Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Cash Shop Steed paves the way to MMO Hell
Scot
Member LegendaryPosts: 24,478
When will players wake up and join those of us who think cash shops are an anathema? Justin Webbs article "My Little Pony" depressed me so much and is a real sign of things to come. I am an old WoW player myself, this is not a dig at WoW, but WoW is the most high profile MMO in existence, where it goes others follow. The fact is most of the people buying those ponies or whatever it is in your MMO don't even read a gaming forum, we need to get online and talk to players in our guilds to stop this sea change in the way we play MMO's. Here are some excepts from that article:
“In case you’ve been living under a rock, Blizzard recently put a new item in their virtual store – the Celestial Steed. For 25 bucks, WoW players can now buy a spiffy all-in-one scalable mount.”
“What they have done is moved the goalposts (again) … slightly. Next up undoubtedly is the $50 mount, followed by the $100 hat, and the $200 unique class, etc. It’s a smart move. This is the kind of hand-waving marketing stuff (”evergreening” their brands; engendering goodwill; “representing the offer”) that Blizzard is really good at.”
“$25 on a virtual mount, but Blizzard made the process … fun. Act now! You are 65,476th in the queue. Time remaining: 8 hours. There’s only a hundred thousand left! Once you have been selected, you will have only 15 minutes to complete your order! Genius. Were any of those numbers actually real? It doesn’t matter! Here’s your pony! Any other game would just take your money and email you a code. But Blizzard makes it so … exciting. They make it sound as if the servers really are groaning under the weight of all the awesomeness. It must be exclusive if I have to do all this, right? Right?”
"You could argue that they’ve (Blizzard) earned it, but game journalists should at least be talking about the fact that WoW just became an RMT game."
"What Blizzard has managed to do is to take a concept abhorrent to many gamers and make it palatable. They’ve done it in small baby steps."
"I think we’ll find that this is an ongoing exploratory probe into what their player base is willing to pay; a way of “training” their (mostly casual) clientele into accepting that RMTs are “normal”."
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
General: My Little Pony
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
Those that can, DO
Those that can't, pay.
The price of having casuals in your game. Alas dont despair because a fool and his money will soon be parted. If only they found a way to take all the casual's money. Sigh
When SoE introduced a cash shop into eq2 a few years back maybe 10,000 quit over it. It didn't really phase SoE very much and it was hardly noticed at all in the larger MMO community. But really WoW players have to take a stand. If WoW loses half a million or million subs over this it would make huge waves and set back the micro transaction movement a few notches. But if it doesn't and this is allowed to stand then the age of straight up Pay to Play subscription MMOs is over. Every WoW clone will copy this if it turns into a big success.
There will be very few games for anyone but casuals if this catches on.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
I agree, it's already happening with games in general. Not garnering to be good games but to appease the masses, forgetting that despite not apeasng the masses good game still atracted said masses. Now games will just be clones of each other. sad fate for gaming.
What greed can do to games.
Um....questions like 'Why?' and 'So what?' come to my mind.
Terrible comparision.
MTG is a CCG. You purchase each next installment, and play a lotto for the cards you get in your pack/box. It's 'pay as you go'.
MMORPGs like WoW are subscriber based. *Should be* 'pay once, play for a month'.
The Black Lotus isn't playable in any format, but is a crown staple of the industry. People collect it because of its symbol, prestige, whathaveyou. A celestial mount is collected for the same? Ha!
Terrible comparision.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
The steed gives an advantage in game.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
As long as Blizzard sticks with making vanity items available through the shop, I don't give a rat's ass. I don't believe they will ever get to a point where they sell items that will give a player an advantage in-game.You can only do that if you game is not subs based. I am sure they realise that.
I'm pretty sure Everquest II players said the same thing a few years ago, when Sony started introducing RMT in that game. Now stuff like XP potions are freely available from their shop.
And really, I find responses like "it's only cosmetic" to be laughable. Almost everyone in the really world understands that looking good is important. Only stereotypical geeks living in the basement with dandruff and bad breath could think that appearances have no value.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
Read some more about it. It give every character you have present and future an auto-upgrading mount. Once you spend your $25, none of your characters will have to buy a mount again.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
The training still has to be paid for, yes. Without the Steed, each of your characters will also have to buy a new mount to use the training.
That is an in-game advantage.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Read some more about it. It give every character you have present and future an auto-upgrading mount. Once you spend your $25, none of your characters will have to buy a mount again.
