by Azaroth | April 24th, 2010
It’s almost as insane as this.
But absolutely nowhere as insane as NOT DOING THAT EARLIER.
Blizzard is, I’d assume, setting themselves up nicely for big cash payoffs when their new expansion releases and people are playing the game in droves again.
I think this new item they’re selling (a mount – as fast as any in the game… that speed being something people have grinded out countless hours for in the past) is an interesting bridge. They started out stating that their item shop doodads would have no effect beyond the cosmetic and decorative. Fair enough, I have no issue with that. Well, I have no issue with that if your game is free. When you’re double dipping, it’s a little shady… but companies are out to make money, honey. Decorative items is a pretty tame way to double dip.
Which I’m sure is what most people figured. Add on the fact that they were throwing 5% to charity or something, and it’s really not so bad.
However, we’re moving out of the cosmetic now. Faster mounts is one of the most expensive things in the game. Some of the hardest things to obtain.
Now, unlike myself, Tim actually tweets interesting and game industry-related stuff. One thing I took note of a week ago or so was this story. Titled “Fancy Horse Makes Blizzard $2 Million In Four Hours”.
Not surprising, really. But given Blizzard’s gradual increase in the value of these items and the obvious tactic to bring the item shop in seeming benign and even charitable, not to mention the unlimited money hats involved in selling more and more meaningful items in their cash shop – are real items, or even abilities, that far behind? Can they be?
World of Warcraft is over half a decade old. I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing it get milked before their new MMO comes out.
Now, I don’t actually -play- World of Warcraft. I’m only interested in this from the perspective of a gamer. At what point does selling meaningful items in a game I’m already paying a monthly fee for become the norm? What about competitive balance? I would suppose only a few people give a rat’s ass about that compared to the millions and millions that will fork over twenty five bucks for a flying mount.
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That’s fucking nuts. Granted I’d rather pay 25 dollars then spend 25 hours trying to get some stupid rare drop.
What’s this doing on IPY.com though? And how much will pink halberds of vanquishing cost?
I hope you’re joking. ;)
This is just a blog. I’ve stated a million times I’d never muck with competitive balance for the sake of $$.
I posted something about this a month or two ago on my blog. Basically it’s just like the music industry going from album CDs to downloadable singles. That’s the standard nowadays and it benefits the consumer, or is at least more palatable in today’s world. Same for the gaming industry. If companies make more money and put out a better product for cheaper, then let’s do it. If not, nobody will be playing said game. Me personally? I’m cool with it as long as it’s not designed to fundamentally alter the end game for the elite or casual. If it starts causing a rift in the playerbase then I’m not playing that game. Meh…
Yeah, but this is the equivalent of selling a CD and then making people pay money to listen to the songs.
Yeah sorta… How about – buying the cd and being able to listen to the cd, but you have to pay an extra five bucks for the bonus secret track. It’s just gay when it’s a double-whammy, but if these big companies shift towards the pick-n-choose business model, like the music industry, then it can and most likely will work. The gaming industry is just now dealing with these things, so it has a way to go before it becomes viable for both the seller and buyer. Honestly it’s not such a bad thing, as long as the game isn’t based on who has spent the most money. Again, if I have to pay for the initial game, and then pay a subscription monthly, and THEN do microtransactions or buy DLC… all to keep from falling behind the curve so I’m not a gimp in game? That’s not a game that I’m interested in playing.
PS – I always wanted to be a gnome priest, even before release!!!!!
I’d play WoW again (only) if they released 3-4 new classes or so.
But even that would be stupid, because everyone would roll those classes.
I’m not sure redoing the old world and asking me to play the same classes over again will do it. I might play casually for a few weeks if a certain friend wants me to.
If I want to play a diku, I’ll wait for SWTOR though.
I love this. Activision is purely genius when it comes to commercializing video game addiction. Bobby Kotick is a total dickhead from the gamer’s perspective though.
Well, they couldn’t have gone about being money grubbing whores any more intelligently, really.
I’d check out the model that League of Legends has been using. The game is entirely free to play, no “power” sold, only increases on how long it takes you to unlock various things, and cosmetic skins. So far this seems to be doing very well for them, as the game seemingly keeps growing quite a bit.
At first I was skeptical on how a free game would get me to pay any money for it… and then I did it – I grabbed the 30$ digital edition that came with a few goodies. For me this is big, I am notoriously Jew-esque with my funds and since most vidyagames can be downloaded…
They simply just made a great game and an incentive for people to support them based on their own free will.
Its amazing what happens when you release a game that isn’t a complete pile of shit.
Same goes for the music industry…
Why does nobody go to shows? Because they suck. They’re unoriginal. Much music has become stale, and many bands don’t do much more than play the music.
THE RABBLE IS ROUSING
Yeah, EA did same thing with BF: Heroes. Exact same formula. A lot of weird games are coming out like these. Eventually it’ll all be like that except only available on things like Steam, Facebook, Xbox Live or PSNetwork. In fact the next-gen consoles should just go full-throttle towards virtual media only, dumping physical media altogether. Maybe I’ve posted this before, but there’s a company doing a new delivery method – http://www.onlive.com/index.html
Yeah, somebody just posted a discussion of OnLive on the 420chon… its an interesting concept – and I do believe it may be in the future. The problem nowadays is being forced to have an internet connection to play Single Player games as a form of DRM… now that is crap. Same thing with OnLive
I personally wouldn’t be very interested in the OnLive service, though I do think they are heading a step in the right direction as far as seeking out new delivery methods.
All in all, I was still pretty shocked at how many people bought into the WoW mount crap… I’ll have to find it and post it – there was a speech on game design by some random fellow who said that gaming was going the way of “Achievements” and “Points” nowadays. Utilizing the psychological “small rewards frequently” type. Its pretty interesting if I can actually find it.
I haven’t logged into my OnLive beta account for a few months, but the lag was pretty significant when it first started. For FPS games that rely on response time, it was like doubling your lag.
I think if I saw something like this in a game like UO I’d be outraged, but I’d expect this from WoW. Don’t you have to grind for days to get a mount? Some people would rather just buy one. There are worse ways to spend $25, and WoW seems to be the perfect example of how to milk money as a MMO maker anyway, how many expansions does WoW have anyway? (Kinda similar to what EA does with UO nowadays, aren’t there like 15 UO’s?)
Of course if I played a free UO shard with donation items like hued ethereal mounts or something I’d be a little upset, but that is just because I’m a snob and want to seem cool and original.
Where’s my halberd of +27670 yaht slaying?
I just logged into divinity for the first time in about 2 months. 25 players online.. lol cores. One month overdue from my thresh hold of IPY release omg az wtf lokl ko32k4o2k4oe