That’s not true. Race change, level boosts, faction changes, server changes. All of these will encourage developing a game a certain way. Also, you discounting cosmetics as part of the gameplay loop in a looter/mmorpg is part of why I think you are myopic.
More to the companies benefit than the player bases. Gating flight behind pathfinder makes everything take longer to do, moreover Classic was designed as a flightless game, but if you look at it for what it was back then vs what WOD through BFA are as partially flightless games there is a pretty stark contrast in the scope of design. Classic is huge, even for a flightless game the zones are huge. Now look at what we had in WOD-BFA for the size of the zones. They’re tiny in comparison.
It’s really simple as to why Classic wasn’t anti consumer-there was a time demand to do things however the company invested a lot of money and design into the game at that time. They put far less of both in now and, to the detriment of the player base use things like pathfinder to try and cover how little effort (money) they are putting into the game now.
No, because at the time classic was released they used the subscription model, not the time in game model as a success metric for investors. They didn’t do that because it was the best thing for the players. Originally there wasn’t going to be a Pathfinder, they were just going to remove flight. When they realized how much money they were going to lose they chose this half-way nonsense to minimize damage, while still keeping their own interest at the forefront by maximizing the time in game metric.
You’re being willfully obtuse here, nothing else actually makes sense to me. No other way you conflate a game which never had flight to a game which did for nearly 10 years to have it removed by the company shortly after they changed the metric by which they report success to investors.
One of the main reasons why I’m not pre purchasing Shadowlands.
1 Like
I’m sorry but what mount you own will not determine how good you are at the game. Nor will what race you are or what faction or what server.
The onus is still on you as the player to actually play the game.
I get where you are coming from, but again, with WoW specifically, this really isn’t anti-consumer. If we were talking about ESO, you’d totally be right as they have literal game content that provides advantages to those who pay for it.
Faction/Server changes is actually interesting.
Would that be considered paying for an advantage?
I wouldn’t think so if your reasons were to play with friends or to be on a more active server, but I know in the case of Mythic first prog, they race changed to take advantage of racials because even something with that miniscule of a boost is worth having than not having, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.
Level boosts don’t confer any advantage, at best they are a skip.
The benefit of the company is to have players play their game.
Them doing things to ensure players play their game is not anti-consumer.
You people do realize that the literal definition of anti-consumer essentially makes every business in the world anti-consumer right?
It is in the interest of the business to ensure that business continues.
No business operates at a loss for long or their doors will close.
At some point, they need to implement prices that increase their revenue, sales to increase shopper participation, special events to attract new customers, etc. All of these things by the definition are focused primarily on their benefit, the business, not the customers.
That farmer who grows organic produce and sells it at a premium, by your definition is being anti-consumer because his prices far exceed the value of the actual product and benefit him more than the customer.
This is why you can’t just use a definition of a word as an argument.
I mean Bill Clinton tried it and look how that turned out for him.
It’s why you need actual examples of anti-consumer practices, not just things you disagree with.
Pathfinder is not anti-consumer. You are in fact getting flying within the game, when it is released to everyone. No advantage is given to any customer, nobody is paying extra. You get it when it is ready to be implemented into the game, not before.
Yes, it used to cost gold and they changed it in order to keep people playing their game as this is beneficial to them, however, it is not detrimental to the consumer because they are in fact playing the game.
That isnt the only thing people care about. This is what you assign as the only thing to care about in terms of not being in the cash shop.
That doesn’t change the idea that that can introduce gameply loops to push people to using the cash shop.
Probably way more, since there seems to be more to go wrong (corruption stuff, balancing, the level squish, characters being able to totally level up in just WoD/whatever, etc.)
But they have way more content. Zones in Classic were incredibly huge, and empty. Often the larger they were, like Desolace, the more of a waste of space they were. They also often had maybe only one or two quests, or perhaps none. Cata improved the Classic zones and incredible amount.
They can, but have they? No.
Nothing pushes you into Blizzard shop because nothing there has anything more than a cosmetic value. Which again, is what I said already.
If we were talking about other games, you would have an actual argument.
