World of Warcraft: Current Year

Secrets said:

Most places outsource artwork into China/Taiwan/Korea/Other eastern countries now anyways. EQ does it, most places get their 3d models from those countries as it's cheaper labor than housing an in-house team for a handful of assets you'll have them make once and never again.

Concept artists, 3d modelers, animation studios - all of these are mostly outsourced in smaller companies.

Especially if two thirds of your company was thanos'd by sexual harassment / workplace lawsuits; you'd be turning to those companies quickly and from a business perspective it would increase revenues if you paid an eastern outsource studio 40k for that expansion's models, zone artwork, etc, and just had your team do the set dressing.

Take a look at LAKSHYA DIGITAL PVT. LTD.LAKSHYA DIGITAL PVT. LTD. - that's the studio who has done EQ's artwork... Aside from Tom Tobey who does the modeling for EQ/EQ2. He's set to retire soon, and I bet you they'll outsource his work for each expansion cycle as it's easier to pay by the asset than pay Tom Tobey a salary each year.

And it's not like they're a small studio either. Big name AAA titles get their work done from them:

Our Work | Lakshya Digital

lakshyadigital.com

Click to expand...

It's not just art. Cost of labor (and everything else) is so expensive in San Diego that we have some of the low level engineering work done out of country. They all have access to Autocad and it's variations, do great work, fast and cheap.

It's mostly just glorified drafting. The actual engineering is done in house. But it's a huge savings.

With the way western games are going, why not outsource 100% and just play asian games?

Chris said:

With the way western games are going, why not outsource 100% and just play asian games?

Click to expand...

Predatory monetization.

For all the flaws WoW has, most of its monetization issues at this point are made by the players - ie; selling loot runs, pvp ranks, etc.

But those are flaws of the design, and have nothing to do with the monetization. Most people here would love to see a traditional MUD style game in 3D that only costs a monthly sub with no bullshit attached to it.

Lost Ark's got Korean/Chinese game systems bloat. It was apparent to me the moment I logged in and they had several types of achievement systems layered on top of each other.

Another eastern style game that suffers from systems bloat is ArcheAge. They layer stuff on top of their content that makes the fun parts of older content become irrelevant as they either trivialize what you were doing before, or a new system comes out that makes your existing monetary investment worthless. (Farm carts, Library, etc)

FFXIV has this issue to a lesser extent with the way PVP is set up, and with some of the minigames that haven't been updated in years like squadrons, most of the Golden Saucer games that aren't Triple Triad or Lord of Verminion, Eureka, the older deep dungeon content, etc. They've done a good job keeping most of those minigames contained, unlike Lost Ark and other Korean f2p games. But those issues never directly affected you having to pay $ for those bits of content.

Lunis said:

I'm gonna give it another go and try the outlaw rogue again but actually put in the effort this time. Going from combat/sword rogue in classic to retail was painful. Keeping up all the buffs while using all your cd's pretty much every pull... i couldn't focus on anything but the rotation which made me die to boss mechanics a lot. I must have looked like a retarded mongoloid to other players. Guess i'm going to have to force my ass over to a target dummy and internalize the rotation and spend hours on weakaura tweaking.

Click to expand...

Play sub instead. Its better and easier

Secrets said:

Predatory monetization.

For all the flaws WoW has, most of its monetization issues at this point are made by the players - ie; selling loot runs, pvp ranks, etc.

But those are flaws of the design, and have nothing to do with the monetization. Most people here would love to see a traditional MUD style game in 3D that only costs a monthly sub with no bullshit attached to it.

Lost Ark's got Korean/Chinese game systems bloat. It was apparent to me the moment I logged in and they had several types of achievement systems layered on top of each other.

Another eastern style game that suffers from systems bloat is ArcheAge. They layer stuff on top of their content that makes the fun parts of older content become irrelevant as they either trivialize what you were doing before, or a new system comes out that makes your existing monetary investment worthless. (Farm carts, Library, etc)

FFXIV has this issue to a lesser extent with the way PVP is set up, and with some of the minigames that haven't been updated in years like squadrons, most of the Golden Saucer games that aren't Triple Triad or Lord of Verminion, Eureka, the older deep dungeon content, etc. They've done a good job keeping most of those minigames contained, unlike Lost Ark and other Korean f2p games. But those issues never directly affected you having to pay $ for those bits of content.

Click to expand...

