With beta coming out on Tuesday I started to think about my Warcraft opinions. I’m still a little salty that Ion apparently thinks that all WoW players are brainwashed lemmings just repeating the takes of the ‘popular kids’ (aka parroting feedback from influencer videos). Anyway, I had a nice little rant about that and then started to wonder why it had got under my skin so much. I started to wonder if maybe that’s because I feel trapped? Constrained? Voiceless basically. I’m not on any of the ‘usual’ social media places (I’m on tumblr and I watch some videos on YT but that’s it). I’m not sure if discord counts as social media but I’m not in anything that the WoW devs are looking at.
The WoW forums scare me. When I’m really looking forward to something, I’m enthusiastic, eager etc. I’m not good at waiting and I try to still immerse myself in the thing. I’ll watch loads of videos on it for example, and I want to talk about it! This is usually when I make the mistake of checking out the forums and the relentless negativity and name calling upsets me everytime. Seriously looking at the ‘comment section’ on YT videos (or anywhere) is always such a mistake. It’s sad and it’s scary. If anybody expresses anything vaguely positive then they are a ‘shill’. It’s like the only acceptable thing is to ‘love to hate’ and that’s just so sad.
I don’t know what I’m going to do about beta because I desperately want to give feedback. Blizz are turning addons off and creating in house versions, and it probably won’t do any good but it’ll make me feel better if I can tell them what’s good, and what needs work.
Anyway! This post isn’t about beta feedback because that hasn’t started yet – it’s about something I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot bargepole, controversy.
First a note
I try and structure my blog posts so there’s a point to them. This is me talking about X. I have never been that successful in making them ‘essays’ in terms of being well-structured arguments. I do usually try and break the topic down into sections to make sure I covered everything, but I know I can be a bit scattershot.
Why am I bringing this up? Because structuring isn’t easy. What is this post about? Well when I typed it up initially it was about two controversies that are currently going on. Then I looked back to see if I had blogged about player housing and found only one post from the initial announcement. That made me realise that I should probably post about my take on player housing as a whole before diving into specifics of any micro topic relating to it. Then I realised that one of my points would be better supported by referencing a post I made about delves – which I haven’t posted as I only just found it in my drafts again. And it’s like, what do I put in this specific post? How do I make it make sense in isolation? It’s like trying to explain part of my brain as these are my thoughts and I fear that I just don’t make sense.
First controversy – Hearthsteel the real money virtual currency
Ok so quick context Hearthsteel is a virtual currency that is used to purchase decor from the store. It’s only a handful of items (19/2200 or so as is currently datamined). We don’t know what the cost is, or what sort of packs of Hearthsteel will be available but yikes don’t ever look in the comments section. People are frothing at the mouth with vitriol and for my own peace of mind I typed up my response. Nobody reads this blog even though it is public, so nobody is going to come after me for this (unlike my fear of posting on the WoW forums).
One big argument I see against Hearthsteel/blizz’s cash shop in general is that they already sell the expansions, and charge a monthly sub. So selling cosmetics on top of that is just pure greed. That the expansions have gone up in price and frequency and it’s too much. WoW should be free to play if they want to charge so much/have a shop etc. Now, do I dislike that blizz makes so much profit and it goes in the pockets of the shareholders? Absolutely. It should go more to the people that make the game, and also they should hire more people. But is it too expensive? Depends on how you look at it.
I refused to buy Star Wars: Outlaws (I still haven’t). I want to play it but in order to access all the content it was like £100 and nope that was crazy. It didn’t feel worth it to me because most games of that type I get 60ish hours out of before I platinum them. Sometimes a bit more but the only one that has gone over 100 is AC:Shadows (less because that’s a great game (it’s not) and more because it’s half live service with all the free updates and I’m a completionist, I like to finish my games). But anyway I digress because this post is about Warcraft, not other games. My point is “what do you get for what you paid?”
I got the epic edition of Midnight at basically £80. Assuming that’s now for 18 month expansion cycle – that’s £4.44 (recurring) per month but call it £4.50 for easier math. I pay my sub yearly so it was £104 last time (again let’s call it £105). Divide that by 12 months – £8.75 (a slight discount off the £9.99 I think it is if you pay monthly). Add together the £4.50 + £8.75 = £13.25 a month for Midnights life cycle. Now I didn’t include the other benefits like the extra 1 month sub, or the cosmetics that come with Midnight or the 12 month sub there. We’ll just call them bonuses.
So £13.25 a month – let’s round it up to £15 for a nice number. At bare minimum I login 4 hours a week for my raids. Averaging 4 weeks in a month that is 16 hours and that is already slightly less than £1 an hour. My thinking is where else can I go for entertainment/socialising that is £1 an hour? – and this is bare minimum! Usually I play a lot more than that. It ebbs and flows depending on what else I am doing/what’s happening in game, but I think I have made my point already.
In terms of “value for money” WoW is very good. As I said I hate how they don’t invest that money back into the game. I really hate the greedy profiteering. I’m not in favour of the shareholders at all! I have limited funds being disabled and I’m just breaking down why I’m ok with paying for what I do.
Now I dislike a lot about the ‘virtual currency’ practice because I can see the psychological manipulation. It’s like how Amazon won’t let you put ebooks in a cart (you can only get them individually) as the theory is you think about the purchase less, and impulse makes them more money. I’m wary that despite blizz claiming otherwise in their blog post, the amount for items, and the amount of Hearthsteel in bundles, won’t match and there will always be odd leftover amounts ‘forcing’ additional bundle purchases. BUT critical point here – it’s optional.
