Yeah where’s Ahab when we need him?
Most people who vote with their wallets have long since stopped playing.
I vote with my wallet by buying indie games or old discounted single player AAA games. This also means I can game on a crappy machine. Being a retrogamer also helps. I literally have more games to play than time to live.
Are the whales the ones complaining? Because the whole concept of a whale is that they are the exception. The vast majority of players pay only the minimum amount or slightly more, but the whales dump so much money in that they are still worth more to the devs than the other 99% of players combined.
It’s the same as how most airlines operate. The first and business class sections make up the majority of the profit, even though they are just a small fraction of the passengers.
The whales wouldn’t complain about this one anyways. When this mount was available in-game on the auction house it was probably around 5x the price in USD assuming you bought wow tokens.
You’re right. The definition of a whale includes that he has enough money to not complain about any price at all.
Except complaining is his kink… Then he gets double the satisfaction from his payments.
buys shit
violently orgasms
Whales aren’t people who can afford whatever, so they spend whatever. Whales are people invested enough that the perceived value added is more than the money it costs. Most whales, therefore, are regular people who are addicted to the game rather than moneybags who could easily afford it. So yeah, it does smell of victim blaming. We should be calling out the bad business practice, rather than calling out those being victimized by the bad business practice.
A whale doesn’t need enough money not to complain. The tactics used to attract whales are meant to build or take advantage of addictions. When I was drinking I would regularly complain about the cost of alcohol yet still spend much more than I could afford on it
“price gouge me harder, Daddy!”
Or the whale is German, because complaining is a national past time.
In FFXIV, most multi people mounts are paid for, but they did have an event where they have one that can hold 4 people. There is a paid mount that holds 8 people, and it’s a whale. It’s the most expensive mount at just $42. There is no reason you should want to carry 8 people because everyone should have a mount.
Some people mentioned there are some additional features locked behind the specific mount this comic is lambasting. Something about AH and mailbox. I haven’t played WoW so not sure how much of an advantage that is, but the closest FFXIV analogue imo is the extra retainers.
You only have 2 by default and pay an additional $2 a month for any extra. They allow you to basically bot farm some items every 30m to an hour(depends on how below your retainers level the target is) as well as more storage and selling capacity. Nothing is explicitly gated by it, but those who spend the money have a higher capability to earn in game money and/or have greater convenience if they use it properly.
For those of us who have had extra retainers for years, it’s cost us way more than $90, but it’s not a single huge purchase so can definitely seem like less in your head if you don’t take that one small step of reasoning.
I started boycotting all paid digital subscription services when World of Warcraft came out.
So to me; you’re the problem. Anyone who isn’t boycotting all paid digital subscription services is the problem.
Subscription fees for frequently updated MMOs aren’t unreasonable. I refuse to pay them, but I don’t begrudge their existence. MTX on top of that are another matter - that shit should only exist in F2P MMOs.
Wtf are you talking about? The user you’re responding to is just clarifying the term “whale”.
If you ignore what else they say:
The vast majority of players pay only the minimum amount or slightly more,
Of course they’re making this claim because that’s what they do. Listen: BOYCOTT BOYCOTT BOYCOTT - stop funding things you don’t want to see in this world. Stop funding things you don’t want to reward.
If you do reward these actions (such as new subscription model services), or you’re justifying them in online commentary (as the comment I replied to was, as you are) then you have no right to complain about them - because they were funded by you.
It’s like paying the minimum on a Kickstarter for killing kittens, then commenting “Yes, but it’s really the whales funding it”.
Not if you’re all funding it too. That still counts as funding it! STOP LYING TO YOURSELF!
You’re raging against a discussion on nomenclature and blaming anyone that responds to you for your off-topic crusade. Maybe take a moment think about that.
