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

It bothers me not at all.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't even care if Blizz sold gold from the store either.

Yes, gold is relatively easy to get in-game through a number of means. If somebody wants to pay actual cash instead of spending their time, you know, *playing* the game then fine. There isn't a whole lot competitively in the game where gold becomes a make-or-break issue. Yes, there are a handful of BoE/crafted items that tend to be very pricey, but the bulk of the more expensive stuff tends towards vanity or fun stuff like motorcycles, mammoths, and rare pets.

Whether somebody wants to spend a few days farming or spend $10 to get an item makes no difference to me. My issue with goldbuying is, and has always been, that the gold being sold is from hacked and stolen accounts so buying it only continues the cycle and rewards criminals in addition to inflating the economy by all these gold and items being doubled.

Now if you could buy JP/VP/Honor/Conquest gear or raid drops or something along those lines, I would feel differently.

I think the "rich WoW player" comments refer to the trend of buying in-game stuff for real money, not the act of buying one pet or mount. There are people who are able to dump a lot of real cash into this game and others who aren't.

I still don't see how this drastically effects the "spirit of the game". I will still be running dungeons and raids with friends and strangers, I will still be grinding achievements, I'll still be massacring massacred by Horde in Battlegrounds. I will still continue to farm those rare mounts, those rare minipets, those rare recipes, those obscure gear pieces, still do dailies, and still play the game like it were...well...a game.

There are all these lofty notions of the "spirit of the game" being tossed around to protest a change that is minimal at worst. It is very unlikely anyone will make any substantial amount of gold from these minipets. I mean, come on, its a freakin' minipet. We're seeing far more rare minipets added to the game then we are the store. I am still stumbling across minipets I've never heard of before. This minipet will become like any other vanity item: an overused attempt at a status symbol, or, for some players,a nifty toy to play around with. Three weeks after release we'll be laughing about how brats wasted 10 bucks on a dumb non-combat pet and are boasting about how cool they are while we shake our heads and continue on.

As for 900k subscribers being an insufferable blow, I think you're over exaggerating. There are numerous factors which could reignite a player base. And just because people who have played for six years are leaving, last I checked the human population was still procreating and people were still finding new video games...believe it or not WoW is "new" to a large percentage of the population. Face it, for some of us, no matter what Blizzard does we're not going to stay. To try and keep catering to players who are on their way out is bad business. Blizzard knows this and they are now trying to encourage new subscribers because realistically, that's where the future of WoW is.

I think its also quite realistic to argue that even if WoW never regains 900k players that in of itself does not constitute "peak". If you mean peak subscriptions, then yes. But there are so many other factors. How many people are dropping second or third accounts in favor of focusing on one account? How many of those people leaving are whiney brats who weren't contributing anyway? You can't quantify it.

Also keep in mind that last year's 12 million subscriptions are not representative of static individuals. The 12 million who played at the start of Lich King may not be the 12 million who were playing at the end.

I see my queue times going down. At the start of this expansion level 80-84 dungeons had something around a 30-45 minute wait time. Now its rare that I spend more than 20 minutes in queue. Stormwind is as packed as ever. People are still raiding. Guilds are still forming. Auction House is still full of crap whether its greys or purples. There is no indication beyond subscription numbers that the game has "peaked". My guild is gaining new WoW players every week. Sure, we've lost some veteran players and thats sad and regrettable, but it is not proof that the game is on its way out.

Honestly, I'm looking forward to getting one of these minipets as a present from one of my adoring fans. :-p

Edited, Oct 11th 2011 11:57pm by ekaterinodar

I dont think Bliz will ever (outside Tabard/shirt maybe) release gear for buying. But advancement items, hell yeah i hope so. I would kill for a potion that gave the RAF bonus by yourself. Make it 10/15 bucks lasts a month. I would go nuts with that. Thats not game breaking as its already there but this way you save having to dual box/have friends, as all my friends already play wow or have no interest.

I can dream cant I

Edited, Oct 12th 2011 1:06am by BeanX

As long as the leveling process wasn't slowed to further encourage purchase of such an item.

Actually, with Transmog, I could see them introducing a whole slew of statless Transmog skin items for players in the near future. In fact, I'd be surprised if they didn't. Probably start with recolored versions of older sets, but I wouldn't be surprised if completely new skins were designed just for the Transmog store.

Edit: And if one of those recolored sets was a black and (purple or gold or red or blue) Judgment set? I don't know if I could keep myself from buying it, to be perfectly honest.

Edited, Oct 12th 2011 2:16am by Poldaran

This is a bit of a tinfoil hat response, IMO.

