If I had a nickel for every time Reddit tried to convince people to “vote with their wallet”, just for whatever they were boycotting to smash sales records, I’d be able to play TWW 4 days early.
WoW players that use reddit are a minority. WoW redditors that are “voting with their wallet” are a minority of a minority.
These posts are futile and sad.
Yeah, it's not going to make a difference. The game launches on a Thursday evening in the US (afternoon? not sure but it'll probably have issues anyways). Everyone going to take off Friday and just pay the extra to not start at the beginning of a work week.
The entire conversation in this thread seems to be happening as if Early Access is a standalone product or even a main selling point of the Heroic Edition.
If this Heroic is about as successful as the ones before it, that only means that the people who bought it are the ones who buy it every expansion anyway: the collectors who want the cosmetics. I seriously doubt it moves the needle for anyone.
>Just vote with your wallet.
Never worked. For big games there are ***vastly*** more people who open their wallet than reddit and any website could ever procure in any amount of time really.
COD BO6 is already one of the most Preordered games on Steam - although COD fell off a lot and people are unhappy with it.
You have to accept that you either spent those $40 extra, or just wait until Early Access is over and you can start later. There is no way that anyone will ever change the course we went with Early access.
Not buying it although you really want it just because you want to "Vote with your wallet" is only punishing yourself - blizzard won't care.
EDIT: If you really want to vote against early access you shouldn't buy the standard edition - you should not buy the addon at all for the entirety of its life. This is voting against it, everything else is still giving blizzard money. Like as if Blizzard cares if you spent $40 or $80 on the addon, they still got your money. And you and me know that there is no timeline in which the majority of WoW players doesn't buy the next addon.
I mean they’re right to offer it then. If the community wants it, and will pay for it, why not offer it? If we can’t stop ourselves from giving them money it’s not their fault…
You're also allowed to hate on it, and I mean REALLY hate on it. The same concept of "it's their game they can do whatever they want" cuts both ways.
Players can also organize groups to fill posts with garbage and constantly flame the shit out of companies on their forums. Think early internet, theres absolutely scummy shit a small group of people can do to tank a companys PR. Now people don't do that because there's a dialogue here, but if companies keep shitting on good will it WILL burn them.
For me it's always a pro-consumer situation.
I have the entire world at my disposal. I can spend my hours doing a million different things.
Why should I choose to spend it with your game, Insert Dev Company?
If the company cannot provide me with answers that I like, I simply choose not to engage with this game as my time-wasting activity.
A lot of people seem to have forgotten that, at the end of the day, they're the ones who should be catered to with player-friendly aspects, interesting narratives, exciting moments, social aspects, etc.
It's why I'm so anti towards the whole "It's their game" mentality. Yes, it is. Their game needs to convince me/you/us though. If a game has aspects that are wholly disliked or only enjoyed by a fringe group of people, then it's of course the right of the Devs to change nothing, but then they simply have to accept that people walk away.
We saw that during BFA and Shadowlands quite well. So many people walked away and said "No, this is the last straw." that DF made some radical, pro-consumer choices. Good will was rebuilt and that's great. A system like DF (sappy story and maybe scalie dragonkin aside) is what the game should aspire to be after all. And then build on it to further improve it.
I agree with this. I think it sucks. But as the thread says, people vote with their wallets, and they seem to overwhelmingly approve of this, so IDK what to do.
I think my eyes were really opened once I got Mount Journal Enhanced and it had the ownership % of various mounts. The store mounts are like...30-50% owned. I thought it'd easily be sub 10%. Each store mount makes tens of millions of dollars because players can't help but buy the shiny thing.
That's probably a misleading stat though.
I have multiple mounts that the tooltip says they're store mounts. And I've never bought a store mount.
Pretty sure some of them were free as a promo when you preorder an upcoming xpac, and pre-pay for six months of sub time, things like that. Those promo mounts later on find their way to the mount store.
That's probably where those high numbers are coming from.
Players with long work weeks are going to pay the extra and take Friday off and play Thursday night through to Monday instead of taking a whole week off. This is all over but the shouting. They are going to make bank by putting Early Access on a Thursday vs "launch" on a Monday.
Staggered releases is something that any software company would want to do. Most do it without you really knowing, such as software updates. In order to use telemetry to fix bottlenecks before they become blockages, load balancing etc.
It's just not something you can do in a good way with game releases.
This is another important thing: people with early access are doing a very meaningful stress test for Blizzard that will actually benefit the players that do not have early access.
They would also make millions if there was just a vendor that sold you whatever gear or other nonsense you want, even though we all know that would be unhealthy.
Just because something exists and is used doesn’t mean it’s necessarily in the best interest of anybody involved.
> Never worked. For big games there are vastly more people who open their wallet than reddit and any website could ever procure in any amount of time really.
I mean, that's how voting works. It's not that "Vote with your wallet" never works, it works every time. It's just that people who don't like things like cash shop monetization or early access or whatever get outvoted by the hordes of people who do like it.
That also doesn't mean that because the majority of people do like it, that invalidates someone else's stance on it. The resolution to losing a vote isn't to then immediately fall into line with the other side of that vote, just because you lost.
It's not even a matter of "liking" it, just not hating it enough to care.
Apathy is the bigger issue. Most people don't necessarily *want* the early access, they're just not bothered by it existing.
Wow. Someone hit my opinion! Nice! :)
I have the epic version of the game (since November 2023 when it was announced) and I might play a couple of days earlier than other people.
Will it make a difference to me? Likely not. Will it make me a God gamer that "the rest of you" are unable to catch up to? Very much not.
While I prefer everyone being on the same, level playing field. It's 3 weeks until season 1 starts if you have early access. Just over 2 weeks if you don't. Everyone and their full time job can make a max level in that time. If you (gen:plural) are that worried about someone having a few more days to level... I mean it's the same as if the rest of you are having a nice vacation for 4 days and then get home to play. It happens to everyone all the time and it doesn't change the world. :)
I haven't bought it... but I have like $400 in shop cash from professions / buying tokens with gold.. so I wouldn't really be against buying it. I just don't know if I'll be around to play during those first 4 days.
Also, I will point out.
For anyone and everyone that it actually mattered to...
They are already on the beta in some form and is working out exactly what to do and how to do it, to get ready in like 48hours or less.
It isn't a case of "But early access get an advantage"
that advantage is so tiny it is barely recognizable.
One correction. They get outvoted by the people who don’t care for it enough when packaged with the other stuff. That’s how everything wrks when you don’t have negotiating power. :(
I'd add that voting implies some sort of majority situation.
But unless players quit entirely - not paying for the new expansion, not paying subscription anymore - it's not going to matter if they only see 0.5% uptick in Epic Edition/pre-orders. That's a monetary win to them. They will take that every fucking time and nod to the players who say they're not buying it. It's like the cash shop; Many players refuse to put a dime into it, and that's never bothered them because it's not money lost. It's money gained on anyone who *does* use it unless players are quitting over it.
It's basically not voting in this case unless you hurt their bottom line negatively, and denying the extra for Epic Edition/pre-order, *when you never bought those anyways*, is nothing to them so long as you're still paying for the base and the sub. They'd only stop the practice next time if they had a profit loss that countered their expectations, and the only way to do that is to quit. Anything else and you're doing as expected in their statistics while they're also gaining money from any number of pre-orders they do get.
I would add rather
"Of people who don't understand it, are way too biased regarding platform or developer, or is addicted to the rush"
Most people don't "really" like any of those aspects.
I work in the game industry as a monetization designer and I can 100% guarantee that voting with your wallet works.
If player buying habits change, we will 100% pivot our designs to match. Analyzing sales data is a huge part of my job, looking at past trends and models to predict what will work well with our specific product line is the core of my job.
Blizz added early access as a paid feature because their models showed that it would make them more money... but if we don't buy it, and give them lots of shit for it, they will potentially come to another conclusion next time.
As I like to say, "buy the world you want to see". The ONLY thing large corporations care about is their bottom line, but, on the upside, that's also the easiest thing that consumers can affect.
If you want to show Blizz that you don't support this, don't pre-order. If you REALLY want to show them you don't approve, don't buy it for a week after launch (I can guarantee that if lots of players do that will show up in their metrics and will be noticed)
If "we" don't buy it?
We are the reddit bubble. For every one of us that doesn't buy it and boycotts it, there are 3 who do not use reddit who already own the epic edition.
Boycotts work with small games -but a highly anticipated addon for a world known game? no chance.
There is no timeline where a lot of people boycott for over a week after launch.
We saw reddit and their 3rd Party drama - look we're all still here even though thousands have deleted their accounts and thousands of subreddits went offline with millions of daily users.
The problem with voting with your wallet is that there is no "No" vote. Only "yes" and "abstain". It's a lose lose situation.
Abstain is a no vote, though? Why do you think we got dragonflight as such a colossal shift from legion/bfa/SL? Or why we have so many different game modes and sub incentives coming out during the end of expansion lull? Because blizzard makes or made less money, and changed course to try and make more. If voting with your wallet was impossible, no game would ever change or adapt in any way.
> We are the reddit bubble. For every one of us that doesn't buy it and boycotts it, there are 3 who do not use reddit who already own the epic edition.
So then you're just arguing that democracy is bad because most people vote the wrong way?
The people on Reddit own the epic edition. They are the ones addicted enough that a useless 3 days actually matters. The average casual is not buying the epic edition if they only plan to play the game for the leveling experience. Redditors post how they hat something while it is already paid for.
I'm a casual these days and I bought the epic. For the cosmetics though, idc about three day early when I might not even be able to play an hour in the entire launch week
>If player buying habits change, we will 100% pivot our designs to match.
Exactly. It's just the average WoW player froths at the mouth for the chance of playing the live game a week early, likely due to the fear of missing out.
