Let's talk: WoW

[Omaeka]

Firstly, I will be speaking only of negative aspects of WoW, but this is not a hate thread. The only goal I have is to gather opinions from the community as I know WoW is popular here, and most importantly, find out why people find it acceptable from Blizzard. There are only 2 aspects of the game I find to be poor, so I'll hopefully keep the post size to a minimum, I am only looking for feedback.

1) The grind to max level; the insane amount of time to hit the level cap, and the overall poor experience the game gives the player. I know WoW is all about the end game content, and that's great. My issue is though, it's 100+ hours, and iterally every zone is:
Step 1: arrive, spam 'accept' on the NPCs quests
Step 2: quest 1) kill x monster, quest 2) gather x items from monster, quest 3) interact with x objects littered around the monsters
Step 3: hand in for boring loot
Step 4: move onto the next area.

2) The monetization; each expansion upon release is the cost of a full AAA retail game on PC (beginning price range) and that on top of a mandatory subscription makes it an extremely expensive game. MMO's these days like to provide the base of the game for free, with expansions either as one off payments or included in an optional subscription. That is already double dipping, in an MMO with little content outside of raids/dungeons, with expansions only adding a handful of content that you will spend any real time in.

The character boost secondly is absolutely horrendous business practice, but not in the concept, but the pricing. Blizzard know that most people do not have the time to level alts and so provide a paid option to fully level a single character to max level... That's great... except it costs £40/$60, that is more expensive than an expansion!! For this price surely you would unlock an unlimited amount of level boosts to be used on every single character created for the rest of your accounts life... That price is absolutely insane, as the only alternative is to power through what is by far the game's largest flaw; the leveling process.

The issue with the cost of a single character boost ties in with the leveling system flaw. People enjoy lot's of different accounts; a PVP character, a DPS + Tank + Healer PVE characters, different class (regardless of roles).
The choice of gathering these from scratch is hundreds of £/$ worth of boosts or potentially thousands of hours spent in the weakest content the game delivers.


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IMO Blizzard are extremely disrespectful towards the WoW playerbase with such a high price of entry and absurd microtransaction pricing, which I find amazing as they otherwise provide extremely replayable games of the highest quality and value in their genres (Diablo 3, Starcraft and Overwatch).

Opinions I'm looking for:

1) Why do people find it acceptable?*

2) Have you quit WoW due to the price gouging? If so what is your opinion on what WoW has become.

3) Would you like to quit WoW? It is easy to see why some may find it difficult to quit at this point, due to the sheer amount of time and cost a lot of accounts have racked up, the idea of quitting must feel like a huge waste.

4) Do you find the character boost to be bad value?

5) Do you agree that the leveling process is poor, and if not what are your reasons?


*I know a lot of people justify the pricing with 'because they can' and I'm not looking for those sort of responses, nor do I wish for this thread to devolve into people who dislike the game generating only negativity. I am looking for the opinions of those who have played it or still do, and those people only. (For what it's worth, I played from the release of WotLK but stopped at the end of Cataclysm because I realized how much money and time the game required)

I am looking for an answer as to why a game with a fundamental flaw, and extremely expensive microtransactions to bypass said flaw holds such a gigantic share of it's market. WoW is a complete package and I understand this, as an overall experience it has a larger world, more content (even if a lot of it is copy and paste - leveling) and stronger endgame than other MMOs, but there are MMOs on the market which struggle to make a profit while WoW literally prints money, and there are MMOs that are much stronger in certain aspects (Combat, Quest variety and design, world design and content to world size ratio) all of which are in it's shadow, and most likely will be until the genre itself dies - which it may never do.

 

[Omaeka]

I always laugh when people say WoW takes a long time to level. It is so much faster than older MMOs it is a joke. Being able to level to max level in 100 hours is fast as hell when it comes to MMOs.

I understand that, but it is still a very long time to spend especially when something WoW does so well is make you want to have much more than one character. I'd estimate that to have an account with access to everything (strong PVP competition, each role in PVE and a taste of what each class offers end-game) you may be looking at over half a thousand pounds or well over 1,000 hours of grinding.

Because the cost of expansions and subscription goes into creating new content for the game. Most normal AAA games give you what you get at release and then make you pay for DLC/expansions - well Blizzard have to maintain servers, pay GMs, and keep creating content. And despite what you think of the content (personally I thought WOD was probably the worst expansion) it is made to a high standard.

There's no doubt that the game has Blizzard's level of quality behind it, but the costs of the new content you get; does it really feel like each of the expansions have a healthy cut of the tens of millions per month profit the game makes?

No, but I don't agree with microtransactions. Blizzard should be made to choose between a sub and a store, but not have both.

Do you feel that way about cosmetics, or just the microtransactions that provide a change to actual gameplay (level boost)?

I enjoy the social aspect more than the content. I like logging on, working with other people, and killing bosses. I'd miss that if I quit. Hell, I did quit for a while and I did miss it.

With a community as gigantic as WoW, it's easy to see why you feel that way. But don't you sometimes wish you could have this social aspect in a superior MMO that doesn't cost as much money? Granted when you lay it all down on the table, that doesn't exist yet, but if it did would you switch?

Very. But i've never given Blizzard a penny bar subs and expansion packs.

What is your opinion on class, race changes & server transfers + pricing?

Yes, very poor. TBC and WOTLK were not great zones to level in at the time, and now they look very dated. I'd be thrilled if both were just nuked off the face of Azeroth.

Would you not prefer Blizzard spent money and manpower on revamping the questing system from scratch - to actually put effort into the quality of the leveling content, rather than the quantity, especially as the alternative is a large fee?

I ignore all the extra charges, the only one i've ever used is the realm transfer when my guild switched realm. I find all micro transactions a waste of money and would never partake in any, i feel supporting them will only encourage more developers to implement them into their games.

When it comes to leveling i always found it important to lvl the character your self so you can learn how to play it in the process. I havent used a level boost yet because when logging onto friends accounts to have a go on their chars i found i would have to spend ages learning how to play another char, i prefer to just level it and learn how to play all the different specs that way, also people expect you to mess up when your lvling up, if ya jump in a raid at max level people expect you to know what your doing and not be trying to learn the char at the expense of their time.

I think charging to change realms is a little out of order, our guild has had to do a couple of real changes in the past when ours got to quiet to raid and i've always had to leave charaters behind as i cant afford to be paying to move them, thats the main thing i wish they would change, free transfers of all your characters after you have payed for one.

Why is it you think that Blizzard charge so much money for only a one time service? The money you spend transfering realms for example, isn't simply the price of what it costs them - like the physical authenticator.

I think that paying for a character boost would be better as an account wide option for every character you have or create, and paying for a class, race and realm change should simply unlock the option to do it for free as many times as you wish.

A price drop on the services should at least happen if that does not. I 100% believe that the profit they generate from quality of life changes or simple services is very poor business practice. They should see the services as a way to help and reward loyal customers with flexibility within their game, not as yet another revenue from an otherwise colossal money maker.