To answer your question, there is no point. If a game has a cash shop I am not interested. I don't play many MMOs these days. Maybe my time of playing MMOs is finished.

No thanks moving along to different game. Guild Wars 2, don't support these companies like Tera milking the customer.

Would anyone else enjoy this type of game? What type of fantasy based pvp game wouldy you like?

I would enjoy a game that has no levels but instead has tiers of Battlegrounds like World of Warcraft, but many many BGs. As your guild wins matches you get points to purchase decorative gear (no stats), titles, etc and you also unlock the next tiers of BGs.

Are there any fantasy PvP battle games out there or is this something that hasn't been made yet? I am thinking along the lines of FPS games but instead of guns you are using swords, magic, bows etc.

teddyboy420 wrote: "The price isn't set out of greed, it's set to be a deterant to guilds changing their names all willy-nilly."

That is laughable. Do you work for SOE, just curious? How about included in sub fee you pay and has a lock out timer on this option for however long SOE would want? I guess that would be too easy.

Your option is the only way ......

Milk, milk, milk, milk the customers .. way to go SOE!

Originally posted by Kothoses

Originally posted by Kothoses

In most walks of life you are correct however in the world of internet subscription gaming a mobilised and vocal section of the consumer base and POTENTIAL consumer base can effect change.  Blizzard need to hear loud and clear that this is unacceptable not just to current customers, but to potential future customers.

 

They have already alienated me from their forums after issuing me with a 4 day ban for saying "/bump for a nice group of people" on another guilds recruitment ad in our realm forums.  However with this system they have made sure I do not buy cata, do not re-new my wow sub and will not purchase starcraft 3 or diablo 3.  Its not what they are doing thats the issue, its that blizzard control the market, when they "try" something if it works most other mmos follow suit.

 

Now if they get away with this and sony and Cryptic follow suit, how long untill they are selling your data to third parties?

 

None of this would have been needed if they had managed their game community properly in the first place, instead of letting them act like little children in a sweet shop.

 

So no I will not be quiet about it, and neither should you, it was only through mass mobilization of the customer base that facebook backed down at all on their privacy issues, and its only through mass mobilization of customers old new and future that blizzard will back down.

 

 

 

Just to point out, that what I described above is exactly what happened.

 

And the result ladies and gentlemen?  So sorry mr Wood, but you were wrong, just like your writers were wrong with the "Customer is not always right" column and various other columns written to be apologists for corporate mmo makers greed.

Once again People power expressed its self in a way to effect change, learn from this.

People screamed about other changes as well. How do you know many did not do just as Jon Wood has stated to do? Maybe many many voiced their concerns and then did quit. Maybe in the past people only made their voice heard and did not actually quit. Who knows what drove them to change their minds.

There was also people sending letters to companies that advertise on Blizzard's website. Maybe they got worried and contacted Blizzard. We can't know for sure what caused the withdraw. I believe Jon Wood could be right.

Smed sees $$$$$$, people should leave those games now. All they are going to become is shopping for digital items.

You knew Smed seen $$$$$$$$$$ when watching Blizzard rake in all the money for that one digital pony. This isn't surprising at all. What is laughable is all the people still playing the garbage EQ has become

Originally posted by katerosk

Find  me a completely f2p game with the quality of Allods and i will stop playing Allods!!!

Guild Wars 1 and 2 is coming soon!

Originally posted by Kamax

News of this patch have exploded in an uproar on Allods forums.

- Mounts were initially announced as free and obtainable through a quest. Now they are removed to temporary and available via quest or cash shop.

- Whenever you die there is a percent chance per blue/purple/orange item equipped to be cursed. Cursed items give negative stats and can only be de-cursed by purchasing items through the cash shop. As well raid bosses now have a chance to drop extra cursed items, meaning you will have to pay to un-curse and use them.

- As well certain items such as respec potions have been removed from quests and drops to the cash shop.

 

This patch is not themed after some Allod named Gipat, it is themed after the cash shop and several ways to force micro payments on the already declining player base. It is truly too bad because Allods had potential, but the abysmal management, GM's asking players to take gpotato surveys (credit card scams for the most part), and treatment of their community has effectively signed a death warrant for this game.

The reason the "free to play" (yeah right!) cash shop business model fails. You will never here that free to play puppet writer on this site mention this though.

Instanced all to death, zerg dungeon runs (no crowd control)  = count me out

Originally posted by Li-Su

Originally posted by SwampRob

I had 7 70s and then gave up when I saw that WOTLK wasn't offering me anything I wanted.   I loved Wow for a time, and as a soloer I loved that you could solo to the top level.   And then Wow is simply Raid or give up.   Bah.   If Wow ever offers me a non-grouping method to obtain the gear I want (even if it's a long and lengthy process), I'll consider rejoining.

Ah this reminds me of why I start playing WoW.