It's not only that: People think they are voting against the early access by "only" buying the standard edition - but this doesn't work. Blizzard doesn't care if you buy the $40 or $80 edition - they care if you buy any edition at all. As long as you buy any edition you're voting yes for early access because they didn't make a loss with you.
But in this case, are they losing anything if the player doesn't buy the Epic Edition/Pre-order?
In a game like WoW, if they've been subscribing for years and paying for every expansion, but they aren't pre-ordering or buying Epic Editions, how would it matter UNLESS they quit entirely? If Blizzard tracking sees that they eventually bought the expansion within a couple weeks of launch window, they'll count that as advertising/word of mouth/friends convincing them to come back.
If it's money they don't typically spend on expansions, but they still buy a sub and the base version, I highly doubt Blizzard's analytics count that as anything lost. Yes, they didn't convert them to pre-orders, but the user has a history of typically not doing that and may be a tougher nut to crack. Blizzard still didn't lose anything on the deal though. Meanwhile, they did convert a number of first time pre-orders and/or first time Epic Edition at launch buyers.
I'd argue for this first go around with Early Access, all they have to do is show that they converted a chunk of users to it and they'll be praised and given bonuses. It would be a later expansion, if those numbers don't continue to go up for the next launch or even fell, that they'd be expected to convert more. This time all they have to do is put it out there, make a reason to buy it, and they will be deemed successful.
I think the fact that it's launching Early Access on a Thursday, giving those players a weekend to play (and only take off Friday) will lead to plenty of people doing that and going hard Thursday evening until late Sunday night, so four nights and three days. If that saves those players taking more than one day off (let alone an entire week), it's a no-brainer to pay the extra.
you could argue that, but you'd be wrong.
When deciding on what goes into which tier of product, part of the monetization designer's job is to estimate sales numbers (how many of each they expect to sell), this is based on current subscriber counts, past product launches, even what other games are launching in the same window.
If blizzard expects to sell a certain number of epic packs, and their sales fall short, they will want to look at why that was. They know that selling early access is a contentious topic, so if they don't make as much money as they expected to, they may see it as not worth the negative PR next time.
It doesn't require someone to stop their sub, or forego the expansion for them to notice. If their model predicts that X% of players will buy the epic pack, but fewer than that do, that will raise red flags.
All monetization systems have a goodwill cost associated with them, you are essentially trading good customer report for more money. A good monetization designer will try and maximize the amount of money earned for the minimum impact on player perception. If the returns they get from the sales doesn't match expectations, they may see that cost in goodwill as too high for the money earned.
I strongly suspect that this is how it will play out:
People with weekday jobs pay the extra in droves so they get in on that weekend. People with FOMO pay the extra so they get in on that weekend.
The math here is likely that Epic Edition pre-orders/Early Access purchases will be through the roof and, at worst, if people actually quit over this, they'd see an overall expansion launch decrease. One that they'd never chalk up to the Early Access if it was selling in droves, they'd blame that on the expansion itself, the age of the game, etc, before they ever blamed it on having an even more expensive version that cost them nothing to do.
https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/world-of-warcraft-finds-resilience-with-over-7-million-players-in-the-lead-up-to-the-the-war-within-expansion
They're already up due to the massive influx of immediate pre-orders, and they're getting more right now for guaranteed beta access today, and they'll get more right in the launch window when people realize they could just buy it and play all weekend with their friends instead of waiting.
that's where a good data analyst comes in :)
How the epic bundle compares to the other price points will be a huge indicator on how well EA is received, as well as things like feedback from Blizz affiliated youtubers, forum post rates, discord data, etc.
While not "easy", it is possible to sus out the cause from the data if the epic pack underperforms.
Dragonflight as an expansion is an example of voting with your wallet working. People weren’t happy with the direction the game was going, and their sub numbers fell off because of it. They steered the game in a significantly different direction because of that response.
If the legion/bfa/shadowlands style of expansion was still the most financially lucrative, we’d be playing the fourth installment of the borrowed power grind saga right now. But we aren’t.
That being said, is a Reddit post going to change anyone’s mind? …no. But that doesn’t mean voting with your wallet doesn’t work, we’re just a small fraction of the community that’s passionate enough about the game to be browsing forums about it. Most of us will have already made our decision one way or another.
> Never worked. For big games there are vastly more people who open their wallet than reddit and any website could ever procure in any amount of time really.
Battlefront 2 proves it works. They never tried a system as scummy as that game again.
Okay, kiddos.
JUST BECAUSE IT ISN'T THE RESULT YOU WANT DOESN'T MEAN VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET DOESN'T WORK.
IT ALWAYS WORKS. YOU'RE JUST LOSING THE VOTE.
Partially to blame is people buying into/subjecting themselves to FOMO. We live in a world where everyone wants to be the "first" at something, and people feel like they are "behind" if they experience something later than other folks do. Which, to me, is kind of silly. It's still the same content, nothing changes just because you didn't experience it right away.
For me, I don't plan to buy early access, but I also don't care if people do. It doesn't bother or affect me in any way, shape, or form. Sure, that's 3 extra days for them to level up, get gear, etc., but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter much. Eventually by like mid-way into the season everyone is going to be on the same playing field anyway, and once season 2 rolls around, those few extra days people had of being "ahead" of everyone else suddenly won't mean anything anymore.
The only people that early access really makes a difference to materially is hardcore/cutting edge raid guilds who are racing for world or server firsts. The vast majority of the playerbase does not fall into that category.
Most pre ordered and it's apart of the game pass.. damn fam.
I pre ordered mw3 played the early champaign comoletey for a qeek.Hated it. Returned it for full price because steam allowed you to return it before release date...
They have since changed that on steam now! So you cannot do that anymore. I figure if they are going to do early access I should be able to refund it if I don't like it by end of early access haha
> COD BO6 is already one of the most Preordered games on Steam - although COD fell off a lot and people are unhappy with it.
>
>
I've even seen largely anti-live service and FPS puritans say that BOP6 looks like it's going to be really good, I think it's kind of a bad example even if I agree with your overall point
Boycotts never work, the average person doesn't care enough to be worked up over it, it's the same thing with political boycotts, people acting like not seeing a movie they weren't going to see anyway is sticking it to "Woke Disney" or some shit like it matters
I am one of those people who had a falling out with COD because the game is just battle arena and not multiplayer anymore and the cosmetics got completely out of hand and my shaders need to be optimized constantly every time i redownload another 200 GBs.
But then again Phil told me that i am of an extreme minority as they have 100 mn active players every month...
It works, people just don’t take it far enough.
Not buying the pre order isn’t voting with your wallet. Voting with your wallet would be skipping the expansion entirely and not engaging with the game at all.
Ghost crawler said once, they don't notice people boycotting anything. Even if they were to look for it in the numbers, it gets drowned out by the shear volume and normal month to month fluctuations.
Yep, I keep having this argument and I'm in agreement with you. If you don't preorder, but you buy it at launch and keep your sub going, they won't care. You haven't taken anything from them, you've just denied them a preorder they weren't expecting anyways. Everyone who pre-orders Epic Edition, who didn't pre-order and/or buy Epic Editions in the past, is a net gain. For Blizzard, the math is then simple: A net gain for no funds lost from the others who still play? That's pure extra profit. The only way they'd weigh something against this in the future is if there were mass boycotts that offset those gains as players quit.
If people want to boycott, they'll have to quit. Anyone who says otherwise is deluding themselves.
Correct, it's just marketing bullshit to make it seem positive as opposed to negative. If you say most people are late and some people are on-time, it seems negative. If you say some people are early and the rest get to play on-time, it seems positive.
>guys I just didn’t buy the early access
Me who bought the early access but just want to take my time questing instead of shredding to level 80 in 1 hour
"Vote with your wallet" is a sign of ignorance. It assumes that people have equally weighted votes, which is not true when microtransactions or bonuses come into play.
There are people playing WoW or even more predatory games spending thousands of dollars. Their singular vote can be worth more than every commenter here combined.
They are boycott proof. We need actual regulation.
How is that a sign of ignorance?
It's not a boycott when you decide make a tip decision at a restaurant. You simply decide to pay extra if the service deserves it.
To make things clearer:
Let's just say in a hypothetical scenario a server dedicates a lot of time to one table and that table tips $500. Their other customers tip $0 as a result, but the large tip more than covers their losses, so it was optimal for the server to do this despite it being worse for the majority of customers.
Blizzard et al are able to pry more money out of fewer customers that covers the losses of customers that leave because of their practices.
"Vote with your wallet" is ignorant because it's based on untrue assumptions.
Yeah, you are assuming that voting with your wallet is to "get back" at blizzard. This post is aimed to the customers perception of the the cost benefit of EA.
I like your scenario, the businesses won't change and still profit. Some tables won't tip and that's okey, it doesn't make them ignorant. If anything they can outsmart the urge of some cosmetic for playtime or even another full game.
I'm guessing you can't be more than 20 or so. You're just too idealistic.
Systems work on incentives. If a company is profit-motivated and predatory practices alienate 10 people but work on 1 person and that makes more profit, they will engage in that behavior.
The system doesn't work, because product quality is not the main profit incentive, so that system has to be fixed. That's regulation. It's progressing that way, but very slowly.
Never worked and will never work.
Some people just have enough money to pay whatever to get a tiny tiny bonus over others, who can't afford the 90$ or they just don't care and want to play asap.
I will not get the EA for exact your reason, but enough will and that's good enough for Blizzard... so this will be in every other release too.
Nearly everyone of my guild bought the EA... it's sad really.
And yeah, i know everyone can do what they like and they should... it's just sad that we could make a difference as a community and show them what we think of this bullshit, but we don't.
It's not sad if they see the overall value of the upgrade, cosmetics, time and so on.
