So buying the expansion gives you a lot of the story. But you have to wait for updates/patches for more of the story to be released.
If you bought the expansion, shouldn't you be able to play the main storyline through? Additional updates are cool, but isn't it incomplete? In a way a partial product to keep you subbed?
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I am tired of being ripped off an I don't NEED any game,i am not some addicted junkie,i am the consumer,they need to conform to us not the other way around.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I refuse to fiscally support their efforts till they understand I am the costumer and I should not have to pay for anything!
I will say, though, that I thought they used to give 30 days of game time with the regular $40 box and now I think you need to buy the deluxe $60 box to get that, which is lame. People buying the expansion should get a month to see the launch content.
That kind of stuff just makes this place special.
There should be plenty of other content to keep you subbed in the expansions without affecting solo storyline (dungeons, crafting, new classes, pvp, etc.)
Or did WoW go F2P or something. Honestly I have no idea.
But last I knew (and I could be very wrong) WoW was still a sub based game, so, you're not paying the Sub for Expansion content, you're paying the sub to get access to the game in the general sense.
As for spanning out the Story to keep people subbed into the game, that is brilliant really, sounds like a trick they picked up from GW2, where they release story content in some small intervals, free to anyone that is actively playing, so people stay around playing the game for the free content updates. (with the idea that if they can keep players coming back and playing, they will spend money.. obviously)
I would like to feel your outrage, and no doubt it feels like they are playing you with this latest trick, but, come on, that is the whole nature of how subs work, from making things with impossibly slow grinds, to flat out time gated content, to rare spawns that are a type of randomized time gate (That is a real pisser), to a slew of other ways they put in means to stall progress that mask as gameplay, the goal is to get players to maintain an active sub, that is how they make their money.
This is just their newest trick.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Used to be you would get all the expacs after the next one came out, but not played in long time other than classic so i have no idea what retail looks like since pandaria.
So for a sub for a month you can play classic and every expac except the latest. is the way it used to be unless things have changed.
Anyhow if you can still play old the stuff...you could wait i guess. Or pay the early access fee:P That's what the expac price is really:P
Just .... Brilliant!
I get where Twisted is coming from. You who scoff are off base, in my opinion. They put out a story-based expansion. That should include the whole story. Or charge less for an the incomplete parts of it. They finish the story in bits and pieces, released here and there.
Is it fair? Not one tiny bit. Is it business as usual? You bet!
As for this:
It's not like Activision/Blizzard is hurting. They still getting over $15 million each month yet (1 million subs)? Did they do massive layoffs lately?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
We had Empires run by Emperors, we had Kingdoms run by Kings, now we have Countries...
I'm trying to rethink my perspective, maybe WOW is a different beast (unlike other MMORPGS/DLCs that have complete storylines day 1).
Agree with others, maybe I should see WOW differently. I guess it would help to see expansions more as a new MMORPG launch... with content delivered throughout the product lifecycle to complete the storyline.
I was reading a small poll of players that said from the last expansion (BFA)- strickly doing the main storyline was about 100hrs, but most spent about 350hrs in game.
I won't complain about the Xpac + sub business model since I prefer that over any other MMORPG payment models but from purely a game play perspective it's kind of disappointing to go trough the whole Shadowlands story quest content and not see a final resolution for Sylvana and all the other faction leaders. I'm not crazy about this "stay tuned" crap either.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I only played a couple days of shadowlands and didn't even go back to classic after. Oh and to be repetitive for me the subscription isn't the issue.
Case in point, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the whole thing was shot all at once, and then it was broken down into Three Movies, and had time gated release dates. This obviously to give people time to watch the movie, buy all the apocopate merchandise, and allow it to simmer in and maximize their hype time and profits, and then the next movie was released, all new merchandise was released, all new hype, and it keeps the fans involved, it keeps the hype alive, and it keeps the profit from merchandise flowing.
Sure they could have released all 3 movies on day 1, allowed the masses to gorge on something like like 9 hours of movie, and burn out in a few months. Instead they made releasing the Trilogy it's own saga, and thus milked it for the most money they could, this profited everyone involved in the making and selling of that movie.
WoW is just doing the same thing. You bought the expansion, all content included, you will get all the stories and everything, just with a time gated release.
Now they will say things like, releasing in sections, allows players to enjoy the story as it comes, it allows the casuals to catch up to the hardcore players, so they all talk about the story and discuss the next chapter as it comes, and when it gets released, they can all charge into the next section together.
This way, there will be less in the way of end story spoilers at the end of the first day, because some people can do 100 hours of content in 10 hours.
While all of that is true, and those are in fact good noble reasons to time gate the release of large blocks of story content, so that each story section/chapter can be enjoyed by the population at a time, and not having players trying to gorge on all the content within the first week in a mad race to see who can be first place.
Like the Harry Potter book sales where people would line up at midnight to buy the book, take it home and not sleep till they finished the book. And while that has it's place in the world of entertainment, game developers need to make the call how is the best way to release their content.
Time gating story also allows players to do that one chapter this month, and then move off to other content things, like dungeons, raids, etc, this is something else that GW2 did, where in the personal story, it was level gated, so you did part 1 between levels 1 - 10, if you completed the story before you made it to level 10, then you had to go about and do other things to get to level 10, before you could start the next chapter.
This was done, so that players would play the other parts of the game as they followed the story, as opposed to being on rails from cradle to the grave, like some games, and they lay this on you fast too, like, you do the story and you're only like level 3, and they are all saying "Well go out and see the big open world.. scary AF ain't it! Go get 'em tiger!
I mean, Obviously, no matter what they do, there is always going to be some group that will be upset, the question I guess becomes, do the people that are upset understand why they did what they did?
When it comes to sub based games/services, sure, it's also trick to keep players subbed in, that is why companies can film like 10 epoxides of your favorite show in a month, and only release a new episode for you to watch once a week, so they will keep you as an active viewer over a long period of time.
Same with an MMO, they want you to keep an active account waiting for the next chapter to be released, and that can seem shady AF to the people that otherwise would not keep an active account, but to the players that were enjoying the game, gated release has many advantages as I explained above, their is also good fiscal reasons for them to do it this way, and it does allow for minor tweaks and changes, in case something gets discovered that they missed along the way.
Just saying there are many ways to look at this, and it might not be as cut and dried as you think it is.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.