TLDR in Quoted Section at the end.
Many players nowadays seem to agree that–with some exception–the game as a whole seems to have gone downhill over the years in terms of quality and enjoyability.
A couple of the more popular complaints, particularly in the last few years with the introduction of Mythic Plus, has been the amount of paid carries (M+, Raid, PVP) to get gear and the ease-of-access of these carries causing unrealistic item level expectation and unreliability of competence that comes with someone purchasing achievements instead of having actually done the fight.
Unrealistic item level expectation is demonstrated by posting such as “N Casthe Nathria LFM 210”, and the unreliability of competence is demonstrated by people linking AOTC: Nzoth achievement to get into a Heroic Nzoth, but having no idea how to do the fight.
Many tend to see this problem as simply a community issue and while, to an extent, that may be true, it is worth noting and analyzing the actions and inactions of Blizzard that have only made this game worse.
Back in Warlords of Draenor, there was an interview with one of the developers in regard to the Demonology spec for Warlocks in which the developer in question had stated that the reason for the neglect of the Demonology spec was because that they simply didn’t think people should be playing Demonology. This interview, combined with later interviews, gives us a picture that Blizzard routinely alienates and overpowers a rotation of specs to, as they say it, “force players to try new specs and new classes, giving them a more complete experience of what the game has to offer”. However, we have realized that this is a fluffy say of saying “To keep people playing more often”.
The constant rerolling that is done by the player base compounds the issue caused by paid carries in a way that has been made even more obvious by the structure of the Shadowlands expansion. Players not getting invited to content they don’t outgear was bad enough, but the implementation of the new-and-improved PVP loot system has become a very desirable source of high item level gear. However, there is one unique factor to the PVP system that compounds every issue with paid carries in the worst way possible, the need to fight other players. Currently, the PVP loot system mixed with the paid carry system creates a system where individuals who are just now wanting to get into PVP have to fight 2400–or even rank 1–players who are being paid to do carries to get to even 1600.
Using the above evidence, it is possible to ascertain certain predatory aspects of the business model Blizzard uses in World of Warcraft.
- The lack of QA testing has created a scenario where players pay Blizzard for the ability to test an obviously incomplete product.
- The constant lack of balancing and finished product causes a need for many players to reroll and then either have a slow process getting caught up or use their in-game gold (earned via WoW token or otherwise) to catch up.
- Assuming an individual buys WoW tokens with real money to pay for their carries, an individual who purchases an AOTC Denathrius achievement pays Blizzard $80 by current market standards. An individual who buys a +14 key pays Blizzard $40-$60 by current market standards. An individual who buys an 1800 carry pays Blizzard $160 by current market standards.
- Real-Money Paid carries in World of Warcraft have always existed, but were always bannable. However, these are not bannable anymore as long as you use Blizzard’s WoW-token as a medium. The carrier no longer gets paid for the Real-Money Carry, Blizzard does.
- The above stated fact explains how Blizzard essentially uses the High-End World of Warcraft players (the ones who perform carries) as unpaid, unofficial employees to add to their bottom line. Blizzard ensures the “employment” of these players by combining time-gating content with the introduction of time/gold sinks such as the Caravan Brutosaur to ensure these players will have downtime on wow and something to spend gold on.
At work today, I had a conversation with one of my coworkers who had said that he spent $300 on wow tokens because he wanted to reroll from his DH since it is obvious that Blizzard is going to leave it neglected and he wanted to play something stronger. This discussion prompted a deep dive into the market rates and how much money Blizzard has made on the gameplay of its Higher-End players.
I did 1800 carries for gold during much of BFA and for the entirety of Shadowlands thus far. This combined with Mythic Plus keys and N’zoth kills, over the last year has earned my friends and I a total of approximately 100,000,000 gold. This broke down to roughly 25,000,000 gold for each of us. At the current exchange rate, of 110,000 gold per token, this comes out to each of us having 227 tokens worth of gold. or $4540 per person. Assuming only half of those paid carries used gold from the WoW token, that would mean that over the last year, Blizzard made $2270 off of each of us individually, or $9080 for the year from the whole group.
So every time someone complains about the balance of the game. Every time someone says “its ok, Blizzard will balance the classes next patch”, every time Blizzard promises that its next expansion is gonna be “alt friendly”…
Just remember: No it won’t. They will change just enough to make people reroll and keep the whales paying and the carriers making Blizzard money as unofficial, unpaid Blizzard employees.
