[WoW] $60 for a level 90!

[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.

[Gadwen]

Don't EQ and EQ2 also offer this service now? or at least plan on offering it soon?

[Swish]

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

Don't EQ and EQ2 also offer this service now? or at least plan on offering it soon?

If Blizzard can introduce it, most likely everyone else will follow. Levels of scumbaggery in gaming companies are reaching new lows.

[Bamz4l]

ya watch this be the next pre-order bonus for some games

[mgellan]

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

Jumping from 1-90 is not really a benefit in WoW anymore. It is either a hassle for a new alt or something separating a new player from playing with his friends who are already on the server. It's not something that can give a competitive advantage to one player over another or something that can be remotely construed as paying to win.

Even getting a Death Knight or whatever when you hit 55 results in truly fricken awful Death Knights (I was one of them - couldn't be bothered to invest any more time in learning from scratch so stopped playing) ... I can't imagine what people who ground their way to 90 will think of a while bunch of totally clueless lvl 90s running around!

Regards,
Mg

[Uteunayr]

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

Even getting a Death Knight or whatever when you hit 55 results in truly fricken awful Death Knights (I was one of them - couldn't be bothered to invest any more time in learning from scratch so stopped playing) ... I can't imagine what people who ground their way to 90 will think of a while bunch of totally clueless lvl 90s running around!

Regards,
Mg

Seriously. Do dungeons from 1-90 to level up, and you'll notice a huge slump when you hit 58 dungeons (early BC, late vanilla) of all the bad DKs. You can really feel how bad it gets. This is what level 90 will be like, lol. And with brand new content? Holy shit.

[radditsu]

I had a ui during lich king that told me what buttons to press to maximize dps and tell me exactly where to go on every boss fight. How is that not the easiest thing that exists?

[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/

[Quineloe]

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

Smart of blizzard to do that. Honestly, WoW doesn't start until you're max level, so this doesn't really bother me. This also is undercutting the RMT I'm sure. And if you're going to come back and don't feel like leveling, you may as well buy an account. I might buy one if I didn't wanna risk getting addicted to WoW again.

Might as well do away with levels completely if that's the approach now.