[WoW] $60 for a level 90!

[stormlord]

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.

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.

WoW still cares about hardcores and nostalgia. They keep saying their next expansion will bring back the old times. They even did a revamping of old content some time back where htey painstakingly tried to preserve the character of what was there. And even in your own post you mention how the high ranking pvp ratings are ways to differentiate hardcores from casual players. Well, I've made a couple posts here where I mention how they moved the grindy gameplay to the end-game in WoW to appeal to the casuals while not alienating the hardcore 24/7 players. This was easy to do because grindy gameplay is cheap and they used it to keep the neckbeards playing.

I agree they don't go out of their way to satisfy the nostalgia itch, nor do they go out of their way to make content for hardcores, BUT they do at least go far enough to rake in some cash. Generally, I have to agree with you that the market is moving towards woman and teenagers and also console players and this is like a tidal wave washing over the industry, but as another poster states, this doesn't leave everybody else abandoned. If there's an untapped market, even if it's niche and small, companies will go after it because that's how markets work. Even the big games will try to tap into those things in small amounts, just as WoW uses pvp rankings to keep hardcores playing.

Here're some examples of companies appealing to the neckbeards:

1) Wurm Online
2) Mortal Online
3) Xsyon (formerly known as Xyson)
4) Secret World
5) Entropia Universe (expensive mmo and real cash economy)
6) ArcheAge (1) and other asian MMORPG's (tend to be more hardcore)
7) DayZ
8) Demon Souls/Dark Souls (single-player/multi-player)
9) Dwarf Fortress (single player)
10) The Dark Mod (2) (standalone version of the Thief series single-player games)
11) Path of Exile (more like diablo 2 than diablo 3)
12) GoG.com (sells older classic games)
13) Hundreds or thousands of small scale single-player and multi-player games

(1) - http://nobodyplaysgames.com/forums/i...february-2013/
(2) - http://www.thedarkmod.com/main/

[Ahldagor]

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

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

not in terms of dollars. blizz is doing everything they can to stop a sinking ship and trying to get that number back to 12million. i think swish said it earlier that the game has just run its course.

[triad]

i know its just talk and talk is cheap but arnt they talking about going back to "vanilla" style for the game ... idk how they can recover from a bs ploy like this one but i wouldnt mind seeing them do a progression server like EQ did just to play what i kinda missed ..but i wonder if their population would be as much of a shit show as our server

[Swish]

Why have a leveling system at all for the next expansion? Clearly too much for players to do another 10 levels on their main character when the community would rather shortcut with their credit cards.

People say the LoL community is toxic, but I'd rather be playing there than on Blizzard's servers [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Tecmos Deception]

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

Why have a leveling system at all for the next expansion? Clearly too much for players to do another 10 levels on their main character when the community would rather shortcut with their credit cards.

Buying a level 90 is obviously something for players who already have played 1-90 before and don't care to do it again + something that will allow new players to catch up to their established buddies more quickly. It does not in any way suggest that current level 90s "can't handle" leveling up in a new expansion. Blizzard makes money in the process, but they ARE in the business of, ya know, making money (and, somewhat connected to that, keeping customers happy).

These forums are full of people bitching that leveling in wow is too easy, but then when Blizzard offers players a way to skip the part of the game that you think is retarded, you complain about that too? Not to mention the whole "it's ok to use RL money to incidentally obtain p99 xp pots, but if you pay for levels in wow "OMFG I CAN'T BELIEVE WOW WOULD DO SOMETHING SO HEINOUS!!!"? Lol.


I mean, I agree with the sentiment that WoW isn't for me anymore. But just because the game isn't what it used to be, or it isn't what YOU are looking for, doesn't mean it hasn't made decisions that made some sense (dungeon finder wasn't Blizzard secretly trying to kill MMO community; it was a fix for people playing on low-pop realms and them trying to bring more convenience to players... yeah it kinda was a double-edged sword, but what isn't?) or that it isn't still fun for a lot of people.

