World of Warcraft: Current Year

DeadAgain got me. Thanks

Hoax or legit?http://www.pcgamesn.com/wow/blizzard...world-warcraft

Hrrrm. World of Warcraft players came out in frowns yesterday upon discovery of a strange spell on the public test realm.Enduring Elixir of Wisdom appears in patch 5.4, offers a double XP boost, and makes reference to an 'In Game Store'.

Zoinks! M-M-Microtransactions! Those same players scarpered to the game's official forums, where their fears were corroborated by a Blizzard rep.

"We are currently exploring the possibility of adding a way for players in certain regions to make purchases directly within the game," wrote WoW community manager Jonathan 'Zarhym' Brown.

"As part of this process, elements related to this will be appearing on the PTR. We'll provide additional updates on our plans as development progresses."

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Edit: It's on a couple of other websites as well now so probably legit.

I could be wrong but I could have sworn they said they'd never go down that route. Maybe they didn't though, I'm sure someone will have a quote if they did.

If its a double exp pot then it looks like they'll employ Pay 2 Win. Fuck.

Noodleface_sl said:

If its a double exp pot then it looks like they'll employ Pay 2 Win. Fuck.

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So every MMO with an store-sold XP pot is pay to win?

Itzena_sl said:

So every MMO with an store-sold XP pot is pay to win?

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Yes.

I'd say so, you're gaining an advantage over those not willing to spend RL money.

Itzena_sl said:

So every MMO with an store-sold XP pot is pay to win?

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You do realize you just set yourself up, right?

"for players in certain regions" sounds like Asia.

I don't see how double XP would make sense anyway; there are already a billion ways to speed leveling up. If they really wanted to be evil they'd sell a valor cap extender and extra mogu runes of fate.

BTW, if you think leveling faster means you 'win', you apparently don't play WoW.

Over the years I've watched tons of folks dual box RAF accounts to power level alts.

The exp pot is probably a lot cheaper and easier. I will gladly drop a few bucks for one to help skip the northrend leveling grind.

There's basically no grind there, you can just pvp or instance your way past it without even setting foot.

I imagine this XP pot will end up in the eventual China F2P offering. Its coming.

I bet the US/EU stay P2P for a long time. I excuse xp pots usually. Gear will cause a /cancel from me just as it did with Swtor. Any gear beyond simply level 1 non-scaling tmog stuff.

Kaljin_sl said:

You do realize you just set yourself up, right?

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Ssh, I'm playing a long game here. You'll see the payoff in about a month.

Caeden_sl said:

I imagine this XP pot will end up in the eventual China F2P offering. Its coming.

I bet the US/EU stay P2P for a long time. I excuse xp pots usually. Gear will cause a /cancel from me just as it did with Swtor. Any gear beyond simply level 1 non-scaling tmog stuff.

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This. If any market would go F2P, it would be China and they can make money with micro-transactions. Besides, there already is a super XP pot in WoW that you can get. Rare statue in Dreadwastes...spawns every 2 hrs. gogogogo!

Itzena_sl said:

Ssh, I'm playing a long game here. You'll see the payoff in about a month.

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It's not really a game when anyone with half a brain knows EQN will be cash-shop out the ass. Smed humps that shit like dachsund on pixie sticks.

Given how old the game is and how marginalized the leveling component to it has become, I barely view this as news.

I suppose an exception might be at xpac launch, but I doubt something like this would be available for the first X weeks anyway, which punts it back to who-gives-a-fuck territory.

Vulg_sl said:

which punts it back to who-gives-a-fuck territory.

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The who-gives-a-fuck attitude is precisely why we've fallen as far down the slippery slope as we have to the garbage pile of an industry we have today.

You should give a fuck about every little thing Blizzard and other MMO developers do. Because that doing influences decisions for yet more doing, and what they've been doing for the past 10 years is selling their souls for an extra $2.99 pony on the cash shop. It has to fucking stop if we want any real gameplay again.

Ya, selling special looking mounts is game breaking...

Besides, anything Blizzard does is going to be wrong in your eyes unless they do a patch, the servers come up, and it's vanilla EQ1 (complete with bugs!).

Dumar_sl said:

The who-gives-a-fuck attitude is precisely why we've fallen as far down the slippery slope as we have to the garbage pile of an industry we have today.

You should give a fuck about every little thing Blizzard and other MMO developers do. Because that doing influences decisions for yet more doing, and what they've been doing for the past 10 years is selling their souls for an extra $2.99 pony on the cash shop. It has to fucking stop if we want any real gameplay again.

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Where do you get off lecturing people when you bought and played MoP yourself. You make damn good points about the industry and the genre, then go and fucking buy and play the very thing you protest against. Do as I say, not as I do.

Dumar_sl said:

The who-gives-a-fuck attitude is precisely why we've fallen as far down the slippery slope as we have to the garbage pile of an industry we have today.

You should give a fuck about every little thing Blizzard and other MMO developers do. Because that doing influences decisions for yet more doing, and what they've been doing for the past 10 years is selling their souls for an extra $2.99 pony on the cash shop. It has to fucking stop if we want any real gameplay again.

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Sounds like a stressful way to game.

Feel free to work yourself up to an aneurysm if you like, it's a pretty simple formula for me - as long as Blizzard doesn't cross the streams of pay-to-win and progression raiding (i.e. the reason I still play), I just don't care. They can add as many rainbow-farting unicorn mounts or novelty pets to their store as they'd like.

If they try to monetize shit they shouldn't and flush the game down the toilet the same way they ruined D3, I'll find something else to do. In the interim, I'll choose not to be surprised that a corporation tends to act in a capitalistic fashion.