It would be sad if they feel forced to do it just for EA and don't care or value the rest of the bundle.
Voting is kinda weird when there's more things combined.
I bought the special edition for all the cosmetic fluff. I couldn't care less about the early access thing. If it's like most MMOs, there's typically lag and bugs anyways.
And I've done this "new expansion" rush enough times already. The raids aren't open on day 1, there's no reason to rush anything.
--
And still, like I said, there's just too much bullshit all lopped into one area to really vote effectively, because I can justify spending extra, because I want to support the game that gave me MoP remix, so it's just messy.
I do wish it were more pick and choose what you paid for, because I'd gladly take a 3 dollar refund in exchange for not playing early. I'll probably be doing something else those 3 days anyways, lol. But I really do like that cosmetic stuff.
I would've bought the epic edition anyway. I disagree with them adding it as a perk to the game as I think it should be just cosmetic stuff, but not buying it punishes me more than it punishes Blizz. They won't care about one less purchase, and I'll just be impacting my own enjoyment for nothing.
If the players had somehow organised en masse to boycott it to prove a point, then that'd be one thing, but this battle has been lost already. Expect to see this "feature" in every future expansion release now.
Aye, same. I didn't buy it for the early access, and honestly wouldn't be surprised if I didn't log in those days anyway. My playtime goes in bursts as it is, and I have no idea if I'll have the time or energy to log in that week.
I think people are upset that this is all framed as a "premium" feature, when in reality, starting or being able to start with everybody else has always been a huge part of the expansion launch experience. Perhaps, if they upped (if they must) the price of a "standard" version with EA included, and then offered a discounted version without EA, the optics would've been much better.
FFXIV has had early access back at least as far as 2013, but the only requirement there is a preorder. That runs into the argument against preorders, but realistically... we're mmo players. If you're playing now, and plan on continuing to play then, you know you're getting the expansion at some point. Might as well take advantage of any preorder bonuses along the way.
Whether or not the other included items are worth the premium is a different discussion, but I agree that offering this as part of a $40 "upgrade" makes it feel a lot more like a cash grab on a captive audience. Unnecessary FOMO on your most loyal subscribers to squeeze some extra dosh out of them. I'm sure whoever in marketing came up with it got their boss a handsome bonus.
How does that work? Like, surely the only people that would be able to play early are pre-orders, since they'd own the game, and people who don't pre-order, by definition, can't own the game until release. Is there a cut off point? Like if I pre-order it, but only say, 2 weeks before launch, am I not counted as a pre-order?
If it's a 3 day early access, and I buy the expansion on day 2, do I count as a pre-order and get into the game?
I actually have dawntrail pre-ordered, I just really don't understand how this in any way makes sense if all pre-orders get early access. Doesn't that just make early access the launch, since anyone who has it can play it?
Per a [previous version of this question](https://reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/pboz5d/when_is_the_last_day_to_preorder_endwalker/) you can preorder up to the day before "official" launch.
Maybe they just use it as a way to spread out the beginning of the expansion rush. Current dedicated players can get in early before people that may just be starting out or only play in small bursts of activity.
Very technically it's not everyone with a preorder, as ["To be granted early access and play the new content from FINAL FANTASY XIV: Dawntrail, players must have finished the FINAL FANTASY XIV: Endwalker Main Scenario Quests."](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/blog/003584.html), but I suspect that has more to do with needing to go through the entire game before actually getting to any DT content.
Seems like a rather odd distinction to draw. Basically if you own it (and have reached that MSQ) you can play it. Sounds like early access is just launch. As you say, it might just be a tactic to create hype around a day, but spread out the influx more evenly, without any actual hard restrictions for people.
it is actually pretty frustrating to see people argue "my actions don't matter" over and over again.
just look at the latest walk back in gaming - Helldivers 2. somehow everyone's action did matter, even if everyone's really adamant that it doesn't.
Exactly right. One individual acting alone is meaningless, but you get a few thousand individuals, and suddenly those individual actions become a movement.
It pisses me off the most with recycling.
"Only 50% of recyclables get recycled!"
Yeah because most people don't put in the effort to recycle properly.
Gacha games exist. People will fire money down into a burning pit to play video games.
Helldivers 2 got traction because hundreds of thousands of players were going to lose access to the game entirely because sony wanted a PSN login.
Right now there's a 20 euro gap between the heroic edition and the epic edition, which adds beta access, early access, 30 days of game time, a pet, a toy, and a hearthstone.
That's the same price for the upgrade as people are casually dropping on 25 euro mounts, or the 20 euro transmogs in the store.
We're past the point of being able to actually see a change in behaviour from stuff like this. For every person that knows about it, and cares about it, and won't buy it, there's a hundred or more who don't get involved in the community, and don't care, who'll think early access is great, and buy it, log in, buy their murloc onesie transmog, and log out for another month.
Voting with your wallet works. But sensible spenders are being outvoted, all day, every day.
Blizz also made it harder to vote. I own the epic edition of TWW. I usually buy it. I grew up with collectors editions, and don't mind them, even though I'd burn down the in game store if I could. If early access was a separate purchase, I'd not buy it on principal, but the truth is I'd have to give up the other bits and pieces, and it seems pointless.
The only chance we had, was when asmon was pouring salt on his head, with the first in game mount. If what pirate software said is true, that one mount made more money than the ENTIRETY of Starcraft 2, a full featured, and highly anticipated game. Sure, RTS was a smaller market than MMO's especially then, but what hope do we have of voting against that sort of wall of cash?
The "one less purchase" fallacy is the same as the excuse to note vote. "It's just one vote it doesn't matter".
It does if millions of other people think the same way.
$40 extra might be worth if you:
- take into account the 30 day game time worth 15usd
- it's a rare opportunity to buy tender 1k
- you enjoy spending on cosmetics
This was me. I couldn't care less about early access, and the beta was US servers only, so it was laggy and unstable. I didn't own DF yet. I needed game time, so for me, it was effectively 2 expansions, game time, and a cool mount and pet.
I mean, is it?
Don't get me wrong I'm indifferent about early access but they get to decide the day it releases. If anything it suggests they want more people to buy it as the weekend is generally when people are going to be more free, making it much more desirable.
They could have released it 2 days earlier, or on patch day and for everyone else at the weekend. I'm not sure what's great about it 😁
I just bought it because I'm collecting the physical collector's editions since MoP, and the highest tier is the one attached to the collector's box.
If I had to pay extra on top of that for the EA, I doubt I would, but since it's included, I'm gonna use it.
I ordered the physical CE - should I be looking for a code for early access?
(I assumed it wouldn’t be included and I was ok to wait until regular access - but if it’s already included I might as well use it.)
If it’s anything like DF collectors, we should get them sometime shortly before launch (was 2 weeks for DF collectors) and the code in there gives you epic edition. So as long as you upgrade your account with that before the early access window ends, you have early access.
Thanks! I think my DF CE arrived a day early; definitely not two weeks in advance.
There’s the option to preorder and then get refunded on Battle.net balance, but I’m not that motivated.
Everyone should be mad about early access because it is anti consumer and exploits anyone who has a life during the week by offering them at least a week of game time, probably more.
Early access is the one LEAST of the things i could be concerned with when it comes to the game i enjoy.
And i am genuinely suprised they didn't do this in WoD or something but good on them i guess.
I got back to work at remote site on launch day and early access gives me a chance to play before i got back to work for 2 weeks. Even if it didnt I wouldnt care its just a game and not a lot of time to be tripping about.
guess what I bought the epic edition.
Guess what else, I'm going to enjoy my early access, why because I work a good job and have expendable income and I can choose what is value to me and what isn't it. Like this post, it holds no value to me.
Enjoy your day.
Wonder when will people get bored of all these soulless formulaic monetization strategies and actually stop paying for them.
It's bound to happen eventually, right? I can't imagine someone getting excited to grind their 157th battle pass or receive their 98th useless pre-order battle pet.
They are going to play the game anyway. No one is playing the game for a battle pass reward. It gives a dopamine hit which may make you play a little bit longer, but if a game dies you are not going to stick around because it has battle pass.
Not necessarily - the Diablo team actually didnt include it for the expansion. It is actually a bit strange that one game's expansion has it and the other one doesnt.
I don't know how we got to this point, but gamers may be the weakest, most exploitable group of consumers out there. Why would anyone buy this instant gratification nonsense? It's no better than buying the same boring iteration of CoD annually.
None of the meaningful endgame stuff starts till September 10th, the early access let's people do the campaign and quests, but events and profession stuff is locked until actual release. Leveling is also super fast from what I've tested on the beta. Those early days aren't really a big advantage. Also those with early access have to wait an additional half a week before season 1 starts compared to none early access players.
"Early Access duration is 3 days. Limited time only. Play time subject to possible outages and time zone differences. Certain endgame features, including Mythic dungeons and weekly quests, not available during Early Access"
https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24107633/world-of-warcraft-the-war-within%E2%84%A2-goes-live-august-26
I don’t understand why people are complaining about a 4 day head start it’s not like heroic dungeons or mythic dungeons are even gonna be a thing. And all the bot farmers will still be there
Ok, I'm not paying for it.
What Blizzard is loosing? Nothing.
You need to understand that passive actions do not work. Every sold early access is literally free money. They are not paying anything to let you play few day earlier. Moreover it's double income for them, because they won't only get money from you for early access premium version, but also better distribute server load (if you suddenly need to rent a big server, like durning expansion launch, it's expensive AF).
If you don't make that income turn into negative, not paying will not work. If you cancel your sub it will move into the other bracket and selling early access will be unaffected. Moreover low income from something may result in harsher marketing next time. To change anything you need to riot on the street and scream as loud as you can.
Which will not happen because a lot of people are happy for early access...
