I don’t think a company making a 12+ age game should have a kind of laissez-faire freedom to pursue whatever business, design, or monetization efforts it wants under the guise of liberalism where it falls upon the consumer to protect themselves from the deliberate ills of said company.
Whether it is legal or illegal, I certainly think it is immoral on the part of the company, in this case Blizzard. And I don’t think Blizzard’s immorality is excused on the basis of people being responsible for their own actions and decisions. Especially not in the context of a video game that is made for a younger audience by a company that actively seeks to manipulate their actions and decisions for their own business ends.
Its not impossible just requires a lot of time, though there is nothing that shows hes account is bought. all the achievements have different dates etc.
please educate yourself before you throw false accusations around
that guy is a and has 0 idea what hes talking about but he think he does
also blizzard removed item/mount merging in 2020 or 2019 so it makes 0 sense that its merged when all the mounts are after 2020? xD again not to mention that all the achievements has different dates, it wouldnt have that if its a merged account
First of all, don’t make PEGI something it’s not. It’s only labeled 12+ because the PEGI rating system says so. What does it mean, well, not so much other than:
Video games that show violence of a slightly more graphic nature towards fantasy characters or non-realistic violence towards human-like characters would fall in this age category. Sexual innuendo or sexual posturing can be present, while any bad language in this category must be mild.
It doesn’t say anything about other aspects of the game.
Second, in the end of the line it’s always up to the customer…to act responsible. And if it’s regarding an underage person, we have legal guardians that ought to step up.
That last part…well…I don’t know many commercial companies who do not partake in that. Marketing in that sense is pure and utter manipulation. Making us want something we didn’t even know we needed.
But also, I don’t think I follow what you’re saying anymore. It started with drop rates, afaik. And if that’s a damaging design, I’m honestly not sure what kind of design would be ‘moral’ instead. In the end any and every reward structure leans on psychological effects it causes. So sure, we should be wary of it. But…there are alternatives, currently often used, which are much much worse, and damaging to the user.
I think it leans up to the point; whose responsibility is it how much we play? And whose responsibility is it to determine what we spend that time on? In my opinion this will always be the individual. Enforcing this by law will be quite…impactful to say the least.
At some point, it falls to players (Or their parents/caretakers, if the player is a minor) to have at least some sense of responsibility, it doesn’t excuse Blizzard’s actions, but like it or not, these things happen (And as far as predatory practices go, encouraging people to play more is beginner stuff), so people are going to have to wise up to it, we can’t take the rough edges off everything, so we’ll have to learn to navigate a world with said edges.
“Corporations don’t have your best interests at heart” is an important (If galling) fact of life, but expecting those same corporations to take responsibility is really naive, they won’t.
My point being that it’s a video game for young people. Video games generally are.
I disagree. And I suppose that’s a question of individual freedom and market-driven consumption, versus the collective well-being through state control and regulation.
And not that I am a bleeding red communist or anything, but I generally think that the video game industry needs more legislation and regulation than it currently operates under – and Blizzard’s games, including WoW, are no exception to that. I’d say, and have said, that a lot of Blizzard’s game design is ethically questionable.
Bit torn on this myself. Personally (and this is coming from a stubborn, rarity-obsessed gamer), I think rarity just doesn’t carry the same weight today as it did back in the early days. Seeing a Scarab Lord or someone on the Zulian used to be a mini event, the whole server noticed: here’s this one person with THE thing. Players were always crafting a story around their character and that came from whatever made them stand out in the world (Nick Yee’s “Daedalus Project” is a good read on how social structures in games shaped player behaviour between 2001-2009, basically a survey illustrating how the desire to stand out and collect rare items motivated a significant part of the player base)
So, the value of a rare thing is almost entirely social, its worth goes up the fewer people have it. Yet if nobody notices, or nobody cares, then what is it really, besides just another line of code? Which takes us to today’s reality: the overwhelming abundance of mounts and transmogs and titles, toys and pets, literally hundreds of collectibles. Does adding a few more rare ones to the pool really mean much, other than maybe your collection number going up? Not sure.
I mean, if you look at the newer player, they most likely don’t know (or care) what a “Champion of the Naaru” is, most are just here for a quick session before jumping into another game with their buddies. WoW isn’t the center of attention anymore, and neither is the black protodrake from a thousand years ago.
And that’s not to say no one cares about cool stuff these days, players still value having something not everyone else has (hello Mage Tower), but it just matters a lot less now when it’s clear as day, that gamer attention spans have shifted and WoW is just too bloated with stuff to notice.
Sure, it’s logical to preserve some rarity in an MMO (and Blizzard of course wants to keep long-term goals from a business perspective, so very much doubt they’ll just serve everything on a silver platter, during some random event) but I’m afraid it makes little sense to insist on exclusivity when the game design is focused on “collect them all - collect them asap”. I say this as much to myself as to anyone else.