[Uteunayr]

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

"it's ok to use RL money to incidentally obtain p99 xp pots, but if you pay for levels in wow "OMFG I CAN'T BELIEVE WOW WOULD DO SOMETHING SO HEINOUS!!!"? Lol.

I am against both. I do not believe that real life wealth, which is not strongly related to your effort and work, should translate into in-game benefits. The nice thing about MMOs before the F2P model started to build is that everyone pays in their $15, and from there, what you become is entirely based on your hard work. Two people that do the same work get the same benefit. RL money to obtain XP pots, whether it be for a kickstarter, or for a F2P model game, is something I am opposed to because it makes two people that do the same work get unequal benefits based on real life wealth. This may not permeate through the entire game, but it being present devalues the hard work some players will do based on the real world distribution of wealth.

I come to these games to get away from the bullshit in the real world. I'd like for my hard work to provide me the same benefit, nor more or less, than the benefit provided to a person who puts in more hard work. Or, in the same way, for someone to be able to do less work to achieve the same.

They are virtually the same thing, only differing in degree (the point to which you wrote), but they are both shitty systems.

However, to the defense of others who find WoW selling a level 90 relative to a F2P game selling XP pots, is that one model is a subscription, while the other (p1999 xp pots for example) is free to play, so they are not directly comparable without keeping the sub in mind.

[Swish]

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

I do not believe that real life wealth, which is not strongly related to your effort and work, should translate into in-game benefits.

This, its never a level playing field if people are going to pump extra $$ into getting advantages/pay to win/pay to not grind items.

I ranked up on the vanilla WoW PvP system and went hard to get Rank 13 (Warlord) for the PvP armor set. I wanted to push for Rank 14 (High Warlord) to finish my character and get him a sweet looking 2h axe... but I couldn't afford to invest 6+ hours a day for 4 more weeks ensuring I stayed ahead of the other PvP grind (there could only be ONE Rank 14 per week).

Then 2-3 months later Blizz announced TBC, and all the hours and effort I'd put in was for nothing... all the scumbag WoW kids were wearing exactly the same gear for PvP, easy mode was turned on.

Downhill from there, and they made the same mistake at the end of every expansion - everything became worthless. This "pay $$" shit is just an extension of how easy it has become to have the right gear/mounts/other perks.

...and before anyone says it, yes - "confirmed mad" [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[formallydickman]

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

I ranked up on the vanilla WoW PvP system and went hard to get Rank 13 (Warlord) for the PvP armor set. I wanted to push for Rank 14 (High Warlord) to finish my character and get him a sweet looking 2h axe... but I couldn't afford to invest 6+ hours a day for 4 more weeks ensuring I stayed ahead of the other PvP grind (there could only be ONE Rank 14 per week).

Then 2-3 months later Blizz announced TBC, and all the hours and effort I'd put in was for nothing... all the scumbag WoW kids were wearing exactly the same gear for PvP, easy mode was turned on.

I know the feeling. Almost all my buddies and I had a similar experience, but it didn't affect me as much as it affected you. I just turned into a terrible casual.

I usually resub for each xpac release with WoW. I have 6 max lvl chars that I level up (eventually) then exclusively arena and BG until one of my buddies I resubbed with burns out. The smoothness of the pvp usually keeps me entertained for about 3 months then I quit and call it good. I can totally see a market for people who have a similar play style as myself (though I personally don't need another max lvl char... have enough already).

I don't think its good for the game (which is pretty crummy already), but I do think they know what they are doing over there at Blizzard in regards to profit. They know the game's time is limited and they are going to draw each and every penny out of it while people are willing to sub. Kudos to them for that at least.

[Uteunayr]

They said that this previous expansion was meant to bring raiding back to the Vanilla days. All it did was scale up the raid difficulty, but it didn't bring it back to vanilla in the least. It just wasn't Lich King raiding easy.

[triad]

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

They said that this previous expansion was meant to bring raiding back to the Vanilla days. All it did was scale up the raid difficulty, but it didn't bring it back to vanilla in the least. It just wasn't Lich King raiding easy.

so its not the upcoming exp that is trying to make it go back to the old days?