Apr 21
Anti-Microtransaction Bigotry
My general rule of thumb is that when I see something I want to comment on negatively out in the blogosphere, I tell my wife (she rolls her eyes) and I feel better. I’m an opinionated jerk but I’ve managed to keep some of my particularly assy tip-of-the-tongue snark to myself. But … I’m sorry, I just gotta vent a bit. On Thursday Tobold made me want to rip my eyes out of my head. He starts with a provacative statement, offering a possible future where Blizzard offers microtransactional autoleveling for World of Warcraft. It’s a joke, of course, but he follows that with:
“You were probably disgusted by the thought that somebody could pay dollars to reach a certain level or get a set of epic gear without playing the game. But the sad truth is that some people do exactly that. There are powerleveling services, honor point grinding services, arena point services, and anything else you can think of. If you wanted, you could create a fresh account, make a level 1 character on it, then give the userID and password plus a bundle of dollars to a powerleveling company, and receive the account back some weeks later with your character now level 70, having an epic flying mount, two tradeskills at 375, and a complete set of PvP epics.”
I know he’s making a point here, and my eye-ripping isn’t directed at Tobold per se. That said … the level of bigotry, snark, and close-minded aggression people have towards the idea of microtransactions and alternative business models is staggering. While I’m not sure I buy Cameron’s ‘rent a friend’ idea, it’s a pretty compelling argument. Even on top of that why would it be a bad thing, exactly, for Blizzard to offer up special servers that had a buy-your-own-70 service? They’re already offering characters on the Arena servers for a low, low cost; that gives you one specific slice of the WoW experience, at high level, on a microtransactional level. What would be wrong, exactly, with extending that to the raiding experience?
A green-decked 70 would get a ton out of mechanical utility out of high-end raiding, on top of the personal satisfaction from taking on that content. All Blizzard would be offering would be another way to experience a slice of Azeroth. The best thing to do would be to keep those characters locked at 70, too, and offer a bump to 80 (for a fee) some predetermined time after Lich King content is generally conquered.
I think they’d make a bundle on this service, and if the price was right I’d probably even partake. This would be the perfect way to get a static instance group going; everybody chips in to kit out a group, you grab your gear and go. Meet once a week to take on a new instance, and enjoy all the fun of that content without the months of grind to get there.
I really hope they offer this someday. It’s obvious that Blizzard is intent on the max-level experience being ‘the game’, and every barrier between players and that goal seems to be made to be broken. They’ve already reduced the time investment required … now all that remains is to demolish that fence completely.
9 comments9 Comments so far
Just to clarify for anyone who might not know, my “rent a friend idea” was basically that there’s no difference between a friend giving you 5000g for your epic mount and a stranger whom you paid giving you 5000g for your epic mount from a gameplay perspective.
In other words, buying gold is a lot like renting rich friends who will shower you with gifts. If you have a problem with gold-buying, you should have a problem with sending your friends money and items. If you think gifting is fine, then you should have no problem with gold-buying (why does it matter how people make their friends out of the game).
Saying that one is fine and not the other is just imposing your personal moral standards on other people (which I’m guessing most of you are against). There’s virtually no difference from a gameplay perspective and the impact it has on the game.
And before you start complaining about the negative effects of gold farmers… plenty of gold farmers are legit. I’ve never been harassed by one, and I’ve been playing these games for 10 years (more if you count MUDs). Would you still have a problem with gold buying if hacks and bots were out of the question?
If so, then yeah… that’s just being a snob.
I feel your pain, so to speak. (But can you actually throw “eye ripping” at somebody?)
I almost never go into the RMT discussion because I have something of a “so what” attitude on the subject. But I tend to be focused on PvE and don’t view somebody buying their way in as in any way diminishing my own fun.
I find that if you have more time than money, you are anti-RMT. If you have more money than time, you are pro-RMT. Exceptions abound of course. For me, it is all about what I value more. Right now, time is more precious than money so I generally would have no problem with an RMT server and I just might play on it.
Example: My wife has a level 70 in WoW and she PvPs all the time. I have a level 40. I do not have the time (or interest) to grind to 70 so I can join her. However, if I could pay $100 and have him boosted to 70 I would probably do it, just so I can play alongside her. To be clear: I would not pay for a leveling service, I would only pay if it was an officially approved option.
I’m with Ethic. While I don’t have any problem with RMT (at all, and frankly I have more time than money right now… I just value my time very highly), I really don’t like the shady back-alley feel of going through less than reputable sources.
I also like to play games with my fiancee, who doesn’t like to grind. I would happily magic her up to 70 for a fixed price so that she could play with me and my other friends, but that’s not an option (and again, I don’t want to mess with PLing services– too dangerous for my liking).
Hacks and bots aside, it’s the freaking in-game SPAM that drives me nuts about the third-party RMTers. I don’t want my in-game mailbox filled with the stuff. I don’t want to have to click “ignore” five hundred times a minute when I’m in a major commerce hub in the game.
I’m also almost exclusively a PvE player, so I am not really impacted by people buying their way to the top. But I still want to smack everyone who avails themselves of these third-party services because of the goddamn spam.
It’s nice to see a little balance in the discussion of RMT. Those opposed to microtransactions are often vehemently so, and there is little room for calm, rational consideration of the pros and cons.
I think most of the objections are from people who would object to the introduction of RMT into their EXISTING game spaces. Spaces where the currency of achievement has always been time and effort.
If someone wants to start up a new game with RMT built into its core, more power to ‘em. But to introduce it into an existing game community would be seen, justified or not is irrelevent from a customer point of view, as devalueing the effort put in by player up to that point.
I think, simply put, that’s the main objection.
Of course there is a fear that should an RMT game, like ZT Online, suddenly balloon to WoW-like popularity, that all future games will follow. And I’m sorry, I’m cool with Pay-to-Play, but Pay-and-Pay-and-Pay-to-Remain-Competitive is not happening. I’ll find a different hobby.
(Google “Gamble your life away with ZT Online” for an extreme example.)
Very nice writeup, with some excellent points covered here!
As the leading provider of in game, micro transaction software for publishers, we’re always happy to have a read of both sides of the coin of micro transactions. Subscription based play has it’s own merits, as does free to play, micro transaction based play.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be one or the other, but rather, micro transaction based play simply offers a certain type of gamer to play how they’d like (i.e. different costumes), vs. the hard core gamer who may benefit more from a subscription based model.
Agreed 100% about the time vs. money factor. This is actually one of the compelling arguments in the free to play arena right now. Some people have more than enough time on their hands, and are perfectly happy to grind. Others have little time on their hands, but have no problem to pay a little bit more to enjoy the ‘end game’ content.
Incest….
Incest….