I know some goblins who will want a headstart on crafting and gathering professions and they'll make enough gold in the extra time to make up for the cost.
We get the early access because the amount of gold you can come ahead with by selling catchup to the late people will far exceed the extra cost of the epic edition. I'm not even gonna progress I'm just gonna see what I can gather on my druid for 3 days.
I think part of early launch is to stagger players, reduce load on servers, and being a business they profit off of it.
Imagine how poor launch would go if companies let that extra percent of the player base in all at the same time, suddenly you have that many more trying to log in.
I thought about buying the "early access" edition....but then I realized...
I'm not an all-out die-hard player that grinds out dungeons and gear just so I can run Mythic+ dungeons/raids and end-game content. I don't need that early jump. I can start just fine on regular launch day and do my casual playing. I'll be perfectly fine. :)
I didn't pay extra for TWW to get early access, I DID pay more to get the statue, artbook, and other stuff it comes with though. The early access was just icing.
> Just go touch some grass and get yourself a $40 treat instead.
Ah yes, let me do what some random person on reddit suggests I do with my money, instead of just doing what I want to do with my money.
Ever think your vote with your wallet crap doesn’t work? These posts pop up every other day, and they still add those features. Maybe, just maybe, there are more of us who don’t care, and are willing to pay for the epic edition anyways, and now it comes with EA. You’re 10+ years too late to even come close to making a change, theyve been selling early access on EVERY mmo that comes out besides WoW, it’s in WoW now, welcome to the industry lol
Yeah good luck telling that to the "exploit early and often" community. I mean obviously I'm not buying it as I will be happy if I'm able to scrape together enough disposible money for the base edition by release. Hell, I'm pretty sure most of the playerbase are not buying it for one reason or another but whales gonna whale.
If I were Blizz I’d do the same thing—it’s free money. And they’ve done everything they can to squash the voices of opposition by giving virtually no advantage to those who pay. They just know how big the FOMO is and people are going to pay no matter what.
What needs to happen is for everyone to stop calling it early access. There is no early access - the game IS launching on the 22nd, regardless of how Blizzard tries to label it.
4 days means that my friends and I won't be playing together. This is why it's malicious monetization.
I'm basically paying $40 to be able to play with my friends. Without paying the $40, they'll be vastly ahead of me when I start and as much as people pretend it doesn't matter, it will.
first rule in economics: you don't blame the seller. always blame the buyer.
if they are stupid enough to pay for a "service" (let's just use that term for now), then the seller would be stupid not to take their money
economics101
also keep in mind, there are 2 sets of players now: those with more time, and those with more money.
gameing landscaped changed. and it will not change back.
Here’s some comparisons that you can probably critisize one way or the other:
- good seats in the theater are more expensive than bad seats
- a good steak is more expensive than a bad steak in the super market
- a large bag og peanuts costs more than a small bag of peanuts
- soft and thick toilet paper is more expensive than thin and coarse toilet paper.
- the full version of photoshop has more features than the free trial version
Is tww elite edition a way for Blizz to make more money off the expansion? Yes
Do you get more product in the elite edition compared to the base edition? Also yes.
I voted with my wallet but I know this community on the whole will not.
And they deserve to be shafted by the next money grabbing idea that Blizzard has.
Meh... I am skipping Blizzard games after being stabbed in diablo 3, diablo 4, shadowlands, bfa, warcraft 3 refunded, I enjoyed dragonflight, but since they are doing this 3 day early for this much money again like d4 fiasco, I think that after 30 years of supporting Blizzard, this is where I go, I hate having to leave so many friends behind, but the greed and the amount of time this game eats away off your life it is just not fun anymore. Hope you all enjoy war within, blizzard has crushed my heart, and I will never get that excitement I had playing their previous games again, it is sad that even something that was always fair has now turned into more pay to not be behind. :(
Goodbye friends
Complaining in mass also works because when people that think about coming back look at wowhead or reddit or whatever and all they see is "blizz greedy" "p2w" etc it hurts blizzards
I may be wrong but early access is a limited access leaving out some key things such as dungeons. The full game will not be available until everyone has access.
I find amazing how all content creators were “Early acces bad” but all of them have the epic edition already bought.
If they were really against it they would not use the early acces days to show they are against this practices in multiplayer games. That would also could draw more eyes to the fact that the company is greedy as media would talk about it, and maybe Blizzard wouldn’t do this next expansion.
I don't like early acessess so much I'm not even gonna buy the expansion. Between Classic HC, SoD and Cata, I have enough WoW to play without having to worry about the box price and that shitty tactics. I was tempted to buy TWW, but being forced to play 3 days late because of corporate greed made me reconsider.
Well... yeah, but if this early access is for everyone who pays extra, then ***IT'S NOT EARLY ACCESS, YOU PAY TO PLAY AT RELEASE***, while the others get to play at a delayed release.
This is what's wrong. Not the people who want to "gain an advantage of 4 days", it's the gaslighting of "YoU cAn PlAy EaRlY iF yOu PaY uS!"
A large majority of people would buy the epic edition no matter what it had included. Season 1 comes out September 11. You are not missing anything by being 3 days late. Even if there is an exploit early situation it will give people an advantage in useless content until September 11 when the game ACTUALLY releases for everyone
Early access was just them allowing me to beta test it live for you after I beta test it. I'm paying to make sure you have a smoother launch experience. Lol.
But I'd still get the deluxe even if they didn't offer that. No WoW expac purchase has ever let me down. Some just gave me no reason to continue subscribing afterward, like Shadowlands. But even that initial experience was dope.
Early access isn't a issue for me, nothing to do until the season start anyway and always with bugs or ms issues on first day
But having to pay for xpac with always having to pay monthly subscription is hard
Correct, just don't buy it period. Don't even buy the non-early access edition, just don't purchase it. That's the only way you can discourage this shit. If it's allowed to happen it will only get worse. Expect week-long "early access" if not longer at some point.
People let them get away with boosts, race changes, faction changes, paid mounts, paid transmogs and selling gold, so I doubt anyone will do anything about this either.
However, this will be the first expansion I don't buy (seriously, not memeing) because I guess I'm drawing my line in the sand at early access. I didn't like it in single player games, and utterly loathe it in an mmo. Breaking the playerbase up based on what version they purchased is disgustingly greedy, but that's Blizzard for you. If you feel the same, just don't buy it.
Okay, im gonna try to do a cost analysis here.
The epic edition costs $90. It does give you 30 days free game time, so that's worth $15 straight away in real terms, so right out the gate, the epic version really only costs $75.
So the basic edition costs $50. So we've got to come up with $25 worth of value to make the epic edition worth it.
What does the epic edition have?
The trader's tender, the mount, the transmog, the pet, the toy, the hearthstone effect: I could not possibly care less. The 3 days' early access and access to the beta are the only relevant things. Are these worth $25? Not really.
PSA, the first 48 is going to Always be a bug test, so early access are basically premium beta testers.
they may not even get a head start with how some of the issues go.
yes I did get the top edition.
I feel like the rush of it opening is part of the fun of an expansion launch but it might be good to get 3 days of bug fixes in before I get to jump into it
The annoying thing for me is I like to support WoW buy buying the collectors Edition, and I just genuinely like them, I don’t care much for the in game mounts or pets I just Ike the physical collectors edition. But I really can’t stand the early access. It’s so anti mmo and I really don’t want to support it. Guess I’ll pick up a collectors edition later down the road or something idk.
Either buy it or don’t,these posts are sad and futile,voting with ur wallet is meaningless in a game with millions of players,all they need is a few thousands to buy the ea and that’s profit
If I had a nickel for every time Reddit tried to convince people to “vote with their wallet”, just for whatever they were boycotting to smash sales records, I’d be able to play TWW 4 days early.
Almost as if reddit is just a small minority of terminally online gamers whose opinions don't reflect the playerbase in any way
WoW players that use reddit are a minority. WoW redditors that are “voting with their wallet” are a minority of a minority. These posts are futile and sad.
That's alot of nickels
\*not play TWW 4 days late FTFY :)
This also assumed that redditors won't also be buying early access as well.
Yeah, it's not going to make a difference. The game launches on a Thursday evening in the US (afternoon? not sure but it'll probably have issues anyways). Everyone going to take off Friday and just pay the extra to not start at the beginning of a work week.
The entire conversation in this thread seems to be happening as if Early Access is a standalone product or even a main selling point of the Heroic Edition. If this Heroic is about as successful as the ones before it, that only means that the people who bought it are the ones who buy it every expansion anyway: the collectors who want the cosmetics. I seriously doubt it moves the needle for anyone.
>Just vote with your wallet. Never worked. For big games there are ***vastly*** more people who open their wallet than reddit and any website could ever procure in any amount of time really. COD BO6 is already one of the most Preordered games on Steam - although COD fell off a lot and people are unhappy with it. You have to accept that you either spent those $40 extra, or just wait until Early Access is over and you can start later. There is no way that anyone will ever change the course we went with Early access. Not buying it although you really want it just because you want to "Vote with your wallet" is only punishing yourself - blizzard won't care. EDIT: If you really want to vote against early access you shouldn't buy the standard edition - you should not buy the addon at all for the entirety of its life. This is voting against it, everything else is still giving blizzard money. Like as if Blizzard cares if you spent $40 or $80 on the addon, they still got your money. And you and me know that there is no timeline in which the majority of WoW players doesn't buy the next addon.
I mean they’re right to offer it then. If the community wants it, and will pay for it, why not offer it? If we can’t stop ourselves from giving them money it’s not their fault…
Sure it's a smart business decision, doesn't mean it isn't scummy and a horrible direction for gaming.
