Same thing that happened with Lich King, and to a much lesser extent Burning Crusade. Why is Cataclysm any different?

They’re slow but not that slow.

When you pay $20 for the Adventurer’s Pack, you are getting an unabashed RMT in a subscription-based game. The Pack includes fluff, yes, a cloak – and like the CoX costume packs, I have no problem with paying extra for fluff. But it also contains real in-game benefits – the equivalent in-account storage to owning a house (which costs a weekly fee as well as a 1g house-buying fee when you get a house) and a Nimble Goat, which heretofore has been restricted to level 58+ who have Kindred with the Iron Garrison Miners and cost 5g. It also contains 2 extra character slots, which cannot be purchased any other way.

They tried to disguise the fact it was an RMT by making a lot of confusing rules about how you buy the new mini-xpac, depending on your subscription type and whether you buy the AP or just the xpac, but it’s there and isn’t fooling folks. You are paying $20 for fluff (ok,) character slots (which again, ok, many games charge a one-time fee for character slots, I’ve bought them in CoX) and actual, tangible in-game benefits in the form of a house-worth of storage and a mount. Now people who buy the AP do not need their houses (or they may choose to keep both, as storage space is something the LOTRO devs are very stingy about) and never need to buy a mount for new characters again. That’s a serious advantage over other people who do not buy the AP.

I canceled like a year ago, otherwise I’d check myself. If you have something related to the store or transactions on the exit survey that’s a strong indication they are looking. Putting it on the exit survey is standard procedure at least.

I frankly don’t see the difference between forking over $10 for a pack of cards and the chance of a pet and forking over $10 for a pet, other than just making it more convenient for people that want pets but not cards ( the vast majority of their players I imagine).

What’s so bothersome about eliminating that step? If people wanted to get pets, and were okay with paying Blizzard for it, this is the better solution; not to keep buying hundreds of card packs just to see if you were lucky.

A random chance of finding a pet code in a pack of cards is more or less okay but the option of buying the pet directly isn’t? I think we’re threading too thin.

“For people who expected WoW to remain a subscription-based game, this is violating that expectation.”

Don’t see how. Right now if Blizzard offers one item, a thousand items or no items at the store, the subscription remains. For the last 5 years they’ve introduced their fair share of hare-brained schemes (I don’t agree with most of those myself) and the subscription has always been there.

All their box sales are years behind them and they know they won’t get a massive influx of new players again. Ever. Why mess with their main income of subs? They’re not stupid. They know they’ll lose a nice chunk of their players if they get -too- silly with the microtransactions. Why would they do that?

If only 10% of their players use the store, yes of course it’s 10% x (n$) they didn’t have before. That much is true. But it’s also true they’ll look at the numbers and see that 90% of their potential customers are not buying, and that’s enough for any self-respecting marketing guy or CFO to nail his own balls to the wall. If 90% are not buying there’s something terribly wrong with their concept, their execution or their goods themselves, so they’ll re-evaluate.

Therefore if you like the game, but don’t like the microtransactions, the logical response is not to do microtransactions. Quitting the game can happen due to lots of reasons; not buying from the store is much more precise.

Unless you wanna use your total cancellation as punishment for them using microtransactions. Well within everybody’s rights, but it’s not sending any clear messages unless you spell it out on the exit survey.

But the only way to vote against microtransactions is to cancel your subscription. Refusing to buy them does nothing.

If 90% of players dislike microtransactions (and don’t buy), and 10% of players like them (and buy), Blizzard is still increasing revenue unless players leave the game. Is that what you mean when you say to “vote with your wallet?”