WoW To Add Avenue For Real-Money Gold Buying

For some time, players of Blizzard's World of Warcraft have been able to purchase a small number of vanity in-game items for real money, but the items were restricted to the user's own account. Now, Blizzard has announced they will be adding another such item, with a twist — it doesn't become bound to a player's account until they use it, so it can be traded or sold on the game's auction house. In their announcement, they said, "While our goal is to offer players alternative ways to add a Pet Store pet to their collection, we’re ok with it if some players choose to use the Guardian Cub as a safe and secure way to try to acquire a little extra in-game gold without turning to third-party gold-selling services. ... While some players might be able to acquire some extra gold by putting the Guardian Cub in the auction house, that’s preferable to players contributing to the gold-selling 'black market' and account theft."

Comments

Going back on their word

[bonch]

Blizzard has gone back on so many things they were once publicly opposed to, from PvE-to-PvP transfers to the purchasing of gold using real-world money. And it all began after Activision got involved. Microtransactions are becoming an increasingly prominent source of revenue for this company.

$25 for a mount still blows me away. That's more than a month of subscription time...for a vanity mount.

Re:Going back on their word

[mikael_j]

I'm mostly annoyed at the focus they've been giving PvP (as in, organized PvP, not random world PvP).

It used to be that PvP was a secondary thing in WoW, PvE was the main draw. These days if you check out just about any WoW it seems to be a lot more about PvP than PvE for a lot of the active players.

Re:Going back on their word

[Impeesa]

Note that you are not purchasing gold from them directly - it's an important distinction that no new gold is added to the economy as a result of this. It's functionally not really different from the CCG mounts and pets, which have been tradeable for a long time. A lot of the other things they've reversed their stance on, like PVE to PVP transfers and so on, were just arbitrary restrictions and have proven to be very useful services for a lot of people. If anything, it's more a slow process of caving to player demands than hunting for more cash (though I'm sure that's a happy side effect). I think they still understand where the line is for things that would damage the health of the game.

Re:Going back on their word

[Anonymous Coward]

I think with the popularity and immediacy of free to play mmo's, blizzard is adapting to the changed shape of the industry. They didn't become a the mammoth that they are today by ignoring what was currently working, they just had a knack for doing it better. On top of the micro-transactions, they also made the first 20 levels free to play (granted, it doesn't take more than a couple hours to hit level 20). Have a feeling in a years time its revenue is going to be entirely micro-transaction based.

Re:Going back on their word

[AuMatar]

Other way around. When WoW started, PvE was a joke (UBRS was a raid) and PvP was what it was all about, and it was all open world PvP. It was a hell of a lot of fun. Creating Molten Core was the first step to destroying all fun in the game by turning it from PvP into PvE.

Re:Going back on their word

[Darinbob]

It's not important. A vanity mount helps no one, it's not pay-to-win, no one should be upset about this.

I've always thought the best way to get rid of gold sellers is to have the games get into the business. Again it's no big deal because gold is trivial to come by. Who cares if a noob gets some money? If players don't like it they can avoid buying the items. People take games too seriously treating everything as a competition instead of having fun.

Re:Going back on their word

[lynnae]

gold buying can be disheartening. I'm not saying it always is, but in many cases running end game content means you need either the ingame gold to buy the consumables or the time and alts to farm all your own.

If you don't have the time and alts, and if the market for end game consumables has been inflated by gold buying, then you really are down to few choices if you want to continue on in the game.

Re:Going back on their word

[angel'o'sphere]

So ... you are that rogue camping flight points? And that you call world PvP? Or do you mean the Tarren Mill lag fests?
The only world PvP I remember is killing the people riding into Molten Core on weekends ...

Re:Going back on their word

[mikael_j]

Well, world PvP was fun. On the realm I started my first character on there were daily attacks on Darkshire, lots of fun for everyone over level 25-30 or so. These days "world PvP" seems to be about ganking (my "favorite" being the blood elf mage + undead rogue tag teams that roam the world looking for other players to gank).

Re:Going back on their word

[niko-fu]

Blizzard has gone back on so many things they were once publicly opposed to, from PvE-to-PvP transfers to the purchasing of gold using real-world money. And it all began after Activision got involved. Microtransactions are becoming an increasingly prominent source of revenue for this company.

$25 for a mount still blows me away. That's more than a month of subscription time...for a vanity mount.

Re:Going back on their word

[blahplusplus]

"$25 for a mount still blows me away. That's more than a month of subscription time...for a vanity mount."

What's even more mind blowing is that there lots of stupid people who will just keep paying like gambling addicts.

Re:Going back on their word

[Andreas Mayer]

Have a feeling in a years time its revenue is going to be entirely micro-transaction based.

In that case, in a years time I won't be playing WoW any more.

Re:Going back on their word

[Riceballsan]

While I admit I haven't played WoW since vanilla (pre burning crusade). I have to say from my viewpoint at least, it more likely isn't the games focus changing as the players focus. Particularly due to the fact that the working system of PVE is raiding, in which you have 20-40 people gathered up, needing all of them to be geared up with more or lest the best of the previous raid, then having to beat the bosses, which are hard at first as you are learning their tactics, where to stand when etc... and any 1 person in the 20-40 standing in the wrong place constitutes a wipe, after that when you finally get everyone on the same page for each boss, you then have to repeat it, over and over again till you can get each of your 20-40 people the gear they need to move on to the next area, (since only 1-2 items will drop each time and you need to gear up everyone). This IMO leads to some major burnout. So I'd imagine the players that enjoy that style, for the most part lose interest, need long breaks every few months etc... Meaning the PVPers are the ones who aren't getting bored. Also another factor is guilds, In general there are only 2-3 guilds that are at the top of the PVE settings, meaning if you had the gear from the first 2-3 raids, the only raids that would benefit you are the 4th and up raids. Limiting your guild choice to ever get anything to 2-3 guilds tops. When the inevitable guild drama hits, PVE-ers really have nowhere to go and just retire, PVPers aren't even really dependent on having a guild.

Re:Going back on their word

[MWojcik]

There's one important caveat: no "new" gold enters the system. When someone buys the pet for real money and someone else buys it for gold, that gold was already present in the game, it was not "created" by the real money transaction.

Re:Going back on their word

[dbIII]

I think you'll find the big cash rewards for daily quests had a lot more to do with inflation.
If you do the dailies for rep grinding then at level 85 gold is really just something to keep score unless you just have to buy the most expensive stuff in the AH instead of waiting for it to drop, or if you want to buy all the stuff you need to get that skill up now.
If you don't have the time to learn how to play your character well enough to do a raid then it's true you won't have enough gold to buy the stuff to run it either. You don't read a book by turning to the last page do you? Why try to jump right to the end of the game? Those people that demand you have the best of everything before you can raid with them will probably throw you out for being a newbie anyway, or maybe just because cousin Fred just logged on and he needs a spot. Ignore them and work your way up.
The "gold farmer" thing seems to be mostly a myth - the gold mostly comes from being drained out of hacked accounts. Guess what, to get it you apparently get asked for enough details that your account can be hacked too. Even if it worked as advertised it would be a good vector for money laundering so Blizzard would have to crack down on it hard to keep taxmen and other Feds from hassling them. Any way for third parties to put money into WoW and then for others to extract is a potential legal nightmare for Blizzard.

Re:Going back on their word

[errandum]

No new gold was created when gold farmers that hack accounts send gold from point a to point b, and it's general knowledge that it ruins the game.

On the other hand, this item will become so common that it'll be useless as a source of gold in no time.

Re:Going back on their word

[MisterZimbu]

Things have changed significantly on that front - the raid size is smaller (10 or 25 players) and the bosses drop more loot, plus bosses give points you can spend at a vendor to get more raid-level loot.

The burnout's still there, but it's more in the opposite direction now- a new raid comes out and the players are getting geared so fast that they have nothing to do afterwards.

Re:Going back on their word

[kick6]

It used to be that PvP was a secondary thing in WoW, PvE was the main draw. These days if you check out just about any WoW it seems to be a lot more about PvP than PvE for a lot of the active players.

If PvP is the main draw now, and I'm not convinced it is, its pretty easy to see why: time commitment. As an end-game PvP character you can log on, queue for a random battleground, be in the battleground in under 5 minutes, and generally be out of the battleground in an additional 25. So you only have to invest 30 minutes to accomplish something. Arena is even faster. On my 1400 ranked arena tram (crappy, but I don't want to try any harder) I can cap points for the week in a total of about 80 minutes of play, and that assumes I lose half of my arena battles.

