they're adding transmog gear. They spend a lot of time designing things for the Blizzard Store, then it seems like the in-game items are sub-par. Everyone is always asking about new dungeons, more unique armor during leveling, new character models, etc and Blizzard's response is always that they're limited with designers/manpower.

If they stopped focusing so much time on cool things for the Blizzard Store and put more time and work into the in-game available things, whether earned from achievements or just given out (player models), I think the overall community would be a lot happier. Not happy, because you can never please everyone, but I know I'd be happier.

I think it also reinforces their concept of "If we make cool things, we get more money"... and eventually you'll see more and more cool things being sold for-profit online, rather than earning them in-game. We already pay a subscription fee, in a world where good MMOs like Guild Wars 2 can function without one... so Blizzard should try harder to deliver extremely high-quality items to player-base for free, not having to spend more money to buy them. Where's the fun in that?

[Duster505]

I tend to be on the side that doesn't really think the sky is falling. Wow's had these "scary" changes before and yet the store remains cosmetic in the us. We might never get the experience boost, and if we do, i still feel like we can already do it, since RAF copies are maybe 5 in most places.

Store transmog armor does open a door: A door to awesome. Blizzard is always going to have projects for the store in place and in development, but the best thing about store armor/mounts is they don't have to be expansion relevant. We can get cross license gear, we can get lore figure gear, we can get "iconic" armor sets redone without harming the fidelity and legitimacy of the original versions. All kinds of stuff opens up. And as we've seen with the sparkle pony of old, there's nothing keeping them from using those assets on subscription content. I'm all for this.

Blizzard could also add all those transmorgs you talked about into professions instead of letting players pay real money for it. That way the game would stay true to the subscribers. There are many ways to honor the players that pay 15$ per month and paid full price for the box and every expansion. There are also many ways to betray those players. Ingame cashshop would be one way. One that many will not be taking with open arms and will question the direction AND the dedication that Blizzard is showing their game at this point.

[Deleted]

The only thing I dislike about it is that it recently seems like the coolest pets and mounts come from the Blizzard Store, and now they're adding transmog gear. They spend a lot of time designing things for the Blizzard Store, then it seems like the in-game items are sub-par. Everyone is always asking about new dungeons, more unique armor during leveling, new character models, etc and Blizzard's response is always that they're limited with designers/manpower.

If they stopped focusing so much time on cool things for the Blizzard Store and put more time and work into the in-game available things, whether earned from achievements or just given out (player models), I think the overall community would be a lot happier. Not happy, because you can never please everyone, but I know I'd be happier.

I think it also reinforces their concept of "If we make cool things, we get more money"... and eventually you'll see more and more cool things being sold for-profit online, rather than earning them in-game. We already pay a subscription fee, in a world where good MMOs like Guild Wars 2 can function without one... so Blizzard should try harder to deliver extremely high-quality items to player-base for free, not having to spend more money to buy them. Where's the fun in that?

I could see your point if every few months there was a full set of transmog gear for each class going up.

But your really comparing the amount of work the art team put into 3 helms to all of the Tier and PvP and leveling sets that have been added in MoP?

You really think it is even remotely comparable?

To give a plus side to the cash mounts and pets I actually like these as I can gift them to people for special occasions (birthdays etc).

[Buu]

I'm on the side of "those things don't fit ANY transmog smoothly, what a ugly thing".

[Deleted]

I'm against it as long as they keep restrictions on armor/weapon classes ingame. It's a douchy move to sell items transmogable by all armor classes but not let them transmoq everything ingame.

It actively works around their own ingame rules, which is wrong.

[Deficineiron]

The key word here is "potentially". Do you believe that Blizzard will expand their dev team (in particular, their graphics department) using the profits from the cash-shop? Personally, I don't. If that were the case you'd expect a game with ten times the subscribers of other MMOs to also get ten times the content. That doesn't happen. Add to that, the main limiting factor in content development is the time it takes to make the graphics. Funneling resources into cash-shop extras, "vanity" though they may be, has the potential to seriously bring down game quality.

We may already be seeing this. No pre-expansion event, no mid-expansion 5-mans. The stated reason was that they would take time away from the development of raids, but apparently they could spare the time to make cash-shop items. These items are now being put at a higher priority than content that our subscription used to pay for.

well-written post. would add that blizzard, in looking at how to increase value-added revenue, surely understands very well that they cannot just put their maximum real money purchasables up in the store in day 1. - they need to start with trivial things, then something less trivial (a boe mount explicitly endorsed as an alterative to using a goldseller to get gold), now gear models and for one market an xp boost potion (actually alters gameplay), etc.

It is not at all unreasonable to assume they will continue to push the envelope over time. If you are going to boil a frog alive, you need to be patient.

- - - Updated - - -

No, I don't agree with this. This is basically buying gold. You would buy pets for real money and then sell them for gold in-game. Suddenly, rich people would definitely get an advantage in the game, the economy would be ruined, etc, etc, etc.

cash store has already sold boe items and blue has explicitly endorsed re-selling said item as a way to purchase gold indirectly without dealing with a 3rd party.

- - - Updated - - -

Now what does this have to do with transmog gear in the store you ask me? Well, if making the regularly acquired sets not as good looking as they could've been will lead to a higher purchase number of transmog store items, they'll probably do it. They'd never admit it, and I'm not saying they will do that for sure, but while the chance is there, I'm against it, as the only way to be sure is to not have a transmog store at all.

the beauty of this is that any intention reduction of detail/time put into tier sets in order to make cash transmog items sell better can never be established beyond any doubt - its all subjective.

[Deficineiron]

Also the argument about you already pay for everything is just a false sense of entitlement from it having been that way before. Your money is to access the game. They decide what is in that game. They don't OWE you those items because you pay a subscription fee. No where does it say you get everything they develop for that 15 dollars.

actually, a named blue, I think chilton said in an interview that current video game theory was that players should all be able to see all of the content. it was interesting and caught my attention because he said it in the passive voice.

[Deleted]

actually, a named blue, I think chilton said in an interview that current video game theory was that players should all be able to see all of the content. it was interesting and caught my attention because he said it in the passive voice.

And you will see it. On other players.

[Deleted]

But they can NOT have the very worst of F2P and then add the very worst of Subscription (limiting players to log into the game) and expect ppl to accept that.

Obviously, they can. Quite successfully even.