Blizzard wants more money *charging for battle.net now*

[Baal]

I think you're overestimating the amount of processing DII needs.

That's why I noted the importance of Diablo III and Starcraft II being released.

In fact, the reason I noted those was because I do indeed realize that DII is nothing compared to, say, World of Warcraft. However, the next two releases on battle.net will be within the same ball park.

 

[smwScott]

The point is that you don't have to pay to play other non-persistent games online and there's no reason why you should here either. Everything doesn't need to be hosted server side (if indeed it is at all). It already serves as a way to get everyone who already gave them money for the game to view a ton of ads ... and if I'm not mistaken I think one of the main reasons it exists is so they can exercise total control over their games (preventing mods and whatnot). Why the hell should we pay for that privilege, when the whole reason it existed in the first place is for corporate benefit, not customer satisfaction? A simple lobby/matchmaking system (like the old Westwood Online) would suffice.

A lot of people are missing what's really going on. Blizzard knows they have a stupidly rabid fanbase that's going to buy whatever they sell. That's the reason behind stretching SC2 out into multiple games and that's the reason why they're looking to monetize (even more than they already have with ads) bnet. Most of the mainstream will be unaware of this bullshit prior to buying the game, but I'm not sure how significant the "mainstream" is with Blizzard's non-WoW customer base anyway. StarCraft did alright but it's not common to hear non-nerds discussing WC3...

 

[lame-o]

The devs said that there will be micro transactions, where you have to pay to change your character's name or whatever. There won't be any extra unlockable stuff you can buy. So you can play the WHOLE game by paying for the box and that's it. And this has been confirmed on diii.net and the official Diablo 3 forums.

DO NOT PHEEAR.

 

[Deleted member 56031]

you might find this interesting

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55289

 

[PoeticRocker]

Congratulations?

I'm just saying I'm not very hyped about those games when it seems like everyone else is. Ever since I heard WOW charged a monthly fee to play online, I then convinced myself there was many other games I would rather play instead of WOW. My friends tried to get me into WOW and I still didn't want to buy it after playing the demo.

I dont know about Starcraft 2 anymore. I mean 3 packs? I really dont care for singleplayer campaigns anymore. I mostly enjoy playing online with friends, but if I have to buy 3 packs just for that. Then Diablo 3 most likely would only be fun cooperatively considering the fact that I got bored of Diablo 2 while playing it solo.

I dont think Blizzard games really appeals to me anymore.

 

[Pesmerga]

Cool story brosef.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Blizzard run servers for WoW and constantly update it.
If Battle net was to be P2P, wouldn't the price be significantly lower?

Huh? Was there any talk of battle.net being P2P?

Why is battlenet necessary, to me it always seemed like a way to monopolize your multiplayer options like Xbox live instead of something that is really better then what other games have.

To prevent cheating, for one thing.

But they provide a server list and community features - which is excatly what battle.net does for Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo and Valve do it for free.

Err, no. Valve provide a list of existing servers hosted by other people, Blizzard hosts the servers. Also worth mentioning (again) that battle.net is still free for the games you mentioned, and nothing has been confirmed.

They have servers backing Steam though.

Right, because Steam isn't profitable for Valve at all without the need for subscription costs, right?

This is quite wrong. When you're playing on battle.net, everything is server-side. If you create a game while playing Diablo II on battle.net, and then someone joins the game, you can leave while the game stays intact, because it is hosted server-side. Who hosts the actual server when you're playing TF2? Not Valve.

Thankyou.

Please note, I'm still against a paid subscription type plan for battle.net, and if it were to be introduced then I'd probably have to reconsider giving Blizzard any more of my business. I just felt the need to point out how unnecessary and irrelevant the comparison to Valve was, no matter how much people enjoy chowing down on Newell cock around here.

 

[CyberPitz]

I'm still lost where it said it's specifically charging customers....

This is all speculation right now, get off your hate goats and wait until something official to bitch about.