To get into a random raid group.................you're probably spending that same 30 minutes you'd spend to actually complete a battleground sitting in a capital city watching trade chat hoping that some half-made group needs your class. WoW is old now, and the players that started playing in late '04/early '05 when the game dropped are still playing, but have significantly more demands on their time thus their focus has shifted away from the 6 hour raids that used to dominate end-game content.

Re:Going back on their word

[myowntrueself]

I agree that some implementations of microtransactions suck but think about this:

Do you play WoW every single day? I don't.

In order to play WoW at all I need to pay for a 30 day subscription. But what if I only want to play for a few weeks every few months?

Shouldn't there be a way for me to pay for my WoW game time in smaller chunks than 30 days?

If Blizzard offered a way to pay 'by the minute' would that be bad for the game?

I can imagine that some would argue that this would encourage the 'casuals' and ruin the game for the truly dedicated players who really do play every single day month after month.

But the modern game industry increasingly caters to normal people, not just dedicated gamers. I think thats good because I don't consider myself 'a gamer' just an ordinary guy who is interested in MMOs, just not 'dedicated' to them.

Re:Going back on their word

[lynnae]

I killed my wow account over a year ago. I'll skip the bit where I add my credentials

we can all go back and forth about who does what to whom and who needs what in order to complete x, however, my comments weren't warcraft specific. I personally think there are many issues with the "current state of MMOs" and damned if I know how to fix them.

There's a "gimme more more more, faster faster faster" attitude in most of the MMOs I've played that really start to drain the fun out it quite quickly.

Re:Going back on their word

[Ironhandx]

Excuse me Mr. new pvp whore that likes to think he's been playing since beta - but hasn't.

WoW was a specifically stated PVE game. PVP was tacked on after the beta testing started. Molten Core was available at release(mostly, it was buggy, but available) and UBRS was a raid, doable with 10 men but for awhile they allowed 15 man raids.

Hell, Gnomeregan was supposed to be a raid at first, as evidenced by the fact that right up until near the middle of WotLK you could form a 10 man raid and go there.

World PVP was all that was originally intended as PVP for the game with the ability to opt-out by playing on a PVE server. Battlegrounds were tacked on by popular request in Beta.

Your point that World PVP was a hell of a lot of fun is correct: However it was only possible to have that hell of a lot of fun in a game that was almost entirely focused on the player interacting with the Game Environment and thus having incentive to protect said environment. Darkshire and Redshore battles happened because Horde would want to go gank some alliance. Alliance would show up because they were protecting their friends that were questing and the quest mobs for everyone that wanted to use them. Vice versa happened for horde as well in other locations.

Battleground Queueing once they had a few BGs near the end of Vanilla almost immediately had a large noticeable effect. Those that liked PVPing could get their fix in a BG and from the safety of Orgrimmar/Ironforge, leaving the village folk undefended and the opposite faction unmolested.

There are statements out there from previous devs on WoW that they kind of hate what the game has become with Arenas etc.

They see that the arenas can be fun but they don't fit into what was envisioned for the game originally at all.

Re:Going back on their word

[Talderas]

Too bad these items are all permanent mods to the account. It means that they'll be great money makers for the early investors. As more and more people buy them through gold demand will drop and the amount of gold you can get for them will drop as well. Eventually it will reach zero as there's no longer any players that want the item. So this sort of transaction really isn't going to help that in the long run.

Compare that to EVE's PLEX, a consumable, which means demand will be kept up and provides a much more consistent value for the dollars you put in.

Re:Going back on their word

[Talderas]

When that mount came out it was the only mount that altered based on your flying skill.

What did this mean?

If you had regular riding it functioned as a regular 60% mount ground.
If you had epic riding it would function as a 100% mount on ground.
If you had flying it would function as a 100% mount on ground and a whatever the basic flying speed was.
If you had epic flying it would function as a 100% mount on the ground and a 280% flying mount.
If you had a mount with 310% movement speed that mount would function as a 100% mount on the ground and 310% flying mount.

You never had to dick around with changing your mount. You never had to make extra effort to go buy a mount, just upgrade the skills. Further it was account bound so every character you created had a mount they could use for eternity. Now factor in that a lot of riding skills got turned into BoA skill books that you can send to other characters on your account and it becomes a little more valuable. It may not be worth $25 but it did have some value beyond just a vanity item.

The lil XT vanity pet also had a very nice function. It would destroy those irritating choo choo train sets that dipshits liked to drop in the AH or bank.

Re:Going back on their word

[Talderas]

RMT is questionable as to how much money it adds to the system. If they acquire the gold through methods that don't involve hacking or selling vendor trash then it may not add gold either. You could argue that money for RMT gained through auctions can possibly increase the gold supply (as players may farm stuff that creates gold just to buy the stuff off the auctions) but that is an indirect increase in supply at best.

Re:Going back on their word

[Talderas]

What you call incompetence, I call optimization.

Now I could spend 16 hours grinding the money or I could spend $50 to buy gold.

Let's see...... I get paid more than $3.13/hr. Yep, buying gold makes a lot more sense.

Re:Going back on their word

[mikael_j]

That kind of "PvP" is a lot more common these days (or was until Blizzard decided to deploy "countermeasures").

Back in vanilla it was more about actual fights (this was back when reaching level 60 was an accomplishment in itself and a few level 50s could at least have a chance against a level 60), these days you zoom to 85 and you're pretty much untouchable by anyone lower than level 81-82...

Re:Going back on their word

[tlhIngan]

Blizzard has gone back on so many things they were once publicly opposed to, from PvE-to-PvP transfers to the purchasing of gold using real-world money. And it all began after Activision got involved.

Yep. I stayed out of WoW, so my first experience under Activision was StarCraft 2, and man did the experience suck. The game was fine, but the policies and other crap associated with battle.net 2.0... damn.

I suppose Activision's already running out of blood from Blizzard, so they need fresh blood to squeeze money out of. Say, like Bungie. Perhaps that's the business model - take fine game companies with good records of producing good games and squeeze every penny out of them.

Re:Going back on their word

[Luckyo]

WoW didn't have any of those "fancy" raids back then, only a handful of dungeons, and most zones were in fact PvP. Only PvE zones were starter zones. Even cities were PvP.

Re:Going back on their word

[Luckyo]

Know your WoW terminology. It's called TRH, short for "That Retarded Horse".

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=146009

Re:Going back on their word

[Luckyo]

In most cases you don't leave a game "because there's something better to do". You leave it because you get bored with it, or some major feature annoys you enough to get you to quit.

I would imagine that pay-to-win would certainly qualify as "feature that annoys you enough to quit" for many people.

Re:Going back on their word

[ildon]

Hell, Gnomeregan was supposed to be a raid at first, as evidenced by the fact that right up until near the middle of WotLK you could form a 10 man raid and go there.

Not exactly. Originally you could form a raid and bring 40 players into ANY dungeon in the game. The only restrictions were that you could not complete quests (which could be circumvented by dropping group, completing the quest, and being reinvited before the 60 second timer was up) and only receiving 10% of normal experience from killing monsters (AFTER having that XP be split N ways, N being the size of the group).

So while I can't say with 100% certainty that Gnomeregan was never at any point intended to be a raid, I can say with certainty that being able to bring 6-40 people in there was not an artifact of its raid or non-raid status, because that is something that was true of ALL dungeons.

Re:Going back on their word

[ildon]

Oh, additionally, Alterac Valley was always intended to be a part of the game, at least since mid beta. It was intended to be like first person DOTA (streams of NPCs fighting along a path guarded by towers, with players assisting the NPCs in taking down those towers and eventually the final base). It was also intended to be part of the game world like Wintergrasp eventually was, until they realized their hardware couldn't handle it and came up with the idea to instance it, thus creating the concept of battlegrounds.

I guess you can argue that an open world AV would have still been "world pvp", and I won't argue that at its core this game as always been primarily a PvE game (just look at how they've all but abandoned PvP arena balance, especially after the game failed as an "e-sport", in order to be less disruptive to PvE balance), but you can't try to use non-facts to support your argument.

Re:Going back on their word

[ildon]

Maybe you missed the fact that a couple months after release there were about 4 PvE servers for every 1 PvP server, and the PvE servers were more crowded. The only reason PvP servers are even remotely popular now (and they still continue to be less popular than PvE servers) is that even the PvP servers are safe due to safe/sanctuary zones and instanced PvP taking most PvPers out of the world. I played exclusively on PvP servers when the game came out, so I'm fully aware of how the game was back then, but I'm not delusional enough to think that just because I played a certain way and all my friends did, that we were not the minority.

