(Speaking about the "Premium Dungeon Finder")
What are your thoughts on not only this new feature, but "premium" features being added into the game?
I won't even beat around the bush on this topic: I am 100% on the fence about this service. I love the fact that they're making it so that you may hook up with your Real ID friends from different realms, I hate the fact that they're trying to tack on a "premium charge" to this feature. Already there are multiple micro-transactions available for World of Warcraft and I don't care for most of it. I don't like how you must pay in order to move your character, rename a character, or even change your character's face (or sex in some cases); as a collector I'm certainly not a fan of how I must put forth real world money in order to get my hands on certain pets or mounts. Don't get me wrong, I do love how they on occasion do charity pets through the Blizz store, but for the fluffy money generator items? I'm really not a fan.
This isn't about character customization though, nor is it about vanity items that we can honestly live without. No, this is about a supposed premium service for a product we a) already paid for and b) pay to play. World of Warcraft, as much as I love you to pieces, you're beginning to sound like a nightmarish phone contract. "Buy this phone (the game), purchase this phone protector (the authenticator for those of us bums without smart phones), pay for the service so you can make calls (our subscriptions), oh and in order to have voice mail and texting, you must also pay x amount of dollars (transfers and now the ability to play with your real life friends cross realm without having to leave the WoW friends you have made while stuck on your server because you can't afford to actually transfer your main with the 10 alts who all have the professions that make life in Azeroth convenient to you)." One thing can be said about the premium service: excessive.
Obviously I'm not in the demographic of those who would make use of such a service. I simply cannot afford something extra in order to play with my real life friends who just so happened to get their start on different servers. Did I also mention that 90% or more of my RL friends playing WoW play horde? Last I checked Night Elves and Orcs didn't play too nicely together even if the non-pixelated versions of themselves do, and the premium service doesn't go cross factions like that (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this).
While on paper this premium service looks quite nice (minus the price tag of course) and I'm rather happy that they're making such a thing available, I'm going to have to say "Walk thee plank, matey!" to this idea. I know there are some folks who may make use of such a service, and more power to all of you who choose to, but I personally couldn't give two shakes about yet another money making gimmick put forth by Blizz. Cool idea but the premium service certainly is not for me.
This is much how I feel as well. While it's a nice idea, it doesn't much affect me. All of the people I know well enough to care to play with are either the opposite faction anyway, or have toons on my server! For the most part, with how real ID and the dungeon finder works, this seems like a feature we should have had when real ID released and for no extra fee involved. The premium features hold no interest for me, and if I'm going to be spending money on extra game features it'll be mounts and pets for everyday enjoyment!
ReplyDelete~~Brunnstag~~
I agree with your assessment. I won't be paying for that and even if it was a service I would consider, the fact that it is connected to real ID means I would never use it.
ReplyDeleteHeck, blizzard would have to pay ME if they wanted me to use real ID and even at that, I doubt they could pay me enough to ever use it.
I don't think it is worth paying to play with friends when I can just roll on their server or they can roll on mine.
So why would I pay for it?
@Brunnstag - Aye, it does seem like a feature that could simply be rolled into RealID + the dungeon finder. I don't think they quite had the tech down pat when they released RealID though, which is why we haven't seen it previously. I just find it a bit irksome that they're trying to add yet another price tag on a very cleaver feature, making it rather useless to those of us with a more strapped financial situation.
ReplyDelete@Grumpy - I'm a bit of a RealID fan, especially since they removed the super tracking thing that made the system a fiasco when it first was to be released. I love that I can chat cross realm/faction and even chat cross game (it's semi handy to chat with my buddies who aren't WoW players but who love themselves some Starcraft) but this whole "let's see how much we can charge for x feature" is just getting a bit out of hand. I know the tech probably isn't cheap to develop, but it doesn't much seem like something that would cost much to run once the bugs are ironed out. Because of this I really don't think we should have to pay for such a thing, unless WoW moves to a sort of free to play service where we only have to pay for the extra special features of the game, and not have to fork over both a monthly subscription fee and added cash for nifty features.