Microtransactions pt. 2

Photo credits to (cutaia) on WoW.com

Be sure to read part 1 first :)

Continuing on with diving headfirst into Blizzard's microtransactions by addressing the common complaints, concern, and controversy.

• The cost of the item, $25.

As I mentioned in the first part, $25 dollars was the price Blizzard put on the item all outside things considered. They have economists on the payroll and they raked in 2.5 million dollars and climbing off this mount. Good for them. The huge problem people are having with this price is when they put it in comparison to something.

$25 dollars is almost two months of game play, therefore it is outrageous.
$25 dollars is half the price of the game/an expansion, therefore it is outrageous.

You know what I spent well over $25 dollars on yesterday (to put this in perspective for you)? Dinner and a movie with my beautiful girlfriend Shelby. You know what I could have done? I could have bought the two of us Hot Pockets and Cheetos and pulled up the movie illegally online and watched it at home for about $5 total. However, $25 to spend on something fun and cool and relatively better than what I could get for $5 at home, was well worth it to me. So let me try this game.

A car cost $25,000, this mount only cost $25. OMG that is 1000 times less than the price of a car, I should buy it!
My pay check is $2500 a month, this mount only cost $25. OMG that is 100 times less than what I make in a month, I should buy it!
A month of groceries cost $250 a month, this mount only cost $25. OMG that is 10 times less than what I spend a month on food, I should buy it!
A night out at the movies, and possibly even popcorn and a drink included (depending on how expensive the theater is), cost $25. So instead of going out one night a month, you can buy a mount.

$25 is a joke.

• A bad use of money or a waste of money.

Who are any of you internet jokers to say how I, or any other person, should spend our money? That is what I thought. But then people took it a step further saying, "Sure. Go ahead and spend your money on whatever you want. It just makes you look like a stupid moronic idiot that shouldn't be leading a guild because you have bad judgment and no sense of the worth of some things and have a poor miserable life."

To that I say, "Cool story, Bro."

• That Blizzard will only ever make cool things for real money now and not in game achievable.

• That Blizzard already has $15 a month from us and we deserve cool stuff like this in the game.

I think these two go hand in hand. You know what I would say to this? There has never been a better time to play WoW and everything we have gotten during this expansion has been awesome. Remember the Core Hound? He is a badass, and free. Remember the Perky Pug? He is a badass, and free. Onyxia mount anyone? Free. Invincible's Reins?!?!?!?! Free.

I made my point.

• The fact that so many people have a cool mount make it cheap looking and lame.

The BEST response to this I can find: Here. I couldn't have said it better myself, but I still plan to try. ;)

When you buy a car, chances are you aren't going to be a unique snowflake. Even if you buy a Ferrari, if you join the right circles, you will see plenty of them. This goes for ALMOST every rare mount in WoW. Some rare mounts (raid achievement mounts) you have to be in a group to get, and then EVERYONE gets one. So why is it that the more people have something, the less cool or desirable it gets for everyone else? Seriously people? Are you that pathetic of a person that you play WoW to have more things than other people to make yourself feel better to the point where something that you personally think is pretty cool suddenly isn't when other people have it? Your E-peen must be HUGE!

I have two mounts currently that I think are two of the coolest mounts in the game: The Great Brewfest Kodo and The Black War Mammoth. One of them is a semi rare drop and the other is purchasable by anybody with 300 stone keeper's shards, yet I still ride them both and love it and don't give a crap what people think or how many other people have them.

Just because things are common do not make them less useful or cool (iPod and iPhone).

• The mount is actually cheap looking, lame, and feminine.

The mount is very cool looking, in my opinion. My favorite part is that stars appear behind you when you ride it around and even on top of you if you just sit there. It is a really cool effect. I can't speak for the feminine part, other than people are saying that because it is a horse/pony/"My Little Pony." To each his/her own. And as Blizzard showed us, there are well over 100,000 people and counting that don't share the feeling. I guess I could have used that previous line to debate all of these points, which makes me feel like it was a cop out.

• The misleading info that it got you a 310% mount. (Untrue.)

I felt I should mention this because it brings up a great point. If this mount was a 310% mount and it was purchasable with real money, I would call that crossing the line. I don't know if it would be enough to quit the game for, like selling gear would be, but it would be very hard to take that lightly. That being said, it was just a misinterpretation and will scale to 310% if you have it, but will not give you a 310% mount. I also brought this up to take a moment and cover a topic that was going to be a separate blog, but this was a good segway.