Re:Going back on their word

[WuphonsReach]

I would imagine that pay-to-win would certainly qualify as "feature that annoys you enough to quit" for many people.

For me, it was trying to be a tank or healer in the cesspool that is random cross-realm LFG. (And since they took out the "same-server-only" option, don't start up with "form your own group". It doesn't work any more.)

It was like empirical proof of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

Re:Going back on their word

[WuphonsReach]

You could argue that money for RMT gained through auctions can possibly increase the gold supply (as players may farm stuff that creates gold just to buy the stuff off the auctions) but that is an indirect increase in supply at best.

Not unless those items can be sold to vendors.

Money being transferred from a NPC (who has limitless funds) to you is a "faucet".

Money transferred from a player to a NPC is a "drain" or "sink".

Money transferred between players has zilch all effect on the total amount of money in circulation. At best, it can be a minor sink due to fees.

If faucet money is greater then sink money, you get inflation. If sink quantity is greater then faucet quantity, you get deflation. Deflation is much less likely then inflation because players will simply go run do more faucet activities to pay for the money sinks. So over time, inflation tends to be how things usually go as higher tiers of content have to reward more money/effort over lower tier content (otherwise players will not migrate to the new content).

Re:Going back on their word

[Loveless62]

It still gives an advantage to those that are willing to pay real money for game money. No new gold is created, but it does allow people to pool the existing money by buying multiples of the pet and selling them to accumulate wealth. Since gear can be bought with gold, this will give the players that are willing to spend real money an advantage over those that are not willing to or cannot afford to.

Re:Going back on their word

[Dripdry]

Ok, my girlfriend and I started playing WoW about 2 months ago. SHE was the one that came to ME after we both poo-poo'd the purchased mounts. They're usable by all characters in one realm for that person, and the thing goes faster as you get better mounts. Basically, it's not just vanity, it actually helps lots of your characters get around. The way we see it, they're offering some value for what we might pay. Drinking the kool-aid? A little, I'm sure.

Re:Going back on their word

[Ironhandx]

It was actually stated outright in the making of WoW DVD in the Classic collectors edition.

Re:Going back on their word

[Ironhandx]

Um, PVE servers in which there were no PVP zones if you didn't want there to be outnumbered PVP servers 4 to 1 at release and were MORE CROWDED. In fact the most crowded PVE servers then are still the most crowded servers today. There is no PVP server that suffers from queue times to log on, meanwhile its a common occurance on some of the PVE servers.

Re:Going back on their word

[Ironhandx]

AV was intended as a PVE raid originally. Learn more about something before you post about others "non-facts"

It WAS intended to be an outdoor raid, similar to many EQ raids. However this would have caused some inherent PVP in the zone. When BG's became a popular time killer they just repurposed the whole deal.

I mean, this shit is all even in the "Making Of" Collectors edition DVD that came with Classic, straight from the devs mouth, on camera no less.

Re:Going back on their word

[Luckyo]

Except that it was mentioned in the NAME of the zone that it was PvP (contested area).

Still is in fact.

Re:Going back on their word

[Luckyo]

It does tbh. Before I quit in the beginning of this year, I did form dungeon groups quite a lot, since I cba to tank (I was a death knight main since the beginning of wrath). I had the gear for since I was offspec tank in raids when needed, but I was DPS main and I preferred to have fun seeing who could win on meters.
As a result our runs were always extremely fast, and we rarely had problems getting people to fill most spots. We may have sometimes needed to grab one person from LFG tool, but that's not much of a problem, even when missing person is a tank. If we got a baddie, we kickvote him out, I slap on my tank gear and spec and we move on.

Re:Going back on their word

[Luckyo]

Not true on EU at least. The most crowded servers are the ones with many decent guilds, and these have long migrated to PvP servers. This issue has been massively bemoaned by people who wanted to join good guilds, but couldn't because they rolled on a PvE server and couldn't migrate to PvP. Open EU forums from the time before PvE to PvP migration was allowed, and you'll notice that they couldn't go a week without new thread on "I want to join a good PvE guild, and all good PvE guilds are on PvP realms" topic.

As far as I know, similar trend was also on US side, though I didn't follow that nearly as closely so I cannot say for certain. Therefore I'm quite uncertain where you draw your 4:1 and more crowded claims from.

Re:Going back on their word

[mikael_j]

I don't see how you can possibly see the game as being more PVP focused now; they've more or less completely given up on organized PVP balance, and even specs that were traditionally balanced for PVP first (ex. Frost Mages, Arms Warriors) are now changed in favor of PVE over PVP.

It used to be that the game was designed for PvE with PvP being something you could do on the side (as in, world PvP, no battlegrounds or arena, no ladders or such things). And if you look at the players there are a lot more players who play for PvP these days, it used to be that PvP was something you did when you had some time to kill ("hey, let's go to hillsbrad!").

[...] totally worthless with no hope of a fix in sight (Tol'Barad).

The worst thing about Tol'Barad was the win-trading that went on before they "fixed" it. Lots of annoying gankers who got their first full set of PvP gear thanks to that...

Re:Going back on their word

[ildon]

Now I know you're full of shit.

Re:Going back on their word

[Ironhandx]

From forum announcements on the US side. I never paid attention to the EU so you could be right there - I wouldn't know.

I was playing since beta.

Re:Going back on their word

[Ironhandx]

Sigh, I guess I should pay attention to the "Do Not Feed" sign you should have hanging around your neck however:

The dvd is available for download in several locations. Download it, watch it, be enlightened.

Re:Going back on their word

[Luckyo]

Tongue in cheek, "there are good guild on US side"?

Seriously though, yes I play on EU and it was a huge problem, with forum posts bemoaning "I am on PvE realm, and all good guilds are on PvE, and I can't join one if I reroll!" on a weekly basis until the migration was allowed.

Re:Going back on their word

[Luckyo]

I suppose that is one way to look at it. Another is very well presented in the forums: "I want to level on a PvP server and not get constantly ganked" vs "It's a PvP server stupid".

Re:Going back on their word

[KingBenny]

subscription fee AND a cash shop ... that must a brandnew business model then, it's like stealing from junkies

Re:Going back on their word

[Kream]

I feel sad for people not on my server. Emerald Dream is an RP-PVP server (RolePlay+PVP) and world PVP is tremendous here. Our server is busy and balanced and there are several guilds, from behemoth PVP-only ones to colossal RP+PVP ones, to RP-friendly ones to small boutique dwarf-only or troll-only ones. The RP informs and invigorates our PVP and I and dozens of friends of mine would not be playing if it weren't for this server.

Eve did it first...

[JoeLinux]

Eve online did it first, and paid a price for doing it incorrectly...they've since apologized and said they will roll it out right.

Meanwhile, WoW is hemorrhaging users...this can only further accelerate their departure, as people find a game with more meaning...Should provide some tasty n00bs to pod...

Re:Eve did it first...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. Eve did this with plexes (buy this, trade for isk) a long time ago and it has been a stable part of the economy. The recent apology was for the stupid incarna expansion crap.

Re:Eve did it first...

[Sable Drakon]

This is more along the lines of a PLEX, not the Noble Exchange or Aurum. That was done properly and was in place way before Incarna was planned.

Re:Eve did it first...

[Rogerborg]

If you read that "apology", I think you'll find that all they're apologising for is not selling enough different types of monocles, or having the gym, hot tub and Cyber-Skank Singles Bar areas ready for Arcana.

Re:Eve did it first...

[TFAFalcon]

It's not that they don't want to admit it, they are just happy about it. Someone who just spent some $ for his internet spaceship is much more likely to be an idiot that flies around without support. So they make for some mighty fine killmails.

Re:Eve did it first...

[g4b]

additionally, you still need to build that stuff.

capitals just dont drop from the air. first you have to get "some" veldspar and stuff.

so basicly even if the player pays in eve to be a rich kid, he still needs to wait for skills, and somebody else needs to mine and build his ships.
money is gone fast in eve if you got no clue what you do.

Re:Eve did it first...

[Charliemopps]

Yes, they're hemorrhaging. They've dropped from capturing 54% of the mmo market down to a measly 52% Whatever shall they do.

Re:Eve did it first...

[MrMickS]

No. This is more like the Noble Exchange. Its a vanity item that can be traded for in game currency. PLEX are not a vanity item as they have a use that consumes them.

Re:Eve did it first...

[Ihmhi]

People had no problem with the PLEXes after a while. PLEXes allowed things to work both ways - players could earn in-game money to buy game-time cards (and thus not spend real money), and people could in turn spend money to buy PLEXes and sell them.