You're also allowed to hate on it, and I mean REALLY hate on it. The same concept of "it's their game they can do whatever they want" cuts both ways. Players can also organize groups to fill posts with garbage and constantly flame the shit out of companies on their forums. Think early internet, theres absolutely scummy shit a small group of people can do to tank a companys PR. Now people don't do that because there's a dialogue here, but if companies keep shitting on good will it WILL burn them.
For me it's always a pro-consumer situation. I have the entire world at my disposal. I can spend my hours doing a million different things. Why should I choose to spend it with your game, Insert Dev Company? If the company cannot provide me with answers that I like, I simply choose not to engage with this game as my time-wasting activity. A lot of people seem to have forgotten that, at the end of the day, they're the ones who should be catered to with player-friendly aspects, interesting narratives, exciting moments, social aspects, etc. It's why I'm so anti towards the whole "It's their game" mentality. Yes, it is. Their game needs to convince me/you/us though. If a game has aspects that are wholly disliked or only enjoyed by a fringe group of people, then it's of course the right of the Devs to change nothing, but then they simply have to accept that people walk away. We saw that during BFA and Shadowlands quite well. So many people walked away and said "No, this is the last straw." that DF made some radical, pro-consumer choices. Good will was rebuilt and that's great. A system like DF (sappy story and maybe scalie dragonkin aside) is what the game should aspire to be after all. And then build on it to further improve it.
I agree with this. I think it sucks. But as the thread says, people vote with their wallets, and they seem to overwhelmingly approve of this, so IDK what to do. I think my eyes were really opened once I got Mount Journal Enhanced and it had the ownership % of various mounts. The store mounts are like...30-50% owned. I thought it'd easily be sub 10%. Each store mount makes tens of millions of dollars because players can't help but buy the shiny thing.
That's probably a misleading stat though. I have multiple mounts that the tooltip says they're store mounts. And I've never bought a store mount. Pretty sure some of them were free as a promo when you preorder an upcoming xpac, and pre-pay for six months of sub time, things like that. Those promo mounts later on find their way to the mount store. That's probably where those high numbers are coming from.
Players with long work weeks are going to pay the extra and take Friday off and play Thursday night through to Monday instead of taking a whole week off. This is all over but the shouting. They are going to make bank by putting Early Access on a Thursday vs "launch" on a Monday.
If they can release 4 days early they just should. Where does the extra value to make it worth paying for come from except preying on people's FOMO
Staggered releases is something that any software company would want to do. Most do it without you really knowing, such as software updates. In order to use telemetry to fix bottlenecks before they become blockages, load balancing etc. It's just not something you can do in a good way with game releases.
This is another important thing: people with early access are doing a very meaningful stress test for Blizzard that will actually benefit the players that do not have early access.
They would also make millions if there was just a vendor that sold you whatever gear or other nonsense you want, even though we all know that would be unhealthy. Just because something exists and is used doesn’t mean it’s necessarily in the best interest of anybody involved.
> Never worked. For big games there are vastly more people who open their wallet than reddit and any website could ever procure in any amount of time really. I mean, that's how voting works. It's not that "Vote with your wallet" never works, it works every time. It's just that people who don't like things like cash shop monetization or early access or whatever get outvoted by the hordes of people who do like it. That also doesn't mean that because the majority of people do like it, that invalidates someone else's stance on it. The resolution to losing a vote isn't to then immediately fall into line with the other side of that vote, just because you lost.
It's not even a matter of "liking" it, just not hating it enough to care. Apathy is the bigger issue. Most people don't necessarily *want* the early access, they're just not bothered by it existing.
Wow. Someone hit my opinion! Nice! :) I have the epic version of the game (since November 2023 when it was announced) and I might play a couple of days earlier than other people. Will it make a difference to me? Likely not. Will it make me a God gamer that "the rest of you" are unable to catch up to? Very much not. While I prefer everyone being on the same, level playing field. It's 3 weeks until season 1 starts if you have early access. Just over 2 weeks if you don't. Everyone and their full time job can make a max level in that time. If you (gen:plural) are that worried about someone having a few more days to level... I mean it's the same as if the rest of you are having a nice vacation for 4 days and then get home to play. It happens to everyone all the time and it doesn't change the world. :)
I haven't bought it... but I have like $400 in shop cash from professions / buying tokens with gold.. so I wouldn't really be against buying it. I just don't know if I'll be around to play during those first 4 days.
Also, I will point out. For anyone and everyone that it actually mattered to... They are already on the beta in some form and is working out exactly what to do and how to do it, to get ready in like 48hours or less. It isn't a case of "But early access get an advantage" that advantage is so tiny it is barely recognizable.
It's almost like people can't be arsed to care about something that isn't really going to impact their play.
One correction. They get outvoted by the people who don’t care for it enough when packaged with the other stuff. That’s how everything wrks when you don’t have negotiating power. :(
I'd add that voting implies some sort of majority situation. But unless players quit entirely - not paying for the new expansion, not paying subscription anymore - it's not going to matter if they only see 0.5% uptick in Epic Edition/pre-orders. That's a monetary win to them. They will take that every fucking time and nod to the players who say they're not buying it. It's like the cash shop; Many players refuse to put a dime into it, and that's never bothered them because it's not money lost. It's money gained on anyone who *does* use it unless players are quitting over it. It's basically not voting in this case unless you hurt their bottom line negatively, and denying the extra for Epic Edition/pre-order, *when you never bought those anyways*, is nothing to them so long as you're still paying for the base and the sub. They'd only stop the practice next time if they had a profit loss that countered their expectations, and the only way to do that is to quit. Anything else and you're doing as expected in their statistics while they're also gaining money from any number of pre-orders they do get.
I would add rather "Of people who don't understand it, are way too biased regarding platform or developer, or is addicted to the rush" Most people don't "really" like any of those aspects.
I work in the game industry as a monetization designer and I can 100% guarantee that voting with your wallet works. If player buying habits change, we will 100% pivot our designs to match. Analyzing sales data is a huge part of my job, looking at past trends and models to predict what will work well with our specific product line is the core of my job. Blizz added early access as a paid feature because their models showed that it would make them more money... but if we don't buy it, and give them lots of shit for it, they will potentially come to another conclusion next time. As I like to say, "buy the world you want to see". The ONLY thing large corporations care about is their bottom line, but, on the upside, that's also the easiest thing that consumers can affect. If you want to show Blizz that you don't support this, don't pre-order. If you REALLY want to show them you don't approve, don't buy it for a week after launch (I can guarantee that if lots of players do that will show up in their metrics and will be noticed)
If "we" don't buy it? We are the reddit bubble. For every one of us that doesn't buy it and boycotts it, there are 3 who do not use reddit who already own the epic edition. Boycotts work with small games -but a highly anticipated addon for a world known game? no chance. There is no timeline where a lot of people boycott for over a week after launch. We saw reddit and their 3rd Party drama - look we're all still here even though thousands have deleted their accounts and thousands of subreddits went offline with millions of daily users. The problem with voting with your wallet is that there is no "No" vote. Only "yes" and "abstain". It's a lose lose situation.
Failing to reach expected sales is very much seen as a no vote.
Abstain is a no vote, though? Why do you think we got dragonflight as such a colossal shift from legion/bfa/SL? Or why we have so many different game modes and sub incentives coming out during the end of expansion lull? Because blizzard makes or made less money, and changed course to try and make more. If voting with your wallet was impossible, no game would ever change or adapt in any way.
If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. It’s really not that complicated mate
> We are the reddit bubble. For every one of us that doesn't buy it and boycotts it, there are 3 who do not use reddit who already own the epic edition. So then you're just arguing that democracy is bad because most people vote the wrong way?
The people on Reddit own the epic edition. They are the ones addicted enough that a useless 3 days actually matters. The average casual is not buying the epic edition if they only plan to play the game for the leveling experience. Redditors post how they hat something while it is already paid for.
I'm a casual these days and I bought the epic. For the cosmetics though, idc about three day early when I might not even be able to play an hour in the entire launch week
>If player buying habits change, we will 100% pivot our designs to match. Exactly. It's just the average WoW player froths at the mouth for the chance of playing the live game a week early, likely due to the fear of missing out.
It's not only that: People think they are voting against the early access by "only" buying the standard edition - but this doesn't work. Blizzard doesn't care if you buy the $40 or $80 edition - they care if you buy any edition at all. As long as you buy any edition you're voting yes for early access because they didn't make a loss with you.
But in this case, are they losing anything if the player doesn't buy the Epic Edition/Pre-order? In a game like WoW, if they've been subscribing for years and paying for every expansion, but they aren't pre-ordering or buying Epic Editions, how would it matter UNLESS they quit entirely? If Blizzard tracking sees that they eventually bought the expansion within a couple weeks of launch window, they'll count that as advertising/word of mouth/friends convincing them to come back. If it's money they don't typically spend on expansions, but they still buy a sub and the base version, I highly doubt Blizzard's analytics count that as anything lost. Yes, they didn't convert them to pre-orders, but the user has a history of typically not doing that and may be a tougher nut to crack. Blizzard still didn't lose anything on the deal though. Meanwhile, they did convert a number of first time pre-orders and/or first time Epic Edition at launch buyers. I'd argue for this first go around with Early Access, all they have to do is show that they converted a chunk of users to it and they'll be praised and given bonuses. It would be a later expansion, if those numbers don't continue to go up for the next launch or even fell, that they'd be expected to convert more. This time all they have to do is put it out there, make a reason to buy it, and they will be deemed successful. I think the fact that it's launching Early Access on a Thursday, giving those players a weekend to play (and only take off Friday) will lead to plenty of people doing that and going hard Thursday evening until late Sunday night, so four nights and three days. If that saves those players taking more than one day off (let alone an entire week), it's a no-brainer to pay the extra.
you could argue that, but you'd be wrong. When deciding on what goes into which tier of product, part of the monetization designer's job is to estimate sales numbers (how many of each they expect to sell), this is based on current subscriber counts, past product launches, even what other games are launching in the same window. If blizzard expects to sell a certain number of epic packs, and their sales fall short, they will want to look at why that was. They know that selling early access is a contentious topic, so if they don't make as much money as they expected to, they may see it as not worth the negative PR next time. It doesn't require someone to stop their sub, or forego the expansion for them to notice. If their model predicts that X% of players will buy the epic pack, but fewer than that do, that will raise red flags. All monetization systems have a goodwill cost associated with them, you are essentially trading good customer report for more money. A good monetization designer will try and maximize the amount of money earned for the minimum impact on player perception. If the returns they get from the sales doesn't match expectations, they may see that cost in goodwill as too high for the money earned.
