Donations for Frostwolf. Can we talk about it?

[humanzirl]

The title pretty much sums up what I am feeling about the donation situation on Frostwolf.

Donations are something that are given completely voluntarily, I understand that.
I also understand that Warmane somehow gets away with providing, what shall we call them... gifts? as a token of their gratitude for these donations.
I also understand that Warmane gets away with these.... gifts..... being available EXCLUSIVELY through the marketplace (aka, only available to DONORS).

That is fine. That is all fine by me. I don't care. No, really, I don't.

See, what people do not understand is that servers live and die by the donations they receive to keep them operational. This means that there must be a continual inflow of money. But people will not give you money for free, so you must incentivize these donations to keep them coming.

I spend a LOT of time on this server. I spend a LOT of time gearing my character and tweaking everything exactly how I like it. I do not want that time wasted, so I do not do stupid things to get myself banned. But I also want this server to be around for a long time. I would like to donate.

This is where my problem lies. I want to donate. Sure do. But with the way Warmane has set up donations I feel like it is more as a cash-grab then anything else.

Let us look at some of the items you can only get through the marketplace, and their respective cost.

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So I am not a rich person: I would like to buy a 2-person flying mount for me and my friends to enjoy. Okay, nothing wrong with that. Let's see what it costs!

X-53 Touring Rocket: 38 coins! Wow!

Okay, what about vial of the sands:

Vial of the Sands: 30 coins! O.0

What about some other things then? I have leveled a lot of characters but want one more. Maybe this time I will donate for instant 90. Let's see what that will run us.

Instant 90: 20 coins. :O

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See, I don't mind shelling out a few bucks here and there to make my life in-game much easier. Heck, if Warmane had a MoP fun-server option I would be there with all the glorious little trinkets and mounts one could possibly enjoy. This is a game after all, and I intend to ENJOY it, not spend hours grinding away with boredom for some obscure goal.

See, this is the crux of the "WoW issue". Blizzard designed this game to eat up time in every possible place so that objectives took longer to get and they could milk people for more subscription money. But Warmane is not subscription based, and therefore it does not make sense why they would want to follow this model. The more hours someone spends on the server in no way benefits the server at all. If anything it just increases server load as people who would otherwise be OFFLINE are instead stuck grinding something (gold, mats, mounts, etc).
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Having said all the previous things I have just said, I would now like to finally get to my point: I would like for the server community (the players) to voice their support in favor of opening a dialogue with the server administrators who make up these prices and have them explain to us their line of thinking.

Right now, I do not know 1 single admins name. Maybe that's my fault, maybe I am not just active enough on the forums or whatever it may be. But I feel like the admins are some super-secret agency that you only encounter when you have royally screwed something up. Why can't we have recognizable names and faces of people who care about us and explain things to us?

I don't know, maybe it takes too much time to do all that, but getting that as a message would be better than the ice cold relationship I feel like our community has with our admins now. We blame them for everything: all the spell bugs, bugged quests/instances, instances not being opened, content not being released on time, etc. And I am sure they do not think too highly of a player base whose defining characteristics are summed up in one word: needy.
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I do not want to spend hours upon end doing something I hate in-game as a "cost" for achieving something that might be very useful. I understand this in some areas: PvP and PvE gearing for instance, MUST be tiered behind the Blizzard default gearing system. But we have a unique opportunity to get things easily from the Marketplace. Why must everthing be $20-$30 or MORE for anything useful at all? Remember, each coin costs approximately $1, though you can of course get better value by donating more.

I don't know. Maybe Warmane has a world-class economist working for them that has devised the perfect solution for maximizing donations for its user-base. Maybe they are getting along just fine without my excessively long post on the forums. But I feel like if useful things like instant-90 and 2-person flyers were available for much less money (and other things as well, I am only using those 2 categories as an example), then it would greatly increase the amount of people, like myself, who want to donate but cannot in good conscience spend $30+ for a single flying mount. That is just ludicrous and not safe personal finance.
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So, finally we come to the responders to this forum thread. I will try to cover what will most likely be the most common responses below:

OMG, you're so poor you cannot afford the thing you want? You dont deserve it then!

