24/05/2023

Wrath Classic Adds WoW Token, Community Goes Ballistic

I thought that my next post on here was going to be about some interesting changes that are coming to Classic era, but then I found out this morning that Classic Wrath is basically on fire, and that seemed like it might be worth talking about as a priority.

It started innocently enough for me, when I noticed a tweet from loyal commenter Pallais on my timeline, which contained a link to this Wowhead article and the comment: "I have to say I'm enjoying the popcorn-worthy drama some Wrath Classic players are experiencing because of this. ^_^" Funnily enough, I didn't even have any reaction to the WoW Token announcement itself, I just thought "well, that's not very kind towards people who might not like that" and scrolled past.

But then I got curious and checked the WoW Classic subreddit, just to find that it was basically one giant dumpster fire. I can't claim to be enjoying the show, but like a train wreck it's just hard to look away from (and I get what Pallais meant now). The mods have officially dropped the rule that previously forbade talking about private servers, and of course said private servers have happily taken up the opportunity to advertise. In general, people are mad at Blizzard and shouting a lot. And it's weird to me because while I think you can have plenty of reasons to dislike Blizzard or WoW, this seems like such a random hill to die on.

I searched my blog archives to remind myself of what sentiments I expressed about the WoW Token in the past, but I couldn't actually find a single mention of it. It came out during WoD when I wasn't playing, and I clearly didn't have sufficiently strong feelings about its introduction to comment on it in any way.

I can't say that I've taken any real notice of it since picking up retail again either. Obviously there's been a crazy amount of inflation during the years I was away, but I feel that I'm earning more than enough to cover everything I need. In the services channel in town, I often see people advertise carries through heroic raid clears for a mount or achievement, and I'm always surprised that these are actually cheap enough that I'd technically be able to afford one even with my super casual level of play. (Though I would be completely broke afterwards, not gonna lie!) Either way, my point is that it doesn't feel like buying gold confers a significant advantage to anyone; presumably it's something for the impatient or people who want to collect expensive cosmetics without putting too much effort in.

It's funny because on some level I feel like I should dislike the WoW Token more, simply because it's another micotransaction and in an ideal world I'd prefer a return to a pure subscription model. Considering it's very hard to find an MMO without a cash shop nowadays though, I've become pretty desensitised to it, and the simple truth is that not everything you can buy in a cash shop has the same impact on the game. Something like the WoW Token feels like it should be a big deal, but the more I thought about it, the more it hit me that basically, buying gold (whether from a cash shop or a gold seller) only causes problems if that gold in turn buys you things that we feel perhaps shouldn't be for sale (with either currency) but should have to be earned through gameplay.

To bring up an example that I mentioned before, someone who joined the Forks in Burning Crusade as a brand new player and bought gold to be able to power-level leatherworking and enchanting to max within days of creating his character. He was then super generous by always handing out free goodies to other guildies. When I found out about what happened, it ticked me off because I'd been trying hard to work on my professions to help the guild, and here this guy basically bought himself not just a pay-to-win shortcut on the profession front, but it also bought him clout with the guild, which just felt unfair.

In Classic, on servers where GDKP runs rampant, it essentially makes the game pay-to-win in terms of gearing, as the person with the biggest pile of money gets the best gear. As far as I can tell this is particularly prevalent in Wrath, which I guess does make the WoW Token a problem for players in that situation, especially if they bought gold from gold sellers before in order to gain an advantage. With everybody being able to buy gold legitimately, it will likely drive prices in these kinds of runs through the roof.

It doesn't really matter in retail because there are no GDKPs and loot just generally works differently. It wouldn't even matter that much on my server in Classic era either - when the news broke, someone in my guild Discord asked whether we were worried about the Token being added to era as well, and another guildie asked in return what you would even buy with it, which I thought was an excellent point. A new player might purchase a shortcut to their epic mount, or someone might use it to finance repeated respecs, and obviously that wouldn't be ideal... but it also wouldn't be a huge deal.

So I'm not worried. Again, that doesn't mean I think the WoW Token is a good thing, but I'm not going to pretend to feel sorry for people who opt to play in an environment where you can buy your way to victory, being upset that they'll now have to spend even more to keep up. If you think playing WoW should be all about how much money you have, I can't exactly blame Blizzard for agreeing.

13 comments:

  1. That's the thing about Era: the playstyle isn't even what it was in Vanilla Classic. The hardcore raiding crowd all moved on to TBC and then Wrath, and the Era playstyle is far more oriented toward the "casual" or "tourist" playstyle. I mean, you can go hardcore, but what for? There's no time pressure before another expac drops, after all.

