Take your money and spend it somewhere else. That’s the only sound corporations can hear.
spends money in call of duty
It’s already too late. The time for us to shut this shit down was Diablo 4. Now that Blizzard knows their fanbase of rubes will pay extra for a headstart, expect to see this as the norm for all future releases.
I’m at Disneyland with my family RN and we mainly came because this week was insanely cheap for hotels. My hotel basically touches the convention center and there is almost no one here for blizzcon. It’s dying.
The conversations I’ve overheard are so sad. They all justify simping for blizzard like addicts. So much random misogyny too.
I used to love blizzard games but just the people I’ve listened to concern me.
It started long before. I remember boycotting d3 when the auction house came out and i stopped wow a decade ago because you are paying monthly for a savegame plus microtransactions.
I can buy way better indie games for that price or keep playing guild wars 2 which has no sub.
I mean this sort of thing in general started way before Diablo 4. Gamers have been licking the boots of publishers for a dozen years now. They tolerate DRM that kneecaps performance, they tolerate subscription fees, they tolerate microtransactions, they tolerate always-online games, they tolerate games that require 3rd-party accounts and EULAs, and they tolerate unnecessary bullshit launchers that are jam-packed full of spyware and ads. They would have tolerated the Unity bullshit too but Ricky boy boiled the frog too quickly.
Short memories. As just an observer, the time to stop was at least “Do you guys not have phones?”
D4? Why?
D4 was the first of their games to charge extra for early access by attaching it to premium editions.
I honestly don’t understand people. Just don’t buy the fucking game then.
You’re taking about wow. That’s like telling a junkie not to buy their next fix.
Tell me about it. This was a long time ago but I remember one of my friends couldn’t even go a day without doing his dailies. He wasn’t even interested in WoW anymore, he was playing a bunch of other games. But he absolutely had to login every day just to do his dailies then log out and play the game he actually wanted to play.
This went on for months. When we asked him why, he would just say he didn’t want to miss out and fall behind. Bro, you aren’t even interested in the game anymore…
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I don’t game much either there’s days.
I want to though. Nothing holds my interest like it used to. When a fromsoft game or a deep crpg comes out that isn’t made by Larian I love every minute of getting sucked in but it’s all over too quick and I’d rather play checkers with the wall than pull the lever on another digital skinner box. It doesn’t appeal. It never did. Fuck off.
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This is what I’ve been doing with Eve Online for about 10 years. I login every couple months just to make sure my training queue isn’t empty. I don’t even know how to pilot any of the ships I’m trained in now.
Hey, I finally kicked my WoW habit.
I mean I started FFXIV right after, but it’s a start!
Just keep it to one character. FFXIV gates your reward endgame. You can’t just farm as much as you want. So you don’t have to spend too much time keeping up.
But if you start running multiple high level characters you have a problem.
We need a rehab MMO for them that gets them the same high but is easy to unhook from.
https://piped.video/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc
Idk, can’t load piped…
I didnt fall for it with diablo 4 this time, all my friends that blasted through it in a week are no longer playing and I can buy it when its $20 if at all.
Tired of anything from Activision blizzard at this point.
do that with most games. life is bettee that way
I had such hopium for diablo 4, but they just made the game worse with every patch. It was decently fun when it launched, but they introduced more tedium into everything each patch. Plus when the new season started and you had to do everything over again, it killed my enjoyment of the game
early??? you fucks are a decade late
2 decades, this game is about 20 years old
And yet people will pay it and the cycle continues.
If they didn’t stop from abusive micro transactions, half-ass launches, mocking players about mobile phones, overworked devs, a sexist frat boy culture, women leaving over sexual abuse, or a employee who committed suicide (!)… then nothing will.
The average player doesnt know about any of this. The average player doesnt think about these things. The average player is not you or me.
wow doesn’t have MT
WoW has micro transactions, including: level boost, several exclusive cosmetics (mounts, armors, weapons), exclusive pets.
You can also buy game time with cash and resell it for gold, so an indirect and limited cash for power, too. I know these have been around at least since BfA, dunno if Legion already had them
Not only that, this is by design. They want their early testers to be a small group of people who are heavily invested in the game, both mentally and financially.
Sure, a lot of people are going to be mad about being “excluded”, but how many of them are going to actually boycott the expansion when it releases because of it? The ones are maddest are the ones who most want to play it and are unlikely to walk away.
There was always going to be a small group of players that got to play it before the majority of the playerbase. The only difference is the $90, and that price is well worth it to a lot of the big fans.
Poor Blizzard, they must be failing on hard times, after being bought for 69 billion dollars
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That’s a nice amount of money right there.
That’s for Activision Blizzard, not just Blizzard.
Don’t forget King, the actual lion’s share of the value.
69 billion? Nice.
As entire guilds pay up and see it as a matter of clout.
What I don’t get is what made 2023 the year of the cut brakes? Seems like every corporation has decided to just go full fucking tilt on pushing their consumers to the edge of what they’re willing to put up with and they have ZERO shame about any of it.
High consumer spending keeping the economy afloat against the predicted recession that never materialized. Companies figured they could start charging more and get away with it.
Won’t that risk to actually start the recession though?
The people making the decisions don’t care nor will they be affected by one in any meaningful way.
But they will earn less money, won’t they?
The company will, but from what I’ve seen the decision makers find ways to ensure they still get paid just as much or nearly as much, usually by laying people off and screwing over customers even more.