 

[lame-o]

LOOK HERE

So Julian Wilson told us that you guys are looking monetize Battle.Net in some way. Is that right?

Rob Pardo: Wow, that's an evil way of putting it. Julian's turning into a business guy on me. Here's the way I would put it. We're definitely not looking at turning Diablo into a subscription based game. It's clearly not an MMO, so it's not appropriate to do a business model like that. The way we approach all of our games now, is we come up with what we think is a great game, and then we wrap the appropriate business model around it. If that's just a box price, then that's that.

With Battle.Net we're definitely looking at possible different features that we might be able to do for additional money. We're not talking about Hellgate or anything like that. We're not going to tack things on. I think World of Warcraft is a great example to look at. We charge people if they want to switch servers or if they want name changes, things that aren't core to the game experience, they're really just optional things that some people want. It takes us some development work to do it, so it makes sense to charge for it. We would never do something like say to get the full game experience, you'll have to pay extra.

 

[ktimekiller]

This is great news

 

[Uriel]

I just felt the need to point out how unnecessary and irrelevant the comparison to Valve was, no matter how much people enjoy chowing down on Newell cock around here.

Hey now, there's always reason to chow down on Gabe.

ALWAYS

I could be eating dinner with my friends and say, "hey, these potatoes are great, but do you know what's infinitely better? Gabe Newell. He would pwn these potatoes so much, they would kill themselves if they had arms." And everyone would nod in agreement.

 

[Bad^Hat]

LOOK HERE

AWESOME. Glad to have this out of the way.

*hops back on the hype train*

Hey now, there's always reason to chow down on Gabe.

ALWAYS

I could be eating dinner with my friends and say, "hey, these potatoes are great, but do you know what's infinitely better? Gabe Newell. He would pwn these potatoes so much, they would kill themselves if they had arms." And everyone would nod in agreement.

LOL, point taken.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

rules of the dev - if we're all assholes, you'll come; we'll just make more money.
Throw a Valve in there and you've got yourself one screwed plan.

 

[Bad^Hat]

rules of the dev - if we're all assholes, you'll come; we'll just make more money.
Throw a Valve in there and you've got yourself one screwed plan.

I want to flame you so bad, but I'm not going to give you the (dis)satisfaction.

 

[Seppo]

The thread title is definitely NOT provocative at all, and NOBODY definitely jumped into conclusions based on falsely interpreted tiny piece of info.

 

[CyberPitz]

This is hl2.net, that never happens.

 

[Kyorisu]

It takes us some development work to do it, so it makes sense to charge for it. We would never do something like say to get the full game experience, you'll have to pay extra.

You could argue to get the full experience of WOW you need the expansions. With standalone products it's a bit different of course but still they'll have to be very careful with what they start charging for. Although honestly I can't think of anything.

 

[CyberPitz]

^ You can't say that about every single expansion pack out there?

 

[Kyorisu]

No actually you can't. WOW is different. What I mean is you can encounter people who have the exp whilst you don't in game. Follow me?

 

[PvtRyan]

It's kind of funny that he says this:

We charge people if they want to switch servers or if they want name changes, things that aren't core to the game experience, they're really just optional things that some people want. It takes us some development work to do it, so it makes sense to charge for it.

It's free to copy your character to the Public Test Realm in WoW, but you're charged for what is essentially the same operation, if you want to switch to another normal play server? For a few database queries, 20 eurobucks is a disgusting price.

That said, I'm ashamed to say that I actually transfered an alt warlock to my main server for that price. I'm glad I did because I'm having way more fun with the warlock on my own server, but I'm still disgusted by the price.

 

[Mutley]

I don't blame Blizzard, I think WoW is the best example at how many people are willing to pay a monthly subscription for a game.

If it's anyone who knows if it's a worthwhile venture to start charging subscriptions, it's going to be these guys.

Even if it sucks for us.

 

[Kyorisu]

Battle.NET is a glorified IRC room and server browser. What could they possibly offer that anyone would want?