In a recent post at Worldofwar.net, they mentioned something about “Paid Character Customization” which frankly I’m surprised more people haven’t been talking about.
Jay Allen Brack was asked about the Paid Character Customisation that has been found in the game files. At first, he dismissed the question, and would not comment on it, then a few minutes later, he brought up the subject and said that there is going to be paid character customisation. No details yet though.
Now the big question is what exactly does this mean? For me the first thing that came to mind is that I would be able to literarily buy a customized character directly from Blizzard. Lev 70 Warlock with full epic gear and 50 Gold, baaam done! Could this possibly be what Blizzard is planning? I mean after all the powerleveling, account and gold selling services are big business and if Blizzard can’t beat them, then why not join them.
In essence Blizzard would be doing more positive then harm. For one, there would be no more gold farmers and in-game spam. Blizzard can just click a button and add 100 gold to whoever pays for it. Same goes for powerleveling. If you want your lev 32 toon boosted to the max, pay a bit and two seconds later you have a lev 70 character. Not only would it make in-game experience more pleasant by elimitation gold farmers and spam, but it would be safer for players that decided to participate in these types of transactions. The’re going to do it anyway, so why not do it with Blizzard where you know you’re safe. The only gap that would be left open would be users that want to sell WoW accounts. Perhaps Blizzard will eventually open a service where users can sell and trade accounts to each other.
If this is what Blizzard is planning it would be interesting to see how the community reacts as up until now most people seem to despise they types of services. Or I could be way off base and what Jay Allen Brack really meant was that you customize your character with new clothes, items, etc, in a purely cosmetic way that would not effect gameplay at all.
I would definitely consider playing WoW (again) if I could start out as a lvl. 60 regardless of account, etc. The game is kind of silly requiring people that have played to have to get through so much “training.”
No no, honestly people are blowing this way out of proportion. It is probably just adding little things to your character like pets, new hair styles you cannot choose when you make a character, or things like glows to weapons.
Seriously, it is not as bad as some people are blogging about.
Also, EQ2 has been doing this for years on their special servers. You can buy goods, sell accounts and all that through the Sony site but only use them on THAT server. I see nothing wrong with that to be honest.
I may consider playing WoW again too. Would be nice to play a game with little, or NO spammers. Heck, I’d pay to be on an adult only server too. No punk kids asking for gold either.
Blizzard won’t do it… I think.
There is already a number of measures to let people level quickly:
-Leveling in 1-60 zones is very very fast (you can get through with about 20% of the game’s quests)
-It is possible to get double exp with the “recruit a friend” program. Or something like that.
I was concerned when I first read the article but on second thought, if it puts the current breed of scum bag gold farmers and spammers out of business and doesn’t flood my chat/email with spam, then go for it.
If there are idiots out there who want to skip the whole experience of leveling on their own and want to be fat and lazy, let them. They’ll die a death of obesity soon enough.
Oh no no no no no.
This simply would not do. I’m already concerned with what tripe experience is doing to the community. Do you want the WoW player base to suck more eggs than runescape? Yes we would be rid of gold farmers, but this would only show that they don’t care if you don’t actually play the game. there will still be power levelers, and they will just drop their price; blizz would have high prices on such services.
Wasn’t it EQ2 that let people trade accounts and sell stuff for real money? Only on specific servers right? I think that is the right way to go. Doing it throughout all the servers would harm the game too much.
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Personally though, I despise the idea of paid anything if I am already paying 15 bucks a month. Paid char transfers? Bullshit. Paid char customization? Bullshit. I paid for the game, I pay each month, why am I not getting ALL the content and options?
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Free to play games, yes, I completely agree with this kind of payment structure. NOT SUBSCRIPTION BASED GAMES THOUGH.
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As far as all the fast leveling from recriuting friends, or the 1-60 bonus xp, i think that is a load of crap as well. Like everyone else says, it just fills the community with people who don’t know their class, or how to work as a group. Then again, with hos empty the non-endgame world is, there is not much difference.
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Something does need to be done about the levels 1-60 (soon 1-70) and never seeing another person in the world.
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Maybe one server (or however minimal they can get it) should be designated as a low level server and people are given a free transfer coupon upon reaching 60. Something does need to be done about the lack of people in the world until you reach endgame. But paid leveling, or the super high xp is not the right way.
Qix, Addressing your last point- This might work, but it is still opening the gate to the noobs of the internet. If anyone can reach 60 quickly, what kind of game are we playing?
Players should be able to buy and sell from each other if a dev is going to support rmt. When the developer starts selling gold and items out of thin air the economy will go into hyper-inflation like you’d never believe possible. As long as only the players sell to each other (and naturally Blizz takes a slice off each transaction), the economy is kept in its natural state (because face it, like it or not there’s already gold selling going on on your server in mass quantities). The benefits to this solution are numerous. Goodbye gold seller spam, good by scamming and paypal fraud, and my personal favorite much more safeguards against duping (as naturally duping would be noticed through an official service). The few people completely set against RMT will be offended, but to the rest of the community it’s a win win win scenario for everyone.
Wild speculation.
“Paid customer customization” is a long way from Blizzard selling characters.
Slow news day?