Microtransactions starting in/for WoW?
 

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...77775733&sid=1
I'm wondering when mounts and items (heirloom's) will make their way in. If I was made to answer yesterday, I'd have said never, but now I wonder.

I can't say I'm terribly surprised, but after speaking with a CSR during the Addon policy debate concerning in-game ads and a connection with battle.net/microsoft(ad dept), I really thought it would never happen.

Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of an item shop for WoW either... Like you, yesterday I would have said, "they'll never do that."

Though I am finding myself trying not to spend $20... :(

95% of this game's development path since vanilla wow is about vanity. Are any of you actually surprised by this? I'm not. With each expansion, the game moves further away from what it once was.

This is not your father's orc, for it was once a gnome. Warcraft has become Storecraft.

Wow, it only took two posts for a rep from the "sky is falling" crowd to show up. Shocking.

Only two, I'm more surprised lurking for a few days did not occur first :p

Where? I see a rep from cynics R us, one from club indecisive, and one from from bitter ex fanbois... but the sky remains intact.

I hoped to post this here to see feedback from both sides of the pond, while also getting the usual 'community' type behavior you just rarely see on oForums. There are plenty of sky is falling comments made on oForums, but only a little cynicism, doubt, and general disdain here, so far. Somehow, I can manage to find myself in all three categories. I don't see a direct implication that "Storecraft" was derived from this latest announcement, but has been an escalating factor in the development of paid services and items. Maybe you jumped to that conclusion by misinterpreting "Storecraft" to imply this announcement was the sole reason for his cynicism? In any case, I don't see kneejerk reactions yet... which would mean the sky is fine.

I guess I just don't see the point in mocking individuals in a thread, until there's real reason to (first blood).

And btw.. in at least two versions of Chicken Little, the sky actually did fall. Not that it will in this development.

Meh, it's a way for Blizzard to add some additional revenue however it's likely to be only for "vanity" items. In my PoV it's not any different than the WoW TCG items just not as random. It's possible we may see some of the older TCG items in a slightly "reskinned" form show up there, since Blizzard knows that not everyone has access to the WoW TCG or does not want to spend a bunch of cash hoping to get one item.

I am ambivalent either way. I don't see myself ever purchasing anything from the "Pet Store", then again, if Blizzard ties in the purchase of a in-game vanity pet or other vanity itme with a donation to a charity (as in the case of the Panderan pet), then I might more inclined IF I have the spare cash. However in general, I tend to resistant to most "micropayment" type of transactions.

As long as stores will only offer optional/cosmetic bonus crap, like they do now - pets, and stuff no one really needs in terms of "no impact to actual gameplay!" - I'm fine with it. If people like to spent money on things like that, it's their problem. But if it will ever happen that you NEED to buy basic things like a Tier Set or something similar, I'm done with them. :rolleyes:

Absolutely....Although i "might" be tempted for the one part of the money goes to MAW, however if that was the case, why not just donate the WHOLE 10$ to MAW. Not like Bliz is broke or anything.

Because developers and designers don't work for free. Blizzard is still a business at the end of the day, but it is nice to see that they are giving. $5 for each of the million they will probably sell is a pretty impressive contribution.

I know my wife and I both bought one :)

My simple answer to this thread is that if I was to buy anything for a game with real money it would be to buy it from the owners of said game. Gold Sellers ? Never. If WoW ever offered the opportunity to convert real cash to game cash ? Definitely. That is the difference here.

But, we all have to realise this is a game and to react accordingly. It is one thing to spend $5 for an in game item or $20 for 1m gold ( if that ever happened ) but its another thing entirely to pay $50 for a vanity pet in a game if you really cannot afford such luxuries. Think before you buy is the obvious thought here.

The problems that come with gold and item selling for real cash are way different than selling cosmetic things for real money. While the later doesn't influence gameplay for others, but yourself. The former really hurts a game, especially when it has not been part of the game since the beginning. There are games that don't have a monthly fee and get the money via an item store. Which has never ever attracted me for several reasons. If you put such an option in WoW, people will definiately start to feel like they have to buy things to compete. Just like they are flipping out over gearscore, dps and other **** already.