It was a very simple tradeoff. Do you spend 30 or so hours grinding ISK to save $15? If that's worth your time, great. If not, you can switch things around and save time grinding for ISK by buying PLEXes.

When they added a new currency which basically turned into a cash-only shop (in a paid MMO), that really irked people (and for good reason).

Re:Eve did it first...

[Talderas]

Aye. You can't ignore all the underlying economic activity that has to happen in EVE. Mining, Refining, Construction.

Even if you can buy a super cap it will still take 6 weeks just to built it so unless people have super caps lying around they're will to sell it's not an instant transfer.

Re:Eve did it first...

[DerekLyons]

Eve did what first? Allowing you to buy ingame items for real world money and then turn around and sell them for ingame money? Nope - Puzzle Pirates did that first with the Doubloon Exchange back in 2005.

Re:Eve did it first...

[Sperbels]

You've got these trust-fund babies out there multi-boxing on high-end computers

Oh please. I used to run two instances of Eve on the same medium range box at the same time. MMOs aren't about how much money you have, they're about how much time you can devote...and always have been. Well...actually gold sellers make it about how much money you have. But hardware has never had much of an effect on MMOs.

Re:Eve did it first...

[virgnarus]

Even this statement is kind of a misnomer. The 'cash-only' shop relied on PLEX being turned into another more granular currency, and since people could acquire PLEX through ingame ISK, they could purchase clothing without paying a real dime. Plus it was all optional and vanity so people were disappointed but not really angry, at least not to this specific case.

What got them really distressed was that the past couple expansions have delivered almost nothing satisfactory for gameplay and instead offered vanity junk like this. The trend got the community very peeved off, and getting insider quotes about adding game-changing items to the store (which was taken outta context) amongst other leaked info ended up being the proverbial straw to the camel's back. The direction was neglecting EVE and using it as an experimental testbed for Dust and WoD, so you can imagine it was just a progressively aggravated situation until something got people to snap.

Re:Eve did it first...

[WuphonsReach]

I think EVE's crowning achievement is that it introduced pay-to-win in such an obfuscated jargon laden way that to this day, players still won't admit even to themselves that there are super-capitals out there that were flat out bought with credit cards.

Yawn, mostly we don't care, because we can band together and blow up those scaps. Made even easier after the coming nerfs to super-caps.

At the same time, the other reason we don't care is because PLEX does not magically add ISK to the game. So it has zilch effect on inflation (except that it makes large sums of ISK more likely to move from older to newer players).

Plus, CCP got their cut, which means more money for dev salaries and maybe improved content.

PLEX takes a lot of the wind out of RMT sails, now CCP just needs to get better about banning the botters (who do cause inflation by getting NPC bounties or mission rewards non-stop 23x7).

Re:Eve did it first...

[Ihmhi]

Unfortunately if you're in a group smaller than 10 decent players with good skill training, incursions are not really an option. They're sort of a "winner takes all" situation.

Re:Sensationalist Bullshit

[mikael_j]

1. Player A purchases pet for real-world money
2. Player A puts pet up for sale in in-game auction house
3. Player B buys pet for in-game currency ("gold")
4. Player A receives in-game currency

THAT is what was meant with "WoW To Add Avenue For Real-Money Gold Buying". Just as there are plenty of people with real-world money to spend there are plenty of people in-game with too much gold to spend, to them it makes more sense to just throw some gold at it rather than buying the pet using real money.

Ex player.

[matt007]

I first encountered WoW when I played the US beta, almost immediately stopped playing Everquest.
I then played the European beta, and bought the game as soon as it released.

I had tons of fun in the first years, then it slowly went downhill.
Arenas suck, resilience suck, extensions are way too slow and too small.
Microtransactions suck.
and worst of all, the community at least on french-speaking servers is AWFUL.

Re:Ex player.

[Ironhandx]

Its pretty god-awful everywhere. The Community doesn't exist anymore. What you have now are a bunch of gamers better suited to playing FPS's that thrive on instant gratification and barely even interacts with the community.

Those that do seek some sort of pleasure out of it for the most part. These consist largely of trolls etc.

There are a very very few like myself, and perhaps yourself, left that are genuinely helpful and relatively patient.

Most of us have quit already, I know I have.

Re:Ex player.

[Spazztastic]

March '05 I made my account. It was a blast, and you're right, there used to be community. People would talk (or more often flame) in general and you could have a name on your server. Sooner or later that disappeared with cross faction BGs and instances. Up until a couple of patches ago, the guy you just did UBRS with you'll never see again most likely. Even if you did become RealID friends and started queuing together, you still won't get the same friendship as someone on your server.

I log in here and there but I'm debating on just canceling it and putting that $15/mo towards something else, maybe another MMO if I can find the ambition.

Re:Ex player.

[mlts]

I'd say, try EQ2, or if you want something retro, EQ1. Yes, these games have been around a while, but they do have a solid sense of community. At the minimum, you know the trolls and the trolls are actually trying to use their heads to try to heat up 1-9 or PR chat.

Yes, EQ2 has items you can buy in the marketplace, but it is limited to mounts, XP potions (double xp for a period of time), a rent-free house, appearance gear, and the ability to buy added character slots.

Of course, EQ2 isn't perfect, but I play MMOs because I like the people, and one can find some very cool people who are capable of more than just four letter epithets to group/guild with.

EQ1 is also good at this, although the game engine is a bit dated. If you can deal with that, there is an insane amount of game content -- you will never get bored, even when you hit the max level.

Re:Ex player.

[WuphonsReach]

Most of us have quit already, I know I have.

Or we went back to EVE, which, as much as it can be a cess-pool of griefing, also has its fine share of upstanding members. And since there is no "level to 85, win arena matches, get I WIN button to use in world PvP or BGs", the short-attention-span folks don't last long enough in EVE to be more then a mosquito bite.

It's about damn time

[Saintwolf]

Now hopefully this will destroy the economy of those pesky gold sellers and their endless trade spam.

Re:It's about damn time

[Andreas Mayer]

Now hopefully this will destroy the economy of those pesky gold sellers and their endless trade spam.

What spam? Haven't seen one in a long time. Get some decent spam filter add-on.

Will the new ActiBliz keep Bliz fans?

[yacwroy]

Now that every (ex)fan has had a decent taste of Activision-Blizzard, It will be interesting to see how well their next few products do.

Do consumers actually pay attention to corporate ethics any more? Time to find out.

Re:Gold to Dollar converion.

[mikael_j]

You'd be surprised at how much gold a lot of in-game items are worth at the auction house.

There's been heavy inflation going on for quite some time, items comparable to what used to be very expensive 2000G items are now selling for 20-25kG on many realms ("comparable" when compared to what the current top tier of equipment and items is).

Dammit...

[Therilith]

Another game lost to MTX...

If this is "the future of MMO gaming", I'm glad I got out before I had to see it firsthand.

Re:Sensationalist Bullshit

[Kagetsuki]

Thank you for explaining that, I was totally lost as to what the hell the description was trying to convey.

This won't hurt the economy at all.

[flimflammer]

This doesn't hurt the economy at all. No gold is materialized, so it's no more detrimental to the economy than someone buying and selling a rare item they found on a mob in the auction house. When I first read the headline I assumed you could actually buy gold or something. I don't think this is as bad as people seem to be blowing it up to be.

There isn't going to be a huge market for this item in the way something like PLEX is in EVE. It's a pet. The pet collectors out there will get it one way or another and then it will be very slow going.

Sorry, that happened well over a year ago

[Shivetya]

the Trading Card game featured items you could sell in game for ridiculous amounts of money and Blizzard even sanctioned that.

They are not adding gold to the game, they are simply giving another means of it moving from character to character. It is most likely that the costs in game for the pet will quickly tank which might push off a lot of buyers.

What does not bode well is that pets sold to players from Blizzard now take on the trading card game limitation of one time use instead of account wide use. This raises the cost of buying a pet for your account by 1000% or more.

And so

[DrXym]

WoW's transition to F2P begins. It'll probably be a better game for it too.

Blizzard has lost their way

[Tridus]

Given the rate at which WoW is losing subscribers (nearly a million in 2 quarters this year), you'd think they'd refocus on things that are actually good for the game.

Alas, nope. Instead they're focused on milking the cow as much as possible. This is just another example, the last one was trying to charge people to group with their friends. Blizzard eventually backed off on that, but the push has been growing from them for a while. It seems subscriptions aren't good enough for them anymore despite an incredible lack of content being added to the game these days.

Oh well. It was fun while it lasted, but all things must come to an end.

