The Good and the Bad Truth

As I am reading through the posts here I am seeing the same things over and over again, so I wanted to break it down a bit.

Economy - The economy is a constant source of pain. Even though Blizzard supposedly hired someone to take care of this lol. The general issue of things is that players charge what they want to charge regardless of what the item is. We determine whether or not to buy it while making little in the way of farming or general drops from mobs. So Blizz has a market for selling Gold (which did not exist originally) but Blizz wanted to get a cut of the action and instead of Gold Sellers they decided to charge us themselves. This has been a laughingstock for years. Blizzard has never taken care of this and won’t. But they gratefully take our money from Mounts, Shop items and yes to get gold.

Content - Since this new team has taken over we have had repeated content that is reinventing the wheel. Old content that was already done by other they are using to make us happy. However, I want to point out your paying for the same content that existed 15 years ago so it not really new. Since Legion they have been struggling with anything that gamers really want to come back and say hey that’s new. But now they are trying to put us back to where we were when they nerfed us in Legion. Instead of leaving what is already done they are recreating it. For example, the Spider people. They existed in WoLK. You didn’t like the legendries in Legion, so you took what they did and put it on the talent tree which is a pale comparison. So, all I am seeing on content is either repeating things or working with things that people originally thought was terrible. Like Goblins. So, what we have now is content that older gamers (the money spenders) are not into, so we are doing old content?
**Just a note here it’s not fun if people don’t like it.

You came out with the Siren Isle because the developers made a comment on an interview that we as gamers were not ready for the new content and Mythic+ was broken. So you added the Siren Isles to strengthen us for the Dornagal content which is not balanced nor was Dragonflight. Once again people did old content. So in the expansions since you nerfed Legion we have learned that Blizz is more interested in their own pockets rather than the fact this is a game and should be fun. The content is a remake of old content. And the expansions that followed were boring and without the typical Blizzard flair. The you added a Steampunk director to advance the sci-fi aspect of the game. When originally this game frowned on that as it was in line with high fantasy. They created engineering for this reason. Everything else was kept low key. What happened to exploration, the hunting for Lore and the ability to survive and afford the basics of what you need equipment and lord food.

Overall - We are just seeing the continuing problems resurfacing over and over again. The content is subpar. The ability to keep your gamers interested is fading. We have mechanics issues and slow time in resolving issues (could be because you removed guildmasters from the company). In addition, you have an economy that is no uncertain terms unhealthy for the players. And a greedy corporate system that says take the money from the gamers, but don’t give them anything remotely fun. Sounds like milking the system to me. I as a gamer and a Veteran am pretty sick and tired of spending money on a game that the very creators have no idea what the gaming community wants because they are more interested in the money and less on the game. As long as that exists and these problems exist I don’t see us going far.

4 Likes

WoW players are addicted to WoW, and they will keep their addiction till a new fantasy “D&D like” MMO with minimum quality and set in a known world/setting comes.

And yes, I keep pointing out D&D because that was the roots of Warcraft 3 and WoW. Sadly, new DEVs don’t even know it or understand why D&D is so important for the fantasy genre (IMO, seems like).

4 Likes

A solution for this Blizzard is very simply. Constructive criticism is a good thing when you listen to it. Your missing a golden opportunity to stay on top of the game rather than player shopping around for other WOW type games, You had classic come out and a slew of people went to that rather than stay with current content. If that didn’t tell you their was a problem then I don’t know what would. You need to kill the Goblin content fast. You need to get back to your basics and improve those or your going to keep facing the problems that exist. You have a ton of things out here that you never touched. People are loosing their faith in a game that really keeps the same problems in place. Just like criticizing gold seller when you yourself are selling gold. See a two way street. These bots are existing because the content cane be mapped out so all these have to do is repeat farming the same mobs. You had the opportunity to get bosses to drop the same equipment each time and you didn’t. Another issue for the economy. You could have put a plan in place to regulate the economy so people would not make profits selling gold. A player was threatened for reporting and getting rid of bots. Because these blackmarket sellers are using your game not for fun but for profit. Unless you truly think this is okay and you continue to let it happen I wouldn’t be surprised if others didn’t realize botting and selling gold can be profitable. We had one guy in an interview indicated that with some computers and a set up they made a $1 million dollar profit. Again a blow to your economy. You could have been part of the solution but you let it go. As long as you do that no matter what you put out. Your going to get your true games who fell in love with your game at the beginning looking for greener pastures.

I see a lot of personal opinion.

Not much “truth”.

A lot of not understanding how things work.

5 Likes

Not sure how long you have been playing the game but all of it was the truth. Please look as Asmond, Talisin and Evital, and Bellular gaming to see these interviews and points. Also look at Pyromancer and his content on lore. Basically we are paying money for a game that is turning out old material and not really caring what happens.