On a sidenote, I really don't think this will ever happen to WoW, they WILL offer more optional/cosmetic features, maybe even class change in the future - well, I highly doubt that, too. But, I don't believe in WoW having item stores at some point - hopefully not even hairlooms.

Don't press the panic button yet.

When you start seeing different kinds of items than you can already get via the TCG loot cards, then you can press the panic button.

So each of these is fair game:
- Pets
- Mounts
- Toys (Disco balls, rocking horses, etc)

Also, if they do something like making a 310% mount buyable (without needing to do something substantial in-game to be able to ride it at that speed), you may press the panic button then too.

They're not going to sell gear, gold, or 310% mounts. Blizzard is smart, and they know they'd just ruin the game if they did start selling those kinds of items.

Eh, this game has had microtransactions since you could pay to transfer servers. I'm not worried at all. Anything that affects game balance won't be sold.

I want one of each!




/agreed

I already bought mine, along with other things. In fact, my office at work is dressed up in WoW stuff. The students actually love it and gawk over my figurines throughout the day. Then again, I am a Director of Technology so it's quite "natural" for me to spend my money on game items.

I see no shame in this at all, in fact if they made mounts or otherwise gold available; why not? It's about making money and to them it's a revenue generator. Those who cry and whine are the ones who didn't think of it first and therefore have nothing better to do then say "zOMG THE SKY IS FALLING!"


Now get back in the game and game on. I'm a veteran of "vanilla" WoW and I say each x-pac has made it that much more fun to play!

All I can say is... My Panda is so awesome next to me when I'm wandering in Northrend!

Mounts - yes.
Gold - no. Then the sky really would be falling.

Most of us are OK that cash-for-items exist, so long as said items do not impede the competitveness of those that do not have them. In other words, I'm not going to be left out of a raid because I didn't have $10 to buy a panda.

On the other hand, gold purchasing would result in a skyrocketing economy, such that the only way anyone could compete for gems / BoEs / etc is if they were purchasing gold themselves. It then becomes a requirement to play the game, and missing $10 might cause me to be left out. Not good.

And Blizzard has a stance against gold sellers - not only because of "purchasing in-game stuff for real world money" but also because of its effect on the economy (noted in the post above).

"Buying gold makes baby murlocs cry." ~Eyonix

Now see, this is why the line is looking fuzzy for some people, and they're bracing their roof for falling objects. Games are generally about being competitive, from most raid bosses killed (and the time it took to kill them), to the amount and 'coolness' of the pets they collect. People who focus primarily on achievements are being left if they don't spend the cash.

Subscriptions are falling due to lack of interest (other games), limited time for players, China.., anger over changes, and many other reasons. If you took 10 seconds out of your time to think about why "the sky is falling" crowd reacts the way they do, instead of bashing them over the head with a "whiner" label (and vice versa), maybe you could empathize with them (you, meaning knee jerk reaction people from both sides of any debate).

Some people feel that at this point of WoWs development, there might be legitimate concern about what will come next. There are so many things that has been stated will NEVER occur in WoW...
PvE - PvP server transfers.
Faction Change.
Druids main tanking.
Hybrids excelling over other specialized classes.
Micro transactions.
There's more, but why be petty..

Things change given the right circumstances. Odds are that anything that is said will never happen, can happen, and sometimes do happen.

People have strong reactions to the changes made in WoW, because they have strong feelings about WoW or their friends that play it with them. When people feel threatened about any loss regarding something important to them, they are going to lash out. Same thing can be said about those who lash out at individuals for criticizing a company. They are standing up for what they feel is right as well, they don't want to lose the ability to buy their cool pet. They don't want to lose an opportunity to see "advancements" in the game they love be lost because some people are afraid of the consequences those changes will bring. Think about why people react the way they do before reacting harshly towards them.

