New "Premium" in-game WoW Service: Cross-Realm RealID Dungeon

[Correction]

This caught my eye on mmo-champ, worth a new thread.

With the continued popularity of the Dungeon Finder, many players have been asking for a way to group up with real-life friends who play on other realms to take on instances together. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about a new feature currently in development that will allow players to invite Real ID friends of the same faction to a party regardless of the realm they play on, and then queue up for a 5-player regular or Heroic dungeon.

As this is a fairly complex service to develop, we don’t have a release date to share quite yet. It’s important to note that as with some of the other convenience- and connectivity-oriented features we offer, certain elements of the cross-realm Real ID party system will be premium-based, though only the player sending the invitations will need to have access to the premium service. We'll have more details to share with you as development progresses -- in the meantime, you may begin to see elements of the feature appear on the World of Warcraft PTR.

The prospect of paying more for WoW doesn't strictly appeal to me, but I do like the idea of getting to play with friends across servers without having to pay for a realm xfer or having to level from 1-85 from scratch. Won't be long before Diablo III comes out and everything is on Battle.net 2.0 with integrated, premium-payment restricted features.

This isn't the first time WoW has charged for premium access to in-game features (see WoW Remote) but this is for certain the future WoW is trending towards. More features that will likely be bundled into a higher cost/month of playing WoW is going to grow their wallets faster than trying to squeeze much further past 11m normal subscribers.

[Katlan]

Very nice idea, but its laughable they are charging for it. They are nickle-and-diming everything they can it seems. Other "premium" services were just fluff that affected things outside of the game (remote AH, guild chat, ect...), but this is an in-game feature. I don't see how adding this feature is "so hard and complicated" anyways. They alrdy have it there w/ real ID and dungeon finder. Now you just select any/all friends to add to your que list.

[aurik]

Blizzard seems to have forgotten that monthly fees are intended to pay for ongoing development of both content and technology.

Oh well, they're slowly crippling their own game, that's their choice, and the dropping subscription levels will be the ultimate judge of their business decisions.

[Pikarya]

http://www.ddgameworld.com/wp-conten...activision.jpg

[The Stig]

Depending on price, I'm sold.

Can go around telling people I play WoW, and then can friend request them and do dungeons! at least.

[Kaylia]

I refuse to believe that implementing this feature is "hard" when the dungeon finder constantly build cross server party from scratch already.

Also, limiting it to the real ID is kinda lame, not as much as charging you for it, but still is stupid.

[Katlan]

Blizzard seems to have forgotten that monthly fees are intended to pay for ongoing development of both content and technology.

This, monthly subs of 11mil+ ppl can afford them to push this for free since its an in-game feature. They add real ID as a free / cool service and now start adding on fee's to it, just wait... this is only the beginning.

I dunno about other ppl, but not once.. for even a second, have I been like "it would be nice to run a dungeon w/ a friend of mine on another server"

[Katlan]

oops, double

[aurik]

It's not hard.

They already allow you to queue as a group with friends. You indicate queueing as a group to the system by partying up in game. This forces the system to place your group as a package deal. This is already supported.

They're going to build a new UI so that you can form "packages" for the Dungeon Finder through RealID. Not a big deal, as the back-end already supports package deals. The worst part will probably be making a UI for it.

"It's complicated" is a stupid excuse. It may be the case that it is complicated, if they are shit programmers. But that's a result of their own incompetence, can't blame customers for their own idiocy.

Then again, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this was the case. When I interviewed at Blizz a few years ago for a UI programming position they were insanely obsessed with optimization during the interview. So I wouldn't be surprised if the culture there is ass-backwards when it comes to producing mantainable and easily extendable code. Any programmer worth his salt knows that premature optimization is the root of all evil.

[Kaylia]

It's not hard.

They already allow you to queue as a group with friends. You indicate queueing as a group to the system by partying up in game. This forces the system to place your group as a package deal. This is already supported.

They're going to build a new UI so that you can form "packages" for the Dungeon Finder through RealID. Not a big deal, as the back-end already supports package deals. The worst part will probably be making a UI for it.

"It's complicated" is a stupid excuse. It may be the case that it is complicated, if they are shit programmers. But that's a result of their own incompetence, can't blame customers for their own idiocy.

It's possible that dungeon finder party are linked to a particular dungeon ID, making it a bit harder to program, but the worst part should have been the cross server communication, and this is already done.

I can't imagine this problem being anything else but an interface issue

[Katlan]

It would only be semi-difficult for them to program if the friends are cross battlegroup or w/e. Anything inside the same battleground should be a joke for them to program since its already programmed into the dungeon finder and all they are adding is the ability to select a checkbox to que w/somebody outside your immediate party

[Kaylia]

There is still battlegroup? I thought they removed that with cataclysm.

[Katlan]

I thought they just expanded the battlegroups to cover more servers?

But if there are no battlegroups anymore then adding this "premium" content is anything but difficult for them. Just need a UI box that has a checkmark next to everyone on your real ID, and clicking that box adds them to your que. Should be structurally very similar to re-queing w/ an existing pug that alrdy has ppl from different servers


lol.... comments on mmo-champ regarding this being a paid service are 90% negative

[Meresgi]

Charging for this is hilarious. I guess they have to nickle and dime the entire playerbase because they arn't making enough profits currently with the phone shit+Online store+subscriptions and the minor content patches they are working+ Titan must be taking a ton of their resources from ol Kotick. He might not be able to afford his 5th home in the Hamptons.

The concept is cool.. I guess, but with how easy it is to level nowadays, what is stopping friends from just playing on the same server? I'm talking irl friends not game friends.

Now if I could do instances cross faction, that would be pretty cool.

There is still battlegroup? I thought they removed that with cataclysm.

I could swear I read that too somewhere, in 4.1 they said they were going to make BG's be cross battlegroup or something. Not sure if they ever did that though.

[vrumpt]

shit is fucking disgusting. I'm cool with crappy phone shit, you choose to pay for a smart phone its prolly pretty easy to bleed money for stuff like that, but this is something entirely different. Given the amount of backlash i've seen so far they'll probly end up either not doing it entirely or dropping the fees for it. Very similar outrage to the Real ID thing that happened last year.

[Lordender]

lol, another bad move by Blizzard.

Only blind idiot fan-boys/girls are going to buy that shit.

[Ksandra]

There is still battlegroup? I thought they removed that with cataclysm.

I could swear I read that too somewhere, in 4.1 they said they were going to make BG's be cross battlegroup or something. Not sure if they ever did that though.

There are no more battle groups for BGs/arenas. There are like 4(?) battlegroups for Dungeon instances. I forget the exact number, but it's a lot lower than what it used to be.

However, ratings for bg/s arenas are still based on your battleground.

[Pikarya]

lol, another bad move by Blizzard.

Only blind idiot fan-boys/girls are going to buy that shit.

$25.00 dollar horse all over again.

[Eaglestrike]

$25.00 dollar horse all over again.

I have absolutely no issue with there being purchasable mounts and stuff, even for those prices.

But I certainly have an issue with this. Makes me question how much autonomy Blizzard really has, because I normally believe Activison has no say in what they do...but...

[Meresgi]

$25.00 dollar horse all over again.

Horse is cosmetic, while this too is not NEEDED for you to enjoy the game, it is a major thing especially for people who might happen to have friends on different servers. Shit, if people want to drop cash on pets/mounts then whatever, but charging for something like this....oh you Kotick.