It's okay to trade money for gold...Follow

I went with the beer option. If someone wants to waste their real money on game currency it's their prerogative.

From the reverse side of things I kind of like it. I'm on a very limited budget at the moment IRL and love to collect pets. I have ridiculous amounts of gold, so I'd buy one of these off the AH. Hopefully from a name I recognize so I don't encourage gold selling.

Beer, definitely.

I don't think this will change much. There will be more scrubs in epic gear, but it's nothing new, and not an entirely bad thing. I'll take a geared scrub over a non-geared scrub any day.

Also, EVE Online has had something similar in place for a long time now. You can buy game time and sell it on the in-game market so that the people who spend all day making money can play for free, and players who suck at making money have a way to get some fast cash for whatever they like to do in the game.

As long as you can't buy an advantage over others, for instance with BlizzStore "legendaries" or something similar, I doubt the game will suffer.

Edited, Oct 11th 2011 12:09am by Mazra

I'm fine with vanity items like this one and the previous mount for real money. However I feel that Blizzard is slowly pushing to cross that line. Like with the mount I think they're testing the waters to see what they can get away with. Once they start crossing the line I feel like it will lead to trouble in the game. They're really getting a bit close.

I went with the beer option.

I could care less about what happens with the assorted vanity crap you can buy.

^This.

I think its an overall good idea. It is by no means game changing, offers a safe way for people to "buy" gold, and gives us frugal types an opportunity to get a mini pet we wouldn't normally purchase.

I really can't see how this is a bad thing.




I keep seeing this claim that the game has peaked with very little to offer. One bad expansion does not mean it has peaked. Another good expansion like BC or WOTLK could easily bring a flood of more players.

Simple business practice is to squeeze as much money out of a product as is possible. This doesn't mean they are desperate or past its prime.

When we start seeing the servers halved and halved and halved and we don't hear from Blizzard for months at a time, then we can start making those assumptions. Now? Way, way premature.

Edited, Oct 10th 2011 9:56pm by ekaterinodar

How many of those 900k will come back when the next raid tier is released?
When the next expansion (complete with all of its quests, new zones, etc) drops?

They might re-sub for a few months and then cancel again.

Just because someone stops payment on their account doesn't mean they are "gone forever", and once you play a game like WoW for a long time, sometimes it is hard to let it go utterly, entirely. Even if you delete your character, there's always the "I heard it is fun to level again"... maybe someone quit before leveling a new character through Cataclysm areas, etc, etc, etc. And even if they did lose 900k, that's what, about 10% of their playerbase? The other 90% are still going strong.

I wouldn't be surprised if you see another peak when the next expansion comes out.

I hope, though, that they learned from their mistakes at the launch of Cataclysm. No JP from Normals, making Heroics too hard to get into from the start, etc. I still have friends tell me that they "heard Heroics were super hard and Normals don't reward anything" even though that is old, out-dated information.

Cataclysm had a very rocky start for several reasons; hopefully the next expansion is smoother. I think a lot of people quit because of the huge challenges Blizz threw in everyone's faces after Wrath. They went from being too easy to being too ridiculously hard to get anywhere. Then they nerf everything and expect people to jump right in. Some did, some didn't...

Some of them will come back, sure. And there will be a peak when the next expansion drops. That's natural. That peak however, will not reach the level WoW was once at. I'm not saying that all 900,000 are gone forever. A good chunk of them, however, won't come back. My point is that a lot of those are gone for good. There has never been this big of a number of people leaving, while there has always been a lull towards the end of an expansion's lifespan.

Edited, Oct 11th 2011 2:51am by IDrownFish

Just thinking that in-game items should be available through in-game activities and currency first and foremost. That this is now thought of as the alternative way is sickening.

I don't mind the promotional offers, like adding a pet extra if you get an authenticator, buy a collector's edition, pay for Blizzcon, or do the RAF thing or whatever else.

What ticks me off about this latest move is that they now finally crossed the line between in-game currency and real money. And if that wasn't enough, they change the pet to be only available to a single character. So they're going from $0.20 per character at the 50 per account maximum to $10 per character, and I am not to call them greedy?

This pet is clearly aimed at those who spent the $25 for the mount before. If they're still playing, they'll likely pull out their wallet again. But while they got the mount for "all present and future characters", this just doesn't apply to the matching pet.

I don't have a problem with a company trying to make money. Just wish they's stop telling all the BS about keeping things seperate when that's clearly not their intention anymore. I'd also like for them to stop using the term "fun" while doing business like that.

What it shows me is that all the questionable grinding I could possibly do inside the game won't ever get me as much as I could get from real currency.

Question is how much real-world influence and reminders this game can handle until it's just not much of a distraction anymore.

I guess I don't really see why anyone would want to spend real money to get in game gold anyway, so I'm struggling to work out why anyone would try to sell these for that reason anyway (maybe I'm underestimating the number of rich wow players who fail at gold management). It wouldn't make sense for gold farmers to try and sell these, as the initial outlay is more risky compared to gold farmers/bots/hacking accounts and there will be more competition (as any player can do this and it's a legitimate game process).

A quick search for sites offering services that they shouldn't suggest that $10 will get you around 3000g, the Hyacinth Macaw sells for 5750g and Disgusting Oozeling for 4500g (two rarest pets I could think of/find), so I can't really see the Guardian Cub selling that well, other than maybe just after release when maybe not everyone knows where it's from or you have the avid pet collectors who would rather spend gold that real money on it. So, other than not getting your account banned and supporting unethical practices, I can't really see this as a better option for people who want to exchange real world money for gold.

For that reason I don't think it will be game changing and it isn't making me reconsider my subscription. If Blizz started selling weapons (or access to pve content) for real world money or selling gold themselves to players then I would be out. I can't see this model working well enough for those purposes to have an impact on the economy.

I don't see why everyone is so "anti-business" about this. Blizzard is a company that provides a service that we all enjoy. (maybe too much) They have a very successful product and a top spot in its market. They have obviously done many things right over the last few years. Even when you look at subscription losses, about 10% of their base as noted above; many other "WoW Killers" failed to keep that many subscriptions beyond the first few billing cycles.

WoW maybe on its decline, but I am sure no one would have thought it would have lasted as long as it has. The length that this game has held its market share is unprecidented. We have all seen the long term plans leaked, but who really thinks they were all sitting around the boardroom table believng this would really be THE game for a decade. Even if they were, probably none of those guys are still there or working on WoW.

So I guess it is good to remember it is their game and we only pay to play it. They may stumble when making changes to their business model. That is their risk to take. As consumers we approve or disapprove with our wallets...

(the recent protests and the flak that BoA has taken about fee changes has had me thinking alot about how business works as of late. This post just seems to resonate with all that. As a person working to support a family and home, alot of what you see going on out in the real world is scary and depressing. You have the media foucusing on the Occupy Wall Street movement, yet the movment doesn't really come off that well. It is a mob with no real sense of direction or purpose. I fear it will only detract from the issues that are messing up our economy further.)

I've said it before -

I'm all for them doing "one-off" type things where they allow players to get some item for a small fee that will be donated to the charity of the moment.

Meaning ~ Player pays 15 dollars - gets vanity pet to help victems of Japanese Earthquake.

Other things would a bag, mount, fishing rod, etc.

The real problem would come from being able to buy gear for max level toons. I have no issue with buying a BOA piece. (For example: Pay 20 dollars and get a BOA helm for the benifit of Haiti Earthquake survivors....)

Again - the real issue will come in when you can either directly buy tier gear - OR - buy something that would enable you to trade/sell/enchant/etc for tier gear.