Weird take but more power to you my friend
You know who look like whales? Problem spenders who spend far beyond their means, and are preyed upon by predatory business practices that use psychological manipulation to encourage people to spend as much as as they can. Like, I’ve literally watched video game developer conference talks where a dev explains in great detail and depth on how to hijack human psychology to milk every last dollar they can. Whales stopped being “those who can afford to spend” a long time ago.
I think it’s mostly the parents of whales who are complaining.
I’ve seen whales complain. Maybe not whales, but people who pay for skins and random bullshit
I’m so happy I don’t give a fuck about looking cool or having nice effects in a game.
The only one I ever spend more bucks than I had to is Path of Exile. And the supporter packs give you your whole worth of money spend as premium currency plus you get the usual skins, emotes and tracking tools.
I totally feel that I’m okay with buying functional stuff like inventory space if the system itself feels fair.
In 10 years and around 5000h (only game I play except tarkov for a while) in I spend 122€ so a mount for 90 bucks seems crazy.
I’m glad I’ve always looked down on people who spend money to buy shit in games. If something is only available by paying for it, anyone that I notice showing one off in game gets a “tool” label rather than “cool”.
Which is kind funny because if the game was a bit less abusive and had a way to get that item without paying, that negative reaction wouldn’t be so strong because it would be ambiguous. Did this person play the game and get rewarded with that item or did they just throw money at it and get handed it? Can’t be sure, so anyone that has it isn’t automatically a tool.
And progression MTX are even dumber. It’s like paying money so you don’t have to play the game.
Though the overall quality of the game can play a role, plus whether the items are purely cosmetic vs give in game benefits (aka P2W). If the game is amazing, having some microtransactions doesn’t bother me. Like when I pirated games, I had a threshold where if a game was better than that threshold, I’d buy a copy of the game because I wanted the devs to have money. Some MTX are like that, basically a tip jar for a great game.
But if the game isn’t great, it’s more like seeing an expectation to tip when you don’t think a tip is warranted.
People who think that way are dumb
But when I sometimes think that way it’s cool
Logic
The only time I have ever paid for any kind of MTX was for Tribes: Ascend. I bought the cheapest amount of paid for currency (which was $5) just for the permanent VIP status it conferred, which doubled your XP gain to unlock weapons and shit (back before they completely restructured the game and that wasn’t necessary anymore).
I think I ended up using the currency it gave me to buy one of the original Tribes 2 voice sets because it had the most annoying, ear-splitting version of the “Shazbot!” line and I would spam the shit outta it.
Never again. Even if I like the game, like I did with Ascend. I especially won’t do it with anything Hi-Rez makes.
Meanwhile, in Star Trek Online…
“I can’t afford this”
*pull out credit card*
This can only read as hypocrisy when you portray “everyone who plays video games” as a single character
The problem with this mount (beside the cost in the first place) is it provides exclusive functionality otherwise not available.
It provides portable access to the in game auction house and mailbox.
Don’t engineers have a portable AH?
Nope. If they did, the engineering vendor bots all have long cool downs.
I did a bit of looking online, to see if there was an AH bot.
Apparently there used to be a similar mount with the AH, but no mailbox and for 5mil gold. It was removed from the vendor years ago. Anyone who got it then, supposedly still does.
This $90 new mount is defiantly unique to game. To top it off, some of the sentiment around the original was “I didn’t use it as much as I thought I would.”
Wow I didn’t know that so it’s a 90$ cosmetic plus pay to win. Ridiculous.
You’re part of the problem.
That is indeed the joke.
Acquaintance of mine just dgaf. He’ll get banned on a game for cheating and just spend another 60.- to get another copy. DLCs, micro transactions, pay to win, doesn’t matter. He’s a cancer on the whole industry.
Oh man I haven’t thought about dark legacy comics in so many years
It has stayed funny this whole time. WoW provides a lot of fresh material, even if you’re not playing.
Whales are the idiots who keep the Madden games alive.
What the fuck did I just watch?