Re:Blizzard has lost their way

[silas_moeckel]

It's all about priorities, activision wants a return on investment and will do anything to get it. In the last year they have lost 1 million subs, went from a 2 raid to 1 raid per tier citing time issues. They excuse lack of storage space due to DB size. They still have some of the longest maintenance in the industry. It's a death spiral right now and they are still making piles of money. All the competent staff seems to have moved onto there next generation project.

Re:Blizzard has lost their way

[Godai]

I'm confused. When did we get two raids per tier?

1.0 - Onyxia & Molten Core (1 tier, 2 raids)
1.6 - Blackwing Lair (1 tier)
1.9 - The Gates of Ahn'Qiraj (1 tier, unless you count the 20-man)
1.11 - Shadow of the Necropolis (1 tier)
2.0 - Magtharidon, SSC, Gruul & TK at launch (2 tiers, 4 raids + KZ)
2.1 - The Black Temple (1 tier)
2.4 - Sunwell (1 tier)
3.0 - Sarthion, Malygos & Nax (3 tiers)
3.1 - Secrets of Ulduar (1 tier)
3.2 - Call of the Crusade (1 tier)
3.3 - Fall of the Lich King (1 tier)
4.0 - Throne of the Four Winds, Blackwing Descent & Bastion of Twilight (3 tiers)
4.2 - Rise of the Firelands (1 tier)
4.3 - Deathwing (1 tier)

So, how exactly have things changed? I keep hearing that we got more in the old days, but I'm not seeing it. The Burning Crusade launched with more raids (though only 13 bosses total across all four, same as Cataclysm if you include the heroic-only boss you need to unlock) but other than that, its been pretty consistent on what you get. As far as I can tell they've never included more than one raid per patch and only multiple raids per tier on expansions -- and those are fairly consistent in content as well (Karazhan being the notable exception, but its hard to classify since it was the only 10-man at launch).

Also, they've never claimed lack of storage space was a database issue. They've said that storage space isn't unlimited because they want people to make decisions about what they keep. Frankly, I'm with them on this one -- I played Ultima Online and one of the first things Origin discovered is that in an unlimited space world you get weird goddamn behaviour from people. I remember them citing examples like one dude who stockpiled a 100,000 shirts in his bank. People are strange!

Re:Blizzard has lost their way

[silas_moeckel]

They promised multiple raids per tier in cata to compensate for the new shared lockouts. Shorter raids and more of them. They claimed not enough time to finish the other 4.3 raid.

The void storage stripping everything off is a storage issue as in they do not want to keep those extra attributes. The keyring removal was explicitly stated as an issue of space http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2548839953

The cata mantra was smaller faster patches with more content. So far were at best on par, and looking at 12 months of a single raid again.

Overall I still enjoy the game but it's looking like EQ post Sony where you got the sense of accountants running the roost not game developers.

Re:Blizzard has lost their way

[ildon]

It wasn't to "compensate for the shared lockouts" it was so that you weren't staring at the same fucking background all week. I guess they figured if they just made little raids you wouldn't be in there long enough for it to be as draining.

Re:Blizzard has lost their way

[Loveless62]

A better way to understand why WoW players are feeling shortchanged by the most recent content patches, it helps to look at the number of raid bosses delivered, not the number of raids themselves. And no, I am not counting heroic modes as new bosses; adding one or two mechanics to a fight does not make a whole new boss.

1.0 - Onyxia & Molten Core - 11 bosses
1.6 - Blackwing Lair - 8 bosses
1.9 - The Gates of Ahn'Qiraj - 15 bosses
1.11 - Shadow of the Necropolis - 15 bosses
49 bosses for vanilla Wow

2.0 - Karazhan, Magtheridon, SSC, Gruul, TK, & Hyjal at launch - 29 bosses (if you don't count the Karazhan animal bosses and the different opera events as separate bosses)
2.1 - The Black Temple - 9 bosses
2.3 - Zul Aman - 6 bosses
2.4 - Sunwell (1 tier) - 7 bosses
51 bosses for BC

3.0 - Sarthion, Malygos & Nax - 17 bosses
3.1 - Secrets of Ulduar - 14 bosses
3.2 - Call of the Crusade - 5 bosses
3.3 - Fall of the Lich King + Ruby Sanctum - 13 bosses
48 bosses for Wotlk

4.0 - Throne of the Four Winds, Blackwing Descent & Bastion of Twilight - 13 bosses
4.2 - Rise of the Firelands - 7 bosses
4.3 - Dragon Soul - 8 bosses
28 bosses for Cataclysm

This makes Cataclysm look paltry compared to the rest of the expansions.

If you did want to count heroic bosses as separate bosses, then you could double the figure for Cataclysm to 56 bosses, but then the number of bosses in WotLK would raise to 78 bosses:
3.0 - Sarthion, Malygos & Nax - 17 normal modes and 1 hard mode (Sartharion + 3 drakes)
3.1 - Secrets of Ulduar - 13 normal modes and 10 hard modes, plus Algalon (who had no normal mode)
3.2 - Call of the Crusade - 5 normal modes and 5 hard modes
3.3 - Fall of the Lich King + Ruby Sanctum - 13 normal modes and 13 hard modes
In this case Cataclysm looks weak against WotLK. Again, however, I think it is unreasonable to count bosses in heroic modes as separate from the same bosses in normal modes.

Re:Blizzard has lost their way

[jwiegley]

Item ID is a 2 byte value in the game. So every item: 2 bytes + 2 Bytes for enchantment + 3 x 2 bytes for gems + 1 byte for reforge... let's say 2. 12 bytes per item total. Player's can have about 100 bag slots and 200 bank slots for a total of 300. so 300x12 = 3600 bytes/toon. 50 toons max... 180KBytes per account.

But yes. I agree. Let a player's storage hold more... even if 1 player takes up 1 Megabyte of storage then you can fit 1 million players on a single terabyte hard drive. If blizzard's hard up I'll personally provide them with the three modern drives they need to provide players with essentially unlimited storage.

Re:Blizzard has lost their way

[selven]

Just wondering, if WoW is losing subscribes so quickly than what's replacing it? What are the upstart alternatives, and what's so good about them?

Re:Blizzard has lost their way

[dufachi]

Yet you fail to consider that so far, the Cataclysm expansion is only 11 months old.

Vanilla - Released 11/04
2 years and 3 months later: Burning Crusade - Released 01/07
1 year and 10 months later: Lich King - Released 11/08
2 years and 1 month later: Cataclysm - Released 12/10

So, you could either argue that they are fast tracking expansion content now, or they have almost another year to make up for "content updates" (i.e. raid bosses). I use quotes loosely because not everyone appreciates only raid content.

Old news...

[nordee]

T'rain did it first.

Re:Old news...

[Erasmas]

Are we the only ones that have read REAMDE? I think somebody at Blizzard has, that's for sure. One of the next-generation MMOs is going to outright copy T'Rain, and then things will get interesting. Why not allow real money and gold to be interchangeable? Insert Blizzard (or another company) as the currency-exchange (they charge a fee of course), and everybody wins. Those with more time than money can play cheaply and even make money by digging up gold. Those with more money than time can buy gold with real money and get fun stuff.

Re:Old news...

[Cyberax]

Nope, I suspect a lot of people noticed it.

I wonder if Neal Stephenson applied for a patent on business method ;)

Re:How about getting rid of the miserable gameplay

[nordee]

If you stay out of the Hinterlands the trolls might not bother you so much.

Re:How about getting rid of the miserable gameplay

[Andreas Mayer]

After the first few days I kept having this BS thing happen where the sky would go orange and suddenly my character died. After the second time I asked WTF? Turns out it's supposed to be a bloody dragon.

You "kept having?!" Players are actively seeking out the areas where Death Wing is flying over because it earns you an achievement. ;)

Well third time I tried to log out as soon as I saw red. Well this automatically kills your character. My response? I canceled my account and have no plans to ever try WoW again. The truly lifeless might get off on dying randomly as game play but I have better things to do with my time and money.

I have many characters and I think I have seem Death Wing about three times since the expansion came out. You are either very lucky or very unlucky - depending on how you see it. Really, dying from a fly over by Death Wing is not a problem.

Re:Gold to Dollar converion.

[Andreas Mayer]

I don't see many players paying 8000 plus gold for one of these pets

You sound like 8000g was a lot.

But you are still right. Since those pets are easy to come by (just look how many players have those pay-for mounts) they will be worth *less* than rare pets that can be found in game. And *those* are traded for around 8000 to 10000g.

Your premise is faulty.

[CountBrass]

I shouldn't have to need the time and alts in order to play my character,

In many ways todays WoW is a sad, sold-out reflection of it's early self.

