The Blizzard Store

[lord_emperor]

I'm growing seriously concerned with the precedent the Blizzard is setting in the world of DLC.

In case you didn't know, Bizzard's latest addition:

http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100001495

This is basically a flying horse, it confers no gameplay advantage and many players already have 100+ flying horses.

Blizzard is asking $25US for this thing and apparently sales were so successful on release day that prospective buyers were placed in a queue of up to 30 minutes while waiting for a code to be generated.

I would hate it if other developers looked at this, knowing that entire DLC packs which extend the story of the game and frankly add 1000x as much content are selling for $10 while Blizzard gets $25 for a horse in an already subscription-based game. Their reaction is likely to be "I can sell my DLC for a lot more".

I have never bought an item from the Blizzard store, however I have exchanged large amounts of in-game currency to have someone else "gift" the item to me. This raises all sorts of other concerns around legitimised gold selling but in the end, Blizzard is still getting a load of money for what must frankly be a pittance of development time invested.

 

[CPA]

What game?

One high priced horse doesn't correlate to high priced DLC in other games, especially if they don't have the customer base.

 

[AstroManLuca]

People who buy this shit are hurting gaming. Developers are putting more time into worthless cosmetic items because the return on investment is so much better than actually developing new content. Why bother working on a new game, or an expansion pack, or a worthwhile DLC that adds to the original game when you can just spend a few hours making a new critter or hat and sell it to masses of retards who gobble it all up no matter what?

 

[lord_emperor]

What game?

One high priced horse doesn't correlate to high priced DLC in other games, especially if they don't have the customer base.

World of Warcraft, the game with 11 million subscribers. This is Blizzard's 2nd $25 horse and more are planned, in addition to all the $10 cosmetic pets available.

People who buy this shit are hurting gaming. Developers are putting more time into worthless cosmetic items because the return on investment is so much better than actually developing new content. Why bother working on a new game, or an expansion pack, or a worthwhile DLC that adds to the original game when you can just spend a few hours making a new critter or hat and sell it to masses of retards who gobble it all up no matter what?

I agree.

 

[Bryf50]

People who buy this shit are hurting gaming. Developers are putting more time into worthless cosmetic items because the return on investment is so much better than actually developing new content. Why bother working on a new game, or an expansion pack, or a worthwhile DLC that adds to the original game when you can just spend a few hours making a new critter or hat and sell it to masses of retards who gobble it all up no matter what?

The money they make from the sale of DLC is a drop in the bucket compared to the sales of each new content expansion.

 

[Nintendesert]

The money they make from the sale of DLC is a drop in the bucket compared to the sales of each new content expansion.

You can pump out these lame-ass magic ponies and shit with a single developer doing most of the work and in a whole lot less time than what goes into an expansion.

This crap is easy profit that people are eating up. $25 is almost the price of an expansion anyways.

 

[SunnyD]

An idiot and his money do easily part.

 

[lord_emperor]

The money they make from the sale of DLC is a drop in the bucket compared to the sales of each new content expansion.

You sure?

http://www.onlinemassivelymultiplay...er-3-5-million-in-24-hours-hd-gameplay-video/

Even if you assume that no more steeds were sold after the first day, and that 100% of subscribers buy every $40 expansion, it is still more significant than a "drop", especially considering the development time that must have been invested in each product.

 

[AstroManLuca]

You can pump out these lame-ass magic ponies and shit with a single developer doing most of the work and in a whole lot less time than what goes into an expansion.

This crap is easy profit that people are eating up. $25 is almost the price of an expansion anyways.

Exactly. The gaming industry is now in a race to the bottom, with every developer or publisher seeing how shitty, unoriginal, and worthless they can make their content while still getting people to buy it. And you can't even blame them for it – they're only providing it because people are buying it. They don't even have to sell much to break even, but when people have to queue up for a $25 downloadable pet that adds nothing to the game, it just encourages them and other developers to continue with this crap.

Look at how Hat Fortress 2 has been ruined.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

When they started selling in game items, I started losing a lot of interest in WoW. Same thing with TF2 actually.

 

[Kelvrick]

Gotta make a good game before they can start charging money for virtual shit.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Gotta make a good game before they can start charging money for virtual shit.

Bingo. If the game sucks, no one is going to shell that cash out. This was discussed during the first $25 horse they released for WoW.

 

[coloumb]

I know of at least one person who purchased the World of Warcraft® Mount: Celestial Steed simply because he wanted a cool mount for his paladin. Pretty sure people who purchased the rocket mounts also though the same thing.

