There may be many reasons to why fewer OW players want to buy the 2023 Blizzcon virtual ticket compared to last years ones. But one of the issues are the value you get for your money are even worse this year.
If you already own the BP or are planning to buy both the “Ultimate Battle Pass Bundle” and the “virtual ticket” you don’t get any discount for already owning the BP. This means that if you already own the BP you’re basically spending $50 for 1 epic skin and 1000 credits. Even if you play more than 1 game the value is still worse compared to previous years Blizzcons.
I don’t buy them and never have because I don’t play other Blizzard games and the skin they offer is usually for a hero I don’t play plus that’s a lot of money for just one mediocre skin.
What does inb4 mean lol? I’ve seen people say that on this forum before but never understood what it means.
If I understand you right, you mean that the virtual tickets sells well anyway? This Blizzcon is the first one were the tickets hasn’t been sold out so I believe the virtual tickets doesn’t sell as good either.
I like the Sigma skin but it’s sad that that the bundle doesn’t also include the Ultimate Battle Pass Moira and Pharah skins. If those were included instead of 1000 credits or with them, it would have made more sense since there are people who want all 3 skins. I mean 1900+1900+1000 = 3800 coins ($38) so $50 would have still been a lot of money.
Now that the BP is availabe through the virtual ticket aswell, people obviously should get discount if they buy the Ultimate Battle Pass Bundle but they don’t.
the problem is that this bundle… is not at all celebratory with blizzard games. And I know what I’m talking about, I’ve played a lot of Heroes of the storm, Diablo, Starcraft and Hearthstone. If in other years we had the virtual ticket for the conferences, here there is none because the developers are completely isolated in their bunkers (or the veterans who created that franchise are no longer there). And ok, Hots, D3 and SC2 are no longer in development updates, but even if they were ignored in previous years… they had little content. Also for the remastered of the first SC.
This year’s bundle in particular frighteningly favors all the games Blizzard wants to monetize right now, including that WOW mobile game that no one knows very well. But at the same time it shamefully ignores some games released in recent years that have not declared a closure of development. D Immortal? W3 Reforged? D2 Resurrected? Even WoW CLassic. Not even including these titles is like saying “this is our RICH customers’ bundle for our RICH Franchises” (hearthstone had the same kind of shameful monetization conversion as OW2).
it’s a shameful bundle even for Blizzard players, not just for OW2 players. Inflation does not justify this number of cuts even at increased prices. It’s shameful in every way. they treat their games as disposable. Will OW2 be next on the list, replaced by “project odyssey”?
Not our blizzcon. rather let’s fail this corporate pedestal.
Go to blizzcon for what? Listen to what new e-commerce stores they’re launching with a free game attached to it?
Hear about games where they do pretty much the exact opposite of what the customers want, than offer to remove the frustrations for an extra cost?
Or how they’re taking something that already exists and chopping it into pieces so they can charge us subscription fees for something we used to get included for free??
Sadly that’s true. However Fortnite seems to still be the most successfull F2P competative game in terms of revenue and amount of players still playing the game. I think some of it has to do with their monetization strategies and that people of all price ranges (willing to spend money on the game) feels included. Games like Valorant and OW2 are more targeted towards people who spend a lot of money on cosmetics compared to Fortnite that has a wider audience I believe.
It’s not only because of the cosmetics prices and that OW2 is a major downgrade to OW1 were you could earn every skin for free if you owned the game (other than Pink Mercy and Blizzcon ones) that people are not happy.
It’s also because many of the very questionable monetization choices trying to make people spend more money than they need to by for example hiding purchase options which is a difference to Valorant and Fortnite were the shop user interface is very easy to understand and all purchasable options are available at the same place.
Here’s some examples of questionable monetization choices since OW2 :
All purchase options not showing in shop: While the option to buy individual items in the game were soon added to the game after people questioned the legality of the discounted bundles in season 1, these options are intentionally hidden in the shop and you have to go to the hero gallery to show the option to buy individual OW2 items. Also if you want to use “credits” the option doesn’t either show in the shop.
Vaulted OW1 loot box skins: In OW2 season 2, 21 of some of the fan favorite “loot box” skins were vaulted saying “currently unavailable” in the description of them. Now these skins are showing 1 after 1 as Amazon Prime and PS+ exclusive FOMOs that previously always were available.
Story missions walled behind $15 bundle: The story missions are walled in a $15 bundle that includes PVP stuff that can’t even be used in the PVE If you only want the story missions, there’s no other way of getting them than through the bundle.
