Im loving these Talk Azeroth with Olivia episodes. They are awesome!
I don't understand "It's available in the game already" as a justification. Heroic raiding gear is in the game already, but few of us would consider that okay to put in the store. So why is an XP potion okay? Getting one within the game is significantly easier, but it still requires a gold and/or time investment to get. Ditto Lesser Charms. Where's the line between the two? I don't think there is one. It's fuzzy ground.I'm not greatly bothered by either of these being in the store, but I do think they tread on the slippery slope. That, in itself, doesn't mean that Blizzard will slip down that slope. I'm not being an alarmist here. But I sympathize with the alarmists. The only way Blizzard can be unequivocally on the right side of the line is if the ONLY items available in the store are strictly vanity items, having no impact whatsoever on gameplay.
The only thing I have to say about the in-game cash shop, is keep it to the Asian markets. If and when it does come to the US region, I will be immediately unsubscribing and quitting the game, because this is not a way to implement a new feature/function within the game, that requires you to pay even more money on top of the subscription costs.
Of course it's pay to way, it might be at the thinnest end of the wedge but it's pay to win all the same. And it won't end there.
The store shouldn't be used for non-cosmetic purchases, plain and simple. Imagine all the outrage if lesser charms were available from the start in MoP: either grind dailies or buy from the store. While it might not seem like a big deal now since a lot of us have big surpluses, it will be for the next expansion if they follow the same model. Blizzard says they're "evolving". I just think they're crossing the line with their store philosophy. It's not a cosmetic item. Charms lead to direct player power upgrades. I can't really say I like what other microtransactions such as server transfers and race changes have done for the community either. Transfers have created ~20 super servers and a bunch of a dead realms, and race change revenue has kept them from getting rid of racials or letting us pick from a racial bank. GC personally doesn't want racials in the game if he was making it from scratch now. That's a whole other issue entirely though, but imbalanced racials have led to the vast majority of the top 100 heroic raiding guilds going Horde, and recruitment is getting difficult on the Alliance side. I keep bugging GC over twitter about racial reform but his hands are probably tied. Beastslaying + berserking is just plain silly for meeting a dps check.In regards to the XP buff, the in-game elixir from Krol isn't all that easy to obtain. 1 hour respawn, 9% drop chance, usually camped by a couple of people on my server using legal keyclone software used by multiboxers to tag it, real pain. Selling this elixir is a minor form of selling max level characters. Also not cosmetic.Everything that's cosmetic is fine with me (pets/mounts). I was one of the first in my guild to jump on a Celestial Steed.
In game store won't break immersion given the current state of the game. I click a button and I'm magically in a dungeon with 4 or 24 other people I will never meet again or need to communicate with at all. Then I can kill a boss or the current tier end boss without ever joining a guild or being part of my server's community and technically have completed all the current content and wear the same gear as a heroic raider without even a fraction of the effort. In terms of buying xp buff, leveling and end game are two entirely different games. People getting to max level even faster just means there's a greater chance they won't know how to really play their class.
I think a 'buy with real money' store obviously works for pets and mounts. The data mined implications of an XP boost are playing a little bit close to the 'pay to win' game. It really depends when it's implemented and how it functions.Obviously if the potion works on all content, then every member of a progression raiding guild will be expected to buy and use these boost potions in order to get max level on the new expansion as fast as possible. That's clearly 'pay to win'. This can be circumvented though by saying "XP boost up to 80" or the like so it brings you up to current content but not through current content. Maybe six months after the expansion is live, they open it up to allow its use on current content as well.If there are these.."reasonable limits" to make sure that in-game store items don't put extra pressure on progression raiders or achievement hunters, then I could see it being okay. I might even be tempted to get a "100% reputation bonus" potion, if it applied to all old content. Naturally, you then get into the issue of people complaining about certain achievements being trivialized by store purchases.If people are willing and able to spend money rather than time to 'catch up' to current content, then that's an acceptable business practice. You don't HAVE to participate in it, and it certainly shouldn't "ruin" your game if other people are doing it.Where we have to be careful, and hopefully blizzard has learned this from Diablo 3, is that if you make actual usable gear or things that can be used to buy/craft bleeding edge gear with real money.. you ruin the economy of the game's virtual currency. No one will want to pay 5k for a purple current tier breastplate if they can just get it for 5 bucks via the in-game store. But vanity gear, even heirlooms for real money, I think is acceptable.
I'm playing wow 'cause there are no benefits that you can buy with money. Even it's just XP boots is just one step away from P2W. I was always anout how good you are in game ,not how much money you can spent. Ppl camping at Krol the Blade just to have little chance to get XP flask. Why should be someone spared of this? Because he have money? I don't think so.Plus ,another boost to leveling is just another way how to make ppl unable to play their class. They don't have time to learn how to play while leveling. They came to max level ,do little DPS ,say it bad class and start with new. After they repeat this multiple time they stop playing or make LFR their late game content because they are useles in Normal/HC raids.It's even more funny because not long time ago blizzard asked what players think about new players and how to help them get better. Many ppl said that proving grounds is good idea. And blizzard's reaction? "Ok f*ck that ,let them get to max level as fast as possible ,then proving grounds will learn them play. Yeah more money!" I say: WTF?Have a nice day. Sorry for my english.
This In-Game Store actually runs counter to Blizzard's long-held principle of making progress and achievement (as opposed to Achievements) "special". How many times have we heard that some achievement or item is being removed from the game to keep it's "special quality". Clearly Blizzard's greed,,,oh, I'm sorry, let's use the currently popular Orwellian ephemism: "desire to monetize", sweeps aside all principle. Once we start here with a helm or two why not a few hundred dollars for a full set of the current tier armor? Or perhaps $1,500 for the unavailable titles like "the Immortal" or "the Undying"? Why actually level? Just pay enough and you too can be a Level 90 or even higher! For years Blizzard has fallen into an ever deeper panic over the loss of subscribers. It appears that they believe that making the game ever easier will attract more subscribers despite evidence that that is exactly what drives subscribers away. The complexity and difficulty of the game is what keeps people coming back, renewing subscriptions and building loyalty. WoW is worth playing because it is hard to master, not because it's easy. The difficulty and complexity of the game is its attraction. The sense that we have put time and effort into achieving something that many others can't manage is the reason people play. Every move to make it easier and simpler costs subscribers yet Blizzard can't figure it out. You might think that someone in an executive position at Blizzard might say after several years of nerfing the game, "We made the game easier and lost subscribers so we made it even easier and we lost subscribers and then we made it easier still and lost subscribers. Maybe making the game easier will cost us some subscribers!" But no, the logic seems to be having destroyed the talent system, made reputation grinds all but impossible not to max out, created a LFR version of raids so that casual players can claim to be raiders and given us a Chutes and Ladders version of leveling, "Hey! I know! Let's remove learning and skill from the game entirely and simply collect cash to get better gear." Blizzard apparently has researched and fallen in love with period of farm collectivization in the Soviet Union under Stalin when the attitude was that collectivization initially caused thousands to die of starvation so they built on that "success" by continuing collectivization until millions starved. The only difference is that in this modern capitalist version the goal is to cash out while they can.
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
pretty sure, droppable item is gona be removed, since with it, blizzard dont get cash ingame store. when they remove it, its gona be only elixir with xp boost (thank God heirlooms are still free to get, sorta). but still, changes in past months doesnt call me get back in here! its all, agan, about cash, not about game itself. blizz should really listen to people, what they have to say and where they wana game to go, cause w/o people, its just bunch of megabytes!