Tokens are fine. Could be eq2 Kronos. Those sell for 50 BILLION platinum and are used to trade akin to Stone of Jordan from d2 because platinum there is worthless.

Long enough. And MMOs in general long enough to realize you dont know what you are talking about.

No thanks. Not gonna go watch someone else because you have having trouble regurgitating a youtuber’s opinion.

I have been in Undermine all week.

New material.

The thing is, any game that has a currency and something worth buying in game from other players, will have people selling currency. You cant get around it.

I have not seen any game actually stop this. Ever.

Blizzard bans bots all the time. But in waves. Because that is better in every way possible.

3 Likes

My main takeaway from this is that the OP just hates goblins. So that tells you all you need to know about them.

3 Likes

A real crime.

3 Likes

So your saying you agree with me regarding the money issue in WoW. And really regurgitating. Hardly, if the points are there and as a long time gamer myself you do realize not saying anything is in fact just causing the problem to remain. If I am wrong prove it.

I am saying any game with a currency and interactions between players will have someone selling it.

Its not a Blizzard problem.

Its how the world works.

No.

You prove you are right.

So far, you have just whined with a bunch of half cooked personal opinions, that dont make sense if you actually step back and look at the game.

Its not on me to prove or disprove your statements. its on you to prove it.

Prove this.

The market for selling gold always existed.

No it hasnt

Take care of what?

An economy existing? You want Blizzard to do what exactly? Remove the ability for players to trade items?

You are upset that there is a continued story and world building?

You are upset that some of the same races we have encountered before show up somewhere else on the same planet?

…what? Prove this.

Sirens Isle was not old content.

Plenty of people have fun.

No it isnt.

You dont remember TBC do you?

You really dont remember SPACESHIPS in TBC do you?

Disagree.

Disagree

So once again.

You dont like WoW. Thats fine.

Your personal opinion is not “truth”.

5 Likes

The issue is the game isn’t made for the people that have been here since vanilla/BC. The content is good, though wow is a seasonal game now not an MMO. Probably will never go back to being like it c was. Good news is, there is classic if you want that.

It is okay to not enjoy or like wow after 20 years. I’m having more fun in TWW than I have with wow since like probably MoP. But to each their own

This is not accurate. Blizzard charges us for the token but then someone in game farms gold and buys our token. They then use the token to buy game time from Blizzard.

So from Blizzard’s point of view, they get money from us and give game time to whoever bought our token. It’s just an indirect subscription charge, nothing more.

As for the shop, that is 100% voluntary. They are offering a product and only those who chose to buy it pay them money.

Well sure, it’s nothing more than a copycat Dungeons & Dragons - while -
Dungeons & Dragons is nothing more than a copycat Lord of the Rings - while-
Lord of the Rings is nothing more than a copycat Odyssey.
So there’s no new content in Fantasy fiction or video games since Homer wrote his epic poem.

Which has been repeated over and over since Cat but somehow WoW has maintained its position as the number one MMO in the known universe.

1 Like

Blizz doesn’t sell gold. The gold goes from one player to another, in exchange for a wow token. No new gold is created and injected into the economy. And it’s not a laughing stock at all. It’s been lauded by plenty of people for allowing some folk to play for free. Or for allowing people to use gold to buy blizzard products. Including by Taliesin and Evitel, whose opinions you apparently hold in high regard.

1 Like

Well I started putting together the source material but I cannot put links out here. But I can send you the links if you would like with information. But its all out here on the net. People wanted Goblins to stay neutral and out of the Horde. A lot of the legal issues brought people out to reveals several of the inner workings of Blizz. And the economy is a dead horse and everyone is making a profit out of it including Blizzard. But yet for all these issues people just ignore that we are not getting better.

They’re both. The bilgewater are in the horde. The rest aren’t. Some will work with the horde. Some are actively hostile. No group of people is a monolith.

How dare they. Don’t they know this game belongs to you?

I think the game is fantastic right now.

Why Blizzard can’t (and won’t) sell gold

By John Ryan

Published on Mar 03, 2010

Last updated on Mar 03, 2024

In any discussion concerning botting, farming, hacking, or gold-buying, someone inevitably makes the argument that Blizzard should cut out the middlemen and sell gold to players themselves. I wanted to use this article to explain why this would not necessarily be a good idea. We don’t need to get into the legal situation, or examine why assigning a real-world price to in-game currency edges us closer to a world where in-game property can be taxed. All I have to do is tell you a story from the not-too-distant past that involves:

  1. Prices that would make Zimbabwe look like a model of inflationary restraint, and:
  2. What happens when money – in this case, gold – loses meaning.