When I first started playing (US then EU betas and then EU live) running dungeons was fun, exciting, dangerous and sometimes maddeningly frustrating.

Today running dungeons is like a job. And a tedious, boring, uncreative menial job at that. There's no skill required- and most players won't even tolerate attempts at a more skilful-creative approaches as it introduces risk and might slow down their instance run. Why would spending more time having fun be a problem? The problem is that running instances in WoW now is not fun.

Re:Your premise is faulty.

[errandum]

Actually, in the beginning of a new expansion, dungeons are challenging and require skill. And that makes people kick anyone that doesn't meet their gear requirements.

What "ruined" wow wasn't blizzard, it was the players. In the beginning, everyone was the same. Ignorant and in crappy gear. Nowadays there is this huge pit between the new guy and the old one, leading to elitism and the behavior you expressed. And these guys outgear the dungeon by so much (remember, it was designed to be beaten with crap gear) that there is no need for any kind of organization

There should be different levels of gear, but with smaller benefits from one tier to the other, so that nothing becomes trivial after you get some "epics". Easier would be ok, trivial is, in my opinion, what killed Wow.

Re:Your premise is faulty.

[CountBrass]

And yet at the beginning of WoW you could get on the early raids (UBRS, Scholo and Strat) with a mix of blues and greens: which is quite reasonable.

People didn't need to know the instances because -in complete contrast to today- people were willing to talk to each and, shock! horror! explain any upcoming tricky fights.

These days -and repeating your initial point- you are expected to be over-geared and to be have studied every patrol and boss fight.

This has become a necessity because Blizzard has made too many of the bread and butter instance boss fights overly complicated.

This is Blizzard's fault. Blaming the players (customers, rats in the maze) makes no sense.

I do agree with your implied final point though: gear is far too important compared to your character's base stats and skills. Vanilla WoW had it right, we've seen extreme item inflation ever since.

Re:Your premise is faulty.

[Talderas]

Ulduar was beatable with no epic gear.

Re:Your premise is faulty.

[errandum]

You missed the point. Every dungeon is beatable by people that just turned 80 (in blue/green gear). In that kind of gear you will have a challenge is quite a few of the new raids. But then, after 10 or so runs you get way better gear and you're able to run through content (and kick people that isn't as well geared as you).

Gear should make you better, but wow makes the difference between the different tiers way too big, so in the end you'll steamroll pretty much everything.

In UBRS you needed tactics because even the gear you got from those dungeons wouldn't make them trivial (at least until MC or even BWL appeared). The gear you get from the dungeons and first tier heroics is enough to overgear everything that isn't a raid

Re:Your premise is faulty.

[thesandtiger]

Actually, I think the power difference between tiers of gear is OK, but what needs tuning is the way the random dungeon grouping handles people with different levels of gear.

For example, right now it is perfectly possible for DPS in mostly 378 gear to be put into a dungon with a tank that has gear barely meeting the level requirements of the dungeon. This leads to a situation where the tank is being screamed at to GO GO GO and they aren't learning anything other than that well geared players are often dicks.

What should happen is groups should be formed based on the gear level of all members. If everyone has roughly similar gear levels in a group it's much more likely everyone will get along - if everyone has ridiculously great gear they will just blast through, no fuss, no muss. If everyone is in fresh 85 quest greens and blues the tank will be under less pressure to pull everything, the healers will be cut some slack, and the dps will hopefully be willing to use their aggro dumps and CC when they can.

The problem isn't the power differential with the gear, it's that geared people want to run with geared people usually so they can go fast, while undergeared people want to learn and run with people who are patient.

The other issue that comes up is that there is a HUGE gulf between people who run with PUGs and people who are in decent guilds.

In my guild, people are incredibly patient with people who are learning their role and class and gearing up. When someone gets a healer or tank to 85, we form groups specifically to go through each of the dungeons to explain the fights and what each role ought to be focusing on at that point. DPS is usually a bit different - the class leader for that class will spend an hour or so helping new DPS figure out a solid rotation, go over their extra abilities (CC, interrupts, decurses, etc). When I hit 85 on my paladin, I got several crafted items given to me and they quickly helped me get up to speed for heroics and troll dungeons prior to raiding.

With pugs, though, you essentially have people screaming at everyone for any mistake (real or imagined), hurling abuse for no reason other than to do it, and constantly insisting that everyone just GO GO GO despite not everyone knowing what they're supposed to do of knowing about gimmicks in the fights. Plus you have people abusing the system - if they're a hybrid class that can tank, even if they aren't geared or spec to tank, they will sign in as a tank just to get a faster queue. It's just totally toxic.

Re:Your premise is faulty.

[keytoe]

What should happen is groups should be formed based on the gear level of all members. If everyone has roughly similar gear levels in a group it's much more likely everyone will get along - if everyone has ridiculously great gear they will just blast through, no fuss, no muss. If everyone is in fresh 85 quest greens and blues the tank will be under less pressure to pull everything, the healers will be cut some slack, and the dps will hopefully be willing to use their aggro dumps and CC when they can.

This is actually how it works - but it is tempered with how long you have been waiting in the queue. If they kept this rule strict, everyone's queue times would go up since you've basically split the pool of available players into several ilvl based groups. There are several weighting strategies (ranged/melee, armor type, how many times you've done a particular dungeon, etc) that happen in the matchmaking system, and ilvl is certainly one of them. It's just that their 'value' decays the longer you are forced to wait.

With pugs, though, you essentially have people screaming at everyone for any mistake (real or imagined), hurling abuse for no reason other than to do it, and constantly insisting that everyone just GO GO GO despite not everyone knowing what they're supposed to do of knowing about gimmicks in the fights.

I hear this frequently on the forums, but I have never experienced it to the degree claimed. I only run PuGs via the dungeon finder. Are there jerks and idiots and do you sometimes get them in your groups? Sure. But the vast majority of the dungeons I run are smooth and painless - and when someone clearly doesn't understand a fight they respond quite well to helpful tips. I also know how to spell, use correct grammar, am courteous and try to be sociable and encouraging during the run.

Re:Your premise is faulty.

[errandum]

two problems with your approach:

First, it already tries to group you with gear in mind. When everyone is missing tanks though, it then allows a few undergeared tanks to slip through so that the queue times don't become ridiculous.

And second, the problem I was addressing is exactly that no one should be able to "blast through" a dungeon. Gear nowadays makes everyone too strong, so they can, but on the 10th unchallenging dungeon run they quit for the day, or the week, or even forever. You need to challenge your players to get them to commit to your game, and you can't expect raids 2 times per week to do that. If gear wasn't the great differentiator, everyone would need to be on their heels in dungeon runs...

But then you say "if gear doesn't improve your character, no one will run dungeons". This is simple... Just make dungeon gear strong at pvp or at specific raid fights (Abilities that can only be countered if someone has equipment A, or bosses that will be weaker if a certain item is present). This would also impose artificial blocks to avoid content being mastered in two or 3 weeks.

Re:Your premise is faulty.

[ildon]

I don't think you've tried raiding recently... With the lobster bucket and flask cauldrons, combined with the gold earned from "guild challenges" and selling BoE raid drops on the auction house, no raid with moderate progression should ever have to farm mats (assuming someone else is actually posting them on the auction house). The raid bank should be able to afford nearly all of the guild's flask/food buffs, and probably even potion buffs if people are conservative with them (only using them on progression content or DPS race fights).

Re:Your premise is faulty.

[Darinbob]

Even when I was in WoW in the early days (just before BC) it often felt this way. And I wasn't even in end game. At middle levels players were too afraid to take risks lest an instance run not succeed the first time despite the near lack of penalty for failure. The game was clearly treated as a job to some of these players. The PVP tiering by level I think encouraged this, so that competitive players felt compelled to get the best gear while they were still level 19/29/39, etc. I have seen this drive away some newcomers and encourage others to never group with others.

Re:Your premise is faulty.

[errandum]

Before MC there was no chance to be THAT elitist. Blue gear was actually EPIC and not THAT better than the rest. Elitism existed because you were good, UBRS gear would give you an edge, but you weren't out of everybody else's league.

Re:Sensationalist Bullshit

[MPAB]

Player B sells pet to Player C for real-world money and resumes mining
Player C becomes new Player A

Re:Sensationalist Bullshit

[oztiks]

Obviously blizzard is establishing some of stimulus package for Orgrimmer. Those lazy ass trolls keep up with the protesting out the front of the AH there's gonna be trouble!

Market value?