--- Okay, thank you for your contribution to this discussion.

OMG, people work very hard (hours and hours) to get the things they want for their characters! What makes you think you should get it easier than them?

--- This is a valid point. I know several people who farm for hours, days, weeks to get the special thing they want. I am asking Warmane to A: Help that person not have to do that, because if it was available for cheaper on marketplace then maybe that person wouldn't have to farm for it. And B: By that person now donating, he has helped extend the life of the server as a whole.

Also, just because someone chooses to absolutely go extreme farming mode does not necessarily make it the right way to play the game. We are having a discussion about the balance between our time as a user-base, and our money as a user-base (a substitute for time in some cases, but unfortunately, servers cannot pay for themselves just because a lot of people login to them).

OMG, just do what everbody else does to get "Thing X" and stop complaining!

--- Look, I understand some players may feel slighted if suddenly the price for something they just donated for drops. But this is a COMMUNITY. This is not about any 1 single player or small group of players. This is not even about 1 realm. If Warmane dies, then everything we as a community have worked for, all the forum posts, help we have given in-game, work we have done on our characters, raiding, guilds, achievments, etc. is ALL. FOR. NOTHING.

Warmane has to live, and I am trying to open the discussion up between the server admins and the community it serves about the best way to do that.

If you have gotten to the end of this without skipping, I thank you.

[nomind]

when you dont like price on marketplace no1 want from you to donate so stop QQ and find your own way how to farm gold coins without donate :) then you will get coins so fast

[sybirke]

See mate, sadly you will find only similar respones to this. ^

[MZPA]

if I can help it Coin price should be different of country I am from Bosnia and Herzegovina and my salary is € 150 how to donate € 40.

[Drool2]

the price is 1 thing but...the main problem is no1 donate to a dead (or going to die!) server...people need to see some work and attention from warmane in order to show their attention as well.
and please dont attack me with OH NO server is not dying it had 4k this weekend and such... compare this population with the population we had with 2 server back then...even with more bugged game people donated and played here more when they felt a bit interest and attention toward mop from warmane(molten).

[leon9]

Like MZPA said they should make that the amount it cost should be deferent from the county you are coz if you get your $ salary is would be ez for you to donate on the server coz it cost like nothing but for ppl with **** currency it cost sometimes 2x maybe 4x more than for the average guy that has a strong currency but yeah cant complain not warmane's fault but would be nice to donate and keep some of you salary :) (people who live in county with bad currency will get the joke) :) !!

[Obnoxious]

Like MZPA said they should make that the amount it cost should be deferent from the county you are coz if you get your $ salary is would be ez for you to donate on the server coz it cost like nothing but for ppl with **** currency it cost sometimes 2x maybe 4x more than for the average guy that has a strong currency but yeah cant complain not warmane's fault but would be nice to donate and keep some of you salary :) (people who live in county with bad currency will get the joke) :) !!

Unfortunately, that's not realistic. People would just use that to cheat the system, "buying" the purchase of coins from people on those countries to get them much cheaper. Just look at Steam and how they keep trying to find ways to restrict purchases made in countries where they have to sell for much lower prices, such as Russia, doing region locks and all, but still people find ways to work around it with VPNs, proxies and the like.

[LordSerphroth]

Like MZPA said they should make that the amount it cost should be deferent from the county you are coz if you get your $ salary is would be ez for you to donate on the server coz it cost like nothing but for ppl with **** currency it cost sometimes 2x maybe 4x more than for the average guy that has a strong currency but yeah cant complain not warmane's fault but would be nice to donate and keep some of you salary :) (people who live in county with bad currency will get the joke) :) !!

This makes sense. I am a business lead of an analytics startup earning about $10 per hour in my currency. And i ahve donated enough to get the contributer rank atleast.

But i feel that a person who is spending lesser share of their wallet (% of their personal earnings) on this game than me is getting higher benefits cuz of the currency they earn in.