Back in the day when they brought out the first store mount (the sparkly pony) I bought it. There wasn’t warband wide mounts at the time and it was really convenient having a mount on every alt I rolled ready to go. I think I got the second, and maybe the third? As it was nice to have a choice. That reason is gone now. Most of my mounts are available on every character and so I haven’t bought a store mount in years. I get some with my sub/expansions as I mentioned ^^ and also for free I’ve collected a couple because they appeared on the trading post (that flying boat for instance). I really like the purple mana saber in the store but I won’t get it (not unless it appears in the trading post). I don’t need it and I do have self control. There are so many mounts in game. It’s just not something I find necessary.
I think store decor is the same deal. There is so much in game. It really isn’t necessary. Just because it exists doesn’t mean it has to be purchased. Now I do get some arguments because it does feel like blizz is coming out much more frequently with store stuff, and that surely must be taking time for their artists away from working on things in game. But aside from that store things existing doesn’t affect me.
There is another way as well – gold for WoW tokens. I personally have enough to buy in game with my gold (plus I hoard it like I do with IRL money just in case of emergencies). I’m not good enough at making gold to have an excess but for those that do – they can get store stuff just through playing the game. Sure someone has paid for it, as they spent actual money on the token, but that’s their choice too. People complain that these systems are predatory but everyone who plays is either an adult, or should be supervised by the adult whose credit card pays the sub. We can decide for ourselves whether it’s right for us or not.
I choose no on extra cosmetics but I don’t judge those who say yes. I would hope that they only buy if they have the spare funds to do so, but protecting adults from themselves is a minefield. At some point people have to be responsible for themselves. I could segue into a talk about the internet in general here but having talked money, I really don’t want to get into another taboo topic like politics.
Anyway that’s my take on the whole WoW money debacle.
Second controversy – The “race to the end”
Looking at my delve post that I mentioned (I’m going to need to redraft it as I wrote it sometime in season 2 so it’ll sound weird if I don’t fix it), but anyway I think I can paraphrase the point. I’m calling it the “race to the end”. It came up with delves because of Day One people wanting to clear T11’s (the max tier) because of the rewards (gilded crests/hero track in vault etc.) but that sort of mentality is rife across all content.
It’s now hit player housing as I saw in a video about how people were stressing about getting everything done for launch. I can sympathise a bit with the delve thing because that is about player power, in a limited time event (the season) and delves don’t have any catch-up options for gilded crests (but more about that in the delve post). None of that though applies to player housing which with everything people are stressing about collecting (from old content) is going to be evergreen. There’s literally no time limit and there’s no penalty for ‘falling behind’ because it’s like building with lego. There’s no power linked to it, just personal satisfaction that can be done on anytime frame to suit the individual.
Day one is just day one. It is a start, not an end. AND blizz said they want player housing to feel like it’s been part of the game forever and not a new addition.
I started playing in Wrath so there was the game + 2 expansions worth of content. There were different classes, races, two factions. The achievement system was in. Mounts could be collected (even if only on one character). There were reputations etc. It was a lot. It was easy to get overwhelmed but like when I get a new PS5 game I’m not expecting Platinum at the end of my first play session. Pick one quest, one trophy, one aspect of the game and work on that, complete it and move to the next. The old “Rome wasn’t built in a day” thing.
This isn’t new in Warcraft. They added the transmog system and at first you had to keep everything in your bags. So you had to farm stuff you had maybe once vendored if you wanted to mog it again, and keep it, and then when you ran out of space maybe delete it and then maybe have to re-farm it if you changed your mind and wanted it again. Then they introduced the wardrobe and anything you hadn’t got in your bags at the time had to be re-collected. They introduced pet battles across all the old world, and past expansions, plus the current expansion at the time. They added pets to raids (a new reason to go there) and this was pre-wardrobe so maybe you farmed for weeks for the pets, then a couple of years later have to farm for weeks for all the transmog. We now have account wide transmog unlocks! All that leather/mail/cloth I deleted on my paladin – got to re-farm that.
My point is there is always new stuff that goes back to old stuff. Either you did the old stuff and have to do it again, or you never got round to it to begin with. Either way literally nothing has to be ready day one. It’s not a race – it’s a journey. If you are mad excited for housing (I am pretty stoked) then shortlist some items you super want immediately and go after those. But you don’t have to go after everything all at once because you can’t. Just like you can’t go for raid achievements, at the same time as PvP, at the same time as pet battles, at the same as levelling a new alt etc. You are just one person so take it one step at a time.
This is now when some people would be very snide in the comments section and say it’s people “wanting the reward but not actually wanting to play the game” and I feel like that’s unfair. Fear of being left behind is a legit social anxiety. Plus I suppose it depends on what people think of as ‘the game’ as with player housing designing layouts, and building the place, is like a game mode of its own. Gathering all the items to collect them, that’s sort of a separate game. So for folks that just want to build, and don’t want to have to do all the varied activities to collect the stuff, I get it. Nobody likes/is good at all aspects of the game. For instance I’m unlikely to ever be able to get any PvP decor, it’s just not my thing.
Anyway, I think I’m straying off topic because I mean everything I have said, both in terms of the sympathy for people feeling this pressure, but also in my solid belief that there should be no stress about this as folks can take all the time they want. I think it says something about the general mentality so many folks have in Warcraft that they want to be done, and to have all the things, and they aren’t really considering that the journey to get there is part of the game. It’s like seeing it as a series of checkboxes, and just wanting the reward, rather than thinking about the activity and oh now I got the reward for doing the thing.
We don’t have to “race to the end”.