[yoyhed]

I don't play WoW, but I was pretty big into Guild Wars back in the day, particularly the in-game economy. Won't the in-game market value of this pet plummet once everyone's buying it to change it into gold and flooding the auction house with it? Seems like something that'll only be worth it (that is, worth it to someone who would pay for in-game items in the first place) for a short while.

Re:Market value?

[KiahZero]

And yet, if those expectations are higher than the function of supply of the item and demand for it, you'll either be stuck without your $10 and nothing to show for it, or you'll adjust your expectations downward to realize some gain.

I imagine you'll see the same kind of sinusoidal price movements for this as you see for other WoW items, with high prices inducing more people to get one and list it on the AH, quickly overwhelming the demand and tanking the price.

Re:Market value?

[tycoex]

I played Atlantica (among other f2p games) which basically had exactly what WoW is adding now, although the game was f2p so it was at least somewhat excusable, I can't believe they have the balls to do this for a p2p game.

Basically what happens is the item will be worth a ton when it first comes out. It won't tank quickly, but it will gradually become worth less and less as the new "shininess" factor wears off.

Then Blizzard will replace the item with a new "more shiny" item. The current shiny item will drop significantly, and the new item will be worth a ton. If Blizzard chooses to discontinue sales of shiny item 1 when shiny item 2 is released, shiny item 1 will increase in price in a week or so, before going back down to average levels. If they keep selling all the shiny items at once the older ones will continue to slowly decline until they reach a fairly low price that will end up as the "Standard" price for any non-new item-mall item.

Re:Market value?

[Some Bitch]

In order to keep the entire game viable, you have to insure that the freeloaders (those who use in-game money to pay for playtime), are few and far between. From everything I've seen of WoW, gold is just way too easy to come by.

This is incorrect. Nobody is paying for game time with in-game money, the game time is always purchased with real money but may be transferred to a third party to apply to their account. That may be a gift, tax, sale, whatever, but someone paid cash for that 30 days game time it's jut not necessarily the person who actually uses it.

Re:Market value?

[ildon]

Which is exactly why Blizzard thinks it's "ok". It's regulated by the in-game market and so it has a cap on value and works properly within the system. Normal gold buying is disruptive because it works outside the market and encourages people to play in an abnormal way (even ignoring all the scamming and account stealing it generates).

I don't necessarily agree with them, but that's likely Blizzard's logic. And if it stops a couple people from buying gold from third parties, that's to their benefit, too.

Re:Market value?

[thatbloke83]

In precisely the same way that PLEX work in EVE Online (see http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/30_days_Concord_Pilot_License_Extension), this item will eventually stabilise at a certain price on every realm, based on the in-game market. That price point will be zero, however.

The problem is that in EVE, you need a new one every 30 days to keep your game time topped up, meaning that there is a constant stream of supply and demand.

In WoW, this is a one-use item - once you "use" it, it becomes bound to your character and from then on getting another one will have precisely no use/meaning at all, unless you want to give it to an alt character, so eventually the market will become saturated and they will lose their in-game value, and the RMT will just return. I suspect this will be an experiment of sorts by Blizzard, and that depending on how this one does they may well come up with a set of, say, 10 of these items.

Re:Market value?

[Bacon Bits]

Correct, however, nothing is preventing Blizzard from increasing the number of available items that can be traded once the market for the Guardian Cub is saturated (easily determined by their sales figures for the pet).

Blizzard is going very slowly to test the backlash from the community, so they're starting with one item. Worst case scenario, there's only ever going to be this one pet that can be bought and traded in this way. Minimum possible impact. Blizzard is just playing it safe.

Re:Hmmm...

[polemistes]

Yes, and then they figured they also want some terrorist mafia action in their life.

WoW gone soft...

[SeeSp0tRun]

I'll admit that I have played this game since inception, in 2004. That being said, there were dungeons that were damn near impossible to complete, without 40 able minded players. That was a stretch, and it felt like a real accomplishment. That's because it was an accomplishment... it took hard work, and often times took great critical thinking.

The game today has become a cash cow for Blizzard, and their policies show that. From faction changes, to PvE/PvP trasfers, to 10/25 man steamroll dungeons, to now monetizing (and cashing in on) something they deemed a violation of the ToS... a week prior.
They have taken the hard work, and dedication required, and replaced it with money bought goods.

This is an honest question here, but are they creating a type of stock exchange in WoW?

Re:WoW gone soft...

[thejynxed]

Pre-nerf AQ40 and pre-nerf Kharazan come to mind.

WoW has become a MMO Slot Machine. Pull the handle and gear comes out.

Re:WoW gone soft...

[HBI]

Once you break the balance on a game, it never can recover.

I used to respond to unreasonable MUD feature requests with something along the lines of - "Ok, instead of x, let's put a big regenerating pile of gold in the starting room, and a lever to give you experience. Then you take the gold and pull the lever as much as you want. Fun, right?"

This is like legalizing marijuana

[geekzealot1982]

There is always going to be gold buying and selling in WoW. On most servers you can easily buy game time cards codes for gold which people buy in the real world for real money. So it is easy to say that this is another example of Bliz caving, but it is just acknowledging the reality of the situation, and giving players a legal way to do it that isn't illicit, much like legalizing marijuana - it is going to happen no matter what stance they take, it causes dubious hurt, and it might just as well be legal to some reasonable degree.

Eve system

[asciiRider]

When people mention how this is implemented in Eve (my game) - they often forget to mention that it allows the isk grinders to play for free. So - for two players, CCP gets both subscriptions, one player gets to 'pay with isk to play' and one player essentially pays for two subs. Everybody is happy.

I work hard I'm not going to work in-game. I'm most certainly not going to try and compete with unemployed guys who play 18 hours a day. If I can help them by paying for their game time in return for their in game money I think it's a fair deal.

Good God

[Godai]

They didn't do this to 'add an avenue for real money gold buying'. They don't need to -- that already exists, as they've pointed out in several posts. TCG rewards are Bind-on-Equip already, and sold on the auction house for significant money. Its not that hard to buy or obtain one of those and sell it in game for solid gold returns.

Personally, I'm not a fan of this because I think for $10 it should show up on every character for the account its applied to. This way you're paying $10 for a one-time pet, and that seems vastly over-priced. I could care less that you can buy it on the auction-house. The idea that this will be some easy way to convert real life money to gold is stupid. You can't predict what price you'll get so you may end up getting a really lousy return on your $10 investment. Or you might make a fair bit. Who knows? Either way, its a fair way from converting money into gold efficiently. This is a classic example of making a mountain out of a molehill.

Re:How about getting rid of the miserable gameplay

[LanMan04]

Like anyone goes to the Hinterlands anymore.

And, for the record, I fucking HATE troll lore. Lamest race in the game by a looong stretch. And yes, I am including Goblins in that analysis.

Overreaction

[wembley fraggle]

This isn't really a legal avenue for *gold buying*. Instead it's an avenue for purchasing a vanity pet that you can sell to other players for in-game gold. The difference is two-fold:

1) No gold is added to the economy in this transaction, which means this process doesn't add inflationary pressure.
2) There's no guarantee of value on the pet. These things are going to flood the marketplace, as people buy them for resale. Who knows what the final market value of these things will be?

Blizzard could have just instituted some kind of $1 = 1,000 gold transfer, but they didn't. This will be at best a minimal gold buying avenue (I don't predict the value of these pets to be all that high in the long term.

On the other hand, the bigger deal is what the article missed- with all the previous vanity pets, $10 got you a pet that you could use on all your characters (Bind to Account). This new (Bind on Equip) pet means that you have to pick the character that gets the pet. That is somewhat disappointing, as I have a fair number of alts that I could conceivably give this pet, but I'm not going to spend $50 doing so.

Reality, this really isn't a big deal

[v_Los]

It's funny to see how many different tangents people get on when the issue of WoW comes up. It should be pointed out that none of the items Blizzards sells in it's store has any effect on gameplay. Sure, you can take issue with the game itself all you want. You could also point out the fact that it's losing users, but it's a decade old game. I would be concerned if it were still growing at this point. Nobody is forcing you to buy any of it. Take issue with the game itself all you want, but the real money store is probably the last thing that is doing the game any harm. The in game markets are self policed and the value of these items will drop enough that it just won't be worth trading $10 any amount of gold.

The only issue is precedent

[ip_freely_2000]

Suckers are going to spend $25 on a mount that will flood the AH. What costs 20K gold on Saturday will be 2K gold the following week. If you don't already have 2K gold on your toon, then you're doing it wrong. What worries me is Blizz moving this model over to gear. When that happens, I am out.

Re:Sensationalist Bullshit

[wed128]

Why would player C buy it from player B for real money, when they could buy it from blizzard for real money?

