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Source: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/374722023
I found this today after venturing with my rubber boots into the cesspool that is the battle.net SC2 general forum, which is unfortunately all too reminiscent of the WoW forum. It states that, presumably due to the confusion about naming policy, one free name change will be given to everyone, and then a WoW-esque paid name change service will be introduced for a nominal fee. Ah, Bobby Kotick is working his magic.
I'm willing to bet that a few of you (at least) are pissed off right now. Indeed, it's a silly and basic operation to perform and that corporate bozos are laughing their way to the bank by charging for this kind of thing is frustrating to say the least. I'm reminded of my ISP, who blocks port 80 on their home internet packages. "What's that, buddy? You want port 80 unblocked? Oh, well you're going to have to purchase our business plan for that!"
Still, a paid name change isn't as bad as it could get. I'd even argue that it's a good thing. SC2's development cost is around $100M. Let's suppose they've sold 2 million $60 copies by now. That's $120M in sales. I'm not sure how much the retailers take from their cut, but my guess is that they haven't even broken even yet especially because that $100M figure doesn't even include the massive advertising campaign they used to hype up the release.
Investors know that Blizzard games always bring in terrible terrible damage profit and have high expectations. The pressure is on Blizzard to fill the gap between expected and actual profit; I'm sure they didn't anticipate SC2 to be such a flop in PCBangs, especially since they went all the way with advertising in Korea. There was that rumor a few weeks ago about how SC2 might be possibly adopting a P2P plan in NA next year but since I can't even find an article about that from Google, it probably wasn't that serious. And that's good, because it's a dumb idea to begin with. Try to name one successful P2P RTS game (hint: you can't). So, subscriptions are out of the picture for regaining lost money. But what did Blizzard learn with WoW that Asian game developers had already known for a while? Microtransactions are amazing.
Let's start with a history lesson. In 2006 WoW developers introduced realm transfer for one character for $25. Then in 2007 they offered a paid name change for one character for $10. Both these services started with 6 month cooldowns (limited to the affected character). In February 2008 this cooldown was lowered to 1 month for both services. In July 2009, the character transfer cooldown was lowered to 3 days (!). I won't go into what makes these services appealing to the player and why they're so successful, but the fact is that they are huge sources of revenue and are extremely profitable because it costs almost nothing to do them. More recently, WoW's devs have also introduced paid faction change for $30, paid race change for $25, and paid character recustomization for $15. They've even started charging $10 for vanity pets.
What have these things accomplished? Cynics dismiss the developers who allowed these changes as money-grubbing cheats that have robbed the game of its innocence, but that really doesn't make sense. These services offer more options for those who want to pay for it in a way that does not make the game experience unfair for those who don't. In the end, the player is happy, the corporation is happy, and all is well with the world; that money is recycled to fuel more development, the investors are pleased, and the player is happy with his new Lil' KT.
I don't think it'll be any different for SC2. It's kind of too bad that you can only have one name in SC2 which is immutable, but would you really prefer the old system with bad things like smurfing? The introduction of this service means that (hopefully) Blizzard won't try to milk SC2 in other ways that would be more detrimental to the experience.
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Except that it's a free name change.
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On August 17 2010 03:53 Lexpar wrote:
Except that it's a free name change.
In addition, beyond this initial free name change, we'll be launching a service similar to the one we offer for World of Warcraft which will allow additional character name changes for a fee. We'll announce more details on how the free name change and additional paid character name changes will be implemented in the near future.
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I think this is exactly why they don't have Clan tags in Starcraft 2 like they do for other games like Modern Warfare 2 etc. They want people to join a clan and pay to make their name Liquid`soandso for instance.
If they just had a clan tag feature in the game, you could just make your clan tag and change it whenever you need to. But this way they will make a fortune off people who join / leave clans and require name changes!
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Oh, heh. Yeah, I thought that was a bit much for an RTS but figured it wouldn't be out of reason because of its decade-long development time.
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On August 17 2010 03:47 petergibbons wrote:Source: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/374722023What have these things accomplished? Cynics dismiss the developers who allowed these changes as money-grubbing cheats that have robbed the game of its innocence, but that really doesn't make sense. These services offer more options for those who want to pay for it in a way that does not make the game experience unfair for those who don't. In the end, the player is happy, the corporation is happy, and all is well with the world; that money is recycled to fuel more development, the investors are pleased, and the player is happy with his new Lil' KT.
This is really important and everyone blew right over this in the other thread. If it is just limited to this, it's just really a money grab that doesn't harm the game in anyway. It blows, but it is not something I care about. It really does not effect my game play at all and that is the important thing.
It's the precedent that it sets that is dangerous. If this is successful, it might give suits the gall to require a $10 map pack to play the next ladder. Substitute this with whatever game-altering experience you'd like. That's the issue. Paying for clan tags or channels is bull.
anywho, good post. Nice to see someone read that for more than two seconds and crapped on the keyboard
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inb4 everyone smurfs popular SC players.
