World of Warcraft Survey Talks Annual Passes, Paid Character Upgrades

[DugMachine]

Yeah sorry but I'm all for buying 90s. It should be available to those who have already maxed a character legitimately. After six lvl 90s I just can't muster up the will to level a 7th so I will gladly take this free 90 come next expansion.

Will finally have a mage

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

Heh I didn't get the survey, and I was a customer since the original orcs and humans. I beta tested 3 of their expansions, and was a big supporter till the crap they pulled in mists of pandaria, and their response to bug reports on their official forums.

I quit that game this year around april I think it was. I uninstalled it in July along with every blizzard title. Far as I am concerned, Blizzard, and this game and it's upcoming expansion, isn't even worth a pile of poop on the ground. But you just know where there's poop, theres a developer snickering and wanting to make a real world quest to dig your hands into it to find treasure.

Blizzard might be considered an mmo giant, but I suspect their subscription numbers will have a major drop when the next quarter reports comes out next year. Blizzard dug their grave, and now their only option is to try to bribe customers into returning. Not happening here. I am a Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn supporter now.

C'mon over to Malboro server if you aren't already on the game! We have a group here on the Escapist if you wanna stay awhile and chat:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Final-Fantasy-XIV-A-Realm-Reborn

And if you aren't on FF14: ARR and are considering getting it...

 

[Do4600]

Honestly, my favorite part about WoW, and the reason I play it for three months about every 18 months or so is because I like re-experiencing the content, often in different ways than I already had before.

I like leveling, it invests me in the character, there's a sense of growth and exploration and there are at least four or five areas for each bracket of six levels. I suppose if I was playing it constantly for years and years since its release I would have already done everything and be bored with it, but right now, even with four max leveled characters I still think there's plenty more to see and do, paying for a level 90 character would just rob me of that. I suppose I've just played WoW very, very slowly.

Story of my life. I've always thought that leveling is much more interesting than everything else in the game. I remember hitting 60 on my first character all the way back in vanilla. I was looking forward to it so much since everyone kept saying the game started at the level cap. When I got there I felt like I had run head first into a brick wall. Suddenly, the only way to grow my character was to run over and over again the same content in order to get a +10 belt instead of a +5 one. I promptly rolled a new character. Nowadays, with the commodities of the dungeon finder and LFR, I clear the new endgame content once and move on to another character or go on a break.

With that said, I feel like as the level cap gets ever higher, it is only logical for them to come up with ways of making leveling faster. I fully expect to see a paid character upgrade sooner or later but it saddens me somewhat. I'd rather see them coming up with in-game ways of easing leveling for those who want to get to the cap ASAP. I thought the Monk 50% XP buff was a great concept and I don't understand why they don't make it available to everyone.

I suppose increasing the speed of leveling is the logical step. However, I would prefer if they just made more effort to make leveling more fun or engaging, say introduce an incentive that promotes making new characters, like more account wide meta game features or random events in lower level areas that make the area more different each time you play it. Something like...seasons, that would alter the core of an area, like every spring the Swamp of Sorrows is over run with Murlocs and they attempt to take both cities because it's their migrating season or something, and every winter in Dustwallow Marsh there is a large group of whaling ships that anchor north of Thermamore and set up a camp and the Naga cause them problems.

Just something new to give people more to do and more options when using new characters.

I think Cataclysm did that, even though it made some changes people didn't like, I feel that because the whole world was new, people had something new to enjoy while playing, I think that's exactly what they need to do but make it seasonal or something so that it's difficult to play the exact same combination twice.

 

[Roofstone]

I know it's going to happen every time but I'm always disappointed when they announce they're raising the level cap. There are other ways to allow for character advancement than bumping up the number on your character sheet, ways that don't invalidate all previous raid content.

Well, considering the stat crunch. (1000 become 100 and so on) old raid content may be valid once again. Just a theory of course, but it might.

 

[AuronFtw]

Star Wars: The Old Republic has an 'excellent' (comparatively speaking) leveling experience, complete with voiced dialogue and a decent storyline for each class. The game also tanked hardcore.
Why?

