Moneysinks and WoW design

[dak]

I'm pretty sure you would cry about having to pay 30 silver to accomplish an end game task. This is evident by the inane whining over the ENORMOUS (read: nonexistant) costs for T3 armor. The problem with WoW isn't casuals, it's raiders and their 'we deserve everything at no cost' mentality. Believe me, if you are crying now, other games in the genre are going to be a bitter pill for you to swallow once you pack up your shit and move on.

"But I don't want to log on and do anything but raid..." Yea, ok. How is that Blizzard's problem again?

He made it pretty clear that the current end game raider has no problem with paying fees as long as they don't question/care about how it is affecting the stability of the world they spend 5+ hours a day in.

That stability breaks down when you realize that adding a moneysink gives farmers a market, increasing their population dramatically. This results in more money entering the market thus TOTALLY negating the positive influence the sink was designed to have. Instead you end up with the same net inflation you would have anyways but as a by product you have a bunch of farmers griefing casuals and ultimately violating your own companies EULA.

In a game where the "casual 60" is the minority and most people have at least cleared molten core "end game moneysinks" are a dangerous thing to base your economy on. I don't know when the last time you played WoW was but "end game" guilds are not close to what EQ guilds were. On my server the other guild besides my own clearing AQ40 is hardly a step above a Diablo II clan. People ninja loot, officers secretly sell gold to IGN, nobody really gives a shit and why should they? WoW endgame isn't the big deal it was in EQ. Just show up and spend a bill every now and then on china farmer gold and you can be uber!

I don't know what the solution is, I can assure you it isn't giving jobs to gold farmers. Personally I'd like to see a return of the old EQ style exp debt on deaths, hell even exp debt on completing T3 quests be cool. That way instead forking over 20 bucks to a gold farmer or mindlessly farming you actually get to spend time 5 manning with your guild to recover the exp loss. Dunno bout you but that seems much more fun to me.

[The Black Hand]

Originally Posted by Gar

Furor, you are honeslty beign an ass here. You yourself argued in EQ among us others to widen the gap in progression in SoV, SoL and PoP.

Are you seriously suggesting here that the amount of farming us raiders do is somewhere in balance with the rewards we get?

For example, I log in 3 hours before the raid each day to farm potions, flasks of titans and gold in a server where 10+ guilds are in need of the same components.

It's allmost at the point where I lose the lust to play WoW when I need to run around blasted lands with 10 other toons trying to reach a herb faster. That is by all means retarded.

Same goes for gold supplies. We farm the same spots as IGE guys do just to play the god damn game. I would be more than happy if I could spend my repair gold on buying potions and that way losing gold from the servers rather than the idiotic way its done atm.

What it comes to guilds, I lead a god damn guild who did cthun month ago and we have constant membership and recruiment problems due the sole fact you force players to leave the game. In EQ I could log into raids, have my fun and log off. In WoW I need to upkeep 10+ herbs, gold and other repairs funds while raiding.

Fuck. For once, come to our level of gameplay and ask your buddies in FoH how much they feel like farming shit just to be able to do the content. Just a reminder, without one hunter in your own fucking guild I bet you and your friends would not have the potion supply you do. Does that mean that every guild has to find 30-40% of their playerbase bored out students out of university?

You have me mistaken for someone that would have banned you for being a whiney cunt. I actually tolerate your inane chatter.

My buddies in FOH take care of their guild you goddamned retarded monkey. Haven't you been listening?

You have to upkeep? lmao... stfu dude. Just shut the fuck up. Don't play the sympathy card, you'll get none. You're sitting here on your soapbox trying to call for help to any and every retard who will listen when the problem is that YOU ARE A TERRIBLE GUILD LEADER. That's what it comes down to. Again, this isn't Blizzard's fault - it's yours.

[Dynalisia]

Originally Posted by The Black Hand

Why is my guild subjected to such nonsense? My guild who if they are worth a goddamn should have at least 15k gold and unlimited supplies just sitting in the bank."

This is true and at my guild's height, we were actually up to 54.000g. However, since we started doing refunds going up to hundreds of gold for 100% attendance on 'high wipe risk' content, combined with a lot of heavy buying for consumables and what not this pile of gold has steadily declined. Combine this with the that fact that MC BoE's are becoming less and less of a money generator, we'll probably be seeing us dip under 20k halfway Naxxramas, which gives us exactly enough for one more big repairmoney refund and one big consumable rush for the later bosses.

What do you all do for guild-bank cash generation? The only thing I can think of is selling AQ20 shit, but is that really such a good cash cow? I must confess I'm not really up to speed on what a guild can make cash with nowadays, as the last time I was responsible for any of it, was when we were still doing MC consistantly and making up to 800g of profit on prophecy bracers and such. It's mostly just my curiosity.

[Lleauaric~EW]

Taken what you say for face value...

