The Daily Quest: Premium posts
by Anne Stickney 
May 20th 2011 at 5:00PM
WoW Insider's on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative, and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.
Earlier this week, Blizzard announced the upcoming introduction of the Dungeon Finder premium service, a service that will allow you to group with friends on your Real ID account. It also announced that this service would be available for a fee, sparking a whole mess of feedback on the forums and in the blogosphere -- and we've got a handful of posts surrounding the somewhat controversial topic for you.
As for the DuckTales theme, I could argue that the television show used to air on a premium channel and is therefore related, but really ... I just wanted to get the theme song stuck in your head. You can thank me later.
- World of Matticus wonders: Would you pay for premium?
- Blessing of Kings isn't quite sure what to think of the new premium service.
- The Noisy Rogue thinks the new premium service makes perfect sense.
- Corath's Blog thinks, at first glance, that the premium service is an excellent idea.
Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment, and you may see it here tomorrow! Be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites.
Filed under: The Daily Quest
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Travis May 20th 2011 5:09PM
I just wanted to say that is the name of my guild / Guild theme song is right on the main page. http://ducktales.guildportal.com/ great find and I do love that idea very much so, but as for a fee IDK that I would pay to do it, if I was going to do that I would just make a new toon for all that.
Lheim May 21st 2011 8:53AM
Anne, I don't know about blogs - but there's an amazing number of well-thought out forum posts that discuss why paid Cross-server invites are at best an extremely disappointing idea from Blizz.
I won't link directly, but see Tinybee's excellent post currently on page 4 of the RealID Cross realm Dungeon thread #12 on the forums, describing why it's naive to expect this to be the only in-game advantage on offer from Blizzard, and how the standard subscription experience will suffer as a result, and Speedwell's (page 21, thread #11) impassioned plea about how incredible this feature could be for the recovery of the community if it weren't behind two incredibly distasteful requirements that'll squash it's use.
Oh, heck, here.. link away.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2549108178?page=4
and http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2548997340?page=21
Anyway, there's TONS of thoughtful people out there appalled.
Lheim May 21st 2011 8:54AM
/reply fail - meant to go below for Anne Stickney's comment.
impresssunrise May 20th 2011 5:16PM
Wow this article is not biased at all [sarcasm].
Anyone with half a brain knows that the premium services are just absurd. Just read around on sites like manaflask.com or the general forums.
JJK May 20th 2011 5:34PM
Seriously, what with the cherry picking or general disregard of the severity of this development. We are looking at a future where in-game functions are available at a premium and no one on this site wants to call Blizzard on it?
Dave May 20th 2011 5:36PM
Using the forums as a place to check for people with half a brain automatically invalidates your argument.
impresssunrise May 20th 2011 6:12PM
You just got served, Dave.
Diatenium May 20th 2011 6:12PM
Thank you.
Implementing and then restricting additional interaction with your friends to anyone who doesn't pay an additional subscription completely undermines blizzard's stance on ancillary purchases up to this point, to go onto this page and see ambivalence towards it at best and approval at worst really steams me.
I'm not going to play the purely speculative "slippery slope" card since it's hardly fair, but if they go ahead and implement this then what does that say to their financial department in regards to what they can get away with?
Iirdan May 20th 2011 6:18PM
Impresss, there is a point about using the forums to support your argument. The forums are a vocal minority and represent only a small fraction of the community. You can't make sweeping generalizations like you did using forums posts as support.
The contented man does not speak, while the angry man speaks too much.
Lheim May 20th 2011 6:46PM
I'm sorry, but 5000+ overwhelmingly negative posts on the forums is a far greater 'minority' than five semi-positive blogs.
Iirdan May 20th 2011 8:22PM
@Lheim: That may be true, but it is a far cry from meriting the generalization made in Impresss' post.
There may be more negative posts, but that wasn't the claim. The claim was that any person with half a brain is against this, which simply isn't true, much less supported by evidence.
impresssunrise May 20th 2011 11:59PM
I am not trying to make a generalization. I am just saying, take a look around in forums everywhere - including general forums and hardcore guilds as examples. Heck, read the responses on here. The consensus seems to be that vast majority of people are against these premium services, and this article did as good of a job as Fox news in portraying both sides of the argument.
Anne Stickney May 21st 2011 12:55AM
Hi. I don't write the blog posts I link to. I simply surf around and see what's out there. In this case, I found a good chunk of well-written posts regarding the premium service, so I put them all together. Had I found a well-written one against it, I probably would have linked that. However, most people that are griping against the fact that they'll have to pay to group across servers haven't exactly shown that they are the most...coherent and intelligible posters. As it was, I figured what I did find was all well-written, covered the points, and more importantly -- was interesting to read, which is what I look for when I put these together.
budjb May 20th 2011 5:28PM
It is curious that while the feedback on the forums has been overwhelmingly opposed to this that this article shows a slant towards somewhat positive reception to it. Even in Corath's blog, I didn't exactly get the feeling that the author thought it was an excellent idea, only that they could justify the cost.
Iirdan May 20th 2011 6:08PM
He says that he thought it was an excellent idea, to be fair. He needs more info, but he definitely said "I think this is an excellent idea."
Brian! May 20th 2011 5:29PM
I understand Blizzard has had a drop in subscribers? This is an easy way to make up that lost revenue.
WoW is a massive profit engine and corporations are completely unethical in nature. It goes without saying that they will do what they can to get all the funds possible from their users.
Borick May 20th 2011 7:52PM
It looks like they're selecting for their viable customers. Only one person in the group needs to be a 'premium' customer, so a tank or healer can build a following of those he has known success with.
It sounds like a good idea at a superficial level, but I see it as another unsustainable cludge and a stiff middle finger at their casual customers. Of course the unfocused masses shouldn't be in the dungeon finder queues in the first place, but that is entirely Blizzard's fault.
SamLowry May 21st 2011 1:47PM
"I see it as...a stiff middle finger at their casual customers."
Agreed.
"Of course the unfocused masses shouldn't be in the dungeon finder queues in the first place"
And they aren't because pugs are such an 'effing pain. I gave up on pugging heroics because I didn't like waiting in the queue for 40 minutes only to see the group break up five minutes after entering, yet after returning to regular dungeons I now keep seeing sleepwalking healers who focus only on the tank.
No thanks, I'm outta here until Blizz can get their shizz together.
Dude May 20th 2011 5:32PM
Since players already pay a sub they should be rewarded over time and the sub should include these new features not nickel and dime'd. It's a huge breakdown of trust and shame on Activision Blizzard for lulling its WoW player base into a false sense of security.
Mister EDgAr May 20th 2011 5:35PM
Blizzard isn't stupid. While a minority will be crying on forums and blogs other will just hand in their wallet (Not that they haven't already).
I don't really care about this feature but I do care about how every new feature has a pricetag to it.
I wonder how long do we have before WoW become a "free to play" game?