World of Warcraft 'exploring' in-game purchases
Blizzard has confirmed that it's "exploring" in-game microtransactions for World of Warcraft, after an XP booster mentioning an in-game store was discovered in the latest test patch. It's not yet clear exactly what else it'll sell, and whether this is a global move or simply for regions friendlier to microtransactions.
Blizzard has confirmed that it's "exploring" in-game microtransactions for World of Warcraft, after an XP booster mentioning an in-game store was discovered in the latest test patch. It's not yet clear exactly what else it'll sell, and whether this is a global move or simply for regions friendlier to microtransactions.
The 5.4 public test realm patch includes the Enduring Elixir of Wisdom, a buff from an item which doubles XP earned by complete missions and killing monsters--and is tagged with "In Game Store" (via WoW Insider).
Blizzard senior community representative Jonathan 'Zarhym' Brown confirmed in a forum post that the developer is "currently exploring the possibility of adding a way for players in certain regions to make purchases directly within the game."
He explained, "As part of this process, elements related to this will be appearing on the PTR. We'll provide additional updates on our plans as development progresses."
An XP boost is a fairly innocuous microtransaction item, and certainly not rare for MMORPGs. And given how much Blizzard has accelerated levelling up over the years, it's hardly like boosters would destroy anything sacred. The mention that it's for "certain regions" may suggest it's intended for Asian markets, where such things are more common.
Let's remember that Blizzard does already sell in-game pets and mounts through its web storefront; moving all that in-game only seems sensible.
What will be interesting is discovering what other microtransaction doodads it's experimenting with. A more impetuous commenter would blurt out that it means WoW is going free-to-play soon, but let's not be so rash. While subscriber numbers are steadily falling and Blizzard does cite the rise of F2P MMOs as one cause, 8.3 million 'subscribers' (active players, really: the figure includes players in PC bangs and such who don't pay monthly subscription fees) is still nothing to scoff at.
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replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, World of Warcraft 'exploring' in-game purchases.
Blizzard has confirmed that it's "exploring" in-game microtransactions for World of Warcraft, after an XP booster mentioning an in-game store was discovered in the latest test patch. It's not yet clear exactly what else it'll sell, and whether this is a global move or simply for regions friendlier to microtransactions.-
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It'd more like adapting, really. There's a ton of MMOs that already offer XP boost items for some nominal price or as bonuses of some sort.
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but leveling is boring. if this was like 3+ years ago when i still enjoyed the game i would have paid to level up a 4th 5th ect character instead of having to do it manually. theres only so many times you can go through the dead zones before you want to stab your eyeballs and being one of the guys that levels in 10.58 hours instead of 10.59 isn't my idea of a good time so they would have earned money from me and plenty of other people im guessing.
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Relax, I was seriously suggesting they shut it down. It's a cash cow for them, everybody knows that. I'm just worried about the projected future of the game when they start testbedding all their different money making tricks on it until it feels like a Zynga game or something.
The game is kind a titan relic of the old MMO genre (sort of the ultimate example of the genre it essentially killed off) and I have my issues with it, but part of me would like to see it just slowly go out to pasture like all the other MMO's. There's something a little bit sad about them strapping a new money machine on it to prop it up like some 3rd world ruler which has actually be dead for 3 years.
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Odds that Blizzard is looking at micro-transactioning the whole game on top of the subscription?
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Hehe... I think Guild Wars 2 took some subscribers as well ; )
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Guild Wars 2 made me realize how polished and well put together WoW is, so that's something.
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Polish is basically what WoW is. All the major MMO's which came before it were tons of fun, but almost inaccessible (or undesirable) to non-hardcore gamers because they were fairly complex and not user friendly (I know because I played almost all of them). Blizzard basically took all the cool stuff from its predecessors, tossed out some of the more complex parts, and then polished the final product until it shined so bright... even non-gamers had to say "oooh...shiny!!". They made it stupid easy to get into by spoon feeding little portions of a fairly complex game to new users until they got the hang of it. And once they figured it out, they were already hooked.
What they did was brilliant... it's just almost too bad they did it so well because eventually there was no more room for other MMO's. A least not while publishers expected them to live up to WoW.
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A model that used recycled geometry and animations from an existing mount. Prior to that mount I thought people would have laughed at the $25 price but yeah, sold like hot cakes.
Back in the day modders were giving away amazing models and skins just because they liked creating them. Now moddable games are an anomaly and people pay a premium for a pretty hat they like. It's cool that people are getting payed for their work now but I miss when people could create things just for notoriety.
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This will definitely stop the hemorrhaging of subscriptions!
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Let's assume that there are 5-ish million western world subs to WoW. Let's assume a price bottom of $12.99/mo (whatever is the rate you get for 6 months at a time renewals). That's 65 fucking million bucks a month of revenue.
How many sparkle ponies do you suppose they would have to sell to cover a FTP transition? -
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Rift (one of the most similiar games to WoW I have played ina long time) going F2P will probably hurt them some too. I was a massive WoW player for years, and since I stopped subing have been through quite a few F2P mmo's looking for a good one. GW2 held my attention for awhile, but Rift seems to be my new drug at the moment :)
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