A feature that costs Blizzard nothing, given an obscene price larger than any game or expansion they’ve ever sold, dangled with rationality-undermining time pressure, and using some bullshit tokens for artificial scarcity.
Only legislation will stop this.
Nothing inside a video game should cost real money.
If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else.
Nothing inside a video game should cost real money.
I wouldn’t go that far, otherwise you would also kill off essentially third parties producing content a la Second Life or the asset stores in various game engines as well as services provided by players to other players.
Developing a video game is not “inside a video game.”
When somebody’s playing raid sherpa or whatever, pay them in gold.
Even if stopping this cuts off some legitimate niche - that beats letting it swallow the entire industry.
I already disrespect WoW and Blizzard players in general. This is entirely in character for them.
They’ll keep doing it if it keeps working
I guess if this was all I did outside of work and sleep, I’d probably buy it. Mailbox and auction house access is priceless.
But, I got shit to do and mouths to feed, so, I don’t WoW no mo’.
These headlines keep saying $90 mount but it’s basically “$90 access the mailbox and auction house from anywhere, and also get a mount”.
But that’s worse!
But also, isn’t the reason these WoW Tokens are low is because people are trading their in-game gold for it instead of actually paying $90 cash??
Yep! People will buy WoW tokens from the auction house with gold, and they can either redeem the tokens for $15 of shop balance or 30 days of game time. I like making gold in game, so anything I’ve bought from Blizzard over the last few years (including WoW expansions and other games) has been with gold.
The price of tokens went up by about 100,000 gold after this mount got announced and they were selling out fairly regularly for the rest of the day. It seems to have stabilized now, though.
It’s kind bad that it’s only for a limited time. People who are not paying now will have a mechanical disadvantage that cannot be overcome.
I wouldn’t mind as much if this was always available, but locking it up after a time feels like it’s selling limited time cheats.
I think it will be common enough that they can easily access an auction house when they need it in the world. They may also introduce another one in the future, but at a higher price.
Typically prices go down, not up. This is already the cheaper version.
As an occasionally returning player, I think the ah access is massively overrated. What is it that people are buying from there that they can’t buy in the capital, but at the same time must be available on the road?
I have need for an auction house off road maybe once a month? Probably less often. And when I do I can just log onto a banking alt located right at an auction house, mail it to my main and grab it from any mailbox (engineering has portable mailboxes too by the way).
For farmers this effectively eliminates the need for an auctioneer alt. Now instead of sending mail to your auctioneer, you can now farm and when your bags are full instantly list it on the auction house. This is especially important on early markets (lets say new patch or expansion) as the prices go down quickly. This feels very much P2W for a full price game with a subscription.
Booooo.
