f13.net

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/263752-54-in-game-store-100-xp-buff/

(http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2013/july/ingamestore.png)


Thus begins the fall of the subscription MMO?

I imagine certain regions means China where they don't pay $15 a month anyways.  But yes.

It was a matter of time.

I'm not sure what this means.  Do you mean that if this works (outside of China) they'll soon do away with subs?  Or do you mean something else?

I'm hoping it means they do away with subs, yes.

I agree.  That would be great.  I'm happy about subs being dropped from so many games.  The only thing I dislike is when they limit your ability to play if you don't pay.  Like the ones where you have to buy necessary areas or other stuff that seem vital for a decent game experience.  I don't even mind so much when they sell items that give you an advantage over others (unless it's PvP) since I usually just play alone.  It's a step.

I removal of a sub usually drives the theory that they can create content designed to make you want to buy it, rather than gating your entire experience through grinds to draw out your sub.

That's the way it's supposed to work. Many games have screwed that up by adding in grinds on top of the cash shop in the hopes you will buy things to decrease your grind. Tiers getting unlocked with payments would be a much better way to handle this, considering the raiding people would be all over it, and those that weren't could spend money on unlocking other things, like transmog slots, pets, etc.

I actually sat down and worked out how much I spent in GW2 on vanity stuff as well as goodies. Blizzard should be taking notice as I've easily out-spent what I used to pay as a WoW sub - and didn't begrudge a cent of it.

Get rid of the sub and I'd get back into WoW... and EvE.

This is one case where I think the in-game store isn't a sign of impending F2P. They're probably just hoping to sell more premium crap here than they do on the website, plus it lays the groundwork if they do go F2P in a year or two.

Edit: I guess it could mean F2P for other regions. Even that would surprise me as they'd be supporting two very different versions of the game at that point, but they've made some pretty weird changes for Asian markets already.

Don't they have hourly payment options in Asian countries? That's not too far removed from F2P really.

Yes I believe this is part of something for Asia. Not for the USA.

For now.

How many million subs do they still have paying $15/mo in the west?

F2P fucked over so many elements of LotRO. I'd rather sporadically play wow on and off than see it go the same way.

Meh, fuckit. Everybody else has a cash shop nowadays - it's part of the industry, not some Terrible New Thing Set To Destroy Life As We Know It.

It depends entirely on how it's implemented.  F2P is done completely right and is *awesome* in The Secret World.  F2P is decidedly not awesome in The Old Republic, so I just pretend it doesn't exist and stay subbed when I want to play.  The cash shop in SWTOR is just cosmetic stuff really when you're subbed, but when you're not is just onerous with all the stuff that's locked and all the unlocks you have to buy anyway.

I have no problem selling cosmetic items, but $15 for a helm?

Blizzard Store (http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100002559)

Link to story:

wow.joystiq.com (http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/07/17/cosmetic-helms-now-available-in-blizzard-store/)

Brought to you by the guys that gave you the RMAH in D3?

It's like Blizzard looked at what PoE and GW2 were doing with their shops and then decided to make you pay more.

It's a hat. If that's their plan to sell cosmetic stuff at inflated prices for idiots? More power to them. I couldn't give a shit less.

People pay $25 for sparkle ponies, $15 for pets, of course they'd pay $15 for a hat. 

It's not until they start selling full cosmetic sets where each item is $10-$15 that people will say, "wait a tick"

Got to make up the revenue somewhere, and someone's willing to be fleeced for it at all times.

As long as it's all cosmetic, I give no shits.

The Armored Bloodwing (http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100002458) is the sparkle pony done right, imo.

Why, because you prefer that model over another?  So it's only ok if it meets your tastes?

I don't know what you mean by "it's only ok if it meets [my] tastes".
On its surface, that statement should always be one's default position, when deciding whether to buy something. Especially something they don't need. Did you mean something else?