WoW is a game in which there is really a whole game for soloist, during the launch days.  A soloist got a lot of things to do, and is equally entertained, as are the groupists.  That was in great contrast to EQ, in which you can only solo something 20 levels lower than you, and if you do not have the ability to snare it, it will come back with friends.  Yes I can kite, but its not fun kiting every mob for 10 minutes.

However, once you hit the cap, soloing options are largely gone from WoW.

Why waste 15/month to play by yourself? There are many many better single player games that are better single player games than MMOS. Install an in game chat program and play a single player game, you can still chat with people.

Originally posted by Rzep

Originally posted by Arquiteto

Don't you worry guys I'm sure these cut features will be coming to an Item shop near YOU!!

When you think Blizzard is respectable just remind yourself of how they used the make a wish foundation to introduce their item shop. Hey lets create 2 pets and give half of the proceeds to make a wish foundation. People wont complain because its for  a good cause. Then they have their way to introduce items in the future. AND THATS HOW THE WOW ITEM SHOP CAME TO BE.

The Original blizzard was great. Current Blizzard is nickle and diming people in all their titles. $2.99 a month for a mobile auction house  that could further ruin the economy ingame? Starcraft being released in 3 different box sets. So in the end it costs $180. If they cared about fun why do they ignore unbalanced servers where one faction rules 10 to 1. They cancelled these features because it was going to take more work than planned. Therefore costing them more money.

 You talk about all these optional things as if they were forced upon you and you have no choice but to buy them. "Oh golly gee they made an iphone app for the auction house thats is useless to over 95% of the people playings, I sure do hope mommy is home so I can use her credit card to buy this." "Oh noes teh item shop only gives half of the revenues to charity. Those money hungry douchebags should be giving 100%, although I have never before gave a shit about any charity Ima gonna rage and whine till someone listens." This is what I see in your post.

I underlined what I saw in your obnoxious post. You may be okay with paying more for less but some of us are not. The consumer is in control of what they will buy, and I choose to say no.

Richard is a puppet for the industry that is all. After, all he has to eat. If they paid me to  cram this scam "F2P" down people's throats untll they accepted it, I may too.

There is nothing free about these "F2P" games. They should stop calling them that. They always will end up costing the customer more than P2P .. why in the hell do you think they are migrate to this model and paying people like Richard to be the spokes person for it.

Yeah, Richard may say he isn't a puppet for the industry but I believe other wise. No customer in their right mind would push for a system to pay more and get less.

EQ Live is ruined pile of garbage now. It is so mixed up with layers of layers of noncohesive junk. EQ up to the trilogy was great.

I know of a private game project that is busy with activity though, pm me if you would like to know the game I am playing.

---

Originally posted by thark
Most of you seem to forget one thing, Icarus is a small company, and without many subscribers they need all the money they can get their hands on..
Maybe they are doing this in hopes of saving the game, I find it hard to believe greed is the reason for selling 2 rather low level items(wich makes them fluff items)..
Instead of quitting you should support Icarus in the struggle to save this game and even buy these items from them.
The Googles look very cool :)

Yes Yes I know...Item shop is bad, but It's has also been shown that Item shops are here to stay, just look at DDO and what soon will happen to LOTRO....For what it's worth everyone can now play DDO and one day they might become subscribers.
 
/Junker

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Now these are going to be extreme examples but if we had this attitude about all things in life there would only be the Catholic church and USA would not be independent of Britain

Originally posted by Reklaw

Originally posted by kaiser3282

Originally posted by madeux

Originally posted by qombi

 

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Originally posted by zeowyrm
If, as you say, games are entertainment, wth do you care how we enjoy them?

---

The thing is you are not enjoying the games. You are paying for the game, expansions, monthly fee if any, and then paying extra to skip the game. Apparently you didn't have time to read the whole post or you would realize this post was meant to show if you didn't buy into this, you would get the games you want without these grinds and time constraints you want to buy your way through.

Keep buying in that cash shop, you are only hurting yourself.

 

Part of the game is fun.  Part of it isn't.  If someone wants to pay in order to skip the un-fun portions, so they can spend more time doing the fun portions, how is that hurting you?

 ^^^ THIS

You dont need to find every single aspect and every single second spent in the game to be fun or enjoyable to like the game overall. And your argument about skipping to the last 10 minutes of the movie are ridiculous. There is no point to a movie other than to get the story, where in a game there are dozens of other things to do besides paying attention to the story (most of which you dont need to know a single thing about the story to do), especially when the story isnt that good or you just dont care for story. If all i cared about was a story, i would go watch a movie or read a book. Im here to play the game and have fun, so if i dont want to waste hours and hours doing something that i dont feel is worth my time, and can pay a measly few bucks to get past it, then yeah ill take that route rather than putting myself through doing something i dont want to do.

 I feel this is what OP means excactly, you pay for a extra service to "skip parts you don't like" instead of trying to convince developers to change those part you don't like into things you might like, but aslong people will keep paying to so-called "skip the parts they don't like for extra cash" so will developers continue to put stuff in your way so that you WILL pay the extra cash to skip it again. Obviously no game can be 100% pure fun there are always elements that some might not find fun and some might find fun.