*looks up*
Yep, sky is still there.

so when does the subscription rate go down ... hehe


sorry some one had to say it :D


OWWWW ... something just hit me in the head ...

Ohh .. never mind it was my girlfriend slapping me .. and for a sec there I thought the sky was falling. :p

On a serious note .. I have no problem if people want to buy vanity items with real cash. It's their money they worked hard for .. not mine. You can buy crap loads of gaming cards in hopes to get a "cool" item so where is the difference here?

It's when items that actually give you an advantage over someone else is where I draw the line. I should not have to dish out MORE money (along with a monthly fee) to get those items.

Sepioth, thank you sooo much for taking the getting-hit-on-the-head-reigns for stating what everyone is thinking out of my hands for a change. That was my thought exactly since Yhor started the thread, but I was holding my breath till someone else put it out there. So thank you again!:D

Wait? A WoW geek with a girlfriend?

*hides under a table and watches the sky intently*

My exact stance on this. This is in no way a bad move and it does not affect me at all. I'd love to have new vanity things :)

I really don't see the problem with this.

I'm sure everyone will poop their pampers at me saying this, but I really don't see a problem with them selling gold either. I fully get not wanting people to buy gold from outside sources, but buying it directly from Blizz? I don't see the big deal.

Who cares where people get their gold really? What are people gonna buy with the gold anyway? Powerlevel tradeskills? The Traveller's Tundra Mammoth? Gear from the AH that isn't as good (for the most part) as anything you can get the old fashioned way? Who cares about any of that stuff?

If anything, it levels the playing field a bit for people who have irregular or very little play time. Some of us can spend all day farming gold and acquiring whatever we want with said gold, while someone who works all day and has 3 kids to deal with can buy gold with the money they worked all day for and get the same stuff. It doesn't hurt my feelings when someone has the same stuff as me.

I also think this whole talk of it messing up the economy is silly. What's the difference between someone who farmed gold for a week buying some overpriced crap in the auction house versus someone who bought gold from Blizz? Blizz doesn't get any benefit from someone farming primals, and the person who sells the item on the AH never knows or cares where the person who bought the item got their money, so what does it matter?

Further, it's not like everybody in the game is gonna go out and buy 100k and be set for "life." The pets cost $10 each. I think we can all agree that that price is pretty steep. How much do you think a real substantial amount of gold is going to cost? $500? $1000? Many people (look at the wow.com post) have already talked about how they want the two pets but can't afford it right now. How much gold do you think they are really going to be able to afford?

All that being said, I do agree that things that actually impact game balance should not be sold for real life money. I just don't see that gold has any impact at all.

However, all this talk is probably pointless anyway, because it'll most likely never happen. Too many people are crying over two pets, let alone what will happen if they start selling gold or other items.

ANd get this ... she plays WoW too ...



of course I DID get her into it :)

It matters not where you get it or who is selling it. A screwed up economy is a screwed up economy, no matter how anyone tries to justify it.

I can't get my head wrapped around why people just don't get that.

But see that's my point. How does it screw up the economy? In a video game, I don't understand how the source of the money matters.

Edit: People are buying gold now. I think more people than anyone realizes. What, in today's WoW "economy," would be different if that were not the case? You'd be selling less in the AH, because those people would not have the in-game funds to buy what you are selling. Further, how can you prove that anything going on in today's WoW economy has anything to do with the gold selling/buying that is going on already? All Blizz selling gold would do is at least eliminate SOME spam, and hopefully eliminate SOME bots. I don't see how any of that is a negative.

Look at it this way. If people are buying in game money with real cash it will cause the prices to jump up rather high as (quite a few) people will be willing to pay higher prices for in-game items. What will happen is those who can't afford to or are opposed to buying gold even if from a legit source will be forced to either spend (real) money to be able to buy in-game items, or they will have to spend insane amounts of time farming (more so than now) to obtain the gold or finally not participate in the in-game economy at all. The concept as a whole caters to people who have the real world finances to spend on gold. You don't get additional subs and monthly fees by alienating parts of your player base.