When I said that the bloodwing is the sparkle pony done right, here's what I meant.
(This is what I love about nerds, you always have to write a dissertation to get a simple point across).
- I turned up my nose at the sparkle pony. I cared neither for its looks nor its animation.
- I clearly didn't share this opinion with everyone; Blizzard sold a ton of those things.
- A few years later, Blizzard came back with the bloodwing mount. This one is cool looking, and doesn't look retarded when it animates.
- I bought one almost as soon as they made it available in the store. Blizzard has my money, and I have an in-game flying bat mount.

It was a dumb question, you didn't have to bother.

It was a dumb statement.

"Done right" says something was wrong before. Since they're mechanically the same and cost the same, the only vector for it to have been wrong is the appearance.

Since nobody here is the arbiter of taste, saying it was 'wrong' before is a dumb comment.

It was a dumb question because it wasn't a question. You already knew the answer, and just wanted to hammer a point.

Even so, the point is about the pedantic use of the word "right." If he'd used "well" instead the meaning would have been the same.

Ohhhh. You bought a sparkle pony, didn't you.

 :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm:

No, but if I had so what?  Going to call me a fag now?

Your statement was an appraisal of aesthetics making the choice valid or not on the whole rather than for an individual - you.  It's a bogus statement.

 :roll:

Actually, my personal insult of choice on these forums is "douchebag". But I'm sure we can work something else out, if you'd prefer to keep taking this personally.

My statement was completely valid expression of opinion. The sparkle pony is ugly, and it flies like a retarded, broken-backed duck. IMO.

Notice how I put the "imo" in caps there? Maybe you won't miss it this time. Douchebag.

He did say "IMO" in his original statement, so I really don't understand what your issue is here. It isn't like he was one of the people wailing about the store existing.

Boredom, mostly. Was an entertaining diversion in an otherwise dead forum that should hit the graveyard.

Why, because you prefer that type of forum bickering over another?  So it's only ok if it meets your bickering tastes?


(said in a delighted giggly tone, "the same, but I bolded 'you'"!)

Yes.

Because I'm an asshole and don't care what you want, but at least I'm an honest asshole.

This went live on the PTR today. 1 hour elixir that boosts xp by 100%. You can buy them with the in-game browser 1 or 5 at a time. Prices are just test currency so no idea what they would actually cost. I assume they are still only destined for Asia?

My guess, they'll sell them for like half a buck a piece. Maybe a buck if they think the market will hold it. Then you'll have discounts involved in bulk.

I'd go with a buck or two, honestly.

Yeah I would be surprised if each potion was less than $1.

Yeah, $1 or $2. But yeah I'm pretty sure for the time being it's only Asian markets.

Too bad because I have plenty of alts that I have no desire to play because playing alts sucks now in WoW.

Looks like Blizzard may be testing the waters of paid character boosts to 90:

http://www.polygon.com/2013/12/31/5261372/world-of-warcraft-survey-asks-about-character-upgrades-annual-passes

They need to do something. The thought of having to drag another character to 90 makes me ill.

I'd sign up for an annual pass if they gave me the xpac for free.

Anyone who didn't see this coming after the single freebie announced for WoD is dumb as hell.

The tears over on MMO-Champion and the official forums indicates there are many of them who did not see it coming. Or maybe they did and are just crying foul because that's what people do.

MMO-C & official forums in "full of stupid people" shocker. In other news, sky is blue, water is wet, fire is hot.  :grin:

People are still crying about the I was stupid enough to grind 20 characters to level 90 and so should you bit? This game is essentially an instanced dungeon grinder these days from what I read about it. What difference does it make to these people?

Wow has slowly eroded anything that makes their  "hardwork" valid in their minds.

They are of course wrong because nothing about wow is hard work.

Clearly you have not had the pleasure of trying to keep 25 people from standing in fire.

There is a fine line between hard work and masochism.

But... but...  if multiple max-level Warcraft characters aren't difficult to achieve it means they don't matter.  If they don't matter I've wasted my life because I've accomplished nothing else!

