#230 – The Instance: You get what you pay for

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Big News of the Week
Cross-Realm Dungeon Finding Coming Soon. But it’ll cost ya. And according to Blizzard, everyone will come back from Rift eventually. We talk about it.

Rumors & Scuttlebut
Capping Mastery Harder in 4.2. We are in the process of trying some different numbers for various talents and mechanics on the PTR, with the goal of making it harder (or impossible) to cap mastery. What we want to avoid is making mastery worthless or causing other undesirable effects. If we are successful, we will adjust the other tanks to be relatively balanced with paladins again. If we aren’t successful, we know what the fall back position is (basically what we have now). This according to Blizzard.

We also talk about the latest Professions Q and A.

Drop of the Week
The ex-Blizzard dev hopful, Hellgate London, goes free to play! “Circa 2007 Hellgate: London was a wildly anticipated massively multiplayer action RPG. The development team responsible for the game was headed by a group of ex-Blizzard Entertainment employees who had worked on the Diablo series, and fans were hoping they could translate that same kind of addictive gameplay into the online space.

Unfortunately, the game suffered a rocky launch. Patches to fix Hellgate’s numerous (if not entirely atypical for the genre) bugs were announced and then never released. Fans began losing faith in the developer, and many jumped ship back to MMO stalwart World of Warcraft.”

Special thanks to our sponsors this week: Squarespace, Audible.com, Doghouse Systems, and Typefrag.com.

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25 thoughts on “#230 – The Instance: You get what you pay for”

  2. Turpster, king of the WoW fanboys, just tell Blizzard how you feel, maybe they will give you a job. I realise that Randy was diplomatic almost to fault on these matters, but even he took a stand occasionally.

  3. P.s I wont unsubscribe yet but i’m not liking this new show. Dilz needs to speak up and represent the players. The whole reason Randy left was to avoid a conflict of interest, I.E you have the freedom to do editorials. You dont just have to suck up to B every week.

  4. At the Rogue section of this podcast, combat is just as viable as assassination, it just depends on raid make up and the fight.

  5. I can’t believe you would support them charging for an in-game feature.

    Much like Bob, I don’t even want to listen to the rest of the show.

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  9. I used to listen to this show religiously. But it started to go downhill even before Randy left. Came back to listen to see if it had got any better… it hasn’t it’s still bad.

    I also agree, you missed the point about paying for extras. Put the price up a buck for everyone and give me all of these premium features or just fund it from the $15 x 12million bucks you guys make per month already.

    Turpster is looking for a job at Blizzard. The point he’s missed is that we already pay for this and Blizzard (years ago) said they went with the subscription model for a reason. They are going back on their model.

    I have real life friends I’ve met lately who play WoW, they are invested in their server, I’m invested in mine. Occasionally, we’d like to play together… we have to pay more for that? Keep me coming back Blizz, improve the game and not make me pay extra for it.

    People are mad because they pay $15-16 a month… they think its a great idea, there must be enough people that think they would use it, because they are mad about getting charged for it.

    This is only the start I fear…

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  12. I can’t imagine why two guys with 25 year game cards would be so loyal.

    Turpsters assertion that people ought not to be getting upset because they don’t know the details is pathetic. People are, rightly, complaining about the principle, *not* the details. I pay £85 a year for this game- I really shouldn’t be paying any more!

    He also thinks people shouldn’t complain about things they don’t like- because Blizzard (rightly) might change the thing they don’t like. Which is frankly just baffling.

    He’s really REALLY gone down in my estimation over this. It’s a shame really.

    And by the way mate, its “something”, not “summink”.

    ADMIN NOTE: Seriously, if you are going to come to this thread to simply show your bias against a co-host, email him or something…this public trolling has no affect on anything, and will be simply deleted next time.

  13. +correction-

    Sorry, I pay over £90 for it!

    * £85 must be the amount I tell my wife im paying :)

  14. 12 million people, $15 dollars a month= one hundred eighty million dollars per month.

    One hundred eighty million dollars per month x 12 months= Two billion one hundred sixty million.

    When you see it that way, you can understand why they need a few more pennies for a server or two…poor things!

  15. How about if Blizzard just drops the idea? That will save everyone from having* to pay for the service.

    *meaning-completely optional service that is not necessary to play the game

  16. You’re missing the point. It’s not the service most people have a problem with (indeed, i’m the only person I know in “real life” who plays the game, so the service itself won’t affect me)…….its the principle.

    Dungeon finder isnt “necessary” to play the game is it?

    Blizzard make millions of dollars from this game, any new services ought to be part of the subscription millions of people pay- I’m a business person myself, so I’m all for business trying to make a profit, if they didn’t they wouldnt make the game we love.