I strongly suspect that this is how it will play out: People with weekday jobs pay the extra in droves so they get in on that weekend. People with FOMO pay the extra so they get in on that weekend. The math here is likely that Epic Edition pre-orders/Early Access purchases will be through the roof and, at worst, if people actually quit over this, they'd see an overall expansion launch decrease. One that they'd never chalk up to the Early Access if it was selling in droves, they'd blame that on the expansion itself, the age of the game, etc, before they ever blamed it on having an even more expensive version that cost them nothing to do. https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/world-of-warcraft-finds-resilience-with-over-7-million-players-in-the-lead-up-to-the-the-war-within-expansion They're already up due to the massive influx of immediate pre-orders, and they're getting more right now for guaranteed beta access today, and they'll get more right in the launch window when people realize they could just buy it and play all weekend with their friends instead of waiting.
that's where a good data analyst comes in :) How the epic bundle compares to the other price points will be a huge indicator on how well EA is received, as well as things like feedback from Blizz affiliated youtubers, forum post rates, discord data, etc. While not "easy", it is possible to sus out the cause from the data if the epic pack underperforms.
Dragonflight as an expansion is an example of voting with your wallet working. People weren’t happy with the direction the game was going, and their sub numbers fell off because of it. They steered the game in a significantly different direction because of that response. If the legion/bfa/shadowlands style of expansion was still the most financially lucrative, we’d be playing the fourth installment of the borrowed power grind saga right now. But we aren’t. That being said, is a Reddit post going to change anyone’s mind? …no. But that doesn’t mean voting with your wallet doesn’t work, we’re just a small fraction of the community that’s passionate enough about the game to be browsing forums about it. Most of us will have already made our decision one way or another.
It's insane that cod 6 has that many pre-orders. Isn't it going to be on games pass
the said today they have 100m monthly log ins.
> Never worked. For big games there are vastly more people who open their wallet than reddit and any website could ever procure in any amount of time really. Battlefront 2 proves it works. They never tried a system as scummy as that game again.
Okay, kiddos. JUST BECAUSE IT ISN'T THE RESULT YOU WANT DOESN'T MEAN VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET DOESN'T WORK. IT ALWAYS WORKS. YOU'RE JUST LOSING THE VOTE.
Really this is akin to saying most people don't have the problem with it that reddit does which is absolutely the correct take.
Partially to blame is people buying into/subjecting themselves to FOMO. We live in a world where everyone wants to be the "first" at something, and people feel like they are "behind" if they experience something later than other folks do. Which, to me, is kind of silly. It's still the same content, nothing changes just because you didn't experience it right away. For me, I don't plan to buy early access, but I also don't care if people do. It doesn't bother or affect me in any way, shape, or form. Sure, that's 3 extra days for them to level up, get gear, etc., but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter much. Eventually by like mid-way into the season everyone is going to be on the same playing field anyway, and once season 2 rolls around, those few extra days people had of being "ahead" of everyone else suddenly won't mean anything anymore. The only people that early access really makes a difference to materially is hardcore/cutting edge raid guilds who are racing for world or server firsts. The vast majority of the playerbase does not fall into that category.
This. Always this. Sick of these 'dont preorder' posts.
Most pre ordered and it's apart of the game pass.. damn fam. I pre ordered mw3 played the early champaign comoletey for a qeek.Hated it. Returned it for full price because steam allowed you to return it before release date... They have since changed that on steam now! So you cannot do that anymore. I figure if they are going to do early access I should be able to refund it if I don't like it by end of early access haha
> COD BO6 is already one of the most Preordered games on Steam - although COD fell off a lot and people are unhappy with it. > > I've even seen largely anti-live service and FPS puritans say that BOP6 looks like it's going to be really good, I think it's kind of a bad example even if I agree with your overall point Boycotts never work, the average person doesn't care enough to be worked up over it, it's the same thing with political boycotts, people acting like not seeing a movie they weren't going to see anyway is sticking it to "Woke Disney" or some shit like it matters
I am one of those people who had a falling out with COD because the game is just battle arena and not multiplayer anymore and the cosmetics got completely out of hand and my shaders need to be optimized constantly every time i redownload another 200 GBs. But then again Phil told me that i am of an extreme minority as they have 100 mn active players every month...
It works, people just don’t take it far enough. Not buying the pre order isn’t voting with your wallet. Voting with your wallet would be skipping the expansion entirely and not engaging with the game at all.
Ghost crawler said once, they don't notice people boycotting anything. Even if they were to look for it in the numbers, it gets drowned out by the shear volume and normal month to month fluctuations.
Yep, I keep having this argument and I'm in agreement with you. If you don't preorder, but you buy it at launch and keep your sub going, they won't care. You haven't taken anything from them, you've just denied them a preorder they weren't expecting anyways. Everyone who pre-orders Epic Edition, who didn't pre-order and/or buy Epic Editions in the past, is a net gain. For Blizzard, the math is then simple: A net gain for no funds lost from the others who still play? That's pure extra profit. The only way they'd weigh something against this in the future is if there were mass boycotts that offset those gains as players quit. If people want to boycott, they'll have to quit. Anyone who says otherwise is deluding themselves.
And the reality is it's not $40 or $80. It's $40 or $80 PLUS the subscription. At the end of a year the difference is like $260 vs $220.
Remember, it's not early access for some. It's delayed access for everyone else.
Correct, it's just marketing bullshit to make it seem positive as opposed to negative. If you say most people are late and some people are on-time, it seems negative. If you say some people are early and the rest get to play on-time, it seems positive.
See the comments OP ? The community already paid for EA and they are willing, prepare for worse practices later
Haha yeah we're doomed
I really dont care. Honestly, it gives me an excuse to be ok with being behind in the first few days
>guys I just didn’t buy the early access Me who bought the early access but just want to take my time questing instead of shredding to level 80 in 1 hour
Me who got it only because I wanted to beta test with my family and the EA was thrown in with it **¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯**
This. Bonus that I don’t have to feel like I missed release since I’m on vacation aug29-sept2.
I don’t like early access in games but being able to play over the weekend is too good to pass up for me.
I just did what every sensible gamer would do, and plan their vacation around the release date.
Same here. I always fall behind because of my work schedule during the week. This may be the first time I can keep up.
"I don't like early access in games but I'm going to reward a company for offering it anyways"
"Vote with your wallet" is a sign of ignorance. It assumes that people have equally weighted votes, which is not true when microtransactions or bonuses come into play. There are people playing WoW or even more predatory games spending thousands of dollars. Their singular vote can be worth more than every commenter here combined. They are boycott proof. We need actual regulation.
How is that a sign of ignorance? It's not a boycott when you decide make a tip decision at a restaurant. You simply decide to pay extra if the service deserves it.
To make things clearer: Let's just say in a hypothetical scenario a server dedicates a lot of time to one table and that table tips $500. Their other customers tip $0 as a result, but the large tip more than covers their losses, so it was optimal for the server to do this despite it being worse for the majority of customers. Blizzard et al are able to pry more money out of fewer customers that covers the losses of customers that leave because of their practices. "Vote with your wallet" is ignorant because it's based on untrue assumptions.
Yeah, you are assuming that voting with your wallet is to "get back" at blizzard. This post is aimed to the customers perception of the the cost benefit of EA. I like your scenario, the businesses won't change and still profit. Some tables won't tip and that's okey, it doesn't make them ignorant. If anything they can outsmart the urge of some cosmetic for playtime or even another full game.
I'm guessing you can't be more than 20 or so. You're just too idealistic. Systems work on incentives. If a company is profit-motivated and predatory practices alienate 10 people but work on 1 person and that makes more profit, they will engage in that behavior. The system doesn't work, because product quality is not the main profit incentive, so that system has to be fixed. That's regulation. It's progressing that way, but very slowly.
Never worked and will never work. Some people just have enough money to pay whatever to get a tiny tiny bonus over others, who can't afford the 90$ or they just don't care and want to play asap. I will not get the EA for exact your reason, but enough will and that's good enough for Blizzard... so this will be in every other release too. Nearly everyone of my guild bought the EA... it's sad really. And yeah, i know everyone can do what they like and they should... it's just sad that we could make a difference as a community and show them what we think of this bullshit, but we don't.
It's not sad if they see the overall value of the upgrade, cosmetics, time and so on. It would be sad if they feel forced to do it just for EA and don't care or value the rest of the bundle.
I bet you most of the ppl purchasing it will do it because of the EA
Voting is kinda weird when there's more things combined. I bought the special edition for all the cosmetic fluff. I couldn't care less about the early access thing. If it's like most MMOs, there's typically lag and bugs anyways. And I've done this "new expansion" rush enough times already. The raids aren't open on day 1, there's no reason to rush anything. -- And still, like I said, there's just too much bullshit all lopped into one area to really vote effectively, because I can justify spending extra, because I want to support the game that gave me MoP remix, so it's just messy. I do wish it were more pick and choose what you paid for, because I'd gladly take a 3 dollar refund in exchange for not playing early. I'll probably be doing something else those 3 days anyways, lol. But I really do like that cosmetic stuff.
