The Digital Continuum: Macrotransactions
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Business models, Opinion, The Digital Continuum
The subject of microtransactions tends to bring out a lot of different opinions in people and sometimes harsh words are exchanged. I've never really taken a stance on the matter, as I've always been a bit unsure of which side of the argument I fell on.I recently had an epiphany on my stance. Everyone that is talking about microtranasctions seems to be missing something important. They're all a little bit wrong. Michael Zenke (one of our intrepid leads here at Massively) recently brought up the subject in a different light and in doing so made me come to this realization that we'd all been missing an important factor in this discussion.
I think we need to stop looking at microtransactions with a black or white lens. Monthly subscriptions and single-dollar purchases aren't the only options available to us. For the sake of argument, let's call what I'm about to discuss something different.
Let's call them Macrotransactions.
The Perennial Problem
I'm not talking about the concept of endless microtransactions, where players buy cosmetic improvements, experience multipliers or better equipment. Those methods just don't appeal to me unless it's a completely free MMO, and many that I play are not. A lot of the joy I get from playing World of Warcraft is due to its extreme level of polish as a game. I wouldn't want to simply buy equipment in WoW, as a large part of what I enjoy about the experience is playing through content and slowly earning new loot.
The first 60 levels of grinding that my friends and I have done on different servers, or on different sides of the game (Horde and Alliance), are what has killed our ability to enjoy the game. To be honest, I've never even managed to get to level 60 in WoW. My Human Mage is still sitting on the Feathermoon server at level 57 or so and I just can't bring myself to grind up. Even if I managed to do that, all of my friends wouldn't be able to play with me as it stands anyway.
In fact, they wouldn't want to play because of that same grind to 60 that either they or myself would have to face in order to be able to play together.
Some of the best experiences WoW can give you are the ones where you and three or four friends play together in a static group. However, all of my friends (myself included) have played out the original content. We would only be interested in coming back to Azeroth in the event that we could start with a level 60 character and jump straight into the Burning Crusade content.
So why not offer separate servers for players interested in spending 20 or 30 bucks on a new level 60 character, as Mr. Zenke suggested? They could start out with appropriate gear that's just strong enough to handle the content at that level.
The Simple Solution
This is the part where I think Michael lost an opportunity to point something very important out. Instead of locking a character at level 70, the key to my version of this awesome idea is to allow players to start at 60 and experience the game proper from there on out. If this were made to be true, anyone could throw together a five-man static group and play through both Burning Crusade and the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King with any of their friends. Hell, most players who have missed out on this content would probably pay for a couple characters, as everyone has at least two classes they really enjoy playing.
Suddenly, everyone would be playing WoW again -- or at least a lot more people than even now. It's possible that a feature like this could bring a surge of players back into Azeroth as it would allow everyone to start on even ground again just like when the servers first launched. Blizzard really doesn't have to worry about content running out, as there's plenty 60-70 content to play with and Wrath of the Lich King is easily coming out within a year.
I can hear all the people who've spent tons of time playing World of Warcraft complaining about this. "What about all the players who've invested all this time in getting to max level?" are the kind of arguments I expect. Well, what about them? It's not as if potential players were going to grind up so they could come and raid or PvP with those characters. You're not losing out on us having our own sever to play on.
Sooner or later most people are going to stop playing WoW, so it's not as if time spent playing is any less meaningless in relative terms. What matters most is experiencing something fun with friends. Nobody is forcing anyone to pay 20 or 30 bucks to get a level 60 on a special server. Everyone can still grind up to level 60. There are just some who would prefer not to, which isn't all that different from how things are now.
Like I said, what matters most is playing something as fun as World of Warcraft with all your friends. It's what keeps people playing the game in the first place -- with a little help from the grind. By going this route, Blizzard keeps some grinding -- albeit in some of their best zones and instances -- while giving friends and family a reason to come back to Azeroth if they've previously left.
This is an everybody wins scenario, even for those players who've been putting in the hours to grind up to level 70 over and over again. Why? Because they wouldn't have to anymore, unless they wanted to. Somehow, I get the feeling they'd rather be able to throw down 20 bucks for the chance to play with all their old friends who have since left World of Warcraft for greener (or possibly bluer?) pastures.
And really, isn't the best thing about MMOs the chance to play with people you want to be playing with?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-26-2008 @ 1:18PM
Blixkreeg said...
With the constant "reroll locust" that exists in WoW (those people, like you, who can't do the grind to 70 any more and quit early, but simply can't quit WoW entirely), Blizzard would make a killing and at the same time deal with an issue annoying to other players.
However, they will not even begin to consider this due to their stubborn attitudes. As a matter of fact, the most prudent concept of merging low population servers in order to fix the real plague that hurts Blizzard, dead empty wastes of realms, isn't even really on the table. They sure won't make new servers to do this.
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4-27-2008 @ 5:04PM
Ghen said...