I mean how should any group of people agree on what is to long for a grind?
Especially as drop chances are a luck thing.
It can go like with my green proto wich was from my first egg back in wotlk and then I got it again from the second wich is super lucky.
Or it can go like the stratholm mount wich I afte rover 1000 tries still don’t own.
And for drop grinds this could be solved relatively easy if they sit down and experts decide how many tries are ok and when it starts to be bad for the people.
But what do we do when it comes to grinds like dark souls bosses.
That whole genre of games is based on hitting your head against a brick wall until you can see the patterns
I said that this event is indicative that the default design of mount drops et al. is punishing. Specifically that the effort / reward ratio is incredibly unforgiving, to such a degree that Blizzard can double the drop chances and they will still be the equivalent of a needle in a haystack.
I then went on to say why I believe this kind of game design is bad for a number of reasons, and I afterward elaborated on why I think it is bad. And then I ended by saying that it is reflective of a broader video game industry that ought to face more legislation and regulation to curb certain behaviors and trends in business, design, and monetization.
But that doesn’t loop back around to me saying that the European Union should regulate or legislate on the drop chances of mounts in Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.
I hope that makes sense.
It’s not a luck thing if it involves thousands or millions of people. Then it’s just probability and statistics.
Luck doesn’t make a casino go around, probability and statistics do.
Beyond that, like it was with loot boxes, a good place to start would be transparency. After all, Blizzard doesn’t say anywhere how rare their rare drops are. Maybe they ought to. At least then the player would know what they’re getting themselves into.
I would say that rare drops are a zero sum game. You either come out with the drop or you come out with nothing.
Leveling on the other hand is a constant progression where every effort is rewarded.
On the note of events, I will just say the obvious here, that Blizzard’s interest in us as players is our money and our time. And these events all seek to capitalize on our time.
Blizzard wants our time, because if we spend our time playing World of Warcraft, then we’re not spending our time playing the products of Blizzard’s competitors.
That’s also why Blizzard plans their events for their various games to coincide with competition from their competitors. It’s to keep us here so we don’t run off and spend our money and time on the Steam Summer Sale or GoG Summer Sale or all the other summer sales there are that aren’t Blizzard’s.
It’s worth recognizing that, obvious as it may be.
anyway as someone with a lot of the raid mounts i wish they were always 10% drop chance. one of most painful farms is love rocket where every year im happy friend get it but im acc seeting with sha of envy
Not really, that’s just you and people like you that don’t want others to have nice things.
The thing is many mounts exist because it is likely that someone will like them and use them (or at least used them when the graphics weren’t awfully outdated).
Yes some of the mounts in my collection are just +1s to eventually get to the next collection achievements, but I don’t generally seek out mounts I don’t care about, and I care about aesthetics, not rarity.
No it’s not really obvious. If there is a game that I want to play more than WoW there is absolutely nothing Blizzard can do to stop me from playing that game. You talk about players lacking self control, but you really sound… addicted. I’m sorry but this event won’t have any major impact on Blizzards montly subs or retention rates, people don’t sub or resub for events, they do it for content patches/seasons.
If you perceive this from the player population as a whole and not simply from your own perspective, I think it makes more sense. It’s basic user engagement tracking. You want your users to engage with your product/service as much as possible, as that’s indicative of a competitive product/service. That’s what Blizzard’s MAU scores mean. It matters. It’s what they derive their player retention from – that you and I play their game, and that we keep playing it often and regularly. In that regard it matters that we spend an hour a day rather than an hour a year. And Blizzard’s game design obviously errs toward encouraging us to engage with their product/service and spend time on it, as do these events. The success and competitiveness of their business depends on it.
Even if you feel it doesn’t apply to you, it applies to Blizzard as a business.
If it didn’t, they wouldn’t do it.
Do you think they’re doing events for their games out of the kindness of their hearts?
I said my explanation before was obvious, but I’ll retract that description.
And steam plans their events during GoGs summer sale, Blizzard’s summer sale. And GoG plans their events aroung Steam summer sale, Blizzard summe sale.
And Epic pkans their events around winter steam sale and summer GoG sale nad blizzard diablo cross over event and…wait…comapnies plan seasonal events that happen to cross other companies seasonal events because seans are tied to specific times and…this collectors bounty isn’t even a seasonal event and Steam and GoG laugh their little heads off at folks like you think that Blizzard would think WoW events like this will keep WoW players from throwing money at their platforms?
Oh Jito, you really came to a point where Blizzard is THE devil for you and everything and absolutely everything Blizzard does boiles down to Blizzards greed for money.
Geez, you really should cancel your sub and move on away from Blizzard at this point…this is some serious unhealthy relationship between you and a company and the only way out is to leave…
and has 0 idea what hes talking about but he think he does
