Blizzard felt that selling gold and boosts in vanilla classic would create too much backlash.
But they sold boosts anyway in TBC classic.
And they sell boosts and gold (token) in wotlk classic.
How did they slide into this P2W meta that everyone knows is toxic to the integrity of any game?
They’ve been doing it since the start. Before they could do it out in the open using boosts and tokens straight from the blizzard shop. They allowed countless bots to invade the realms, farm gold and sell it via third party websites. The bots subscription fee is the cut blizzard takes to franchise their cash shop to “malicious third parties”. Really they are just the front blizzard uses to cover their desire for a pure RMT p2w game. This has been the commercial strategy all along as this is much more profitable for the shareholders.
Bot buys sub from blizzard> bot farms gold > player buys gold from bot> player buys mage boost and GDKP gear.
The cash goes to blizzard through the bot farms in the form of subs, the player gets the boosts and the gear.
This is not a free to play game. It’s a monthly sub. It has no real new content. Just tweaks and server maintenance on a game that was designed and built many years ago. The suggestion that they can’t stop the bots is laughable. It is a bad commercial decision for them to do so. They just have to ban the right amount to increase sub revenue but allow the bots to turn profits.
Lets just have it out in the open. Blizzard will franchise their RMT to third party bot farms until you agree you will buy it directly from the blizzard cash shop. No need to complain, no use in resisting. It’s not art or history or a cherished piece of childhood nostalgia for them. It’s business and we are the cattle.
Because they need to earn money, like any company. We should be happy that they didnt made us but the game and each expansion again like most company does when they doa rerelease
They’ve shown with Diablo Immortal that they don’t give a damn about their reputation anymore. It was probably quite a gamble but it paid off. Now they just went all in. No support anymore for era, unfinished D4 thrown at the market and enjoying their share of the GDKP meta by selling WoW tokens, OW2 single player not worth it because it won’t sell skins, Blizzcon price increase etc. etc.
Result: The masses still buy their products and pay their sub fees. Shareholders are pleased. All good.
Because the so called community begged for it. RMT has become the standard. All these people that wanted to (re)play classic wow are not teens anymore but jobs with desposible income. Why farm 10 hours for 1k gold when 30 min of real life work is enough and gives you that sweet dopamine hit of getting a new upgrade from a GDKP.
Same with level boosts.
Why experience a game when you can just pay for it and skip everything?
People don’t know what they want. Some people are like children when it comes to shortcuts.
It’s like explaining to your kid that entering all cheat codes will ruin the game.
Again it’s not “the players” it’s some players and not everyone should suffer for their lack of self-control. That’s why you enforce rules which Blizz, as explained by the OP, doesn’t want to.
They absolutely have the resources, and as said, it’s laughable to think it’s just too expensive to support a game we PAY a monthly sub to.
But since they don’t even pay their employees properly, it’s hard to expect they care about the end users.
Let’s hope Microsoft will do something, but that’s just another set of billionaires at the table so getting our hopes up too much might be just as foolish
I know the answer, and its very simple. Blizzard only cares about making money. People are still paying for tokens and boosts, else they would never let these things be in the game.
You are insane if you think Blizzard will be doing the best for the community while not earning as much money.
The power is the players. If the players stop to buy the gold and boost, then Blizzard would have to wake up. Sadly this will never happen, because humans are on a powertrip, always wanting convenience and safety over quality.
They do very well, only they forgot that WoW is not their only game.
The stench they made at their own request with their lack of competence and disrespect for the community will follow them for years.