    This however, is greed- which causes resentment.

  17. At what point does profit turn into greed? Those who have a job could make changes to get by with less, but yet we expect and maybe demand cost of living increases each year. Are we being greedy? It isn’t fair to say the optional service is about greed. It isn’t. None of us armchair accountants have a clue.

    With the game aging and other MMOs seducing players away, Blizzard is hiring to speed up their development cycle. They are also increasing salaries of the employees each year and health insurance is increasing each year, among everything else Blizzard is paying before they can look at the profit, ie. greed and reinvest it into further projects and development.

    They are in a position where everyone would have a hissy-fit if they just increased the subscription price to pay for their increases in operating costs, so they’ve come up with a way for people to voluntarily donate to keep running a successful business.

    It seems every time Blizzard comes up with a way to keep their ledgers healthy, a large portion of the community expects it for free. Who’s the greedy ones here?

  18. “It seems every time Blizzard comes up with a way to keep their ledgers healthy, a large portion of the community expects it for free.”

    But you see, we’re not expecting it for “free” are we?

    I paid for the game (three times) and have paid a monthly subscription every month for nearly 3 years. Thats my “voluntary donation” to them.

    “None of us armchair accountants have a clue”

    They’re not actually terribly hard sums to do from ones armchair to figure out they don’t need to charge people any extra for those services

  19. “But you see, we’re not expecting it for “free” are we?” I paid for the game (three times) and have paid a monthly subscription every month for nearly 3 years. Thats my “voluntary donation” to them.”

    You’re using convenient logic in your debate. Adding options to a product often increases the price. This is what I’m hearing: I’ve been paying for my cable service for 15 years and they have the nerve to expect me to pay more for HBO! How dare they! Just because they have the option available to me, why do they think I should have to pay for it if I want it?!

    “They’re not actually terribly hard sums to do from ones armchair to figure out they don’t need to charge people any extra for those services”

    So you know how much the lawyers cost? Electricity? Hardware? Fiber optic access? Facilities maintenance? Property, health, and life insurance? And do you think none of these cost more each year? Yes, armchair accountants have no clue. I stick by that comment.

  20. I don’t see the issue here myself. Would it be nice to have this open to every user? Yeah, it would. I have RealID friends on other servers that I would find fun to group with now and then. It is hardly a deal breaker for me thou if I don’t get it. They are my friends before this and will continue to be after. Just because I can’t do a 5 man instance is no big deal.

    I don’t see this as greedy on Blizzards part. If they find a way to make money off something as minor as this – go for it. No worst or better then selling the pets or mount, remote AH, or the remote guild chat. I started in Vanilla WoW and I’ve *yet* to see quality or my options become limited or blocked to a need to pay extra.

  21. “You’re using convenient logic in your debate”

    No, I’m not. You’re using words like “free”- whereas I’m suggest everything in WoW is very much paid for. *nothing* is free.

    “So you know how much the lawyers cost? Electricity? Hardware? Fiber optic access? Facilities maintenance? Property, health, and life insurance? And do you think none of these cost more each year?”

    Yes, I do. I also know how much the game costs me per year. Blizzards costs dont interest me one bit- and nor should they you, unless you work for them. Are they going to go bust and stop making WoW? No.

    Interesting how you fail to see the irony in pontificating about “armchair accountants” when you’re using that same argument yourself.

    They’re a public company, I suggest you go and do a search on how much profit they make.

  23. Grentix,
    Go back and notice that I said, “us” when I wrote about armchair accounting. I’ve included myself as a person playing armchair accountant from the beginning. You wasted a fancy debate word like “pontificating” on a false accusation.

    In regards to the word, “free” we could debate it for years. I claimed that you and others would like the additional product Blizzard has produced for free. We don’t see eye to eye on this. In my way of thinking, if you have paid for a cup of plain ice cream for years, and then the vendor offers to add fruit or candy to enhance the product, you would like this additional product for no extra cost. I’d call it free, you’d say you are already paying for the cup and whatever is inside should not increase the cost. I understand there’s no reason to expect you to see it any other way.

    In regards to profit vs. greed. People claim oil companies are greedy. They have huge profits because they sell incredible amounts of product. They clear 6 cents a gallon as profit. So let’s take away ALL of oil company “greed” and save ourselves $1 a tankful.

    Blizzard shows huge profits too, (but do not show how the loss of 600,000 accounts so far this year compares to CoD profits) but they sell a huge amount of product like those greedy, no good oil companies.

    The bottom line is that we don’t agree what it takes to make a person or company greedy. It’s a matter of perspective. When/if I believe Blizzard is becoming too greedy, I’ll quit the game and save the QQ.

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