On the *Wrath of the Lich King beta servers, one of the largest differences between them and their live counterparts was the astronomical price of almost everything on the auction house. You could expect to pay 600-800 gold for a single blue-quality gem, and equally inflated prices for enchanting materials, flasks, and other raid consumables. Were you planning on gearing a character to raid at 80? Here’s hoping you had 30-50K gold at your disposal, or the sympathy of a craftsman who could provide enchants or consumables at far below “market price.”

So what happened?

If you’ve never transferred a character to a beta or PTR server before, this is what happens; copying a character takes a snapshot of what the character has in its bags, bank, and gold reserves when you click the transfer button. Experienced players typically send all of their banker’s gold and valuable items to a character they’re planning to transfer, so that the “snapshot” taken is of a character with all of your account’s gold and marketable items. Because you can usually copy multiple characters, it’s possible to reproduce an incredibly valuable character several times over. Do you have 25,000 gold on your main when you transfer it to the PTR? And you’ve got three character copies total, and you copied your main three times?

Congratulations; you now have 75,000 gold on the PTR as a result of the 5-minute time investment it takes to copy the toon three times.

To some extent the PTR economies are always a bit weird as a result of this practice – people want to test things on the PTR without having to worry about gold – but things were even weirder on the beta servers. A lot of guilds planned to learn tier 7 raid content there, and they didn’t ever want to deal with gold as an issue. As such, many of them loaded transfer characters with as much gold as they could carry from the guild bank (after transferring, the player in question could simply re-deposit the gold back in the bank on the live servers), reproducing a guild’s savings dozens of times over on the beta.

Imagine a server with guilds that could literally “make money” by just reproducing a toon with a lot of stuff on it.

That would be beta – and, as a result, the enormous inflation on the beta auction house, because gold simply ceased to have much meaning.

Any economist could tell you that this was the inevitable result of:

  • Players who could increase their gold reserves with no effort, cost, or consequences, and:
  • Players didn’t care how much gold they were spending because it had no impact on their “real” character – just its disposable PTR/beta counterpart.

When individual gold reserves skyrocket on a server-wide basis, prices inevitably rise when people are able to afford more expensive goods, and b) willing to pay for them. That’s OK if your characters are already wealthy, but it’s a pretty raw deal for new players or anyone who’s rerolled on the server in question; there won’t be anything on the auction house that they’d realistically be able to afford, particularly if the person in question is a brand new player who’s unfamiliar with the game’s economic system. It’s like asking someone on food stamps to find low-cost housing in downtown San Francisco – it ain’t gonna happen.

If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many “gold sinks” around, why repair bills remain in the game, why crafting professions tend to be expensive, and why equipping and raiding on a high-level character requires so much gold, that’s why; it’s part of Blizzard’s effort to keep players paying for things, thus curbing (somewhat) the inevitable trend towards inflation.

The general idea behind Blizzard caving to player requests and selling gold on an official basis is that they’d be able to put the gold-sellers – and through them, an entire network of hackers and phishers – out of business. To be frank, I think it’s a bit optimistic to assume this, if for no other reason than the price war over gold that would likely result, and the fact that Blizzard is at a competitive disadvantage.

If Blizzard:

  • Sells gold at a higher price than existing gold-sellers: Then people who already buy gold against the terms of use will continue to do so from gold-sellers, because the only selling point to “Blizzard gold” would be that it’s legal – and that’s not a sufficient incentive for people already comfortable with ignoring the rules. Moreover, for newer players it would have the unfortunate effect of making it seem like Blizzard condones buying gold if they sell it themselves.
  • Sells gold at a lower price than existing gold-sellers: It runs the risk of encouraging hyper-inflation on servers. Gold is already pretty cheap, consequence (I suspect) of hackers’ increasingly sophisticated means of parting players from their accounts. Blizzard running the prices down to drive gold-sellers out of business would be the definition of a Pyrrhic victory. The more inexpensive that gold gets, the more that buying it becomes a rational choice over spending the time to farm it in-game or taking the risk of playing the auction house – and the closer we edge to the situation on the beta servers.

The bottom line is that selling gold would not be a panacea to present monetary ills, even aside from the advantages it would afford players with greater disposable IRL income. Blizzard cares about what happens if Wow’s in-game economy goes to hell. Gold-sellers do not, and – perversely – their “product” becomes more attractive as server inflation rises.

I’m not reading all that. Blizzard don’t sell gold though, so it’s cool.

1 Like

okay for starters when Wow first came out the economy was different they balanced professions and people were able to make a decent living out of that with out charging you for your first born. When people got greedy that’s when the change happened. And the game belongs to all the people putting time and money in.
And no if the game was fantastic we wouldn’t be loosing a player base.

Yeah, it was smaller. The game is 20 years old. 20 years of people looting mobs and completing quests, adding gold to the economy. Therefore prices go up. Blizz tries to offset this with gold sinks like repairs, transmogging and premium items like expensive mounts.