Today I
want to babble about cost of gaming, this was brought up by a survey blizzard
sent me about micro transactions. Obviously aside from buying the game and
paying the subscription, all other charges are completely optional. But what is
an acceptable amount to charge people? Should the price of a ten year old
game being going down not up? And is there really an issue with micro
transactions in a subscription based game? After the break I will attempt to
babble coherently on these problems.
So
to begin with were it all kicked off, the other week I received a survey from
blizzard it was about features of WoD as well as HotS, and what I played/spent
in other games. While I was answering the question I slowly began to realise
that I have never spent any money on micro transactions that could be earned by
playing the game. I have bought many pets and mounts from the store in WoW
though most of them not for myself but rather for Admiring Azeroth. Looking
back as well most were bought when they were on offer. I never bought anything
off of D3's RMAH yet I sold probably close to 150 pounds of stuff and used the
funds to buy other games. On the whole I personally prefer to earn items in
game as opposed to buying them.
However
at the same point I don't have any problems with micro transactions and cash
shops, in fact I would love to see other stuff added as long as it maintains a
reasonable price. For example at the moment the shop bought boost is £40, I can
quite easily say I will never buy one at that price. Yet if the price was say
£10 I would probably buy several over the course of the next few years. My
basis here is that 40 quid is the price of 4months of game time. (Roughly)
In that time I could level like 50 characters to 90, therefore in my own
personal opinion I don't consider it to be value for money. Yet I don't go
spouting bile on the forums about blizzard ripping me off or allowing people to
pay to win.
The issue
is that while Blizzard makes games they are also a business they MUST make
money, shareholders and all that jazz. But increased revenue also leads to
increased content and more games, you only have to look at the Blizzards job
section all the artist and coders they are hiring. That's were our money is
going and in the long run that can only be a good thing.
Though I
have to confess I was not all that amused when I saw the pricing of the latest
expansion, I even checked back to see what I paid for MoP. I understand that
they put a lot of work into each new expansion and relatively the price for WoW
is cheap when compared to some other MMOs. At the same point they are new
whereas WoW is Ten years old. In an ideal I would love for the price of WoW to
keep going down including the subscription. Yet this would never happen, even
in months where I don't really play much I still pay my sub. It would take an
astronomical rise in subscription prices to really affect the numbers that we
have playing now. We are the rump that is the left, the fan boys/girls while we
do whinge about the cost and we will continue to do so. We are so unlikely to
ever actually properly un-sub and leave the game.
But
Blizzard must be careful that they don't make it feel like they are exploiting
our fan status to get more money out of us. We all accept necessary price
rises, be it inflation or extortionate taxes that some countries levy. But take
the wording of the prices raises for account services in pounds the other day.
That was a complete cock up leaving the player base that pays in pounds feeling
more ripped off than normal. (10 dollars does not equate to 10 pounds, it
make no sense that it is cheaper for me to gift a pet to a US player rather
than buying the same pet for myself. but I won't go into details here there are
many interesting posts on the forums that make the point far more succinctly
than I could.)
Money in
games is always a touchy subject, the person that earns a 100k a year (not
me sadly) has far more deposable income to spend if they choose to. Than
someone who earns minimum wage, a large part of my support for cash shops is if
you have the money it is your choice how you spend it. If for example the cash
shop sells a million sparkle ponies a month, then maybe the price of expansions
never has to increase in the future.
So this
post didn't turn out quite as I had intended it to, though that may have been
for the better. Next week I intend to bash some head together and insult as
many people as I can with my aggressive defence of LFR as content. Well
hopefully not offend, but I will try and be honest and protect my fellow
LFR-Heroes. Peace out y'all
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