And where can I get more?
the guy’s yt channel? https://www.youtube.com/@shapiro127/videos
although I wanted to go with my misrembered futurama quote “There aren’t anymore. and there never will be anymore”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGeUfYusTf4&t=19s
but I remembered the quote wrong
I used to be an avid Plants Vs. Zombies player and I won the Jade League No. 1 spot and earned almost every plant that could be earned and I did it without paying a single dime in real life money. I eventually quit because after you finish the main game and win the Jade League (even once) there really isn’t much else for you to do, and when you grind up your plants’ exp to the level I got them the games become a sinch.
I’m so glad I got clean
Man I want to get clean, but you don’t understand they have three more states coming out on American Truck Simulator and I am desperate to travel to them in game.
I mean it’s an awesome game and truly don’t feel I wasted the money. Except now maybe I have. I have checked the game is not available outside of Steam. You can’t buy a physical copy and not have it tied to online. If they decided to not support it or go out business I will lose everything.
Yeah need rethink playing that game.
I do understand. I used to stay up playing WoW until sunrise. I used to have an in-game alarm set at 2 AM IRL to remind me to go to bed. I ground dailies until I hated them.
From one gamer to another: get out while you can. For one thing, I missed out on a LOT of good games because I was playing WoW. And the expansions are always a tease; the entire xpac and all of your work is going to be useless the very instant the next one drops. More than anything, I didn’t like who I was when I played WoW.
I quit something like 5 or 6 years ago I think (sometime during the disaster that was Battle for Azeroth) and boy am I glad I did. Sometimes I miss Azeroth, but that is a relationship that will drain your very soul. Gotta do one more daily. One more dungeon. One more raid. Then I’ll have enough widgets to buy the gizmo! And honestly, I was never even that good. Pretty much everything in my life has improved since I quit WoW. Not all of it was because of crippling gaming addiction, of course, but it made every aspect of my life more difficult.
All of the above applies to Elite: Dangerous as well. If you are at the point where you are rethinking your relationship with a game, its long past time to stop playing.
Dark legacy comics has been my only source for wow.
I played when they “re released” classic, just before they bent over backwards to please China (that was a big reason I stopped, the other was classic wasn’t classic, there was so much jank in it that had clearly not been qc’d), now I read about the adventures of the dlcomics cast and that’s more than enough for me.
The entire reason people wanted to play classic was because of the jank.
Nah, there were things like floating sign posts, and enemies in places they shouldn’t have been.
It was absolutely not the game that was released 22 years ago. Also they said they didn’t re-tune the enemies, but everything was easier, so maybe it wasn’t re-tuned, but it was differently tuned
Maybe you’re just a better player then you were as a teen
Bwahaha, would love if that was the case. Maybe I was more aggressive as a teen? Maybe I pushed harder into areas where I was under leveled? Except I know that isn’t the case because I’m much more impatient as a gamer the days. I know that food and water were much more important to have on hand because of how frequently you’d need to rest between mobs I remember reaching the next tier of food and being relieved that I didn’t have to wait the entire 20 seconds, sometimes more if I needed 2 rounds of water to fill my mana bar, on the re-release there was barely any down time when grinding the lower levels.
I’m often one to question people’s rose tinted glasses, and I’m not upset for anyone to question my memory, but the"classic" release was made (not saying intentionally) easier than the original release (as a day 1 release player, through cataclysm)
I thought I was immune until I got sucked into some game where you battle with teams of players you collect and fight other players. There was some element of sending your titans to mine resources as well, but I forget the name of the game, but spent over $500 in it.
I literally uninstall any game that has gems, emeralds, coins that can be bought to speed things up.
I put 5 dollars into the clash of clans card game, realized they could very easily have had me for more, turned off the game, uninstalled, and never looked back (I don’t think I even used the currency I had purchased).
It was a good moment of realization, glad I got out for 5 dollars.
They could’ve made so much more with all the permissions I’d given them XD