This type of crap sells...and it sells very well.

If you're creative enough, you could probably drum up a nice chunk of change on Second Life... [where it's ok to sell in game items]

 

[Aikouka]

Would you feel even worse if you knew that 100% of the animations for that mount are just copies from other mounts .

 

[Anubis]

ive long since stopped playing wow but the store never concerned me. they are all vanity items that are re-skins of existing mounts/pets there is no advantage just a waste of real money

 

[ElFenix]

a lot of people pay for cosmetic stuff in lotro, but then the whole game is basically DLC packs now.

(was funny when people realized that a lot of the pay for cosmetic stuff was freely tradable)

 

[Iron Wolf]

I bought the $10 Japan Relief pet. I figured since I could donate to a good cause and get a pet in the bargain I might as well. I prefer the in-game mounts to the sparkly pony or flying lion, but if they ever come up with something cool, I might consider buying it.

 

[Udgnim]

This is basically a flying horse, it confers no gameplay advantage and many players already have 100+ flying horses.

if people want to pay for something that adds nothing except a difference of appearance, then they can spend their money however they want

 

[Generator]

Its an awesome mount. Despite the immoral nature of buying virtual crap, I think blizzard has been pretty tame in milking its subscribers of money. Any other company would have a new mount every month. I know I would do it lol.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Its purely cosmetic, I see nothing wrong with this. As had been mentioned before, you still need a good underlying game before you can sell ugly $25 dollar purple flying lions. Remember when we went through the "subscription based MMO bubble"? Everyone and their left nut was making an MMO this or an MMO that? Well the industry largely got over that and now they're on the next thing and so on.

If this ugly $25 dollar purple flying lion significantly changed gameplay or gave the purchaser a significant upper hand, then the whole "this is ruining gaming" argument comes into play.

In short, if you think there is some horrible problem with TF2, good money says the hats aren't responsible for the problem.

 

[lupi]

good thing we don't have a wow thread or anything.

 

[ParadoxDenmark]

I agree. As long as you can't buy character strenght, I don't care what people use their money on.

I'd personally never buy something like this.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

You sure?

http://www.onlinemassivelymultiplay...er-3-5-million-in-24-hours-hd-gameplay-video/

Even if you assume that no more steeds were sold after the first day, and that 100% of subscribers buy every $40 expansion, it is still more significant than a "drop", especially considering the development time that must have been invested in each product.

Or the cost of hosting and maintaining their server farms along with developing, testing new content or revamping old content, of which Blizzard has consistently kept up and done well with this game along with paying for other ongoing costs associated with promoting WoW. In other words they make a shit load of money because they have a shit load of bills to pay on top of being a for profit business.

Edit: Collector additions of digital games that offer "armor sets, character models, etc" are basically the same deal as this mount. In essence you're paying for a virtual item that only exists on your hard drive.

 

[zoic]

And some people are called fools for buying a 30$ premium tank in World of Tanks, that has actual gameplay meaning

 

[Zenoth]

I see two sides to that, one being relatively neutral, the other being in disagreement to such practices from any developers. Being neutral to it somewhat makes me say that as far as there's no advantages in the game or for the character(s) to own that mount/pet then who cares? Let those with money to waste/spend do whatever the heck they want with it. But on the other hand, I would disagree with such practices since all it does it simply continuing what others did before them, and since Blizzard does it and is successful at it then it "encourages" others to follow (since Blizzard is such an "example" in the industry as far as making money goes). If there was no financial advantages in creating and selling such "payed for" extra items/pets/whatever then they would simply not exist, it was clearly created with the purpose of making money.

If on the other side of the medal however creating such new items would provide more diversity/lore due to the urge to do so on an artistic level without the consumer having to pay for it, then it would be entirely fine. I don't think that a morning one of the artists at Blizzard working for World of WarCraft woke up and honestly thought "wow, I just had the best idea, WoW needs this, I have to talk about that to the guys today!". I'm pretty sure it just came in the form of a simple agreement amongst a small number of decision-making individuals to create that (and more) to make money. There's no actual artistic/creationist interests behind that kind of new items especially if they are individual (I.E if there's no fitting back-story connected to the established lore for the item and is just "there" to the impulsive consumer to buy at any time, but if it was paired with something to "explain" the arrival of such new content and being free then it'd be completely different story).

And, anyway, paying for ANYTHING in a pay-to-play game, really? It just makes as much as sense as playing as a Mage in Dragon Age 2.