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On August 17 2010 04:16 FearDarkness wrote:
inb4 everyone smurfs popular SC players.
They're probably counting on people to do this with the free one, and then have to pay to change back when they get tired of it  Good plan Blizzard, good plan.
either way, I don't have a problem with this. It's nice of them to offer a free name change first.
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Ah, Bobby Kotick is working his magic.
You guys really put the hate on him huh? Have you guys ever stepped back and thought that Bobby Kotick is not responsible for every evil thing that is happening right now? Of course not. It's much easier to make him a scapegoat instead.
But your post is about a paid name change. I have a 360 where I have the stupidest name imaginable (its not Dr. Fartstick) and I want to change it. Problem is, I don't want to spend 800 MP to do this. So I just play offline and I'm happy. Obviously you can do this in SC2 but there really is no point to it.
Are we really surprised that a billion dollar coporation would try and take more of our money? I didn't think so. Yes, it sucks that Blizzard would do this but it's (unfortunately) the way the world works.
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I really don't care about charging for name changes. Yeah its just money grubbing but it doesn't really affect me an any way. If they start charging for ladder map packs I would be pissed as fuck, but I have more faith in Blizz then that. I could see they releasing some campaign style stuff that you need to pay for, which I think is reasonable. I got a fuck ton of missions and challenges with the campaign for $60(not to mention multiplayer)
I think at this moment it looks like blizz is doing DLC the way it should be done, here is your full game for retail price, you want more content, ok pay $5-10(or whatever) vs here is most of a game, you want everything that should have been included, well you are gonna have to pay more. As long as it stays that way, let the tards by their sparkle ponies and thors with wings
EDIT: Bobby Kotick may not be responsible for all of these individual decisions, how ever he is directly responsible for the general mindset of Activision and their focus on profit as the only consideration.
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On August 17 2010 04:29 supernova wrote:You guys really put the hate on him huh? Have you guys ever stepped back and thought that Bobby Kotick is not responsible for every evil thing that is happening right now? Of course not. It's much easier to make him a scapegoat instead.
I was being sarcastic but I guess that didn't come across clearly. People say Kotick's a bad man for being a businessman and that he's the mastermind behind everything bad in SC2, but that's a completely naive point of view.
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It's kind of weird, because he's killing it from a business perspective (seriously, remove your emotions and there really isn't much he/the company have done wrong) but as a gamer, it fuckin' blows.
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I'd hope they made a clan tag function without pickpocketing us atleast? like "Iplaythings[<insert random clan tag>]. That was a function I missed in wc3 / sc bw.
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On August 17 2010 04:49 Iplaythings wrote:
I'd hope they made a clan tag function without pickpocketing us atleast? like "Iplaythings[<insert random clan tag>]. That was a function I missed in wc3 / sc bw.
Agreed.
To the rest of the thread, it just screams paranoia to me, instead of just realize the simple reasoning that people dont want you to go around switching names to smurf or to hassle people, its always something evil and dark.
Like premium maps, oh, no, they arent a way to pay mapmakers, they are a tool to suck our souls into blizzHQ!!11oneblergh
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Hell even W3 had a clan tag option.
BNet2.0 is a disgrace!
The story is superpoor aswell.
I think the yes men should fix Blizzard too...
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honestly, who needs to smurf these days?
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On August 17 2010 04:39 petergibbons wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2010 04:29 supernova wrote:Ah, Bobby Kotick is working his magic. You guys really put the hate on him huh? Have you guys ever stepped back and thought that Bobby Kotick is not responsible for every evil thing that is happening right now? Of course not. It's much easier to make him a scapegoat instead. I was being sarcastic but I guess that didn't come across clearly. People say Kotick's a bad man for being a businessman and that he's the mastermind behind everything bad in SC2, but that's a completely naive point of view.
Oh crap. My bad dude.
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On August 17 2010 07:37 supernova wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2010 04:39 petergibbons wrote:On August 17 2010 04:29 supernova wrote:Ah, Bobby Kotick is working his magic. You guys really put the hate on him huh? Have you guys ever stepped back and thought that Bobby Kotick is not responsible for every evil thing that is happening right now? Of course not. It's much easier to make him a scapegoat instead. I was being sarcastic but I guess that didn't come across clearly. People say Kotick's a bad man for being a businessman and that he's the mastermind behind everything bad in SC2, but that's a completely naive point of view. Oh crap. My bad dude.
relax man, it's all good.
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Hey the search function does work...
I think this is bull shit. While I for one an happy with my name (AngrySCV) it still feels very wrong to charge for something that should be free. I'm not a wow fan, but I would be surprised if anyone is even in charge of the name changes. Bet it's just customer service rep that tells you that the wrong button was clicked and you need to pony up another $10 to try again. I mean SC has unlimited name changes, through the use of unlimited names, and it is all free.
My feelings on this in a word, Bullshit (said fast so it's only one)
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EPT
