Posted by Daeity
On Tuesday, October 11, 2011
- Mynsc's tweet about the Titan Timeline cause a little bit of a stir within Blizzard HQ. About 3 people came here directly from the Twitter page, and then there was a rush of some 25-30 users shortly after (and the following day) who appeared to have been emailed the direct link. Might just have been non-Titan employees who were interested in what was going on though.
- Fallen Earth is going F2P this Wednesday apparently. Should be interesting, I've never played it before but I was never going to pay a subscription for it.
- The most interesting development yesterday, which shouldn't come as a surprise, was Blizzard's unique approach to implementing an acceptable RMT method within World of Warcraft. Pay $10 for a BOE pet, sell pet in-game for gold. It's also only a single pet that you can buy, unlike past pets that would be available on all of your characters.
Q: Could I put the Guardian Cub up on the auction house to try to make some gold if I wanted to?
While our goal is to offer players alternative ways to add a Pet Store pet to their collection, we’re ok with it if some players choose to use the Guardian Cub as a safe and secure way to try to acquire a little extra in-game gold without turning to third-party gold-selling services. However, please keep in mind that there's never any guarantee that someone will purchase what you put up for sale in the auction house, or how much they'll pay for it. Also, it’s important to note that we take a firm stance against buying gold from outside sources because in most cases, the gold these companies offer has been stolen from compromised accounts. (You can read more about our stance here.) While some players might be able to acquire some extra gold by putting the Guardian Cub in the auction house, that’s preferable to players contributing to the gold-selling “black market” and account theft.
Q: What about future Pet Store pets?
It's too early to say how we'll handle future Pet Store pets. We made this change in response to feedback from players looking for alternate ways to get the Pet Store pets, and we're always looking into other opportunities for improvement. We're interested in hearing what players think of the Guardian Cub when it launches, and we hope you'll have fun with this new flying friend.
Funny how they, once again, stated that this RMT implementation was not because they wanted to do it, but because "players asked for it." :)
It sure did cause a lot of uproar though. Players are reacting like Blizzard has defiled or tainted the game. It's inevitable though.. their existing Paid Services aren't as profitable now, and they're under direction from Vivendi to continuously find new ways to drive revenue.
Unfortunately, because this is only ONE item, Blizzard will be benefiting from this RMT method far more than users will. With some many players attempting to profit from the pet (thinking that no one else will be doing it), the in-game price of the pet is going to plummet.
Bashiok also wrote:
TCG Loot card mounts like the Spectral Tiger have been BoE for a long time now (since patch 3.2), and that was and continues to be well-received, and as far as we've been able to tell hasn't had any adverse impact to the game or economy - despite them selling for sometimes astronomical amounts of gold.
It’s potentially worth noting that no new gold is being introduced into the game's economy with those mounts or the new Guardian Cub pet.
Our goal with the Guardian Cub is to provide alternative ways for players who don't want to spend real money to add these pets to their collection. Even though this has been available a while now with the TCG mounts, this is obviously a new kind of way to deliver Pet Store pets, and we're definitely interested to hear your feedback and ultimately see how this will play out.
- It's funny how players reacted saying "Blizzard is now making it LEGAL!" I hate it when people say "Blizzard making RMT legal".. seriously, it's just a policy. You can't get arrested for breaking a dress code policy at work.
- Other than that, it's been pretty quiet. I've gotten my hands on RAGE and will be playing that over the next couple weeks. No point in talking about the game though, there are a lot of good reviews out there that pretty much echo the same experiences I've had with the game. So far, it's a little boring unfortunately.
