Paying to NOT Play with World of Warcraft

Well I didn't think I'd ever be talking about this game again.  I still remember back when I was in high school, just after I finished my GCSE exams, coming home and loading up WoW for the first time.  I remember back during Burning Crusade, when I said "fuck it" to study during my A Level study leave and just whittled away the hours on this game.

Now, World of Warcraft is a completely different beast.  From what people who still do play have told me and from what I've read, it's been dumbed down a great deal and it's only a mere shell of that game that I once had rather fond memories of.

I suppose this post is a kind of extension of the money grubbing rant I made a while ago, so before I even start talking about this stuff, if you want to know how I feel about cash shops and microtransactions, then you can get a general idea from this video.

Now, World of Warcraft isn't exactly new to the idea of nickle and diming its customers.  I remember just after I stopped playing Blizzard released some kind of mount that looked like a bunch of stars in the shape of a horse or something.  People were laughing at it and calling it a piece of shit because there wasn't any way to earn it in game, you had to BUY it from a cash shop.

The reason it was met with such negativity from the player base is because the whole reason you play subscription based MMOs is so that you don't have to deal with this cash shop dog shit.  You buy the game and pay £7/month or something and you get access to everything for that.  In a genre like this where the developer is CONSTANTLY expected to create new content for an ever expanding world, then I won't begrudge them for a subscription fee, but a cash shop is taking the piss.

But times have changed and by the looks of things it seems like all the smart players have fucked off to other games because recently THIS happened.

That picture is from the in game cash shop and is giving players the option to BUY a max level character for $60!  Why would anyone do this, really?  You could buy a NEW game for that much money but Blizzard expect (and people will) people to shell out $60 for a max level character, I mean Jesus Christ.

But I'm not mad about this, why would I be? I don't even play the game anymore.  I'm genuinely confused as to why this is even a thing though.  Part of the fun of playing an MMO is the journey to the end game.  Levelling with your buddies, doing quests and learning the lore of the land as you go, it's great fun.  But instead Blizzard are expecting people to just cut ALL of that shit out and just jump straight into level 90.

I get that people want to PVP and stuff, but what's the point of playing an MMO if you're just going to skip the levelling?  Especially when your skipping out on this much content, it's like your paying to not play the game, I'm genuinely confused as to why anyone would want to skip it when they are already paying a pretty sizable amount of money just to play.

Maybe one day someone will explain what the appeal is, but until that day I'm just going to blanket label you all as nut jobs with more money than sense.