Faction change service whaaaaaattt?

[Fat Tire]

Blizz.....

opening up everything to hang onto existing players.

You watch over the next twelve months as the game gets opened up to complete casual content and welfare epix.

It will happen.

I don't see a problem with a company making changes designed to hang on to its customers. That's a pretty standard business practice. The question is whether it works or whether it will drive people away. I have a feeling that it won't drive people away, and it could certainly help some existing players stay.

As for opening the game up to casuals and easy gear, they've been heading that way since just before Burning Crusade. Remember that they made the honor gear (which usually required incredible amounts of PvPing, day after day, sometimes for months) obtainable without ranks? At that point the snowball began rolling down the hill. Before very long they were nerfing heroics, nerfing Gruul's, nerfing Magtheridon, nerfing Karazhan, and then nerfing those all over again. And again. And again. WotLK heroics are easier than tBC heroics even after all the nerfing. Now they're going to make easy and hard versions of both the 10/25 man dungeons, which means that there will be a version of 10/25 man content that can be done by pretty much anyone.

Thing is, companies don't make these changes without doing some market research (or if they don't, they risk going out of business pretty quick). If Blizzard is going this far in the direction of making the game more and more accessible, then their research must be showing that these changes are always extremely popular. Sure, people complain vociferously in the forums whenever they announce or make these changes, but the complainers never leave, and the changes are popular amongst the people who don't make a fuss. By now it should be pretty obvious what they want this game to be. We are way past the point of "soon, Blizzard will make this game easy."

All good points. I dont know if blizzard has given up trying to increase market share(havent seen WoW has reached 13 million subscribers! and i doubt we ever will), but they have begun aggressive marketing to retain or attract already canceled players back to WoW. Obliviously these extra "services" are very profitable for Blizzard as they add a nice chunk to the profit margin at least during the intial release. I believe when the merger happened with Activision they were forced to become a more accessible game. I am sure market research told them that people dont have a ton of time to devot to the game and most want easier access to improving their character on a more consistent basis and that they are willing to pay for it. These current changes are only the beginning.

One has to think that there is some internal conflict going on inside of blizzard between the "pures" and the "casual" of the development team. With the upper management forcing the hand of the developers for the sake of the shareholders. We will see alot more casual, even more than the upcoming content and just alot more of these types of pay services as blizzard continues to lose market share.

Hey I gotta admit I would pay for certain things myself. 100 bucks for a lvl 80 in full current season pvp gear? You could say no way will they ever do this and I will just point out what they have said they will never do and then turned around at implemented it.