"Can we use the WoW Token in Era?"
"No"
"No"
"nope"
"Why not? We boost"
"boosts got nerfed before the split"
"is that why people don't boost Mara?"
"::shrug::"
"if you're looking for Classic Plus, it ain't happening. when you clear Naxx in Era, that's it."
"nothing here will roll into anything else"
"but I want a boost and can pay"
"you could just play the game"
***
I was reminded of that chat from a few months ago (heavily edited to remove the call outs for WTB/WTS stuff) when I saw this shortly after Blizzcon's announcements:
And the other day, while waiting for my questing buddy to arrive for a Scholomance dungeon run, the tank said "Hey, are you seeing this?"
I looked up from typing away on my Great American Novel* to see toons appearing at the entrance to the instance and popping in.
Lots and lots of toons. With weird names that didn't quite make any sense.
"Looks like bots and boosts," I said.
"Yeah."
"Like right out of TBC Classic. I've seen videos of stuff like this." I was a fountain of deep insight, I tell you.
"That's crazy."
I couldn't disagree with this assessment. I'm very much a 'diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks' kind of person, but such an obvious attempt to bypass most of the game irritated me to no end.
It reminded me of something I once read, that Fines due to breaking the law are only a deterrent for poor people; for rich people they are just a fee for doing whatever they want to do.
Is a rich person concerned about a $500 fine for violating a curfew law or a noise ordinance? No, they'll just pay the fine and keep right on doing it.
Think of Steve Jobs and the loophole he exploited to never have to put a license plate on one of his cars, and you get the idea.**
***
This brings me around to the whales that some gaming companies chase after with those boosts and cash shops.
There's that infamous video posted about how to chase after whales by monetizing things in video games, but I'm thinking of the side effects of those whales.
It's like chasing after that one big business deal for a small company. Or a community getting a new factory (or Amazon facility). Or the government building a military base nearby. You get this sudden windfall that boosts your bottom line, and you become addicted to it. But you also become dependent upon it.
One of my ex-bosses used to say that he'd prefer to land a thousand small deals than two or three big deals. Sure, the big deals looked impressive, but those deals come with outsized demands. And if you lost one of those big deals, the impact on the company is far greater than if you lose one of the small deals.
There are also other, unforeseen side effects. Such as the one that Dan Olson mentions in his (relatively) short video about what happened at the Darkmoon Faire at the 2023 BlizzCon:
***
Was there any real point to this post other than free association? Not really. It just seems to me that the business model for a lot of video games is based on the same model that a lot of communities use in chasing after that big automotive factory or gambling casino***, hoping the influx of cash will solve all of their problems. The reality, however, is that there may be an influx of cash, but also an influx of potentially devastating side effects.
Is the lure of all that money worth it in the end?
*That was sarcasm. I don't write that much angst to ever consider any of my mediocre scribblings anything other than just something for fun.
**Although as ITWire's David Heath was quoted in the article, "One might also assume that the leasing company was happy -- they had an endless supply of luxury cars to on-sell with the previous driver being none other than Steve Jobs," I would personally never buy such a car. There's absolutely no telling as to how that car was treated if the driver knew he was going to trade it for another in less than six months. That's a big reason why buying used rental cars aren't considered a good idea, and having driven my share of rentals over the past six years taking my kids back and forth from college, I have to agree. Some people simply look at a rental (or a lease to a lesser extent) as an excuse to treat a vehicle poorly.
***Probably closer to a gambling casino than the factory, to be honest.
EtA: Misspelled scribblings. Sheesh.
No comments:
Post a Comment