I was looking at the mounts that are on sale in the WoW cash shop, and thinking I might get one, but I hesitate because, and I think it’s only because, this is the Blizzard/WoW cash shop. In the FFXIV, the cash shop doesn’t seem out of place. In WoW it does. I think because I’ve played for so long.
What about you? Are there games where the cash shop is fine, but not others? Would you use the WoW cash shop and not other games?
It’s 100% normal for MMORPGs, even sub-based ones, to have cash shops. Find me a single one that doesn’t. You’re probably holding on to old biases from when it was first introduced in WotLK or whatever.
There wasent one till Activision got their chubby hands on wow
Its out of place because we already pay monthly and are gradually increasing the sub prices while also monetizing content we used to get for paying that sub.
BIG! MEATY! CLAAAAAWWWS!
The only changes I’ve seen in sub prices were for currencies other that usd to normalize them to roughly 14.99 usd.
If this is not the case somewhere shoot me some links I’d like to look at it.
So because a select few mounts are on the cash shop they’ve “monetized content we used to get for paying the sub?” There are still FAR more free mounts earned and found in game than are present on the cash shop. I dunno, this one feels like a big long reach.
Some of the cash shop mounts look really nice. It’s not out of place I don’t think. The mounts go on sale regularly and they help support the game. They’re all cosmetics and give no actual benefits over other mounts. I don’t see the problem.
Not really the point though. They are increasing sub prices while also charging for content we used to get for paying for that sub. Id be happy for sub prices to go to 20 or 25 a month IF they removed the cash shop and I’d have no issue with the cash shop IF they removed the sub price.
Currently they are double dipping and yet we’re getting less content in patches and expacs as time goes on. Its more about the principle than the price.
Yet all of the high effort cosmetics goes on the shop instead of in raids and dungeons. Noticed how we dont have a “free” reskin of the dragon model that was put on the store a bit before sl was announced?
Reach for stars, not straws.
ActivisionBlizzard is a for-profit business. I don’t think a completely optional cash-shop, like the one in WoW, is at all out of place since you don’t have to purchase anything in order to play competitively. Contrast this with the cash shop in Perfect World International, Star Wars the Old Republic, or Destiny 2 and you can’t progress your character easily enough by simply doing game content to be competitive in dungeons/raids without “gambling” on loot boxes sold in the cash shop that have a very low chance of dropping powerful items (Destiny 2 is an exception since you straight up buy the item you want for currency bought with dollars; no gambling).
Any cash shop that sells power is out of place, while one that only sells cosmetics is just fine. Even if that game has no subscription, power for cash means the game caters to whales which just feels bad for the majority (presumably non-whales), because rising above a certain power level is unobtanium without spending real dollars. I’d rather pay a fixed and fair subscription than play in the power-for-cash model (did that with PWI and Dest2 and it was awful once you hit max level).
Now having said this, I’m of mixed feelings about the introduction of the WoW token back on 7-Apr-2015. While the positive is that it provides a F2P model for those player willing to grind gold and that don’t want to pay for game-time or a subscription, the potential negative is that it provides gold to those with real cash to spare. Blizzard limits how many tokens you can buy (I think 10 in a 30-day window, but not sure), however gold can be used to buy epic raid BoE gear from the AH and thus this is an indirect power-for-cash issue. Since it’s not a direct sale of epic items in the cash shop and it provides a F2P path for those that want to play but don’t want to pay for game-time/sub, I’m mostly OK with it, but there are no doubt whales that buy cash tokens (up to the limit) near the beginning of a raid-release and buy power off the AH. It doesn’t seem rampant, so I’m Ok with it.
The sale of guaranteed rare cards (and good chance for epics) in Hearthstone is a power-for-cash model, which is bad. The real-money AH house debacle in Diablo III was bad. I don’t play Call of Duty, but I understand that cash shop sells nice weapons so is also bad. Clearly ActivisionBlizzard has other games that have bad cash shops, but so far the bad is pretty limited in WoW (just the downside of the token, potentially offset by a F2P path for some).
Poe charges 40cdn for a sword transmog. Dual wield? Well you need to buy 2.
A 30$ mount or a pet often tied to a charity doesn’t bother me a whit.
IF, and this is a big if, IF this is happening then that person has metric tons of irl money. If a heroic level BoE is on the AH for 800k or so …that’s 8 WoW tokens. $160.00 USD. NOTHING in this game is worth that kind of cash. I just can’t see this happening as much as you THINK it is happening.
My dude, the store is what keeps the sub price from ACTUALLY increasing and keeps them showing growth to investors vs an obvious decline if they relied solely on subs. It’s been over a DECADE. No notable MMO doesn’t have a cash shop. Probably at least partially because they know gamers won’t accept a sub fee any higher than $15 USD right now.
AU recently had their sub increase which brings them inline with $15 USD. However, NZ and CA pay more than US.
Australia pays $19.99 AUD = $15.19 USD
New Zealand pays $24.99 NZD = $17.80 USD (18.8% more than USD)
Canada pays $21.99 CAD = $17.08 USD (13.9% more than USD)
AUD Price Change (Blizz announcement)
CAD Price Change (Blizz announcement)
US Price Increase Incoming (Player speculation given CAD/NZ pricing)
Inflation you used to get a loaf of bread for $0.50 once upon a time; now it’s easily $4.00 but it’s still the same loaf of bread. The cost of doing business (distribution channels and employee salaries and office space rent) all goes up with inflation, yet Blizzard has maintained the same sub fee (at least in the US) for 16 years–that can’t hold forever because they’re not immune to simple economic principles.
The only other MMO I know of that requires a sub is Final Fantasy and I don’t know anything about that game. I know of some other F2P games that have optional subs with cash shops. Everquest and Everquest 2 are both like that. Nothing on the cash shop in either of those games is any more play to win than Wow to be honest. I mean for starters if you actually buy a sub you earn points each month which can be used to buy items from the cash shop. Also most of the items in the cash shop on both of these games are cheaper than Wow. you can buy mounts for under $20 and the boost service is $35. So if you sub to either of those games you can actually get free boost every so many months.
While its not an MMO Fallout 76 doesn’t cost anything to play and everything on their shop is cosmetic pretty much. You can buy some repair kits which are more of a QOL improvement but they are cheap. Also with Fallout 76 you can do daily quests and other achievements, etc to earn the same points you can buy with cash. So even if you consider the repair kits P2W you can buy them just by playing the game. The short time I played it I had tons of them without spending a dime.
I don’t think it happens often, but there are individuals with disposable wealth (and/or a bad addiction) along with poor money management skill. I knew a wealthy person in my dungeon-group on PWI that lived in England (son of a Lord or some bs) who spent $1,500 a month on loot boxes. I’m pretty confident there’s more than one fool willing to be parted from his cash buying WoW tokens to the limit when he/she wants something. If you are the child of a Billionare heiress, then $160 is not even your daily fun-money allowance. Unfortunately, ActiBlizz does not breakout token sales in their SEC filings, so and they’d have to further identify the average quarterly sales and the maximum purchased by a single player to verify if it’s happening, so we can agree to disagree if you think it never happens.
There have also been a handful of mounts given out to players who buy a 6-month subscription, too. Looking over the shop page I can count at least four.
I’ve been doing the 6-month subs for years…so I pay $13/month for WoW plus get the occasional “$25 value” mount for free.
I’ve played a fair bit of PoE and even purchased some supporter packs but yeah it’s obvious their valuation of a lot of stuff is designed to attract bigger spenders (and also designed to push people towards buying packs instead of plain points…but that’s another topic).