You don't play WOW? The riding lessons need to be learned in game. Those have nothing to do with whatever mount you have or get by whatever means (the card game, a dungeon, a 6 gold price or a 5000 gold price).
So no, you lie: the mount doesn't give any advantage in gameplay value.
the prestige of a mount is directly related to its rarity. So in this respect this mount's only prestige is that it costed its woner 25 dollars.
Crap - a normal low level character in WoW can only afford a racial mount. And the racial mounts tend to look plain and boring - most players stop using them when they acquire better looking mounts at endgame.
The new mount is available to all your characters from level 20. So that means even your low levels can have a better looking mount.
And looking good is an in-game advantage.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
asian market determine the futur of gaming not blizzard or activision any thinking otherwise dont read asian thats for sure
i said it countless time just because asia dont show flashy number doesnt mean they dont have huge amount of player
most game in asia have been bigger then wow for years but asian dont look at it the way we do .they check if they made money this week they did?then thats all there is to it!
so good luck finding number on how many player play their game!most asian game dont care too much about that !why?
their number are so high i wouldnt care either lol!what is the difference between 1 million player or 10 million player!there isnt
but they will check if they made money!
It is not that EQ2 has in game enhancement items (like pots or potions) that Blizzard will introduce them in the future.
That's an assumption.
No - that isn't basing an argument on an assumption. That's basing an argument on history. And one doesn't have to be especially well read to realise that history tends to repeat itself.
And actually - I'm not making the assumption you state. Where did I say it? In actual fact, my post was intended to call a previous poster to task for assuming precisely the opposite:
That was the assumption.D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
Notice how people jump you for saying the truth...
Someone's really interested in defending cash shops. Several people in these forums go to every single post about cash shops in P2P and do their best to defend it. They attack every single post, looking for any little reason or any word to argue about. They will say anything, anything to twist the simple fact.
There are also some others who aren't company's plants in forums, but are just shortsighted and refuse to admit what's happening.
That is an in-game advantage.
If that is a perceived advantage, it would be a fairly small one to the point of neglible. The training is where most of the cost comes from and the mounts are a fraction of the cost. At the most, each character would be saving about 40g to a maximum of 400g across 10 characters, which can be made in a matter of a few hours since gold is so easy to acquire these days.
Unfortunately, judging from the success of this mount there is most definititely a market for these sort of cash shop items so we can expect to see the trend accelerate in almost every game.
I loath to see the day when I'll be able to reskin one of my ships in EVE for a $10 fee. (they already charge us to change our avatar image)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It's more than 40g, but I agree that it is a small advantage (which gets bigger if you play alts - which many players do).
A small in-game advantage is still an in-game advantage.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
I never buy stuff from cash shops even if the game is a free to play.
How does this cash shop mount affect me?
Did Blizz do away with all the other mounts? Is this cash shop mount the only mount in the game now?
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
It's pretty common when studying history to see patterns that apply in multiple different areas.
For example, I remember hearing on the radio the other day a classicist pointing out lessons from ancient Greek history that could be applied to contemporary political situations. That's because the common factor behind what happens isn't a particular country, or a particular company. It's human psychology. Simple emotions like greed and fear control a lot of human behaviour and are much the same now as they were a thousand years ago. And human psychology is much the same in Blizzard as it is in Sony
You use the word "believe". This shows you are making an assumption - it is an assumption based on faith. Personally, I put far more credence in history than statements based on nothing but personal faith.
And I disagree that there's no change. The change has been one of scale. I have never seen the flying rocket car. It's so incredibly rare that you could pretty much ignore it. But nowadays it's impossible to take a stroll around Dalaran without seeing that damned horse.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
Assumption is a conclusion taken for granted.
It might happen but it is not happening. You take it for granted that it will happen basing on whatever you want, it is still inconclusive.
For most players it is an advantage equal to finding a quarter on the street. It is just not relevant to the gameplay experience for them just as finding that quarter is not relevant to their financial well being.
It is a 'slippery slope' problem which is a tricky one to argue. One small thing can lead to a big bad thing or it can have no effect whatsoever. In these cases I prefer to take the 'one step at a time' approach. The celestial steed is a trivial change with effects that are irelevant to the overall state of the game. Should blizzard do something else that is not so trivial then I will examine that on its merits and make a new determination. If you always 'sweat the little stuff' too much you only drive yourself insane and come off as a conspiracy nut.
Spending $25 for horse pixels is akin to spending $400 for an IPAD. A complete waste of money=)