    If the WoW Token comes to Era, I'd expect that to be a prelude to a major change in Era itself, such as major tweaks to the content. Otherwise, like you said, what are you going to buy with it?

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    1. It's interesting how different era is compared to the 2019-2021 version of Classic. I've seen a lot of complaining in the wake of this about how Blizzard are just bad at making a good game nowadays and bad developments are never the players' fault, but I think it's telling that something that is technically the same game can be so different when populated by a different crowd.

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  2. Yeah, my comment was intended to be a bit snarky as I'm not fond of some of the attitude of r/ClassicWow commenters. Not that I hate them, but seeing a bit of cognitive dissonance between players who bring Retail mindsets to Classic while complaining about Retail and Blizzard bringing a bit of Retail to Classic was just too much to resist commenting about the situation. (Personally, I'd rather see Blizzard profit off the tokens than have someone get their account hacked by a gold seller.)

    I agree that there isn't a reason to bring the token to Classic Era unless Blizzard just wants to subsidize folks getting their epic mounts, etc. Though if Hardcore takes off like the blazes then maybe we will? Who knows.

    I do wonder if r/ClassicWow will get shutdown or have issues with Blizzard due to them allowing mentions of private servers now. That step felt like more of a knee-jerk emotional reaction from the moderators than a reasoned protest. Certainly I can't see Blizzard interacting in that subreddit again (if they every did before).

    I also wonder if folks will go ballistic if Blizzard (re-)introduces the dungeon finder in the same patch as Wrath Retail did. It would seem that people wouldn't be as upset by something being added that was legitimately part of the original expansion, but again, who knows?

    Oh, I wasn't in the subreddit when I noticed it. I saw it in r/all so that was a sign that it was likely a volatile topic. I wasn't disappointed. I tend to stay out of the MMO subreddits unless I'm searching for an answer. They make me want to argue when I'm trying not to be that way. :)

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    1. It's funny to me how many Classic redditors attribute anything bad to a "retail mindset" when I've found modern retail to be much more chill in many respects than the Wrath Classic crowd.

      I'm not sure why anything should happen to the subreddit when it's not officially affiliated with Blizzard anyway. There are other subreddits wholly dedicated to WoW private servers that have been chugging along happily for many years.

      I actually think that Blizzard doing a U-turn on the dungeon finder might actually be well received by the current Wrath player base, since I still see people groaning about its absence all over. Then again, it's always the unhappy people who complain, so for all I know there could be many who like it not being a thing.

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    2. I did not play much BC but I find it strange that some Forks would buy gold. Though, I do not know many new Forks from 2021 onward...

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    3. Sorry, apparently I replied to the wrong comment :)

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    4. I'm sure most of them didn't, but there were a couple I was always suspicious of, and after I wrote this post, one of the officers confirmed to me that they knew about it but didn't take any action because another one of the officers was also in the habit of buying gold himself... you never know what's going on behind the scenes...

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  3. Hmm... Something that occurred to me last night --but I already had a post ready to go-- was that if Blizz wants to combat botting to the extent they do, instead of introducing the WoW Token why not eliminate Master Looter and change the way loot is distributed? That would blow up the need for gold via GDKP entirely.

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    1. It's what they've done in retail, but in Classic that would either make loot distribution in large raids a royal pain, or change the whole experience massively if they also made it personal loot instead. Or both!

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    2. At this point, bringing in the WoW Token has already crossed that "kinda sorta no changes" Rubicon, so I figured they should have just gone all the way.

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  4. I would never buy gold - it doesn't make sense to me to cheat in a game, that defeats the purpose why I play the game. But the WoW token is part of the game - it's no longer cheating, just a shitty game mechanic.

    The problem for me is that the token immediately adds a real world price to every in game item you buy. Buying epic flying for a rarely played alt is 5000g - or now it is 10 bucks because I could sell my gold and get that amount of money to pay towards my subscription.

    Farming 5000g for an alts epic flying is fun, because it's part of the game.

    But paying the opportunity cost of 10 bucks for an alts epic flight feels dumb.

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    1. I can understand that attitude on an intellectual level, I just don't remember it ever being an issue for me. Many single player games I used to play had cheat codes baked in if you only knew them, but that quickly taught me that cheating my way to victory was not satisfying at all. It doesn't matter to me that an item has a real-world value if simply buying it is never one of my goals.

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