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

[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: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.

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.