And water is wet. As a customer, virtual or not, who acquired something under the REASONABLE EXPECTATION that it was an enduring item… blizzard disrespected that transaction by retroactively changing the terms.
Their game they can slap bio-waste on a 3d scanner, render it into binary and inject it straight into the game if they want, I can’t stop them. But ethically, someone buys something you let them keep what they bought.
Unlike combat abilities which we’ve come to expect as evolving over time, often in unpleasant ways… the striders weren’t presented as such. I’m not going to pretend it was something it wasn’t.
And exactly what mistake is that? That they didn’t put terms and limits on the mount at the time?
If you make a mistake you ethically find a way to live with the consequences rather defraud customers (Even if only virtual in this case) to put things right.
They should, why should they treat the people that farmed the rep special. All characters on your account should be mailed a free pair and the rep needed to buy the cheap ones need to be taken away. Everyone should be treated the same. In fact all items that require reputation to buy needs that requirement removed, Why should the people who farmed up any rep be treated any different than the ones that didn’t.
What Blizzard has done is not illegal – as you state, it’s clearly in their ToS.
However, it can be argued that it’s unethical. There’s no black and white answer for that; merely shades of gray. In my opinion, it is unethical. Others may disagree.
Regardless of legality, ethics, etc., it surely is very poor customer PR.
Oops – sorry, Jops. I didn’t see your post above mine.
It’s as much, if not more, what these changes represent about Blizzard. Portals, striders, terrible city design, homogenous WQ’s, AWFUL tortollan quests, uninspired island mechanics, failed warfronts, totally unmotivating loot reward distribution…
By failing to ‘do the right thing’ in each of these cases with … compared to the other side, which is ‘art’, they got the art right in BFA. And the raids were fun. So 2 plusses and a bunch of minuses.
It’s not just about striders, it’s about seeing Blizzard stop pretending to care about being an industry leader and become more blatantly just another worthless micro-transaction obsessed pulp mill.
These have all been great decisions, Just read around the forum and see how may supported each and every one. These decisions have not cost Blizzard anything. They are still the number 1 mmo of all time. they still have 15 million subscribers and adding in more every day. Sure they may have lost a few players over all these great decisions, but they don’t need them or their money, Blizzard is doing great.
Once you realize that SPEED or NO-DAZE equipment is Best in Slot for you (and you have to give up having ANY mounts that walk on water to get them), you’re going to have to resort to other methods for water walking from then on.
And as someone who’s “tired of always using the strider” why haven’t you been using those other methods for a while now?
Because they’re much more awkward. That’s why.
But it’s what you’ll end up using because Blizzard couldn’t bother to exempt the water striders, even though having speed/no-daze on other ground mounts would pretty much ensure that we ONLY used them to cross water instead of “All the time”.
Immersion is sooooo important that Blizzard just went through a round of portal murdering to help it, despite a lot of anger over it.
Immersion that’s ruined by treating my character as if it were me.
I agreed to the EULA and expectations of the game.
But >I< didn’t buy the strider. My character did. My character agreed to no such arrangement.
When things are not internally consistent in a virtual world it wrecks the sense of immersion. By saying that my characters expectations are supposed to be informed by something they can’t possibly know about is… anti-immersive.
And we can’t have that, because we can’t have portals. Duh.
yeah…its a bit hard to get some folks to grasp the concept of ‘integrity’.
Kudos for trying…
You do have to wonder about the mindset that is actually ok with DOING the work…then having that work nullified on a whim because some fine print somewhere in the ToS says “we can screw you over any time we feel the urge”
MOST businesses try NOT to pull this dishonest crap on paying customers.
Agreed.
And frankly the Blizzard I USED to know and love when Warcraft itself came out years ago…that company is dead.
What replaced it has no semblance of integrity from what I have seen the last two years.
its all about investors getting their dividends. Not one whit about me as a paying customer.
They’ll need to EARN my respect this time around like they did the first time.
so i just tried to buy the Anglers Water Striders equipment to mail to my other characters.
Sorry guys…you can only CARRY ONE at a time, apparently.
So buy one, mail one, buy one, mail one.
Thanks blizzard.
50 characters under level 100
this ‘grind’ shouldn’t take but a couple hours tops
One of the things flying under the radar here is how the strider had reduced fall damage along with the water walking.
Also, the old way you could take fall damage, and without dismounting you could jump to be on top of the water again. With the new system, any damage at all will require you to remount to regain the water walking. Just more inconvenient convenience.
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