Not to mention that if blizzard were to participate in this concept it would be in their best interests to manipulate the market so that people will have to buy more gold to keep up. Thats just all sorts of ugly in the end.

Lets not forget that taking away from (in many cases) needed time to play will eventually hurt the subscriber base and therefore lose money from subs in the long run. Its a balancing act. Sure selling gold for them would give a quick boost of money but if you can buy 15k gold for that tundra mammoth then why bother making it 15k gold in the first place? Why not make it 50k to jack up the price and encourage people to spend even more cash for it? Why not just sell it for cash and skip the middle man?

Prices of what? The auction house is completely player controlled, and the prices, at least on my server, are completely out of hand already.

I don't think, at least as of right now, Blizzard would drive up the prices on vendor items just to get people to buy gold. The price of an item like the tundra mammoth is still very high. Based on how much the two pets in the pet store cost, I'd imagine the amount of cash you would need to buy the tundra mammoth would be at least a couple hundred dollars. That's still out of reach to a huge chunk of the player base, and another chunk of the player base would not be willing to spend the money even if they could afford it. Would lots of people do it? I'm sure they would, but I don't think enough would do it to have an impact on the entire server's economy. Blizz cranking up the prices on vendor items would only make said items more out of reach for those people unless they lowered the price of the gold.

We are still, in essence, talking about a vanity item. The tundra mammoth is not needed to progress in the game, and as far as I know guilds don't require it. It is a convenience. Because of that fact, I don't think it would ever be a huge problem. Of course, if they were to start making top-end gear available for real cash, we would have a problem. Based on what's available right now just on the auction house plus vendors, I don't see the big deal with those items flowing freely.

As far as buying gold impacting subscription rates, I don't think it will. We pay by the month, not the hour. I'm sure they would love people to pay them for a subscription and not use it. They still get the money with less strain on the servers.

*sigh* Now I don't know what to think. I am entirely against gold-selling, but on other hand, I tend to support anything that makes a murloc of any age experience distress. Oh Seerah, what have you done to my thought processes? :eek:

The idea in general says 'greed' to me. Of course, they are a business and turning a profit is the idea. The charity pet bothers me less because at least part of it is being donated. But in the end, as long as no one gets an advantage in-game by spending real money out-of-game, I really don't care.

Well, I bought 'em.

The mammoth was merely an example. Yes the AH is player controlled. And if buying gold becomes a service provided by blizzard what do you think will happen to those prices? They sure as hell aren't going to get better. They will get worse and mighty fast. Just look at the nonsense on the PTR for an example. Greed knows no bounds regardless of whether its for virtual gold or not. Further pushing the cost of certain items for the casual/non-raider player even further out of reach. I know I would be heavily disturbed by such a move. I won't believe for a second I'm alone in this. Nor do I feel I'm in the minority.

By making gold selling against the rules (yes i freely admit it hasn't stopped the process) it keeps the majority of players concerned about losing their account if they should do it. Remove that factor and I can imagine the game taking a HUGE dive as a result.

It would literally be in blizzard's interest to make buying gold more desirable if they should get involved in the practice. The rifts between players it would cause I don't feel is a bee's nest blizzard wants to agitate.

In the end however in very highly doubt this will ever happen.

@laslo, in response to your actual point: I've been out of the real game for a while, but I *seriously* doubt that end game advancement isn't still dependent on the economy in some way or other. If the economy got as bad as it has been in some games, it would be impossible to properly tweak your character (enchants, pots, etc.) without guild organization -- which would break a lot of casual raid/pvp guilds, who are Bliz's target audience.

It would hurt the ones it would aim to help. I completely agree, but making this point is extremely hard to do to those who want it most (people who are "busy with real life", or lazy-ish people).

