I thought this was a joke but it seems like it's actually legit. WoW, which has a subscription and paid expansions, just added a $90 item to their store. This is Korean MMO levels of absurdity. What do you think of this?

Seems like hundreds of people bought it immediately

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[–] glimse@lemmy.world 27 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Ok so I cackled when I saw the price on this thing but the more I thought about it, the less shitty it is. FWIW I am not a WoW lifer or Blizzard apologist. I got talked into Classic for a year then played a month or two of each expansion since before quitting but I know the background of the story. It looks way worse from an outsider perspective.

You could buy the original auction house mount for 5 million gold back in the day. It stopped being available regularly and now it's available occasionally in the "black market auction house" and it always sells for the maximum bid.

To combat Chinese gold farmers, Blizzard started selling gold in a bit of a roundabout way. For $20, you can buy a WoW token to sell on the auction house. This token can be purchased by a player and traded for 1 month of game time. Some players dont pay a dime to play - gold is not hard to acquire.

When this new mount came out, WoW tokens were worth about 200k gold. You'd need to exchange them for 5 tokens to get this mount. 1/5 of the original price.

Now tokens are worth 330k. 1.65m golf. STILL significantly cheaper than it was originally.

Tokens will need to rise to triple in price to match the original cost which will still be a tiny fraction of what it cost a month ago.

By far the shittiest thing about this - and I think the only real reason to complain - is that the rising value of the token hurts players who pay for the subscription purely with gold as it adds a few hours to their "working" time in game. For context, watching TV and semi-afk farming will get you like 50k/hour. You can earn way, way more if you've leveled up a profession.

The other (not so bad) thing I don't like about it is that....I hate those mounts. They're HUGE and people just AFK on them blocking NPCs I want to talk to.

[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.world 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The other (not so bad) thing I don't like about it is that....I hate those mounts. They're HUGE and people just AFK on them blocking NPCs I want to talk to.

TFW the year is 2024 AD and blizzard still has not properly addressed this

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Important NPCs have a dismount aura but if they have that to any NPC with dialogue, you'd get dismounted a hundred times a day

[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Oh yeah, I actually remember that from the last time I relapsed (Legion). I was wondering if I hallucinated that workaround... But it's still just that : a stupid workaround. It baffles me that it is seemingly impossible for them to implement a keybind that targets the nearest "interactive" npc in range

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

There is, the Interact With Target and Soft Target settings

[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Hmmm, okay. Added in dragonflight, apparently.

Well I guess I can finally shut up about this incredibly minor issue

[–] Skates@feddit.nl 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

It hurts to do this, because you've obviously thought out your comment and you obviously like the game and want to believe the devs are doing their best. But I think your entire premise is wrong

To combat Chinese gold farmers, Blizzard started selling gold in a bit of a roundabout way

Why do you think this? Why do you grant a greedy game dev the benefit of the doubt? They're cashing in on Chinese gold farmers in all possible ways, man:

By allowing their accounts to exist instead of banning and moving on
By controlling the value of gold with a cash shop, ensuring economy is in their favor
The cash shop also brings them monetary value.

They are triple dipping, and you choose to believe they are doing it because they're a good game dev.

A good game dev would ban accounts guilty of real money trading. A good game dev would fix the in-game economy with in-game methods. A good game dev wouldn't have micro transactions in a subscription game. You want to believe Blizzard is doing this because of those evil Chinese farmers - I'm here to tell you they're profiting from this and don't have the morals to make it right.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world -1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Did you maybe consider that they did....both? Gold in the cash shop comes with a very minor downside to players and a big upside.

And where did I imply that I thought they did this for the players?

[–] radicalautonomy@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

To combat Chinese gold farmers, Blizzard started selling gold in a bit of a roundabout way. For $20, you can buy a WoW token to sell on the auction house. This token can be purchased by a player and traded for 1 month of game time. Some players dont pay a dime to play - gold is not hard to acquire.

Eve Online has been doing that since 2008.

[–] parrhesia@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago

The price of the tokens crashed by the way. Is now 258k

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Crazy how I just detailed this exact thing in a different comment and got downvoted for it.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago

People are just looking for a reason to be mad