Blizzard is planning on making 310% flying speed purchasable ingame with gold. There are already nerd rage tear puddles on keyboards all across the world over this change. "Blizzard catering to casuals" and "I am not a special snowflake anymore," you know, the usual. In my opinion, it isn't a bad thing. I am sure Blizzard is going to make it a ridiculous amount of gold and I AM FUCKING POSITIVE that if you already have a 310% mount you won't have to learn it. Some people were raging over the fact that would need to learn it even after already having a 310% mount, pull your head out of your asses people! The reason I don't think it is a bad thing is because I still don't even have the epic flying skill. So guess what people? You will always be a special snowflake in my eyes because I don't have 5k+ gold to drop in an insane gold sink. So you got to be a special snowflake for a long time, you still have awesome 310% mounts no one else has or will have access to get, AND you didn't have to buy it like everyone else. You are still a winner with a huge E-peen to everyone like me, so please calm down.

• This is one I forgot to add but some people actually do believe this gives you an ingame advantage, because you no longer have to purchase a mount ever again.

This point has been shown as a lame reason proving that the amount of money maximum that you would spend on one characters mounts combined in 161 gold. So you save 161 gold per character that doesn't have any mounts yet. So technically, yes, this mount does give you an ingame advantage. You get to be 161 gold richer than all your friends. However, what if you only had one character, only ever planned on making one character, and only used the mount on one character? It doesn't change a thing. Furthermore, you could say multiboxing gives you an unfair advantage because you don't have the resources to do it and level up that fast. It's all relative.

• All of these Microtransactions are okay when Blizzard does it, but not okay for any other company. Basically, gamers are two faced and Blizzard biased.

The final boss of them all, Seraphina Brennan's remark. She is getting the point treatment as well.

• But, no matter the topic, one thing seems to stay the same: people really, really, really dislike microtransactions overall.

No, SOME people that FREQUENT YOUR SITE possibly dislike the current microtransactions as they are today. I am not going to lie, even before company sponsored microtransactions, they were happening EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Don't try to make a statistic out of thin air.

• It seems that people really hate microtransactions, yet Blizzard's newest buyable mount doesn't have people quitting the game left and right. In fact, it seems everyone is cramming in to buy one!

You are right, I doubt anyone quits the game over a stupid mount that you don't have to purchase. Who is this "everyone" you speak of? 100,000+ people when Blizzard has how many active accounts?

• The store offers optional cosmetic purchases, like pets, for what is a pretty steep price.

Your opinion. But as I have made clear many times, it is a fair price conjured up BY REAL ECONOMISTS. Or pretty much anyone with half a brain. $10 - $25 really isn't that much money in the grand scheme of things (which yes I realize is my opinion). Agree to disagree on that?

• While there are certainly naysayers intermixed with the excitement, that comment page looks nothing like, say, one of our comment pages when we talk about Cryptic's item shop. Even WoW.com's poll is pretty much in favor of the mount being in the store.

So how is it that Cryptic could be so fail and WoW be so win? Oh I know! Because they are two completely different things! Cryptic is making you pay for things WoW gives you free. Two character slots? Is that a fucking joke? PAY REAL MONEY to respec your character? Fuck that. Paying real money for more inventory slots in Allods Online? GTFO.

• Bullshit

Ok, fine, yes I just linked the whole second page. BECAUSE THAT WHOLE PAGE IS BULLSHIT. There is so much BULLSHIT on it, I don't know how she can say on her blog that, "We at Massively like to take a neutral tone with our news stories. Even when our opinion as a staff swings the other way, we’ll put out a story that will more or less recite facts and leave the speculation up to readers." Seriously?

The problem is, and she has made this same comparison before and I was telling myself this then too, you can't compare the thoughts and complaints of the vocal majority without knowing the feelings of all the people who don't visit the websites and read the blogs. Just because this certain demographic of gamers does, I can name a handful of hardcore gamers I know who have never visited a site like Massively, let alone read my blog. (lol)

Also, WoW is in a league of it's own. This isn't fanboi speak either. This is the truth. So when you said, "Cryptic's item shop is sucking the consumer dry with both a subscription and microtransaction business model, but it's 100% ok if Blizzard does it, right?" And then asked the question, "Why is Blizzard allowed to do what so many other companies can't do?"

You can consider that answered.




In closing, I will leave you with a quote.

"You're both yo-yo's. Shut up ya yo-yo's."
- Master Shake