Try 40, and yes I did on 4 different raids across Vanilla to Wrath. It still isn't hard work. It's waiting for inevitability and remaining patient.

I just leveled a new character (warlock) on a new realm starting from scratch with nothing to 90. It took about 3 weeks or so. Once I hit 15, I did dungeons and bgs pretty much exclusively until 85, when I started mixing in questing to get to the proper phases.

Now I'm leveling a priest loaded with heirlooms, and it's taking a great deal less time (again, dungeons and bgs only). (Disc is really fun in bgs and holy makes dungeon healing ezymode).

There are so many bad tanks. I've never played a tank, so I don't really understand how one can be a bad tank, but some dks and monks (mainly) take a great deal of damage so fast I almost lose them, and who don't keep things off me. Then there are the bad dps who pull mobs.

Leveling is so fast now that people don't seem to learn how to play - the higher I go in levels, the worse people get - although heroics seem fine, with people knowing how to play and so on. It's the 70s and 80s that get sketchy.

I think that's because leveling is just DPS. You'll never learn the support skills that way or tanking. And in many cases you don't learn effective DPS rotations.

Leveling speed has nothing to do with people being bad in dungeons. Neither does the leveling experience and what it excludes from gameplay.


A large number of players, no matter how many times they've done it, will just not get out of the fire, so to speak.

It's also very likely that a bunch of the 'tanks' in those leveling dungeons aren't actually specced for it.

Or they are lifelong DPS trying out tanking for the first time. Low level dungeons are always a crapshoot for me. I think the winding down of the expansion means less people + people wanting to try something new because they are bored.

Dungeons don't seem to really need much besides dps until hitting LBRS but boy, is there a difference once you get to where the dks start playing.

I haven't had any trouble with warrior, druid or pally tanks. It's just some dks and some monks. Other dks and other monks are fine.

I should play a tank sometime, so I could understand it better. Warriors and pallys seem to be the easiest for me to heal. I'm sure they have their own frustrations with groups.

DK's don't have block like the pallies and warriors do, so they tend to take a bit more damage.  A good DK tank will mitigate that with Death Strike to rebuild health and put up the shield.  I enjoy tanking with my DK and it's embarrassing how few do it well anymore.

Eh, as a new DK tank Death Strike takes some getting used to. I'm used to using my dps abilities when they are ready to go (5 stacks sent of blood) and my mitigation buttons (shieldblock, et. al) before big hits. Deathstrike otoh is best sat on with stacks and used after you get punched in the face. Takes some mental retraining.

Monk tanking takes the same level of thought in my opinion.

Yeah.  Tanks basicly come in three flavours at the moment. 
-  Block tanks (Warrior / Paladin) who are primarily pro-active mitigation style tanks.
-  Solid Avoidance Tank (Druid) who has heafty armor values and relies on primarily pro-active dodge mitigation
-  Squishy Avoidance / Absorb tanks (Monk / DK) who take heavier damage then a Druid, and rely on these funky reactive mechanics to allow them to absorb and / or magically make damage just dissapear.

Honestly, I think they really need to adjust how DKs / Monks work as a whole, because it is usually the crazy gimmic involved in their tanking that lets them do a lot of the crazy shit you see with people soloing current tier raid bosses and things like that, but it will probably never happen because it would completely alienate the people who play the class as is.

I think what he meant is "mash buttons when off CD".

Because all tanks are the same pretty much

[/flamesuit]

If you mean Me, then, No, I didn't.

Unlike the other tanks, DK and Monks need to put a bit more thought into When buttons get mashed.

What's scary for a healer (and I mostly heal SoO these days) is that Monks and DK's both tank like they're dying. ALL THE TIME.

It's perfectly normal for both to go to under 25% health and then jump right back up because of something THEY did.  Which makes healing them a constant source of both Brown Trousers and WTF.

Yeah, healers for DKs need something more akin to CoH's defenders.  They'd benefit more from mitigation than flat-out heals.