Because it was nothing alike. I play WoW muted, with my own music in the background. and I couldn't care less about voice actors; even benedict cumberbatch and patrick stewart combined couldnt make me more inspired to kill 10 wolves. Killing 10 wolves will always be killing 10 wolves, whether I do it alone or with a buddy... or with an AI partner, as TOR so strongly suggested.

The big draw that kept me into WoW was the endgame; which TOR lacked. Shitty space battles, shitty + easy raids, shitty looking gear, and a shitty and boring leveling experience. Bioware blew the majority of their budget and effort on voice acting talent, and skimped hardcore on designers, writers and everything the fuck else. And it showed. The game blew massive chunks. So much that even the voice acting was unable to salvage it. They should have simply made it Kotor 3: Now With More Grindy Shit instead of TOR: The Game We Want To Compete With WoW. The latter very obviously did not work, and decreased the quality substantially.

 

[Eamar]

I love levelling, exploring and chasing achievements, so I play at an absolutely glacial pace (I think I very nearly got to level 85 before I even started the Cataclysm content. My guildmates were absolutely astonished, but screw it, I had fun ). That said, I can see why others might want to buy a 90. I'd personally think they were missing out on a hell of a lot if they hadn't experienced much of the lower level content before, but then again even I have a hell of a lot of alts stuck at low levels. I like to see all the starting areas and stuff but it can get repetitive after that.

I enjoyed the last Annual Pass, so I'd be interested to see what they do with that idea. I'd never normally go in for that sort of thing, but there was no way I was realistically going to cancel my subscription and the freebies (Diablo 3, MoP beta access) were worth it in my opinion.

In short: I'll wait and see what they actually come up with before passing judgement.

 

[Makabriel]

I am glad I got bored of this, as to me they are still missing the point.

Raiding a great idea, but kinda poorly executed. The sheer mountain of grid to get gear to start participating in raids is so stupidly high, it is bigger Kanye Wests's ego. I had a level 85 Draenei Shaman that I would have loved to take on raids to heal, but I could never get the minimum gear to get into the damn things, and since mop had the 'genius' idea of making you have to grind rep to get into dungeons I gave up. Stopped playing completely. I honestly don't get the hype about Blizzard anymore.

Wellll, that's actually changed.
I was a Vanilla Beta player that quit when MoP was announced. (I swore that if they ever put Pandas in the game I'd quit. My guild was quite surprised when I stuck to my word) Fast Forward about a month ago with the Draenor expansion announcement (I love my Dranei) I re-upped. Once I hit 90 a friend of mine introduced me to the Timelss Isles.

I do not lie when I say that in 30 minutes I had a full set of raiding gear and was ready to start raiding. All from OPENING CHESTS.

I felt.. dirty. It felt so wrong. I started to do the rep grind - which I actually like to do- to fill in some spots and found ... you didn't need to grind. Once you were friendly to a group you could buy anything from them up to Exalted. Again, jaw hits floor.

But in a way it makes sense. New expansion is coming. those who are interested want to get back in the game running and in the new raid content. 3 days played time at level 90 and I'm in top tier gear and have seen all of the raid content. It helps having a guild, of course but I'm sure I could have done the same in LFR.

WoW is still WoW. It will never fundamentally change. If you enjoyed it before you probably will now. But like any old friend you haven't seen in years, they do change.

 

[Erana]

My beef with buying 90's is that having a bunch of players running around with little to no experience with a class or game in general can easily become a detriment to a community, and kinda belittles those who did have to level their characters up to that point.

Personally, I'd give some sort of nice (if only cosmetic for the sake of balance) bonuses to characters who did bother to level up by hand. I, personally, would find an advanced transmog system that would allow you to on-the-fly visually equip any item you've ever used as a great incentive.

Yes, I like looking pretty. Why you ask?

 

[Nilanius]

C'mon over to Malboro server if you aren't already on the game! We have a group here on the Escapist if you wanna stay awhile and chat:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Final-Fantasy-XIV-A-Realm-Reborn

And if you aren't on FF14: ARR and are considering getting it...

