Aug 06 2008
The Real Blizzard!
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Have you ever had this happen to you? You ask (what you believe to be) a fairly obvious rectorial question, only to have some wise guy come along and answer it for you? This happened to me last week, but instead of just one wise guy there were many, together forming the multimillion cooperation called Blizzard (or something silly like that).
It began as I embarked on my daily search through several collections of gaming sites… and some other sites. There was a blog written by a World of Warcraft fan stating how, after a few months of not playing, he had attempted to reactivated his account. He was unable to do so successfully due to Blizzard regarding this as ‘extremely suspicious behavior’. Jokingly, I left a comment telling him of my theory as to why this had happened. Lets just say it involved a hacker/terrorist/pedofile type person living next door to him and sharing his IP… However, in order to play WoW again he was told he would have to invest in another copy of the game, and was even encouraged to go buy it straight away before the stores closed. I then asked (slightly more seriously) why a gaming company with millions of players is wasting time trying to sell extra copies of their best-selling game, using excesses such as the one above.
Then, rather unsurprisingly, I payed a visit to the World of Warcraft site to find this question had been answered, and in a rather dramatic way. Normally players are informed of changes to game play by a small bulletin on the main page of the site. However today Blizzard thought to themselves ‘why don’t we just fill the whole page with this new news?!’. And what is this news, I (do not) hear you ask? Well, it’s yet another new mount unveiling.
However, this one is slightly different to the rest. We have to ‘earn’ this ‘exclusive’ Zhevra mount by recommending WoW to a friend or relative. Apart from thinking why my grandma would want to play WoW, I felt a slight surge of anger when I read this.
Firstly, I would not call players buying a second version of the game and starting a new account worthy of the word ‘earn’. We all know this is what will happen. Actually, since the codes will be sent by email will current players even need to buy new versions of the game? Couldn’t they just simply install it on a new computer and use the emailed code? Either way, if someone is hardcore enough to farm for weeks to receive a new mount, surely gaining this half zebra/half unicorn thing will feel like a walk in the park in comparison.
Secondly, who names these things?
Thirdly, the other benefits that come with recommendations all seem a little… too much? Yes, the benefits only last for 90 days, but 3 months with your experience gaining 3 times faster will easily get you to 60 in a super fast time. Also, teleporting was once only for mages and warlocks. But instead of Blizz-unimaginative-ard thinking of some new ability to share, they insist on making characters even less individual by allowing anyone to preform a once class-only spell. Don’t they think there are already enough level 5’s running around Shattrath as it is? And, carrying on from what I wrote above, players can simply run two computers at once, having the second character follow the first and therefore allowing the controlled character to gain faster experience.
Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems like Blizzard has not thought this through completely. It appears they think the best way to draw in new customers would be to reward current players. However, if I were the new player I would feel slightly used with my friend gaining a cool mount and me getting next to nothing. Yes, I would receive an experience boost, but this requires my friend to be by my side at all times. He has his mount, why would he be bothered about my side of the deal?
This strange attempt to gain more players has made me lose some of the respect I had for Blizzard. The fact they could not even be bothered to make up a story telling players why these beasts are now ride worthy is just the icing on the cake. It’s clearly a cheap stunt that has some serious flaws, and shows that Blizzard truly only cares about one thing: Sales.