These companies are purely short term focused. They don’t look to the long term and they don’t care about the company’s stability far into the future. It’s all about hitting the next financial target no matter what.
Profits going down I guess. People save money when inflation is crazy, and if the company profits go down, their stocks go down also. If that happens, leadership may be replaced etc etc.
Ive cancelled most of my subs because they didn’t even provide enough value before the price hikes.
So the people who remain and who are fine with paying YouTube or Netflix, they will have to pay more to support higher profits.
Probably in 2030, people will both pay and watch lots of ads since that gives maximum profits. Pretty much how cable TV went.
As an argentinian I find people from the US treating your anual Inflation as if it was doomsday amusing
You can’t use Argentina as a benchmark here haha.
“First time?”
I agree with regards to other studios but, activision blizzard has had no shame for a while, not a new thing at all.
Higher interest rates put pressure on tech companies to actually not only become profitable but also compete with those returns considering the risk.
Who pre purchases this early? The release date is “on or before December 31, 2024. Lol
That’s right around the corner compared to Star Citizen.
People love to be scammed.
Tools. Tools pre-order this early. Also, tools play Blizzard games, in general.
Can’t wait for them do do it anyways and all the fans cave in because ‘muh social escapism’ gamers have some of the weakest spines, the most important point of boycotting g isn’t being loud and whiney its to NOT BUYING THE PRODUCT FOR FUCKS SAKE.
I 100% understand the need to charge for these services, but how much profit this IP has generated should have secured all funding for future expansions and more economical pricing.
Subs should drop to $5mo with expansions starting off at $20ea. Hell make the “Classic” servers F2P.
I’m gonna make my own mmo, with a TCG and Furries.
I’m almost disgusted by the people insisting ‘it’s expensive, they need the money.’
They’ve made ten bucks a month, per player, for twenty straight years. Plus the price of a whole new game for every incremental expansion. How much more money does another expansion need?
It’s not about reinvesting into the quality of future games, it’s about getting a good financial quarter to please the shareholders. Welcome to infinite growth.
Oh who cares anymore. Blizzard is going to do it, the players are going to lap it up with a smile. Just let it be and move on if it’s not for you
Yup. Stop playing Blizzard shit, you assholes. They don’t care about you, in fact, they don’t care about anything but money.
Why do mmo’s always have the best trailers but the shittiest graphics?
So it’s more accessible. You don’t need to upgrade your PC regularly to play an MMO.
Beyond that, WoW is very stylized, and it’s far from ugly. No, it’s not realistic looking, but it is nice looking.
You know what age is beautiful stylized and can run on anything? The greatest game every made Deus Ex
I’m not sure if you have checked out WoW lately, but it’s actually a pretty beautiful game. I think generally they want the tech specs to be a low barrier to entry for a game where they want millions of players playing concurrently. It also cannot be super heavy or things like raids and battlegrounds would chug.
One thing that Blizzard has always been good about it making games that can run on a potato. It’ll look like crap and your view distance will be obnoxiously short, but you can run WoW on a potato of a laptop and still participate in the core gameplay. Obviously, there’s lots of options to crank up the graphics to 11/10 if you have a powerful computer, but I really appreciate that they lower the hardware barrier to entry where they can.
Not always. D2 necromancers used to be shunned if they summoned in full games
For hype, obviously. WoW has literally done that since day 1, blizzard has done it for decades now.
World of Warcraft: The War Within was announced alongside two other expansions as part of the Worldsoul Saga at BlizzCon 2023, and first impressions from players seem to be pretty positive, with one notable exception: nobody’s happy about the idea of paying $90 for three days of early access to the new content.
There are three ways to purchase The War Within. You can get the $50 base edition, or you can upgrade to the $70 heroic edition if you want access to a bonus mount and transmog set. Or, if you want even more digital goodies, you can grab the $90 epic edition, which includes some other tchotchkes, plus 30 days of game time, guaranteed access to the beta, and three days worth of early access to the expansion itself.
It’s three days early, and the $90 includes a bunch of other stuff.
If you don’t want to pay it, don’t.
The only downside in the article is other people might get it. The less people who buy it the less it matters
So just have guilds boycott it
Three days headstart if you’re playing competitively is huge. Is this preaccess going to allow people to start leveling? If so literally all hardcore guilds will require it from their raiders.
MMOs hurt my brain sometimes.
If they do things like they have for the last few expansions, neither raids, neither ranked pvp, neither mythic+ will be available in the first 2 weeks or more.
Realistically you will have more than enough time to level a character to max, maybe even two.
It still doesn’t make it right, or acceptable, but it’s more than enough to bash Blizzard for being greedy.
Gotcha, I haven’t played for many years by now so didn’t know, back in my days the race started the moment the xpac released, from what I remembered. That still leaves things like realm first top level achievements and stuff like that, no?
I think the last time realm first achievements were a thing (for anything other than raids) was in Lich king, but I might be mistaken.
Since I wrote my previous comment, I thought about it, and there are advantages for starting earlier. Reaching max level gives you access to world quests, which can be a source of gear and reputation. It also leaves you more time to complete the weekly objectives before the next reset. If I recall correctly, last time (the launch of Dragonflight) you got an item you can use to increase the power of a piece of crafted gear.
For the average player it doesn’t really matter, but for the world first racers, it might.
Yup. Headline is a bit misleading. But I guess saying $40 extra which includes a $10 game time voucher and guaranteed beta access doesn’t grab attention the same way.
Also includes 30 days of game time , which is $15