When I try to explain to my friend's kid what he does to his server's economy (and trade chat sanity) when he buys gold, I get a blank stare looking back at me like I'm attempting to steal his dog. If buying gold from WoW directly becomes available, a lot of people would buy it to escape farming mats, which drives prices of mats up because less people are farming for their own. Also, Crafting in WoW isn't rocket science; every crafted item has the same benefits (or iLevel, in the case of random stat crafted items). When mat costs rise because fewer people are farming them, crafters will start dwindling in numbers too, because there's less profit in the time invested... driving more and more need for players, casual and hardcore alike, to buy gold from Blizzard.

This is all hypothetical, as it is now, but still real concerns of people looking at what the future might hold for their game.

I'm working under the assumption that Blizzard will continue to balance achievements (such as collect x pets or y mounts) based on what can be accomplished in-game. The paid pets would be geared towards the "aww, that's cute" crowd or the "gotta-catch-em-all" crowd, but the "look at my GamerScore" crowd doesn't get any additional GamerScore by choosing to spend $10 on a Panda vs. spending 20 mins / day for a week on Kalua'ak rep for a Penguin, or by doing both.

If I find out to the contrary, however, your point is perfectly valid.

If it's legal for people to buy gold, and they can use it to powerup a tradeskill, and there's a minor advantage in changing tradeskills between instances (or even, between bosses), can you see a large number of guilds (or hell, the GearScore/LinkAchieve PuG raid crowd) requiring it? I can.

What does that do for the reroll/alt who is leveling normally and trying to level his tradeskill naturally? The materials will either be gone, or be prohibitively expensive - unless they purchase gold themselves, which is not terribly realistic.

This is just one example.. there are no bounds to the amount of damage that can be done by a nearly unlimited influx of gold. Think of the gems, the scrolls, the enchants, the "primals".. the stuff you always need to buy at max level when you get an upgrade.


I'm not entirely sure why you're discounting the possibility of someone with regular play time also buying gold to supplement their farming.

hmm, there are already "lazy" and "casual" (read: little time to play) players in wow, so many in fact, at any given time on the AH prices of ANY starter mats (copper ore, peacebloom, light leather) are at a lvl that NO true new player could afford to purchase them w/o gathering those same mats and selling them as well to make income.

as players reach high levels (read: 70+), gold becomes, hmm.. trivial? you can now gather mats safely (read: not die while gathering) and sell them for huge profits, as well as quests now raining in the gold. about the only things hindering a player from making silly amounts of gold in later levels is being undercut on the AH or refusing to quest/farm. ^_^

as for buying gold for real money? its already happening, and the economy has not gone bust yet, however since its against the rules, ppl who do so also can get caught and banned, thus buying the economy a little time to stay stable before it goes bust, whereas if it was not against the rules, those that would have been banned (read: gold sellers/buyers) can now be included in the economy, which will now go bust faster then it would have previously. How long would that take? not a clue, im no mathematician, but you can be sure it would happen.

seriously tho, how many things in the economy are actually used on a daily basis? gems/glyphs/food/pots/chants... anything else is one time purchase per player (read: gear/pets/mounts). and blizz was smart enough to make access to those things we DO buy on a daily basis to only be accessible AFTER lvling up a craft to nearly max with items farmed ^_^ so therefore farmed items are also a daily mover. and as long as gathering materials are worth alot, ppl will use them to make gold alot.

if gold can be bought, but the mats can not, would be silly to buy the gold, only to be stuck with the gold to buy mats that dont exist and i think ppl would see that problem and continue to farm mats and sell them for gold, keeping the economy quite alive and kicking, albiet, for a higher price then before is all... Sally bought gold and is willing to pay John to farm her mats.

so, now we are left with Jane, who doesn't buy gold, and no matter her reason for not buying gold, she still needs the mats, but doesn't want to pay john to farm them, so must go farm them herself...

isn't this ALREADY happening in wow? don't ppl ALREADY pay john to farm mats for them, regardless how they got their gold, as well as ppl who refuse to pay john to farm their mats, and they instead farm their own mats??? ppl who pay john to farm their mats now would have to pay john more to do so if ppl buy gold, and i think that is where a lot of ppl are most annoyed, they simply don't WANT to pay john more, amirght?

What the heck is this icon meant to be ?