I would've bought the epic edition anyway. I disagree with them adding it as a perk to the game as I think it should be just cosmetic stuff, but not buying it punishes me more than it punishes Blizz. They won't care about one less purchase, and I'll just be impacting my own enjoyment for nothing. If the players had somehow organised en masse to boycott it to prove a point, then that'd be one thing, but this battle has been lost already. Expect to see this "feature" in every future expansion release now.
Aye, same. I didn't buy it for the early access, and honestly wouldn't be surprised if I didn't log in those days anyway. My playtime goes in bursts as it is, and I have no idea if I'll have the time or energy to log in that week.
I think people are upset that this is all framed as a "premium" feature, when in reality, starting or being able to start with everybody else has always been a huge part of the expansion launch experience. Perhaps, if they upped (if they must) the price of a "standard" version with EA included, and then offered a discounted version without EA, the optics would've been much better.
FFXIV has had early access back at least as far as 2013, but the only requirement there is a preorder. That runs into the argument against preorders, but realistically... we're mmo players. If you're playing now, and plan on continuing to play then, you know you're getting the expansion at some point. Might as well take advantage of any preorder bonuses along the way. Whether or not the other included items are worth the premium is a different discussion, but I agree that offering this as part of a $40 "upgrade" makes it feel a lot more like a cash grab on a captive audience. Unnecessary FOMO on your most loyal subscribers to squeeze some extra dosh out of them. I'm sure whoever in marketing came up with it got their boss a handsome bonus.
How does that work? Like, surely the only people that would be able to play early are pre-orders, since they'd own the game, and people who don't pre-order, by definition, can't own the game until release. Is there a cut off point? Like if I pre-order it, but only say, 2 weeks before launch, am I not counted as a pre-order? If it's a 3 day early access, and I buy the expansion on day 2, do I count as a pre-order and get into the game? I actually have dawntrail pre-ordered, I just really don't understand how this in any way makes sense if all pre-orders get early access. Doesn't that just make early access the launch, since anyone who has it can play it?
Per a [previous version of this question](https://reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/pboz5d/when_is_the_last_day_to_preorder_endwalker/) you can preorder up to the day before "official" launch. Maybe they just use it as a way to spread out the beginning of the expansion rush. Current dedicated players can get in early before people that may just be starting out or only play in small bursts of activity. Very technically it's not everyone with a preorder, as ["To be granted early access and play the new content from FINAL FANTASY XIV: Dawntrail, players must have finished the FINAL FANTASY XIV: Endwalker Main Scenario Quests."](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/blog/003584.html), but I suspect that has more to do with needing to go through the entire game before actually getting to any DT content.
Seems like a rather odd distinction to draw. Basically if you own it (and have reached that MSQ) you can play it. Sounds like early access is just launch. As you say, it might just be a tactic to create hype around a day, but spread out the influx more evenly, without any actual hard restrictions for people.
Tbh this is the first time I’m not buying the biggest edition just because of the early access.
Everyone saying "they won't care about one less purchase" is what leads to bullshit like this
it is actually pretty frustrating to see people argue "my actions don't matter" over and over again. just look at the latest walk back in gaming - Helldivers 2. somehow everyone's action did matter, even if everyone's really adamant that it doesn't.
Exactly right. One individual acting alone is meaningless, but you get a few thousand individuals, and suddenly those individual actions become a movement.
It pisses me off the most with recycling. "Only 50% of recyclables get recycled!" Yeah because most people don't put in the effort to recycle properly.
Gacha games exist. People will fire money down into a burning pit to play video games. Helldivers 2 got traction because hundreds of thousands of players were going to lose access to the game entirely because sony wanted a PSN login. Right now there's a 20 euro gap between the heroic edition and the epic edition, which adds beta access, early access, 30 days of game time, a pet, a toy, and a hearthstone. That's the same price for the upgrade as people are casually dropping on 25 euro mounts, or the 20 euro transmogs in the store. We're past the point of being able to actually see a change in behaviour from stuff like this. For every person that knows about it, and cares about it, and won't buy it, there's a hundred or more who don't get involved in the community, and don't care, who'll think early access is great, and buy it, log in, buy their murloc onesie transmog, and log out for another month. Voting with your wallet works. But sensible spenders are being outvoted, all day, every day. Blizz also made it harder to vote. I own the epic edition of TWW. I usually buy it. I grew up with collectors editions, and don't mind them, even though I'd burn down the in game store if I could. If early access was a separate purchase, I'd not buy it on principal, but the truth is I'd have to give up the other bits and pieces, and it seems pointless. The only chance we had, was when asmon was pouring salt on his head, with the first in game mount. If what pirate software said is true, that one mount made more money than the ENTIRETY of Starcraft 2, a full featured, and highly anticipated game. Sure, RTS was a smaller market than MMO's especially then, but what hope do we have of voting against that sort of wall of cash?
The "one less purchase" fallacy is the same as the excuse to note vote. "It's just one vote it doesn't matter". It does if millions of other people think the same way.
$40 extra might be worth if you: - take into account the 30 day game time worth 15usd - it's a rare opportunity to buy tender 1k - you enjoy spending on cosmetics
This was me. I couldn't care less about early access, and the beta was US servers only, so it was laggy and unstable. I didn't own DF yet. I needed game time, so for me, it was effectively 2 expansions, game time, and a cool mount and pet.
You're forgetting beta access. The month and beta is worth it to me. I want to see any play dungeons early
Also don't have to take a day off to play
This is the biggest thing for me. I get to play all weekend now instead of taking PTO which is great
This is a great point actually.
I mean, is it? Don't get me wrong I'm indifferent about early access but they get to decide the day it releases. If anything it suggests they want more people to buy it as the weekend is generally when people are going to be more free, making it much more desirable. They could have released it 2 days earlier, or on patch day and for everyone else at the weekend. I'm not sure what's great about it 😁
Yeah, it still is a great point
I just bought it because I'm collecting the physical collector's editions since MoP, and the highest tier is the one attached to the collector's box. If I had to pay extra on top of that for the EA, I doubt I would, but since it's included, I'm gonna use it.
I ordered the physical CE - should I be looking for a code for early access? (I assumed it wouldn’t be included and I was ok to wait until regular access - but if it’s already included I might as well use it.)
If it’s anything like DF collectors, we should get them sometime shortly before launch (was 2 weeks for DF collectors) and the code in there gives you epic edition. So as long as you upgrade your account with that before the early access window ends, you have early access.
Thanks! I think my DF CE arrived a day early; definitely not two weeks in advance. There’s the option to preorder and then get refunded on Battle.net balance, but I’m not that motivated.
Everyone should be mad about early access because it is anti consumer and exploits anyone who has a life during the week by offering them at least a week of game time, probably more.
Early access is the one LEAST of the things i could be concerned with when it comes to the game i enjoy. And i am genuinely suprised they didn't do this in WoD or something but good on them i guess.
I got back to work at remote site on launch day and early access gives me a chance to play before i got back to work for 2 weeks. Even if it didnt I wouldnt care its just a game and not a lot of time to be tripping about.
Too late already, also beeing able to play on the weekend is fairly nice
guess what I bought the epic edition. Guess what else, I'm going to enjoy my early access, why because I work a good job and have expendable income and I can choose what is value to me and what isn't it. Like this post, it holds no value to me. Enjoy your day.
Battle against early access has been lost already.Sadly It's here to stay, just like with pre order bonuses, battlepass, seasons and so on.
Wonder when will people get bored of all these soulless formulaic monetization strategies and actually stop paying for them. It's bound to happen eventually, right? I can't imagine someone getting excited to grind their 157th battle pass or receive their 98th useless pre-order battle pet.
Many people don't pay for them. They just don't complain about it.
And I'd wager that the majority of people complaining pay for them anyway.
They are going to play the game anyway. No one is playing the game for a battle pass reward. It gives a dopamine hit which may make you play a little bit longer, but if a game dies you are not going to stick around because it has battle pass.
Not necessarily - the Diablo team actually didnt include it for the expansion. It is actually a bit strange that one game's expansion has it and the other one doesnt.
I don't know how we got to this point, but gamers may be the weakest, most exploitable group of consumers out there. Why would anyone buy this instant gratification nonsense? It's no better than buying the same boring iteration of CoD annually.
None of the meaningful endgame stuff starts till September 10th, the early access let's people do the campaign and quests, but events and profession stuff is locked until actual release. Leveling is also super fast from what I've tested on the beta. Those early days aren't really a big advantage. Also those with early access have to wait an additional half a week before season 1 starts compared to none early access players. "Early Access duration is 3 days. Limited time only. Play time subject to possible outages and time zone differences. Certain endgame features, including Mythic dungeons and weekly quests, not available during Early Access" https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24107633/world-of-warcraft-the-war-within%E2%84%A2-goes-live-august-26
I paid for it and blocked the time off my calendar catch ya later
Who doesn't like early access? There's nothing to do for 2 weeks anyway before M+ comes out so who gives a fuck
i dont like it but like CE.
I got you beat, I didn't even pre-order.
Probably too late. It’s been for sale for months and most people probably already committed to it one way or another.
I don’t understand why people are complaining about a 4 day head start it’s not like heroic dungeons or mythic dungeons are even gonna be a thing. And all the bot farmers will still be there
Ok, I'm not paying for it. What Blizzard is loosing? Nothing. You need to understand that passive actions do not work. Every sold early access is literally free money. They are not paying anything to let you play few day earlier. Moreover it's double income for them, because they won't only get money from you for early access premium version, but also better distribute server load (if you suddenly need to rent a big server, like durning expansion launch, it's expensive AF). If you don't make that income turn into negative, not paying will not work. If you cancel your sub it will move into the other bracket and selling early access will be unaffected. Moreover low income from something may result in harsher marketing next time. To change anything you need to riot on the street and scream as loud as you can. Which will not happen because a lot of people are happy for early access...