I understand where the concern comes from, but look at who we're dealing with: Blizzard has a history of at least trying to preserve a certain spirit of the game (balanced progression) and unless the game is starting to go south to the point that they're giving up on it (something that I doubt would happen anyday soon), I just don't see them destroying the whole spirit of WoW's Progression model by allowing you to skip playtime with IRL money.

They know that Vanity pets come from a variety of sources, anything form easy to get, walk up to a NPC and buy it for a pittance, to killing things thousands of times, so they thought "a pet store wouldn't hurt".

BoA gear? I doubt it -- one, they want to make sure you are max level or near it before you're permitted to get your hands on that stuff, meaning you leveled a character once already. That is why the only ways to acquire BoA gear involve being either 80 (Argent Tournament/Fishing Derby) or 85 (Justice/Honor/Darkmoon Faire/Guild Levels). You could get a piece of BoA from your guild, but it requires Rep last I checked, and getting that much rep with a Sub-80 character would be quite difficult.

Leveling Crafting professions? While it is true they could tweak TBC content a little, I doubt they'd allow players to skip Burning Crusade areas entirely -- they had plenty of chances to do that already (they could have made Level 60-70 areas in the new Azeroth) and they chose not to, because they didn't want to completely invalidate an entire expansion. In fact, they're trying to get us to go back to TBC areas with Archaeology.

And last, but certainly not least, Tier Gear... they won't let us get Tier gear with Justice Points (at least not in 4.3), what makes you think they'd ever let you buy it with IRL Cash? They thought that Helms and Shoulders should be "Raid Onry", I just don't... see them letting you deck a character out with some IRL bucks.

Anyways, any idiot can predict that this new pet would fall to absurdly cheap prices when everyone who has a few extra bucks on mommy and daddy's credit card will try to cash in. I highly doubt $10 for 100g or less is really going to make a dent in the market. I can get 100g with 20 minutes of questing; that's not even minimum wage of $ per hour (avg $5/hr).

Edited, Oct 12th 2011 11:23am by Lyrailis

This is a slippery slope fallacy (i.e., unsound argument). There is no reason to believe that Blizzard will introduce non-vanity items. I have no source, but I swear they've said multiple times they won't do it. It would also destroy the player base.

[********** clam stackers.[/sm]

Still not bitter. Nope.

They can swear all they want doesn't mean they won't do it. The game industry is full of companies that make promises to their player base and even straight out lie. I could be wrong but I thought I remember Blizzard saying they wouldn't spend the time to revamp the old world for flying mounts. Things change, promises are forgotten. Demands are given into. It may be a slippery slope but Blizzard has been pushing more RL money exchanges lately. They are starting to approach the line. Who says they won't cross it?

They never said they wouldn't. They just said that at the time it was unlikely because they would rather focus on new content. But they never ruled it out and said that if they could overcome some hurtles and find a plausible reason to include it in an expansion that it might happen. I'll have to find the original blue post, but I'm remembering back to BC and don't want to dig through google right now to find it.

Pretty much this and honestly, people buy gold through third party sites anyways. After many years of Final Fantasy XI and other MMOs I've just come to accept that some people are going to buy currency. I have always been good at making gil, gold, platinum; whatever. Hasn't really ever phased me. I think it'll hurt the really casual people depending on the game but we're talking about World of Warcraft, so it won't do much. Casuals can make tons of gold starting from level 1 without leaving the starter zones.

Besides the money supports Blizzard either way you look at it. In actuality.... if a third party site is selling gold for 20.00 for 1k gold and you can buy a pet for 10.00 and get 2-3k gold for it; Blizzard is in fact smart doing this because in the end they're setting the price people will buy gold for from a gold selling site.

I think this is a pretty good marketing strategy on their part. Might actually bring a lot more money to invest in their game instead of it being funneled to non-legit third party gold sites. I guess we shall see what happens :P

Edited, Oct 14th 2011 2:48pm by Excenmille

Slightly off-topic, but um...

Why do people use the "if you ask me..." phrase?

That makes no sense really.

If we wanted to ask you, we would have done so. These forums are a place to express your opinions, your thoughts, your questions, etc. I'd think a phrase like "in my opinion..." (aka, "IMO") work much better.

Not trying to make fun of you or anything, but I always found the phrase "If you ask me..." kinda stupid itself, especially on a forum where it is expected that everyone is going to share their opinions if they wish to.

Just some random musings/thoughts from me, that I'm going to give without letting everyone know that they should ask me first. lol.