Re:Sensationalist Bullshit

[keytoe]

That exact scenario has been possible with TCG cards for a while, and we haven't seen the complete collapse of the in game economy.

There is a finite (and very small) supply of valuable TCG cards. There are an infinite number of these pets available in the Blizzard store.

Re:I think that game is dangerous

[desdinova 216]

how about a little more detail and what is so dangerous about CS and WoW?

WoW improvements

[jwiegley]

Scale instances to the gear level. There is too much content already. I've been playing for three years and haven't seen half the raids. From WotLK I have completed Naxx and NONE of the other raids. My guild was too small to tackle content regularly. My guildies were great, helpful people who were excellent people. What? "find another guild" you say? Are you seriously indicating that something that is a *game* should motivate and encourage affiliation based on performance and not on friendship? I'd be happy to go back and spend time in older raids if they were challenging. Put together a group, figure out the average iLevel and then scale the damage and healing for the instances. Bam. All content becomes fresh.

Allow raid compositions of more/less than 10/25 players (and scale the instance). "One raid member can't make it tonight?" you're fucked. "Oh, you have one too many" Too bad, benched.

Allow players to create instances and content. If it is about providing enough challenging content to keep players interested (and it should be... I can't take another random Zul) then Blizzard needs to get over its love of canon/lore and simply release tools that allow players to create their own instances. Yeah, the story lines won't remain consistent but so what. Limit what can drop in the player instances and have a system for obtaining Blizzards approval. Then you would have more content, faster than any player could keep up with.

Get rid of the dependence on guild membership to tackle content. World of Warcraft is clearly designed by individuals with a juvenile high school mentality. guilds are just popularity cliques.You want to raid? You must have a guild to be successful in end-game content (which EVERYONE pays for but few people get to see in a timely fashion). If your guild falls apart, or is great people but too small, or you can't make the 80% attendance requirement, or your employment schedule shifts and takes you out of your scheduled night... you're screwed. no raiding for you unless you find a new guild. Make changes that de-emphsize guild membership as a requirement for experiencing game content. Provide power to the individual to choose content.

Forget about the damn chinese/gold/gear farmers. Drop the whole idea of raid locks. This is put in to prevent people from farming content and becoming geared "too quickly", whatever that means. SO FUCKING WHAT? I don't care if somebody else is getting a free ride. How does their success diminish my ability to play? Why punish me so that I can't honestly grind gear at my pace? If they're geared but they can't play I'll just avoid them. There's no rational reason concerning game play for lockouts. Yes. it prevents guilds/groups from farming gear for new players. But So what? Again another punishment for honest players. It could also be implemented better. Progression can be controlled through iLevel limits for instance entrances and also through content dependencies instead.

World of Walkcraft. Get rid of the damn corpse runs. No reason for them. At the very least when you die just cause the respawn at the instance entrance. Waiting/walking is not "fun". Nobody loves those zones were the graeyards are super far away. That run back really lets you relax and get in touch with yourself. Helps you contemplate your mistake and improve too.

Remove all the penalties for dying. Yes. I get the durability penalty. that makes sense as providing a major, reliable and continuous gold sink to maintain the stability of the economies. But rez sickness is stupid. more stupid is the "oh, you died again quickly? PENALTY BOX!" The disappointment of dying is enough of a punishment. Dying frequently is its own punishment. The time lost to rebuff, wait for mana, instant boss/mob reset is enough. Waiting for 2 minutes after Bloodlord Mandokir kills you is just stupid.

Random Raid Finder. Yes. I know this is coming but it's coming wrong. It will only allow grouping for lower level raids and not the current tier. Why? Stupid. Just another limit enforcing

Re:WoW improvements

[Miaomiao]

By the way: Raid finder is only for the current tier raid (Deathwing) not older raids, you have it backwards. Big thing is it's on an "easy" difficulty only, so you don't get the "best" gear from it. This will probably change, most people are wanting to do normal and even heroic content with raid finder raids.

We'll probably see raid locks go away eventually, there's a hardcore mentality that things have to stay "hard" in terms of needing lots of time invested, instead of "hard" as a form of challenge. They serve an important purpose allowing people to take more time to finish raids, which tend to be giant instances taking hours and hours of time. If it takes you 6 hours to kill all the bosses, having your time investment go away after you leave is bad. Most guilds spread these across 2~3 days in smaller chunks. Many guilds even invest just an hour a night in raiding, making it their main focus.

As far as rez sickness, as well as the waiting time, they're an integral part of world pvp. Without them you end up in situations where new players are camped for hours on end.

Gold DKP probably isn't going to be affected...

[rocket rancher]

It still gives an advantage to those that are willing to pay real money for game money. No new gold is created, but it does allow people to pool the existing money by buying multiples of the pet and selling them to accumulate wealth. Since gear can be bought with gold, this will give the players that are willing to spend real money an advantage over those that are not willing to or cannot afford to.

For what it is worth, obtaining BiS gear is no longer that difficult to do, thanks to Blizz allowing BoP gear obtained in raids to be traded among raid members for up to an hour after the end of the raid. Both my 'locks (undead and human) have four pieces of Tier 11 gear, thanks to heavy and frequent abuse of this benign rule change designed to reduce the number of in-game petitions to reassign BoP gear that was mis-assigned by the lootmaster. Thanks to this rule change, it is possible to offer a shit-ton of gold for that Tier item that somebody out-diced you for, and I've rarely had somebody refuse a high five-figure offer. When the phoenix dropped for our pug 25 man two years ago, I offered 100k gold to the roll winner, who didn't even hesitate. That is the rarest drop in the game, and this guy sold it for the equivalent of 5 Titansteel cool downs. Also, look up "gold DKP" raids on any wow forum to see how pugging end-content raids is an efficient and very cheap way to get BiS gear for even toons you only leveled to get their trade skills up.

So, yeah, having more gold helps on these gold DKP runs. But -- and this is where I think you are wrong about more gold conferring an advantage - you are ignoring the Tier sets. More gold does not confer an advantage to players because of the Tier sets. You can't buy Tier items with gold (gold DKP runs and the change to the BoP rules in raids being the exceptions, as I noted above, but which are pretty limited exceptions.) Last time I checked with elitistjerks, at least for my class ('lock) the Tier sets are still considered BiS for all our specs. You can buy some good gear for gold; outside of raid drops, you can't get a better trinket than the darkmoon card-based ones, or for clothies, the tailored pants and belt. But nothing you buy for gold confers anything beyond the base stats on the item. Tier gear, which are BoP, class specific, and can only be obtained in a raid, have cumulative bonuses on them which do confer a significant, non-trivial advantage in PvE.

As a WoW player...

[neminem]

I have no problem with this at all. People buy gold anyway; better Blizzard gets the profits than sketchy, might-steal-your-account-later trade-channel-spammers. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I like this model way better than the previous one, where there are vanity items you can *only* buy with cash. If they did that with raid-tier gear, I'd quit, full stop, right now. If they used *this* model with raid-tier gear, on the other hand, I'd actually think it was sort of neat. (Kingdom of Loathing, my favorite game ever, basically survives on that model, though granted, it's different in that it's otherwise free to play. I give them about as much a year as I give WoW, though.)

Re:wow is dead!!

[neminem]

Uh... I'm pretty sure there were occasional quests like that (where they provided you an NPC, who could do the quest while you watched, just slower) in vanilla and BC, too. And better that and an NPC who you had to protect or lose the quest, who had no hp and would always run off and aggro everything no matter what you did... vanilla just freaking -loved- those.

Anyway, everyone knows the leveling to the level cap process is just a lengthy tutorial for the actual game (namely, raiding). Wasn't that just as true in vanilla and BC? And, as someone who has never been in a guild capable of fielding 25 people to raid, I quite liked their "simplifications" :p. (Though I will admit, I was less than impressed with the first tier in Cataclysm. I think everyone was. Firelands is pretty cool, though.)

The most disappointing thing about WoW...

[jayveekay]

The most disappointing thing about WoW is not that Activision/Blizzard is trying to monetize what they have, it's that after 7 years WoW is still a character progression treadmill just like the MMOs that preceded it. If it was possible to break out of that model then WoW, with its revenues 10 times greater than those of blockbuster MMOs, then WoW would have done it by now.

It's like the quest for a machine to travel back at time: If it were possible to invent one, someone in the future would have done it and brought it back to demo it.

Or interstellar space travel: If it were possible, one of the other planets in the universe would have developed it a billion years ago and have reached Earth by now.

Hmmm, money, money, money

[onezeta]

Yes, the WoW is now using their strong fan base to get more money. Good for them.