It looks like a grim reaper having an epileptic fit !

Forgive me if this has already been brought up in the thread before. I'm very tired from lack of sleep so the words on the page are starting to do that blurring and running together thing. Nap soon I think.

The gold you buy from a gold seller comes for the most part from hacked account according to Blizzard.

So if you accept this as true it would impact subscription rates as some of the people who get hacked may get discouraged to play anymore and might go on to other games. Particularly if some of the items that have sentimental value from years back can't be restored.

My memory is fuzzy on the details of the actual restoration process so don't quote me on that.

My thoughts on the subject ?

I want the Panda monk pet :)

They aren't currently doing this for any other things other then 2 cute non combat pets. You don't get achievement points or epeen points if you get one - anyone with $10 can get one. It doesn't magically make you a better player then someone else.

it's been a while but last time I checked an authenicator is about that much. And people are always like "get an authenticator they're super cheap".

It's 75% the cost of the wow subscription. Its a movie ticket. It's a cup of coffee and a bagel. It's a decent home design magazine A3 with full colour photos.It's 2 packs of cigs.....

That's Snoopy dancing... :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUQX2B67KL4

Ahh the Snoopy dance. Well I've had a nap now so I can see it :)

i know im a few days late but just had to throw my 2 copper in.

WOW is going down the road of vanity? are you blind or was wow your first MMO? its always been a vanity game. Almost all MMO's have been vanity games since EA with Ultima Online found out there was more vanity players then anything else.

"carebears" as those of us hardcore gamers like to refer to them. The people who cry for days on end at the game host because they lost something, or someone just killed and looted their corpse. Or broke into their house.... ahh the good old days of online gang warfare. When leaving the protection of the town guards required some balls.

WOW has been for the carebear from day one. Also dont think for one second that they wont sell gold eventually. This is about greed not about game play.

Although wow has progressed much slower down the path of selling its own virtual items, all mmo's eventually travel that road. Why shouldn't they? There is a whole secondary industry in it, why should blizzard not lay claim to it?

If bliz really wants to stop the gold sellers? who supposedly get all their gold from your hacked account? then they would for sure sell gold themselves. It would be the fastest stop to the rest of the gold sellers now wouldn't it?

if bliz started selling gold at a lower price then the current gold sellers. Those current gold sellers would go out of business from it.

Really? You're actually suggesting that? If Blizzard started selling Gold, not only would they be massive hypocrites, but probably more than half of the people would stop playing. The very reason people play subscription games over free-to-play cash shop games is so that people who are rich (or just idiots) can't spend all their money and have an advantage over them. It's what makes the subscription worth paying to begin with.

They also said they would never allow faction changing.

And back in my day, you had to farm to get those rare pets! Get off my lawn!

So half the people would leave because they now have an OFFICIAL and SAFE and CHEAPER source for their gold??

There buying gold in large numbers from the "farmers" so I fail to see how those same people would leave if Blizz offered it. In all reality it would increase there revenue as those who would like to buy gold may tend to steer away from a site that they have no idea about it's credit card security.

And if anyone where to leave because they are mad Blizzard was selling gold (aka micro-transactions / DLC) themselves (we all heard this argument about EA selling this stuff to and yet they remain on top of the gaming industry) then the extra gold revenue will surely take care of that VERY SMALL loss of monthly fees.

Look behind you; something flew over your head.

People who buy gold may or may not care, but people that don't are watching Blizzard flirt with the fine line that separates vanity from advantage, and aren't going to be pleased when they're told that not only is time a factor for staying ahead in this game, but money as well.

I'm not going to go as far as claiming over 50% of their subscribers will drop, but do you really think Blizzard is interested in decreasing it's player base in order to get a higher APRU? That's just too detrimental to the game experience.

If Blizz were to offer anything like that, which I doubt they would, they would put it on specific servers, and allow folks to move to those servers like some other pay-to-play games have done when allowing real-cash purchases.

This is an argument none of us need to be having. Less QQ, More Pew Pew.

