In-game purchases? In World of Warcraft? Could happen, says a Blizzard community manager.
Earlier this week, World of Warcraft players on the gameâs public test server discovered an item called the Enduring Elixir of Wisdom. The item description: âExperience gained from killing monsters and completing quests increased by 100%.â
In other words, it makes grinding twice as fast. This isnât the type of item youâd just buy at a store with in-game currency: itâs a purchase-with-real-money, âpay-to-winâ feature that represents a lot of what people hate about microtransactions in online games. And although World of Warcraft already sells virtual pets and mounts for real money, theyâre mostly aesthetic, and you buy them outside of the game.
The thought of âpay-to-winâ buttons freaked out a whole bunch of WoW forum users, and Blizzard community manager Zarhym didnât do much to quell those fears while posting on battle.net yesterday
âWe are currently exploring the possibility of adding a way for players in certain regions to make purchases directly within the game,â Zarhym wrote. âAs part of this process, elements related to this will be appearing on the [Public Test Realm]. Weâll provide additional updates on our plans as development progresses.â
World of Warcraft is still gigantic, but itâs regularly losing subscribers: is Blizzard going to try to milk more from their longrunning cash cow? Is the next move to make WoW free-to-play? We reached out to Blizzard this morning for comment, and weâll update should they have any updates for us.