What is the difference between the exp debt of EQ1 and the G debt of WoW?
Give up?
EQ1 at least forced you to be honest about the penalty... in WoW, you can just put it on your Credit Card. Id actually bet that the time it took to make up a nights raid of exp debt was less than what it takes to pay off a repair bill by farming for the cash amount.

Oh, and stfu about guilds have oodles of spare money. What guild leader gives out money for repairs? And how do you decide who gets it?
Imagine THAT fucking headache.
"Oh you gave Soandso 7g for repairs, the rogues messing up on aggro caused my repairs, give me my gold!"
No guild leader worth 2shits would pay for its members bills. Guilds pay enough for regents and potions and mats to make the entire guild resist gear. (or 20000 dark iron ore bars) or whatever fucked up time mini time sink that was place in there.
Its like bleeding to death from a 1000 paper cuts.

If mindless farming for vital pieces necessary to be able raid is all the people who are in charge of this games direction can come up, then the future is pretty bleak.

It is kind of funny how games imitate life... Chinese farmers are doing the jobs that American raiders dont want to do.. omg! And the powers that be ignore the issue because they know its existance, despite laws on the book specifically forbiding it, helps sustain a system that is headed for heaploads of trouble.

[The Black Hand]

Originally Posted by Lleauaric~EW

Taken what you say for face value...

What is the difference between the exp debt of EQ1 and the G debt of WoW?
Give up?
EQ1 at least forced you to be honest about the penalty... in WoW, you can just put it on your Credit Card. Id actually bet that the time it took to make up a nights raid of exp debt was less than what it takes to pay off a repair bill by farming for the cash amount.

Oh, and stfu about guilds have oodles of spare money. What guild leader gives out money for repairs? And how do you decide who gets it?
Imagine THAT fucking headache.
"Oh you gave Soandso 7g for repairs, the rogues messing up on aggro caused my repairs, give me my gold!"
No guild leader worth 2shits would pay for its members bills. Guilds pay enough for regents and potions and mats to make the entire guild resist gear. (or 20000 dark iron ore bars) or whatever fucked up time mini time sink that was place in there.
Its like bleeding to death from a 1000 paper cuts.

If mindless farming for vital pieces necessary to be able raid is all the people who are in charge of this games direction can come up, then the future is pretty bleak.

Do you 'bet' this because you also never had to make up xp debt in EQ? Because once again, you are a scrub? I would recommend asking your guild leader to set a repair policy up like any guild worth a damn already does.

[Dynalisia]

Originally Posted by Lleauaric~EW

Taken what you say for face value...

What is the difference between the exp debt of EQ1 and the G debt of WoW?
Give up?
EQ1 at least forced you to be honest about the penalty... in WoW, you can just put it on your Credit Card. Id actually bet that the time it took to make up a nights raid of exp debt was less than what it takes to pay off a repair bill by farming for the cash amount.

Oh, and stfu about guilds have oodles of spare money. What guild leader gives out money for repairs? And how do you decide who gets it?
Imagine THAT fucking headache.
"Oh you gave Soandso 7g for repairs, the rogues messing up on aggro caused my repairs, give me my gold!"
No guild leader worth 2shits would pay for its members bills. Guilds pay enough for regents and potions and mats to make the entire guild resist gear. (or 20000 dark iron ore bars) or whatever fucked up time mini time sink that was place in there.
Its like bleeding to death from a 1000 paper cuts.

If mindless farming for vital pieces necessary to be able raid is all the people who are in charge of this games direction can come up, then the future is pretty bleak.

If that's what you come up with when thinking about helping pay your member's repair costs, you are definately right in that you should not even bother thinking about it.

[Bixxby]

Increase the drop rate on sellable shit in instances that a solo chinaman can't farm and you give anyone trying to honestly make money a much easier time of it, seems pretty simple to me.

(It's already in the game somewhat, example being Balnazzar/Archivist at the end of liveside, but it could really use some more use).

[Gar]

Originally Posted by The Black Hand

You have to upkeep? lmao... stfu dude. Just shut the fuck up. Don't play the sympathy card, you'll get none. You're sitting here on your soapbox trying to call for help to any and every retard who will listen when the problem is that YOU ARE A TERRIBLE GUILD LEADER. That's what it comes down to. Again, this isn't Blizzard's fault - it's yours.

Yeah, now I'm the terrible guild leader for camping gromsblood to supply your content design that dosn't allow to beat encounters without the HP supply they give? Try yourself to do Twin emps without flasking and I'd be happy. I bet I was the shitty guildleader too when we killed AoW back in the day.

We provide pretty much everything to our guild, but when we have to "provide" the same amount of hours we do actual raiding, its out of balance. It's not abot guildleading, it's not about upkeep, its just making the shit not fun.