Actually they are considering something like this. Death Knights and other hero classes are rumored to start at 50 or 55.
4-26-2008 @ 2:04PM
GRT said...
So people spend $20 to buy a level 60 character, then in a month they hit cap and start complaining about no new content. I find it ironic that you link to the "Maxed out and bored" post here at massively but don't address that issue.
I really think Blizz has looked at this problem and their solution was to increase the leveling speed from 20-60.
What would you do about PvP on this server? Unless you're anticipating having a bunch of them, you'd lose the cross-realm PvP solution that was supposed to alleviate the long wait times.
BTW, one other MMO did something like what you're suggesting... I'm spacing on which one it was. DAoC perhaps? After hitting cap, you could start a new character at level 20, if I'm remembering correctly.
It is kind of amusing to think about a server with a bunch of level 60 characters who have no clue how to play their class, though.
Another idea would be to borrow the sidekick/mentoring system from CoX/EQ2. That lets friends play together no matter their levels, and it helps the lower level friend to catch up to his "older" companions.
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4-28-2008 @ 9:26AM
Thrush said...
I agree. The mentoring system in EQ2 is great. I have a hunter I only play with my brother and we don't get to play often so my hunter sits dormant for weeks. With the mentoring system we could both continue leveling on our own schedule and still play together regardless of level difference.
For awhile I wanted anyone with a lvl capped character to be able to create a 60 from scratch, but I soon realized that few people would take the time to learn the class before jumping into a dungeon and wiping the group repeatedly.
4-26-2008 @ 2:44PM
Rich said...
I would be all over coughing up $20-30 bucks for a level 60 character in WoW. I've leveled 2 70's and I dont want to do it again. I am not one of these retards that need that long grind to learn a character. I need about 20 hours of play time to nail it down.
In WoW and TBC, you don't need the first 60 levels to learn to play your class. If you did, you wouldn't have the tards at level 70 not knowing how to play. You can do it quite well in the 10 levels of TBC. The people who know what they are doing will learn pretty quick.
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4-26-2008 @ 3:38PM
W. Graves said...
I got out of tabletop games for a reason, please dont let that addiction follow me :(
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4-26-2008 @ 3:39PM
NekoAli said...
I personally would hate to have to reroll on another realm to do this, but I wouldn't mind doing it on my regular realms. Right now I'm working on leveling a 65 warlock, 35 paladin and 18 rogue, in addition to my 4 level 70s. While it is fun to play through some of the old content occasionally, I've done it so many times, I would be really happy to be able to skip some of that lower content I've seen dozens of times before on rerolls and get someone straight to the 40-60 range. Perhaps an option for someone who's been playing more than a year, or who already has a level 70 character?
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4-26-2008 @ 6:05PM
Mummytroll said...
I don't like this idea. The leveling experience 1-60 (and soon 1-70) is essentially broken. With everyone else at the cap, leveling is pretty much a long and boring single-player game. It needs fixing. I'd rather not encourage game companies to offer us to skip past holes in game design for a fee instead of fixing their game. It could become a disturbing trend.
I'm ok with charging for optional account services such as server transfers. I'm not ok with charging for any in-game achievements. Micro or macro, they are all bad.
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4-26-2008 @ 6:18PM
Kyle Horner said...
Wow, "disturbing trend" Really?
You're talking about a videogame that's meant to be played for fun, man. What actually seems kind of disturbing is how you point out the fact that grinding from 1-60 is completely boring and then say that this idea is bad.
Blizzard has already shown us they don't really plan on supporting lower-level content beyond making it faster to level through.
GRT - This kind of server would be for PvE content really, although I'm pretty sure that the servers would fill up with players not wanting to grind 1-60 anymore so population wouldn't be an issue at all.
Also, the reason CoX can do the mentoring system is because it doesn't use equipment. All their stats are easily scalable, so that system is possible. Wheras in WoW, equipment is incredibly important to your character's strength -- thus making it impossible to simply sidekick someone to a high level. Another thing to remember is that only one person can be side-kicked by another at any given time. If you wanted to do five-mans then you'd need three high-levels and two lowbies, which is far less practical than the macrotransactions idea.
4-26-2008 @ 6:49PM
Mummytroll said...
Yes, very disturbing. Games ARE supposed to be fun, or the players will quit. If something becomes not fun anymore, the game company should either fix it or remove it at no additional expense to the customers. I'd like to see Blizzard improve to 1-60 experience by developing addiional content and giving players more incentives to roll alts, but if they just want to cop out of the whole leveling game, they should allow everyone to start at a higher level for free.
In the long term, if companies can derive profit from letting the players skip over the boring parts of the game then they have every reason to make their games ...BORING!
4-26-2008 @ 6:58PM
NekoAli said...
