The game is already fully pay2win, bots running rampant, dungeon boosting/gold laundering RMT on a massive scale, even 50% of the ZA spam I see are GDKP runs. The integrity of the game is no where to be found, and honestly, that’s okay. Many people are still playing and enjoying this game despite all of this occurring for well over a year.
With that being said, I propose that the flood gates of the Cash Shop be opened and just allow players to get whatever services they want with their money.
Race changes, Faction changes, UNLIMITED level boosts, even WoW token should all be included in WoTLK Classic.
Right now my WoTLK shopping list is roughly as follows: 1 race change, 1 server transfer, 4 level 70 boosts, and WoW tokens to level professions/buy gold for GDKPs if I so choose. I’m sure I would end up buying even more services than the ones listed during the entirety of the expansion, those are just the ones I can think of at the moment.
Classic was given to us to make Blizzard money. Let me pay Blizzard as much as I can for the services I want.
The Classic ride we’ve all been on since 2019 will come to a stop Q1 2024 with the end of wrath so may as well give us all the goods now. Open the gates blizzard
For clarity, Classic was given to us for two reasons.
To retain the IP in the face of private servers use, in case they need legal action in the future.
To keep our subs going while they fix Retail. Dragonflight “supposedly” is bringing WoW back to what it was meant to be, so Wrath gives them time to prove it and bring us back to the fold
Here’s a better idea. Remove all cash shop options. Literally every single one of them. Ban Gold buyers (longer). Ban bots (more and faster). If you don’t have time to play the game which is a classic MMO, go play something else (retail perhaps? I don’t really care).
Perhaps…but more importantly, to monetize their IP in the face of private servers use. I’m sure they came to the conclusion that since someone else did the hard work of proving it was a profitable enterprise, why not make those profits for themselves?
You aren’t wrong but thats just a long-winded way to say “make money”. Keep existing subs and gain a nice chunk of new subs while they try to hit on the right gameplay formula…to make more money.
Anyway to the OP’s point, I used to be very much against cash shop in classic but in the context of recent events and the reality of the gameplay experience as the OP laid out, I think its quite reasonable to propose bringing cash shop into classic. I don’t personally care for it and I’m sure I wouldn’t use it but at this point whats the harm? What’s left to save? The “classic” experience has been already been defiled by the developers and players alike…may as well go whole hog and blow the the roof of this thing. Bring it on I say!
The first two existed during original Wrath and should be in Wrath Classic. Level boosts were not, and should never have been added. You complain about bots…you realize that level boosts are the main reason they got so much worse in TBCC, right? And token absolutely not. Didn’t exist until way after Wrath, completely destroyed the economy, and eliminated any ‘achievement’ in-game that involved acquiring gold.
I both think and know I do. Let me paint you a scenario:
I play WoW for arena (weird I know!). I didn’t want many classes in TBC, as many didn’t look that interesting. I want more classes to arena with at level 80. I will not spend hundreds of hours leveling, and I will not pay for 4+ accounts to have a boosted character on every account. The following is now the path that I can justify taking to have as many characters as I would like without unlimited boosts:
Run GDKP RMT money laundered runs for gold, or do questionable acts that I have not yet done in Classic to acquire gold.
Pay RMT/bot boosters to power level my characters through dungeons
How is this less degenerate gameplay than simply paying Blizzard to skip parts of the game that I find too tedious and boring (leveling/gold farming) to justify participating in? Why would anyone care that I have more alts to play arena on? TBC arena scene is absurdly dead, I would think anyone playing would WANT me to have more characters.
So without unlimited boosts I need to waste a large amount of time and possibly do questionable things to acquire gold just to have the characters that I want at max level. I don’t get to get a quick boost so I’m unhappy. Blizzard doesn’t get to profit from me buying character boosts so they’re unhappy. The arena players don’t get to queue with or against my noob alt characters, so participation is lower and they’re not happy.
Who is happy from me not getting to boost 4 characters to 70? People with nothing going on in their lives, so they get off on making the experience of others worse?
doubt that really works out when they never re-released the original product.
Blizzard made that promise with… Cata, WoD and BFA… How did those expansions work out again?
Blizzard lost me already regarding retail; thar ship sailed and im simply not going back because they don’t have a real game designer on staff…
Nothing short of bringing back Kevin Jordan to re-make the classes how they should be; giving him absolute executive power over class and gear design would get me to buy another expansion of retail.
Tokens actually make botting worse; it surprises me when people think Token kills bots, when it actually feeds them and makes them literally impossible to get rid of. you only need to play retail to see it.
And this is exactly the endpoint Blizz wanted. Refuse to put in the effort to balance servers, stomp out bots, and drive the RMTs underground for 3 years and watch as players just throw their arms up and ask for the full retail cash shop experience.