Actually I play on Balmung. Got put in charge of my FC by the leader who is taking a break. Overall, I been having a blast. It's got the journey, and for the end gamers, it's got raiding and pvp. I'm not a fan of end game on any game. So I been leveling sub classes and even alts. Overall, the monthly fee of $14.99, buys me more than what WoW ever did.

 

[miketehmage]

Honestly I don't see many other options for trying to get new players into such an old game.

Maybe they could stop constantly focusing on that.

Maybe if they hadn't been focusing on that all the damn time they wouldn't have lost so many subscribers in the first place due to how god-damn casual they're making the game.

But at this point the damage is done and the idea of having an instant 90 would definitely appeal to pvpers who can't be arsed with the rest of the pile of shit Blizz are calling a game.

 

[suitepee7]

I know it's going to happen every time but I'm always disappointed when they announce they're raising the level cap. There are other ways to allow for character advancement than bumping up the number on your character sheet, ways that don't invalidate all previous raid content.

Well, considering the stat crunch. (1000 become 100 and so on) old raid content may be valid once again. Just a theory of course, but it might.

nah, it still advances. the old content is further behind with the increased cap, the numbers are meaningless, just think of it as percentages and proportions, so say you're 20% ahead of last expansion content (x), after the next exp you would be 40% ahead of x.

think that makes sense...

anyway OT: while i'll make use of the free 90, i won't buy one. i already have 6 classes up to 90, and i don't wanna be spending more money on it. however i like that they're considering an annual pass again, blizz's pricing points are kinda retarded, you save about 40p a month if you buy time in bulk in comparison to month-by-month, i imagine the annual pass is a better savings, with goodies thrown in to sweeten the deal.

 

[suitepee7]

My beef with buying 90's is that having a bunch of players running around with little to no experience with a class or game in general can easily become a detriment to a community, and kinda belittles those who did have to level their characters up to that point.

Personally, I'd give some sort of nice (if only cosmetic for the sake of balance) bonuses to characters who did bother to level up by hand. I, personally, would find an advanced transmog system that would allow you to on-the-fly visually equip any item you've ever used as a great incentive.

Yes, I like looking pretty. Why you ask?

key point to keep in mind, buying a 90 means you still have several hours worth of content before you reach the new cap of 100, so while they may run around with no idea how to play, it won't affect endgame as much.

also loot rewards from quests are now tailored to your class/spec, for example if i was specced healer i could get a ring with spirit/intellect, but if i was dps spec it would have agility. this should eliminate a few of the issues at least

 

[LordMonty]

Saw the survey couldn't be arsed might go back through me emails and glance over it, I buy all the special eds(bar the original wow one as well it was an unknown to me at the time) so i get all the beta invites, early acess and surveys as i guess they realised i'm stupid and keeping me keen is part of there profit margins.

To be honest I still like wow maybe not love it as I once did but I've been in it since EU launch, coming on 10 years. I don't think any of what is listed in the survey matters too much as long as its fun to the people who play it and none of this sounds bad value, dare I say it... it may be good value if you play wow for the 12 months of a whole year of say a pass's duration its all for hardcore palyers and to cement up the core player base as in the end wow is shrinking and retaining the loyalists... like me it is key to it going on for many more years. This all may be viewed with hate by those who would see giants toppled for entertainment which yes I can see the amusement with that, but C'est la vie, that is the fate of all empires, gods, men and kings.

 

[RandV80]

As horrible as it seems to me personally It also makes perfect sense. Unfortunately there tends to be two types of people who play these games, those that like the journey and those that like the end. The latter group is willing to stick around much longer, so when your game is built around making money off of a monthly subscription fee it's easy to see who they lean towards pleasing.

 

[Sarge034]

So Blizzard really has no intention of making WoW free 2 play. They will just continue to charge for content, subscription, AND put in a free 2 pay microtransaction system.

Stay classy Blizzard, but I'll never pay to play WoW again.