The thing is.. those boring parts are boring because people have done it so many times. A new player, or new content, is not bored by having done it many times over already. I love doing Duskwallow right now.. because it's almost entirely new. I'd love to see more zone renewals like that as well, it would certainly make it less a chore to level a new alt and more something to look forward to. I'm not sure that speeding up leveling is working out to well though, since with all my new alts, I'm levelling faster than I can support my tradeskills.
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4-26-2008 @ 7:06PM
Kyle Horner said...
Like I said, it's not as if the original content has to go away. Why shouldn't other players be able to skip over level 1-60 if they want to?
I honestly doubt Blizzard is going to do anything like Dustwallow again. Out of all the updates they have done, adding content to Dustwallow Marshes was the minimal amount of "improving" old content they could have done.
4-26-2008 @ 7:42PM
Mummytroll said...
My point is not that you shouldn't be able to skip over the old content. At this point in WoW you probably should. My point is that you shouldn't want to pay for it, lest companies make a business out of padding games with even more boring grinds you'd want to skip.
I don't deny there's an immediate benefit to buying a higher-level starting character. There are also immediate benefits to buying cheap goods made in sweatshops. Besides the benefits there are the consequences for promoting unethical business models.
4-26-2008 @ 8:03PM
NekoAli said...
I can agree with this. Which is why I suggested it be an option after you've been a subscriber for a while, like NCSoft's Veteran rewards, or after you've had x number of level 70 characters, or something else that would indicate you've been around for a while. Perhaps with the Death Knights starting at a level higher than 1, an option will be introduced. Of course, by that time, I'll probably have the one of every class I want already...
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4-26-2008 @ 10:06PM
zulika said...
I would rather pay more monthly, quite a bit more than current rates, for more content - ie a game with no endgame. Or at least one you can;t max lvl in a few months. ......sigh, I miss real RPGs -meaning the original MMORPGs
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5-06-2008 @ 11:12AM
Jonas said...
Kyle, while I do understand the problem of leveling, I do not support your solution. Since the patch in November, getting to 61 is way too fast for me. And some of the friends that I have made that started playing the game since November, due to the increase in experience per level needed after 61, stopped playing their toons. The best thing I can suggest, since you have already played the game, is quest more efficiently.
Prior to the patch in November, my normal routine for my alts, mostly Blood Elf, was to chain it to Ghostlands, hitting all the quests that you get in Eversong Woods. Then after all the quests were completed there for any of my alts I was level 19-21. After that I found most quests take you all over the place, and that is what people miss, there is no need to do every-single-quest you come across.
Blizzard made this game for people to enjoy. And people are different. That's why there are PvP, Normal, and RP servers. Keep that in mind.
Quests are used for, I wold imagine, getting rewards, earning some sort of respectable amount of gold for repair, and maybe some useful item.
I play on a Normal server, so doing every quest is quite wasteful of time, if you are trying to level. It's easier to link quests together that you know about in a certain area, and avoid others that are either way too difficult to solo, or that take you on a ten minute flight from Orgrimar to Gadgetzhan.
Most zones are completely avoidable like Burning Steps, Blasted Lands, Silthis, Ungoro, Winterspring, most of Feralas, Desolace and Stonetalon. Dustwallow is my new place to quest from levels 38 to 42-43, and after that it's Hinterlands till 50, with a few instance runs in ZF and maybe Mara. After that you just lfg for for your lvl 50 class quest, and head to Felwood, and WP till you hit 58.
As far as people learning how to play their class: some are completely helpless. The most minute part of grouping is knowing what to do when battles and pulls are going well, this is very common in most instances at level 70. However, when things take a turn for the worse, that's what people are referring for playing your class. Too many times have I had to tell people to stay back while marking in brd, scholo, and ramps. As well as watching people pull once the marks are up(healer needs mana and the mage sheep pulls), running into the pat that's clearly marked, not knowing los pulls(pulling AWAY from the pat), not letting the tank gain aggro(PoM ANYTHING is not a good opener), blah blah blah....
So yea the world is full of Leroys. And on low pop servers that's a killer. Don't take the people that are willing to learn the game away from me, you are more than welcome to have at the rest, and maybe in 5 years you would get to Kara.
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5-06-2008 @ 12:23PM
Kyle Horner said...
Jonas, I have to respectfully say that think you're kind of missing the point. I don't want to have to quest more efficiently. Even if it takes less time to level up to 61 now, I don't have the time or the patience to do so. I'll never touch WoW again and neither will many of my friends because of this very problem.
You can think of this like a giant oil well that's just waiting for Blizzard to drill.
5-07-2008 @ 7:14PM
ajjp said...
I've just spent the last few months leveling my first and only character up to level 70. Your solution to get there more quickly seems like a cheat. Sorry, but it does.
It's like saying that you should be able to join a Monopoly game an hour after it started by paying a fee and getting half a dozen properties. What's the point of that? Why even play?
Plus, your level 57 mage is only one level away from the Outlands! Just get 'er done! Then, you and your friends can transfer to the same server and play together. See? Simple.
This is some serious pew-pewing.
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