Unfortunaly I think many simply don't see that and for some reason asume that OP or maybe even me want everyone to play or have fun the way I or OP might want to have fun, yet this topic aint about that, it's about trying to let people see it differently.

The only thing I and anyone would care about would be a fun game experiance, yet we keep seeing people using the excuse to skip the unfun part by using cashshops, not knowing that this gives developers the tools to create more "unfun" things in their games cause they have found the new "excuse crowed" who will pay them extra to skip the unfun parts instead of taking a stand to make developers think twice instead of putting in unfun stuff to create something more fun.

Unfortunaly I have seen that many things in a MMORPG seems to be considered unfun to many people who play these games, kinda the reason why this genre has become pretty limited in options and only slightly go beyond regular multiplayer games. Cause whooohooo we still have the people that will continue to play those games even with unfun stuff in it cause YAY! they will pay regardless to skip it.

And to the person saying he doesn't care about the "next person" I think many of us would agree, I don't care how much money some player puts in a game, all I care for is if the game is fun to play for myself, but there is no denying it does hurt this industry seeing the "excuse crowed" playing it. If only for developers giving them more tools to put unfun stuff in their itemmall games.

 Thank you for understanding my post. : ) I am all for the MMO players. It is hard for me to understand that some people feel this is an attack on them personally when I am only showing how cash shops prevent the correction of the unfun elements in the games they choose.

People should expect more for their dollar, you should not need to pay more to skip part of what you are paying for to begin with.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by qombi

Originally posted by crockopoopoo

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by Simsu

Their update changes nothing for me. I am paying a subscription to have access to all of the content. I don't care if its only cosmetic or fluff. Every single item in a store is something that players subscribers should have access to without having to pay a single dime more than the subscription.

 

Subs Plus should not be an acceptable payment method to anyone. Alternate (other than subs) payment methods are fine (ala DDO, LOTRO) but Subs Plus is strait adding content that requires you to pay a sub and then pay micro payments to get access. If you support companies that are going Subs Plus then you are basically volenteering to pay more money for the same content.

You sub entitles you to the service. Nothing elese. This is where most of the issue comes from, uninformed coustmers thinking they are entitled to more for nothing.

 

 Since when MrBloodworth did this become fact, and what book did you pull it from? Since the industry decided that they wanted more money on top of the sub and game purchases by milking their customers? Well I have to say, I wonder how much the companies are paying you to say this. No customer will fight so hard to pay more for what they always have gotten in the past for less.

He's just playing devil's advocate due to the knee jerk responses seen lately on these forums for something that's been a long time coming (so its not new), is pretty much inevitable, and most of all, for the most part, does little to nothing to impact an individual player's enjoyment of their game of choice.

There's a time and place to have strong principals in many facets of life, but MMORPG payment options just isn't one of them.

As long as the game remains fun, play it, if the cash shops or alternate payment options start to degrade your fun, time to leave, simple as that.

 I disagree, you must speak with your wallet with any purchase. There is a difference playing the devil's advocate and being paid by a company. I am not saying he is, but I do have my suspicions. Item shops will affect you no matter what people think. Things that once could have been obtained in game will end up in the shop, you will get less with your sub fee because as you seen from their update, all these things are not being produced to go in the game which could have been just as easy to do than sticking it in a cash shop.

You will get less for your sub if an item shop goes in a game, fact. Why add it to the game if you can add it to a shop where people have to pay extra? I am sorry, I am not against free to play games with an item shop for revenue, but I will never pay for games, expansions, sub fee, and on top of that a cash shop. Count me out. So explain to me why in the past with your sub fee and box purchases you got the entire game but now companies want to hold back and sell small parts of it for additional money? I will tell you and that is greed.

Only thing in a captalist society that keeps prices from risen is customers saying that's enough.

Originally posted by crockopoopoo

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by Simsu

Their update changes nothing for me. I am paying a subscription to have access to all of the content. I don't care if its only cosmetic or fluff. Every single item in a store is something that players subscribers should have access to without having to pay a single dime more than the subscription.

 

Subs Plus should not be an acceptable payment method to anyone. Alternate (other than subs) payment methods are fine (ala DDO, LOTRO) but Subs Plus is strait adding content that requires you to pay a sub and then pay micro payments to get access. If you support companies that are going Subs Plus then you are basically volenteering to pay more money for the same content.

You sub entitles you to the service. Nothing elese. This is where most of the issue comes from, uninformed coustmers thinking they are entitled to more for nothing.

 

 Since when MrBloodworth did this become fact, and what book did you pull it from? Since the industry decided that they wanted more money on top of the sub and game purchases by milking their customers? Well I have to say, I wonder how much the companies are paying you to say this. No customer will fight so hard to pay more for what they always have gotten in the past for less.