If you had to rally up your guild to change profesions to create the future armor back in Plane of Power, I bet the frontpage of this site would have been filled with flames. Never the less, you can ignore my input on this matter as a fucked up euro bastard that lead the same EQ raid you did, but it still does not change the fact that farming in WoW is out of controll.

When more than half of my guild says they buy gold just to supply hp potions, herbs and repairs, something is fucked up in your gamedesign. Or did we become somesort of losers of WoW guilds by doign the high end content supplied with IGE gold? You would not belive the amount of supplies bought by your pet guilds at highend WoW.. It's universal and just due blizzard mistakes in content creation.

Or did running around zones with completition to reach a herb for mana and titans flasks just become intresting content in world of warcraft? IGE gold anyone?

[Wodin]

What did you guys do with all your resources? MC BoEs, Cores, Ingots, Elementium, Obsidian Shards, extra AQ20 skillbooks. All of these things are worth a lot of money. Your crafters had access to recipes that three or four other people on the server did. Did you leverage that and make money off it?

Raid guilds have had unique advantages that others haven't when it comes to making money. Some have been amazingly good at making money. Others like ourselves have been so-so. But regardless, the resources required to craft the tier 3 sets are not going to seriously tax any serious end-game raiding guild.

[Remfin]

My buddies in FOH take care of their guild you goddamned retarded monkey. Haven't you been listening?

I know of at least 2 FOH members who buy gold to get by...at least that's what they claim when they're doing it!

[Cad]

Originally Posted by The Black Hand

Do you 'bet' this because you also never had to make up xp debt in EQ? Because once again, you are a scrub? I would recommend asking your guild leader to set a repair policy up like any guild worth a damn already does.

What does EQ have to do with WoW? Isn't WoW supposed to remove all the dumb un-fun things from EQ? You guys have done a good job of that on alot of things; why reverse yourself on this?

Repair costs are fine.. the costs aren't out of hand and if you're not just chain-wiping, you can earn them back very quickly. The tier 3 mat set costs, in isolation.. are fine. You're getting some good gear, and really the mats aren't much on a per-peice basis. The attunement costs if you're not exalted.. again, not outrageous, but you feel it.

All taken together? I feel more likely to buy gold than ever before. I want to log in and do the fun parts of the game. You guys are doing a great job on raid content, it's generally pretty fun. Given there's no other way to advance in the game, I do it. I have to admit it's not too bad if you just suck it up and schedule real life around the goddamn game. Your farming game needs work.. I don't enjoy killing mobs that give me absolutely no challenge. My pet doesn't even hold auto-shot aggro anymore.

Please re-think the direction the game is going in - the costs as they are are manageable, a little bit of a sink but manageable. With the way it's going you're just going to give IGE more business - most people like me will not farm more, we'll pay someone 5 cents an hour equivalency to do it for us.

[GrobbeeTrull]

My guild can do it, if yours cant they need to l2p.

[Gar]

Originally Posted by Remfin

I know of at least 2 FOH members who buy gold to get by...at least that's what they claim when they're doing it!

I know more than two, but that isn't the point here I guess, since farming and money usage in WoW is in full balance. I bet he forgot that we still have friends in that guild we that talk to.

Didn't you get the memo? Here is the earlier memo I wrote on the same topic:

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorp...love-bomb.html

[Cybsled]

Repair costs and mat costs aside, it would be nice if raiders had a raid option to obtain many of these things that didnt involve lining the pockets of IGE.

Arcanite/arcane crystals is the #1 beef I have with the T3 sets/Naxx attunement. The IGE farmers have a virtual lock on the rich thorium node spots on many servers, and there is no raid source save for the obsidian chunks, which have the same gem pool as RTN as far as I can tell. However, crystal drops are rare. Ever since the patch added the node drops for AQ40, I've seen 1 crystal from the chunks. A single crystal out of probably close to 100 nodes.

Also on the topic of guild banks, as you move away from the lower tier raids like Ony and whatnot, the bosses drop alot less sellable materials. Even Nef in BWL will drop a few blue BOE, and I've seen a few world drops including epics come off the goblins. But AQ is a wasteland cashwise. Horrible boss cash drops and just some token vendorbait that amounts to a few gold if you whore the corpses. Even if you were inclined to sell the idols/scarabs, your only customers would be other raiding guilds, since joe shmoe is unlikely to have the boss drop piece, let alone the required faction.

[Lyenae]

Originally Posted by Wodin

What did you guys do with all your resources? MC BoEs, Cores, Ingots, Elementium, Obsidian Shards, extra AQ20 skillbooks. All of these things are worth a lot of money. Your crafters had access to recipes that three or four other people on the server did. Did you leverage that and make money off it?

Yep, there's plenty of cash loot in the raiding game. Problem is they dissapear into 'guild banks' that no one except corrupt guild leaders abuse.

Simple liquidate the guild bank every week/monk once it breaks over a limit.