Whale: A loyal, veteran player that has accumulated significant in-game currency (i.e. retail WoW gold) and has spent significant amounts of money and/or gold on a single game title.
I was a whale, for many years. Blizzard killed me. My bones now adorn the new Deluxe mount for Wrath Classic.
Blizzard harpooned and landed my whale carcass during TBC pre-patch.
Last year, I was all-in for both TBC Classic and the split with Classic Era servers. I bought the Dark Portal Pass and TWO clones for Classic Era @ $15 each. Paid in full. WoW Classic was about to be even more epic with Vanilla and TBC.
I soon regretted my decision. Classic Era servers became wastelands. Each realm emptied. Hardly anyone was online. We begged and pleaded to have server merges, to save the dwindling Classic Era community, now fragmented horribly. We waited and nothing happened. After a few weeks I asked for my clones to be refunded. I was told because it was longer than a month, the sale was final. That $30 was gone. Still to this day players play in isolation on different servers. They did merge east and west regions into common clusters, but this was not enough. Then Season of Mastery made things even more segmented. It’s failure is probably the nail in the coffin of Classic Era.
As time progressed, all that I paid for became cheaper, too. The Dark Portal Pass and clones were heavily discounted to less than half of the price I paid. The discount was like salt in my big fat whale wound.
I am now barely playing the game. Over 15 years invested in my favorite hobby. I never plan to fully quit, but dammit Blizzard had me for life. Their lack of interest in my concerns killed my passion for the game. I never plan on buying more than my monthly sub. Ever.
Signed: One Dead Whale