Genshin Impact is pretty good, the monitisation is totaly optional too. I know what you mean though, these games would be better with a box price and none of this microtransaction shit.

People can split hairs all they want, but it all boils down to the same shit. What amount of content/enjoyment can you get for the same amount of money. An existing Sub based MMO, starting from scratch, is going to charge you a monthly sub, an initial box price, and an Expansion box price. On average, thats $35 to start, $40 for an expansion, and $15 a month. Assuming you play the game for 6 months, you're looking at a total expenditure of somewhere around $165.

Why people dont do a straight up comparison for total money spent when comparing a Sub MMO and a F2P-Cash Shop MMO, I have no idea.

Ukerric said:

The difference is that the first one offers you all the entertainment you paid for, while the other has to be designed to offer you as little as it can while pushing you toward the expensive stuff locked behind the cash shop.

By design, it will slow your levelling, so you want to purchase that XP boost, it will reduce drop rates so you want to purchase that nice 5-star item that refuses to drop, it will make mediocre looks so you want to purchase that bling in the shop, and so on.

You always get what you pay for.

Click to expand...

I haven't played WoW for years, but they had already made an art out of stringing you from patch to patch to keep the sub, all for meaningless chores. I doubt that has improved.

Ukerric said:

The difference is that the first one offers you all the entertainment you paid for, while the other has to be designed to offer you as little as it can while pushing you toward the expensive stuff locked behind the cash shop.

By design, it will slow your levelling, so you want to purchase that XP boost, it will reduce drop rates so you want to purchase that nice 5-star item that refuses to drop, it will make mediocre looks so you want to purchase that bling in the shop, and so on.

You always get what you pay for.

Click to expand...

You're using the worst offenses of F2P as examples. Asian or not, there are good examples that dont limit you in natural gameplay. But on that same note, thats also my exact point "You get what you pay for" - as in, if you paid $165 over a 6 month period in a F2P game, and got the same experience, what is the difference?

Second issue with cosmetic cash shops no game addresses is that the $$$ skins are superior because you can equip them at level 1 on any class. STOP RESTRICTING IN-GAME SKINS

Neranja said:

I'm sure the latter has nothing to do with the fact that those achievement sellers did get paid with real money instead of gold, so Blizzard did not get their cut from the money.

Click to expand...

EQ's addition of Krono is just so the Casino house always gets their money first. I think Krono being resold through third parties is just part of their business plan at this point. Krono is part of a loop that involves a bunch of stuff that is technically against TOS, but works...

The EQ Loop:
Casual player sees expensive item/service bought through Krono -> Player buys Krono -> Player pays for item/service in Krono -> Krono gets consumed by 3rd party program boxing user (Exit), or sold to dedicated player who buys krono through resellers at a discount (Risk, Rarely Bannable, but reason to terminate either player as part of this contract at any time)
Those dedicated players are more likely to be toxic, or non-payers and they can ban them at any time which also removes Krono from the ecosystem.

The WoW Loop:
Player sees expensive item/service bought for gold -> Blizzard sets price for their token -> Player must buy that token or spend time out of their day to buy item/service -> Player buys service in gold -> Gold is received and pays for subscription of other player (Exit) or Gold is sold on third party service for $ (Risk, Easily Bannable as you can consider this a loss in revenue as it's not guaranteed the player bought or sold their gold)

Blizzard cuts out the middle man - and it works in the player's favor.

Compared to EQ's setup, WoW's setup has a singular source of gold, and it's generated by Blizzard. The difference is they set the price, whereas EQ's players set the price on the item. So Blizzard's setup means that if anyone deviates from their loop, it should be grounds for account termination, whereas in EQ they're encouraged to use third party programs to generate more revenue. Any bans are a detriment to the economy, but looks great in the players' eyes.

In terms of being 'beneficial' for the players? WoW's setup is a clear winner, as botting and 3rd party programs are directly detrimental to the economy, it's just the game itself sucks.

EQ/EQ2 would be financially unviable without MQ2 / ISXEQ2 at this point. If Amadeus/Kannkor (ISXEQ2) or Brainiac/Knightly (MQ2) were to be hit by a truck, the games associated with them would die off as they would suffer a major revenue loss.

RWF unlock soon, its show time

This raid tier needs to last until 2023, so better gate that shit out

Kuro said:

This raid tier needs to last until 2023, so better gate that shit out

Click to expand...

I'm sure 9.2.5 will fix everything!

The 'my two dads' energy was palpable...