[WoW] $60 for a level 90!

[Uteunayr]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...0-priced-at-60

Yeah...

About that...

Yeah...

There's no words.

[Swish]

Some people's rationale.... "Well like, the time it would take to level a character to 90. I could just work an extra shift at work and pay for it that way." (which completely defeats the point of playing the game to be honest)

No words though, I agree... Blizzard cashing in, worse than EA? Getting that way.

The things people do for an edge or a boost in a game, terrible.

[Ahldagor]

Originally Posted by Swish [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The things people do for an edge or a boost in a game, terrible.

/nod

[BahamutDF]

Originally Posted by Swish [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Some people's rationale.... "Well like, the time it would take to level a character to 90. I could just work an extra shift at work and pay for it that way." (which completely defeats the point of playing the game to be honest)

No words though, I agree... Blizzard cashing in, worse than EA? Getting that way.

The things people do for an edge or a boost in a game, terrible.

LOL @ Blizzard selling level 90's.

And there's still people out there that defend Blizzard's handling of WoW. As if they weren't the most vapid gaming company in existence.

[Ahldagor]

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[Sturgeon]

Originally Posted by Ahldagor [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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That's a pretty scary graph.

I enjoyed WoW during TBC/WoLK/Cata. Half-way through Cata I realized the game had lost its touch and it was time to move on.

[dreama1]

Originally Posted by Ahldagor [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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7 Million is huge.. They still will be making a profit with a couple of million or even one million..

[BahamutDF]

Originally Posted by dreama1 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

They still will be making a profit

So is Justin Bieber. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[dreama1]

Originally Posted by BahamutDF [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So is Justin Bieber. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Fail. You know what a gaming COMPANY is right? It's there to make money, their primary goal is to make you addicted & make money. They don't give a shit about you or your nostalgia.

This is not something new, and this will be a trend in the coming decades of MMORPG. Precedence was already set with EQ2 and its heroic characters.

Companies no longer care and will ever care again about the neckbeard, 30 year old + no -lifers. Indeed, they will soon be a minority in the gaming world. So get used to it.

Teenagers + Women are target demographics for gaming marketers from now on. There are so many females in EQ2 now and they are the ones that buy so much shit from station exchange for houses and fluff, that this, too, will be a common occurrence. Women gamers tend to play casual but long term, which is a marketer's dream, as they are relatively easy to please in terms of content.

Hardcore players were always a minority but they will eventually be ignored completely as companies don't care if you play 10 mins per month or 400 hours per month, which is why you see EQ live now trying to cater to new players. Although EQ live will probably tank, because it's been around too long & not enough marketing is there. WoW actually is a good business model, it caters to every gamestyle, i.e., you can level quickly but high ranking pvp rating etc are ways to differentiate hardcore vs. casual players.

People act as if noobs that are max level can't be excluded from gameplay.. There are many ways to weed 'noob' players out, with achievements, gear, guild etc.. Plus, I think people are overestimating how easy it is to play. You may have knowledge over the other people but seriously it's not that difficult with the web to figure out things all by themselves.

[Uteunayr]

Originally Posted by dreama1 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Fail. You know what a gaming COMPANY is right? It's there to make money, their primary goal is to make you addicted & make money. They don't give a shit about you or your nostalgia.

These things are not mutually exclusive, and in your anti-anti-game company fervor, you seem to have missed that fact. AAA companies have, by and large, abandoned their primary fan bases due to the influx of bro-gamers into the market that either began, or was significantly accelerated with, Halo. They do this because they believe that it is more profitable to appeal to that market, and there may be something to that argument.

But being there to make money does not necessarily entail not giving a shit about nostalgia. Games like Terraria have made tons of cash as an indie game by appealing to nostalgia. Amnesia came into the gaming market at a time when AAA horror was all but dead because the gaming companies decided they were not the profit-hogging super games that would make millions of dollars. You see successful games like Serious Sam, and Shadow Warrior, appealing to the nostalgia for old Quake-style shooters that were ultimately phased about because a game controller cannot function well enough to handle such speed and precision requirements.

Then look at a company like Valve, that frequently states that their profit maximization is in fact a goal, but that profit maximization is not something that falls to one strategy. Certainly, you can be an EA and pump out tons of games that appeal to nostalgia, grab a quick buck, or you can make games that attempt to addict the player base, and extract more resources, EA has been doing that for a while. But EA's value has also been dropping consistently for a while.

Now, some would say Valve can talk that way as they are coming from a position where Valve's success isn't contingent upon their games, or their quality. But just look at Nintendo. If a company has ever existed that is solely based on nostalgia, that is Nintendo. Every console they release the same games, and people pay for them. It is easy enough to see why, people loved Mario back in the day, people love Mario now. Nostalgia is a powerful force, and it can sell Nintendo's products without any reasonable third party support.

It isn't only a fact that many companies do care about nostalgia, but it is a rational outcome of the fact that they are there to make money. If they are there to make money, and when some companies forbid the nostalgia appeal, you get other companies that fill that market. Some companies will merge nostalgia to grab old fans, with new content to appeal to new ones, and their success hinges on their ability to balance these two.

Markets do not solely focus on the most profitable centers, as there becomes a greater clustering of companies appealing to that market. Some companies will invest in niche, fringe markets, because no other companies are going after them, and they can get consistent monetary gain out of those players, since the chances of making a successful game for teenagers + women (as you put it, I have an issue with this over simplification, but we'll leave that) is incredibly steep given the vast competition, it can be profitable to hedge your bets on markets that others do not occupy. This isn't just me rambling, that's how a market system works. It is absolutely basic economics that is being ignored by your post in the idea that every game company must appeal to the clustered market center.

Do you really think Blizzard wont have an issue if WoW is down to 1 million players? Yes, they will be making profit. But to go from the top of the market to just one among numerous others would be devastating to Blizzard. Look at how SoE reacted when their MMOs, EQ, SWG, Planetside, and the bunch, all failed to compete with WoW when it came out. Look how they reacted when, although their games were profitable, they were not *as* profitable as they were. SoE lost market supremacy, and for a decade, they've been sulking. Yes, Blizzard would still make money, but they'd have a lot of issues if they dropped to just 1 million subs.

So, in other words, get off your pedestal. You're playing a 15-year old elf simulator and lecturing people about how nostalgia is meaningless, and slandering people as neckbeards? Hah. That's just fucking funny.