Not if that business makes quality and attractiveness of product the engine for sales, as opposed to using underhanded design/sales tactics to push product. 8.3 is a really good example, advertise all this fun new gear, reap some subs and then gut everything to make sure that the ‘content’ being new mythic + re scaling and the raid aren’t gone through too quick.
Not going to get over me correcting you anytime soon are you?
1 Like
I still find WoD scaling broken and hard to solo through if you lack flying and dont do the treasures and zone event things. Like normal mobs I had to treat like fighting elites in vanilla and one at a time or dead. I cant wait to see how scaling becomes now. Until then it’s a race for me to solo all the old content I can before it’s broken for a long while. I normally use releases to farm rare spawns and such since very few will do that when the new stuff is out.
Sorry it’s not you specifically, I’m talking to like 4 people at once and some keep repeating things you’ve said.
I do like this overall response though as you highlight something important, that being them making sure that content in the game isn’t gone through too quickly.
Given the nature of MMOs, historically, NONE have given you all content up front, ever in fact. Going as far back as Ultima and EQ, you were not given everything up front. You had patches and had to wait for things to be put into the game. This is a normal practice with the MMO genre because of the type of game it is.
MMOs are designed to be living breathing worlds with constant updates and changes. Why would you frontload everything there is to do in the game right when someone buy it? Especially if your metric is player retention over a given period of time?
Think of it like a gym membership, it’s in their interest to keep you coming back for as long as possible. Why would they offer you everything up front so you could be done in a couple of months? Where is the profit for them for their time investment?
It isn’t wrong for them to want you to stay longer and do things that keep you subscribed. Not unless they are forcing you to stay, which is an entirely different thing.
The benefit of the company is to have players buy/subscribe to their game. Not actually play it.
Ideally, Blizzard would want a lot of subscribers that don’t actually play the game. Active players cost hardware, bandwidth, support staff, etc. People that only play the mission table on their iPhone is their ideal player. Just enough engagement to get a subscription, but minimal server resources required.
Well yeah that’s true.
Length of subscription is really all that matters and making people stay subscribed longer is the best way to go about doing it.
That’s just smart business, not anti-consumer.
Using another example, a construction crew gets paid by the hour to do a project. Ever notice how they spend half the time not doing anything? Why rush everything and be done sooner when you can extend the project and make more money. It’s shady, but not wrong.
If they gave mounts at level 1 in classic it would make the game more pro-consumer then, I suppose, because everything would be faster to do. If they just increased run speed to be flight speed, would that be pro-consumer?
Minecraft has the mode where you can fly around and just build stuff. I guess they should get rid of the mode where you have to walk, and can get killed by zombies, because it’s anti-consumer.
Clearly, I disagree with your position. We don’t need to agree.
So your entire argument boils down to “It’s your own fault you got scammed!” That’s pretty lame.
Why is it people who 1000% support Blizzard in everything they do to the extent that they manufacture justifications that even Blizzard wouldn’t touch feel the need to repeat over and over again that they are impartial, when clearly they are not?
No, if you bothered to read the thread, my argument was that their business practices, while shady, are not anti-consumer.
I don’t 1000% support Blizzard lol. That’s an asinine comment.
I DO NOT agree with their business practices, I’m merely stating logically and legally, their practices are not wrong nor are they anti-consumer.
I haven’t pre ordered and don’t plan too. However, that’s not to say I won’t keep up to date on the alpha or beta.
As for my thoughts on SL expansion, I can only hope for the best but my faith in blizz is all but dried up since BFA release. This will be the first time I go without pre-ordering since Mop when I bought the physical box on the week of release.
1 Like
If one bought BFA and thought it was crap, and then bought Warcarft refunded and thought yea it’s not what they said it’s going to be…
And then per ordered SL and its craptastic 100000000% the fault of the person buying it
1 Like
Absofreakinglutely!
Cataclysm was insanely bloated.
There’s a middle ground. They whiff on it constantly
Cata actually wasn’t all that bad for me tbh.
WoD/TBC were much worse.
Catas biggest failing was Vash as that was a nightmare