Oooohhhh Drama

/popcorn

The people that don't usually just like to voice their opinions but seldom act on it.

I'll go back to EA as a perfect example. When EA bought the rights to EVERY NFL licensed football game people vowed to never buy a Madden game again .. yet it still sells out every year.

When EA started selling "Easy upgrade micro transactions" for their games people claimed they would never buy EA again yet these transactions are STILL in their newest games. They actually sold "early unlocks" for games like Tiger Woods and Need for Speed. These unlocks could easily be obtained through actual game play but if one wanted to spend REAL cash to get it easier and faster they could.

When EA stopped updating buggy games cause the games where older people said they would stop buying EA yet games like the Battlefield series is still on top of the charts.

In the end people will bitch, whine and complain that this is a bad idea, that micro transactions will hurt the game,that if they do this they quit. But chances are no matter how much they voice their opinions about this they will not leave the game.

The end result for any company is money and if they decide that adding a item shop for real cash will not hurt the game but increase revenue (which will most likely be the case) then there is a chance it will happen. Maybe Blizzard will be less greedy than the other companies and realize that they do not need to go this route but no one really knows. I just found out that besides for the iPhone version they actually charge .99 to purchase the Mobile Authenticator for their games. Why??? Should this extra layer of security be free?? I mean come on does Blizzard not make enough money that they can afford to take the small loss on the sale of this app??

S**t happens
 

As long as any company get cash, they sell what ever they can to customer.
And about the payment to buy factions, it both good and bad.
You can´t stop Blizzard and you can stop a glazier to buy
his kid a slingshot.
There is always an opportunity to make more cash for everything.

No one said it wasn't a vanity game. The point was that the development path has taken a much more aggressive approach to feeding this vanity, not that the vanity was a new thing. Just about everything in the game's evolution is bringing it down to nothing more than a "fantasy shooter" with cute toys and different ways of looking "pretty".

Honestly though, for those of you out there who were "hardcore" players during the vanilla run, did anyone imagine they would ever see a horde paladin or an alliance shaman? I sure didn't. At one time, it was a horde player's "rite of passage" to make fun of paladins. Same with alliance and shamans.

The time when epic mounts meant something are missed. Know what I mean? If you saw a player riding a kodo, it was a tauren damn it and that's the way it was supposed to be! ;) There's no telling what we might be able to buy this time next year. Scroll of instant max level? Scroll of instant flying mount? Heirloom scroll of "mine's bigger"?

Anyway, once again, the point wasn't that vanity is new. It's that it's too much of an influence and has/is making drastic changes (both planned and unplanned) in the game.

That's more about addiction (both clinical and casual) than it is happiness or quality of game(s). It's not necessarily a validation of microtransaction policy. Think about it a minute. How many people could quit warcraft "cold turkey"? I don't know of many.

I quit cold turkey.

aren't there racing games for 360 that u have to buy some cars and crap like that? people didn't seem to mind that at all, but seem to be mostly against this kind of thing...... really, depending on how the game is made, the racing ones could be selling the way to win (yes, some cars are better than others..... if the game is programmed right, a.... viper or w/e should be able to outrun a model T from 1910 or whenever (don't know cars that well)..... not the best example but u get the point).

these items that their selling have no impact whatsoever on the outcome of battle, other than maybe a cackle from Lil' K.T. their basically RP / E-peen vanity items, and really nothing more.

I also liked the point someone made about the TCG loot, which is basically the same thing but less chance at actually getting anything for your money. also, the re-customization is the same thing.... until blizz makes the females dominate the males with whips and leashes (sorry, couldn't resist).

Yeah .. same here ... I haven't played in about 6 months and have no intentions of really returning. I keep my account cause my girlfriend plays it now.

I come here still because I still like to help wherever possible and the community here keeps it fun. HMMM .. I may be addicted to this website now that I think of it....

All generalizations are bad.

That said, speaking for me personally, if Blizzard offered an official legal source to buy gold, my 5+ years of playing WoW will come to an abrupt halt.

I just tripped over the irony.