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.
Yeah but if you enter a recession, your earnings will be much less. Even if you fire most of your staff, you won’t earn shit anyway.
So causing a recession seems like a very dumb idea
I agree with you, but from what I’ve seen large corporations don’t. That’s all I can say, and this is all just anecdotal.
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.
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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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!
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…
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 BUY THE PRODUCT FOR FUCKS SAKE.
I’m not defending it, or blizzard, and reading the title sounded yucky
But my quick understanding:
Expansion costs $50
Next level is $70 which comes with digital stuff, mounts, etc
Top tier expansion is $90, which comes with even more stuff
So a $40 difference from base or $20 from mid tier
It also comes with 30 days of game time, so that’s $15
Now we’re looking at $25 difference between base game. Or $5 difference between mid and top tier.
So it’s really like $5 for more digital stuff and early access, right?
It would have been better to just make two tiers. Charge $75 for everything including early access and don’t include game time. Cause subscribers are going to pay for that anyway. I guess because a month of access is hardly worth $15 operationally, it’s a nice way to up charge
I haven’t bought anything wow related in like 8 years. So I don’t have a horse in this fight. The title is just a little click bait (I don’t think anyone thought it’s $90 for only early access, and assume it’s part of a $90 game cost)
It’s not early access. It’s late access if you don’t pony up the extra.
Release date is whatever. It’s irrelevant what the date is. It’s set by the company.
If you can play on X date and everyone else on y. Then you’re playing earlier than the rest
Arguing otherwise is pointless
Essentially it’s $5 for early access over the mid tier. Or $15 more over the base tier. Plus a ton of other stuff included with that up charge.
I think the point they are making is a game like wow, if you start days later then everyone else then you are behind them. It’s not like a single player game, if you’re friends are doing end game and your stuck leveling, it sucks. Therefore everyone feels foreced to get early access.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
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
EvE Online used to win Best Graphics of the year frequently. I dunno if they still do. They’re also the only MMO that I know of to use in game footage for their trailers. It would be nice if the gameplay was decent.
I played Eve for a long time until I finally admitted to myself that it’s very boring.
Isn’t EVE also played in excel?
Only if you want to be hyper efficient. If you want to roleplay a lowly jobber space captain, it’s unnecessary.
You can roleplay something other than an excel jockey in EVE? Mind blown!
For hype, obviously. WoW has literally done that since day 1, blizzard has done it for decades now.
So they can run on toasters AND spend the least on making the game?
“It’s win-win” -shareholders
early??? you fucks are a decade late
2 decades, this game is about 20 years old
Did they lift that subtitle from Warframe?
I did immediately think “wait what are Digital Extremes up to…?”, before seeing WoW.
And yet people will pay it and the cycle continues.
Remember that blizzard is microsoft
Lol it just barely came to pass. Blizzard didn’t wait for Microsoft to become dipshits.
They were planning to do so way before the acquisition went through. Diablo already had this and made a lot of money.
And now microsoft is ok with it. What OS do you use?
The heck does my OS have to do with anything?
It’s very shitty. Starfield did this, but it’s not the same to do it for a singleplayer game than to do it for the competitive multiplayer part of the fanbase who will try to rush the expansion.
It divides the player base and ensures that ingame achievements like world-first DLC dungeon completion or boss kills are invalidated or at least muddied within the community.
Just look at Diablo 4, it had a similar system and all it did was kill the hype. Not that I think D4 would have been a staple without that crap, but it certainly felt like it was damaging the reception even further.
D3 was also a dumpster fire at release, and yet Kripp and Krippi’s co-op run for world first Inferno Diablo HC is legendary. One of the very few positive talking points about that game.
This is stupid, but that’s an awful title. It’s not $90 for early access.
Base edition ($50.00USD):
-the expansions
-a level 70 character
-500 “trader’s tender”Epic edition ($90.00 USD):
-the expansions
-a level 70 character
-1000 “trader’s tender”
-a flying mount
-a transmorg/cosmetic set
-beta for the war within (does not save progress on the real servers)
-3 days early access to release of War within
-30 days of game time
-an in-game pet
-an in-game toy
-a hearthstone effect.So it does cost $40 more for the bundle that contains those three days, but it also includes $15.00 worth of subscription-time, and a lot of other micro-transactions. Those microtransactions could be considered either completely worthless, or they could be considered to be worth more than $25.00 USD
Wait, maybe I’m ootl, but you buy the game and you get a L70 character? So you not start at L1 anymore?
Correct. if I’m not mistaken (and i could be) its just an incentive to re-roll your class for the xpac without having to do monotonous work. so for awhile now xpacs come with a character boost. it’s also a way to get your friend into it by them being able to play with your main if you didn’t want to level a brand new character.