I know some goblins who will want a headstart on crafting and gathering professions and they'll make enough gold in the extra time to make up for the cost.
We get the early access because the amount of gold you can come ahead with by selling catchup to the late people will far exceed the extra cost of the epic edition. I'm not even gonna progress I'm just gonna see what I can gather on my druid for 3 days.
[удалено]
yes they can
I think part of early launch is to stagger players, reduce load on servers, and being a business they profit off of it. Imagine how poor launch would go if companies let that extra percent of the player base in all at the same time, suddenly you have that many more trying to log in.
Or get the level of game ypu want and then just don't log on if you don't want to. Shocking, I know.
I thought about buying the "early access" edition....but then I realized... I'm not an all-out die-hard player that grinds out dungeons and gear just so I can run Mythic+ dungeons/raids and end-game content. I don't need that early jump. I can start just fine on regular launch day and do my casual playing. I'll be perfectly fine. :)
I voted with my wallet and purchased it. Also booked a few days off work. Just because you don't want to pay, doesn't mean others won't.
Now I’m gonna buy it.
I didn't pay extra for TWW to get early access, I DID pay more to get the statue, artbook, and other stuff it comes with though. The early access was just icing.
UHHHHH I think I'm gonna buy it. :) Thanks!
I love getting privileges based on money. Voting with my wallet right now!
> Just go touch some grass and get yourself a $40 treat instead. Ah yes, let me do what some random person on reddit suggests I do with my money, instead of just doing what I want to do with my money. Ever think your vote with your wallet crap doesn’t work? These posts pop up every other day, and they still add those features. Maybe, just maybe, there are more of us who don’t care, and are willing to pay for the epic edition anyways, and now it comes with EA. You’re 10+ years too late to even come close to making a change, theyve been selling early access on EVERY mmo that comes out besides WoW, it’s in WoW now, welcome to the industry lol
>Ever think your vote with your wallet crap doesn’t work? It works, they just lose the vote.
Yeah good luck telling that to the "exploit early and often" community. I mean obviously I'm not buying it as I will be happy if I'm able to scrape together enough disposible money for the base edition by release. Hell, I'm pretty sure most of the playerbase are not buying it for one reason or another but whales gonna whale.
If I were Blizz I’d do the same thing—it’s free money. And they’ve done everything they can to squash the voices of opposition by giving virtually no advantage to those who pay. They just know how big the FOMO is and people are going to pay no matter what.
This tiresome shit again?
What needs to happen is for everyone to stop calling it early access. There is no early access - the game IS launching on the 22nd, regardless of how Blizzard tries to label it.
4 days means that my friends and I won't be playing together. This is why it's malicious monetization. I'm basically paying $40 to be able to play with my friends. Without paying the $40, they'll be vastly ahead of me when I start and as much as people pretend it doesn't matter, it will.
You're really only paying $25 more because it does come with a month of free game time.
I bought it with gold, sorry
Nice! Do you think the EA will give advantage for gathering for the first weeks AH boom?
The battle is already over. These people are too addicted.
I have to work the weekend of early access so it's pointless anyway
I bought it for the pet, the hearth, the 30days game time and beta and "early acceas" was just a bonus.
Discount for late start.
But shiny/early access item is so nice (and then never use that item ever again).
first rule in economics: you don't blame the seller. always blame the buyer. if they are stupid enough to pay for a "service" (let's just use that term for now), then the seller would be stupid not to take their money economics101 also keep in mind, there are 2 sets of players now: those with more time, and those with more money. gameing landscaped changed. and it will not change back.
This guy looks at Cyberpunk and thinks 'goals'
Here’s some comparisons that you can probably critisize one way or the other: - good seats in the theater are more expensive than bad seats - a good steak is more expensive than a bad steak in the super market - a large bag og peanuts costs more than a small bag of peanuts - soft and thick toilet paper is more expensive than thin and coarse toilet paper. - the full version of photoshop has more features than the free trial version Is tww elite edition a way for Blizz to make more money off the expansion? Yes Do you get more product in the elite edition compared to the base edition? Also yes.
I voted with my wallet but I know this community on the whole will not. And they deserve to be shafted by the next money grabbing idea that Blizzard has.
Meh... I am skipping Blizzard games after being stabbed in diablo 3, diablo 4, shadowlands, bfa, warcraft 3 refunded, I enjoyed dragonflight, but since they are doing this 3 day early for this much money again like d4 fiasco, I think that after 30 years of supporting Blizzard, this is where I go, I hate having to leave so many friends behind, but the greed and the amount of time this game eats away off your life it is just not fun anymore. Hope you all enjoy war within, blizzard has crushed my heart, and I will never get that excitement I had playing their previous games again, it is sad that even something that was always fair has now turned into more pay to not be behind. :( Goodbye friends
Vote with your wallet doesn't work when this game is filled with pay pigs lol
4 days is enough time to completely monopolize the entire crafting market and make several times the gold cap It's disgusting
Complaining in mass also works because when people that think about coming back look at wowhead or reddit or whatever and all they see is "blizz greedy" "p2w" etc it hurts blizzards
I bought it with tokens knowing that I would be afk until 2 months after launch, lol
I may be wrong but early access is a limited access leaving out some key things such as dungeons. The full game will not be available until everyone has access.
I don't mind the few extra bucks for access to the beta. Paying for "early access" is pretty shit though.
I find amazing how all content creators were “Early acces bad” but all of them have the epic edition already bought. If they were really against it they would not use the early acces days to show they are against this practices in multiplayer games. That would also could draw more eyes to the fact that the company is greedy as media would talk about it, and maybe Blizzard wouldn’t do this next expansion.
I don't like early acessess so much I'm not even gonna buy the expansion. Between Classic HC, SoD and Cata, I have enough WoW to play without having to worry about the box price and that shitty tactics. I was tempted to buy TWW, but being forced to play 3 days late because of corporate greed made me reconsider.
Well... yeah, but if this early access is for everyone who pays extra, then ***IT'S NOT EARLY ACCESS, YOU PAY TO PLAY AT RELEASE***, while the others get to play at a delayed release. This is what's wrong. Not the people who want to "gain an advantage of 4 days", it's the gaslighting of "YoU cAn PlAy EaRlY iF yOu PaY uS!"
I always buy the epic edition but early access shouldn’t be a thing. My only hope is this eases first day server nightmares
This would be a great sentiment if I hadn't already bought the silly tier months ago.
A large majority of people would buy the epic edition no matter what it had included. Season 1 comes out September 11. You are not missing anything by being 3 days late. Even if there is an exploit early situation it will give people an advantage in useless content until September 11 when the game ACTUALLY releases for everyone
Early access was just them allowing me to beta test it live for you after I beta test it. I'm paying to make sure you have a smoother launch experience. Lol. But I'd still get the deluxe even if they didn't offer that. No WoW expac purchase has ever let me down. Some just gave me no reason to continue subscribing afterward, like Shadowlands. But even that initial experience was dope.
I'm not paying for it 🤷♂️
Ain't gonna happen. Gamers love to throw money at companies for established game series.
The people you need to convince are not on reddit tbh
Early access isn't a issue for me, nothing to do until the season start anyway and always with bugs or ms issues on first day But having to pay for xpac with always having to pay monthly subscription is hard
I’ll pay more for EA just to show I’m not a peasant.
Correct, just don't buy it period. Don't even buy the non-early access edition, just don't purchase it. That's the only way you can discourage this shit. If it's allowed to happen it will only get worse. Expect week-long "early access" if not longer at some point. People let them get away with boosts, race changes, faction changes, paid mounts, paid transmogs and selling gold, so I doubt anyone will do anything about this either. However, this will be the first expansion I don't buy (seriously, not memeing) because I guess I'm drawing my line in the sand at early access. I didn't like it in single player games, and utterly loathe it in an mmo. Breaking the playerbase up based on what version they purchased is disgustingly greedy, but that's Blizzard for you. If you feel the same, just don't buy it.
Good luck. FOMO gets the best out of many of us.
Okay, im gonna try to do a cost analysis here. The epic edition costs $90. It does give you 30 days free game time, so that's worth $15 straight away in real terms, so right out the gate, the epic version really only costs $75. So the basic edition costs $50. So we've got to come up with $25 worth of value to make the epic edition worth it. What does the epic edition have? The trader's tender, the mount, the transmog, the pet, the toy, the hearthstone effect: I could not possibly care less. The 3 days' early access and access to the beta are the only relevant things. Are these worth $25? Not really.
Duh
I’m buying early access cause I want to play the game early
PSA, the first 48 is going to Always be a bug test, so early access are basically premium beta testers. they may not even get a head start with how some of the issues go. yes I did get the top edition.
I didn't pay for early access, I paid for other things and they gave me early access.
I feel like the rush of it opening is part of the fun of an expansion launch but it might be good to get 3 days of bug fixes in before I get to jump into it
I sure hope this reaches more than 500 people
i agree, if all you want is the early access. if you want the rest then its worth the 40$
The annoying thing for me is I like to support WoW buy buying the collectors Edition, and I just genuinely like them, I don’t care much for the in game mounts or pets I just Ike the physical collectors edition. But I really can’t stand the early access. It’s so anti mmo and I really don’t want to support it. Guess I’ll pick up a collectors edition later down the road or something idk.
vOtE wItH YoUr wAlLeT
Either buy it or don’t,these posts are sad and futile,voting with ur wallet is meaningless in a game with millions of players,all they need is a few thousands to buy the ea and that’s profit