Not refunding players who bought Captain Torb: The Captain Torb is a $19 store skin that later got available for free as a Twitch drop. Players who previously bought the skin didn’t get any coin refund for it.
I believe actually making the cosmetics cheaper would be a benefit to Blizzard. The playerbase of OW2 are still many of the ones that played OW1 and not as many who are ok with current day F2P cosmetics prices that they are trying to target. In other words I think making cosmetics cheaper could lead to better sales and in the end more money.
I think most people don’t care to watch blizzcon stuff, or at least not the paid only content before. So buying a ticket for just the ow skin is a pretty damn steep price. Especially when we used to get so many skins for free from lootboxes.
Well, fortinite is the “Simpson” of video games: it sells itself out by literally representing whatever is trending in social media. definitely not the ideal comparison to overwatch.
The problem is not that Blizzard was wrong in wanting to circumvent the legal problem of lootboxes, which are banned in more and more countries. And he’s not even wrong in wanting to make it F2P to get A LOT more people playing this game. what’s not good is that there has been a total elimination of the pleasure of collecting, where “the more you play, the more you earn and buy what you want”. Unfortunately OW2, between the high costs and the shameful rotation of the shop which puts ALL content for a limited time of one week… has betrayed everyone. old and new players don’t see why they should waste time for 60 coins which aren’t even enough for the smallest content in the game (the sprays, at 100 coins).
and it doesn’t have much to do with Kaplan or not, they also did it with Hearthstone this monetization approach that erases the pleasure of collecting.
for me this alone is worth a complaint to consumer protection even worse than those who have had Fifa and Fortnite in their way of displaying the content in their galleries.
this problem actually also applies to players new to OW2 who purchased OW1 skins out of simple preference… with ow2 prices. not even a free currency in coins or credits for this. How many times has OW2 changed monetization methods in a year on every single bundle? too many times.
one week you find the optimism that they have understood that legacy bundles must be sold in credits, and the following week they sell the legacy content in bundle coins with increased credit prices in the gallery (which actually happened to justify the “discount” in the shop.).
Yeah that’s especially true now in OW2 when everything available in-game also are really expensive.
However back in OW1 I think people bought the virtual tickets because it was just once a year they had to spend money on OW since they perhaps could get most if not all things by playing the game.
Now when skins costs as much as they do, people have no money left to buy virtual tickets aswell. Then also when this virtual ticket has worse value than previous ones and that people are not really happy with Blizzard it’s just many more reasons to why I believe the interest is lower than usual.
In Brazil you can actually buy the Lilith Moira skin separate because of legal reasons which is interesting. I don’t know if their User Interface for showing the options to buy cosmetics are on the same place though.
In EU it’s illegal in some countries to sell bundles on discount if cosmetics aren’t available outside of them which is why Blizzard had to change it in season 2 so you could buy individual cosmetics. Blizzard made it though harder for people to notice this change by only showing the option to buy individual cosmetics in the hero gallery while the bundles are in the shop which is really bad.
I bought it because I play OW2, WoW, D4, and Hearthstone, so it was a pretty sweet deal, but I was shocked that I get no compensation for already having the battlepass.
Doesn’t seem like good business practice to punish consumers for spending money on your products.
Yeah exactly. Blizzard could have easily just given players who own the BP 1000 coins as compensation but they decided not to do so. Last season people who did not own the Ultimate Invasion bundle did actually get compensation if they only owned the BP so I imagine many people the same thing would apply this season.
I mean this is the first Blizzcon were the tickets were not even sold out so I imagine it will also show in the virtual ticket (VT) sales aswell. Especially when people who already own the BP don’t get any compensation. 1 epic skin and 1000 credits and the Blizzcon VT’s is $50. The virtual tickets have never been the cheapest way to get cosmetics, especially if you only play 1 Blizzard game, but this year it’s even worse than ever for OW players. I’ve already compared the previous VT’s in my original comment for comparison between the different years bundles.
A lot of people are using the Blizzcon 2023 cosmetics in WoW. It’s just that the Overwatch Blizzcon 2023 cosmetics are very underwhelming. The Sigma skin looks awful.
I like the Sigma skin but the price for what you get is so horrible this year compared to previous ones. Blizzard could have just included the Ultimate Battle Pass Moira and Pharah in the bundle or give players 1000 coins compensation if they already own the BP.
I can imagine many people having the cosmetics in WoW because at least they don’t have to buy the same things twice.