In the fast paced blog- o-sphere, a lot of really smart and insightful people have already weighed in on Blizzard’s recently announced plan to offer 5 man LFD support to Real ID. I intentionally waited a bit before I posted something. I wanted to read what a lot of others had to say, make time some great (and not so great) debates on the issue, and do some good old fashioned thinking.
Let’s look at the background of WoW “extras” :
For quite a while we’ve had
– Character Transfer (Move your characters to different realms or accounts)
– Faction Change (Change a character’s faction (Horde to Alliance or Alliance to Horde))
– Race Change (Change a character’s race (within your current faction))
– Name Change (Change your characters’ names)
– Appearance Change (Change your characters’ appearance (optional name change included))
– Pet / Mount store
Recently, we’ve added a couple new ones and this is where people really started talking:
– Mobile Auction House access
– Mobile Guild Chat
– Real ID 5man grouping
These extra fall into one of three categories: Mobile Access, Micro Transactions, or Premium Services. I kind of like the Mobile Access entries we’ve seen so far. It started with the AH and while it does allow people to make a bit more gold, it’s simply an additional way of accessing your inventory. The guild chat included with the Mobile App is great. It’s hard to hate on something that lets you chat with your guildies and build the community feel of the guild.
Micro transactions are a good way to make money in a free-to-play game. “You want to power your toon up? No problem, toss us some dosh and we’ll give you stats.” I don’t like them personally, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that style of game. Thankfully, Blizzards approach to Micro-Trans has been non-combat items such as pets and mounts. It bothers me when the mounts that you buy with real life cash are more “awesome” that the ones you get from playing/excelling at the game, but that’s a different issue. I’ve bought a couple pets from the pet store, but I didn’t buy the TRH (I mean Celestial Steed).
The final category is the Premium, fee based, Services. For the most part I’m ok with these things costing IRL money as the cost is used as a deterrent from people clogging up the system and while it may show my nerd side, I don’t like constant character changes in an MMORPG, but having the option is ok. Faction/race/name/server changes really are fine to me.
The new service that has me disappointed in Blizzard comes from the following Blue Post.
As this is a fairly complex service to develop, we don’t have a release date to share quite yet. It’s important to note that as with some of the other convenience- and connectivity-oriented features we offer, certain elements of the cross-realm Real ID party system will be premium-based, though only the player sending the invitations will need to have access to the premium service. We’ll have more details to share with you as development progresses — in the meantime, you may begin to see elements of the feature appear on the World of Warcraft PTR.
Basically, this service allows you to invite your RealID friends (same faction only) into a 5 man. The functionality is amazing. There are times I’d love to run a dungeon with folks I’ve met across WoW and who are no longer on my server. I’m sure you may be wondering why I am unhappy if the service is great.
I have a couple major issues with this, as announced. Unlike the other Premium Services, this provides in-game functionality…but only if you pay more. WoW is a subscription based game. Everything in-game is supposed to be provided for by that subscription.
Arielle (@riftmaker), a contributor to theincbear.com and a host of the Team Waffle Podcast, and I had a brief discussion one night and one of his arguments for making this a Premium Service was that this is functionality well beyond the base of the game, akin to the customization services and server transfers. I disagree on the basis that these are all simple conveniences and time savers.
I server transferred once (well twice if you count my trip back to Hyjal). It’s possible for me to level a new character on that second server. Paying the fee simply allowed me to save the time and energy of new character progression. It’s the same with the other customizations. If I wanted a Worgen Druid I could make one…and indeed I did (yes, I have at least two Moonkin on the same server).
The problem with the new RealID grouping is that there is no way in-game to replicate this service. Sure I can roll a toon on my buddies server and play with him, but what about friends two, three, and four if they are on separate servers as well. MMOs are inherently social games. Charging me extra to be social is pretty lame.
My next big gripe comes from the “development of this service is expensive and Blizz needs to recoup investment” argument. Acti-Blizz recently announced that Blizzard’s net profits last quarter were $170 million. The customers are already investing in development. That’s part of the subscription. With $170 million dollars left over, surely they can pay a coder to finish this idea.
Other people defend Blizz this time with the idea that “Blizz has limited resources and if they assign someone to this task, it should make money.” Hold up! Now you think it’s ok for Blizz to limit the development of the game for all of us to better the lives of a few. That really doesn’t sit well with me.
Still others argue that the subscription has been the same since Vanilla and ask if it’s better to separate charges than raise the subscription. If we have to start picking services we get a la carte then WoW has become a Free-play game. We currently pay a subscription and that monthly fee should cover all game functionality.
Granted, a lot of the time I like to argue things on the philosophical level and while this alone isn’t going to establish a new class distinction in WoW. I do worry about the precedence a decision like this will set. A lot of folks have no issue with the new service as advertised but I wonder if they will say the same when Hard Mode development is considered Premium since not all players raid hard modes.