Unfortunately, that's not realistic. People would just use that to cheat the system, "buying" the purchase of coins from people on those countries to get them much cheaper. Just look at Steam and how they keep trying to find ways to restrict purchases made in countries where they have to sell for much lower prices, such as Russia, doing region locks and all, but still people find ways to work around it with VPNs, proxies and the like.

Agreed. But the prices cud be set in accordance to a currency that is not among the higher percentile. For example, if you have 3 currencies primarily earned by users L, M , H. Currently your donation system works based off H currency. If you change the rates in such a way that people earning in M find it comfortable to donate , then even L currency earners can start donation with lesser damage to their pockets.

*H, M, L stand for high medium and low conversions with respect to $. $ to $ is the highest and $ to Zimbabwean dollar is the lowest

EDIT : for easier understanding just replace L with Rupee, M with Bulgarian lev and H with $
65 Rs = 1.82 Bulgarian Lev = 1 $

For example, if you have 3 currencies primarily earned by users L, M , H. Currently your donation system works based off H currency. If you change the rates in such a way that people earning in M find it comfortable to donate , then even L currency earners can start donation with lesser damage to their pockets.

EDIT : for easier understanding just replace L with Rupee, M with Bulgarian lev and H with $
65 Rs = 1.82 Bulgarian Lev = 1 $

My analysis on this is :

1. H currency customers start increasing number of transactions because now the rates are lesser.
2. M currency customers start spending on higher cost items more frequently since its affordable for them
3. L currency customers begin donating since it hurts their pockets lesser

All you guys have to do is maybe use a simulation to assess whether the mean profits u earn by pricing your market around M currency is more than the profits you earn by pricing your market around H.

Or

Do a control test on a few users for 1-2 weeks and see actual results.

EDIT : Try Montecarlo simulation, easy to get a tool to do that. There is an addon to Excel called @risk which lets you run 1million monte carlo simulations on excel data.

[Avitus]

It's called disposable income.
If you make equal to 150 of euros per month you should really fix your life instead of asking warmane to fix their coin prices.
If you cannot afford the goods,you don't buy them,it's that easy.
I don't go into a car shop with below average salary and ***** that some random saudi prince can afford golden ferrari,and i don't demand the price adjustment to my income in order for me to get my hands on one as well.
The mounts on coin shop are just visual eyecandy,you could arguably say that the items are as well since gearing nowadays just means spamming BGs.

All in all,if your budget won't let you afford donations,you shouldn't be donating,in fact you shouldn't even be here,you should change job or switch country....150 euros....there are maids in third world countries that make twice the amount per week. You are either selling used condoms on streets or that's just the amount you manage to gather on monthly bases after you are done robbing seniors for that month.

I am sorry,but this topic is an insult to our species.

[LordSerphroth]

It's called disposable income.
If you make equal to 150 of euros per month you should really fix your life instead of asking warmane to fix their coin prices.
If you cannot afford the goods,you don't buy them,it's that easy.

What?!

MZPA said that he earns 150 Euros in his own currency, working in his own country. He may be a king in his country living in a palace with that income but cant afford spending on Warmane since prices are based off $s. He DOENST need to fkin "fix his life". You need to "fix" your knowledge about how world economics work.

[Avitus]

What?!

MZPA said that he earns 150 Euros in his own currency, working in his own country. He may be a king in his country living in a palace with that income but cant afford spending on Warmane since prices are based off $s. He DOENST need to fkin "fix his life". You need to "fix" your knowledge about how world economics work.

It doesn't matter. At the end of the day it's a donation that grants you perks e/g in this case coins. It's not a necessity,thus need not to adjust it's value on per-country bases unlike medical supplies and food.
Besides at the end of the day,warmane has things that need much more attention than random people with welfare-check equal salaries complaining that they cannot afford a....donation,it's cruel and blunt,but true.

[Obnoxious]

Donation "prices" have to keep one and only thing in mind - maintenance costs of the server. Those costs won't be lowered if we claim many players come from places where 30 euros is a lot. The servers aren't hosted where you live.

Thee prices can't take into consideration how much one person earns or how much is normal to earn in a country or another. If you earn 150 euros per month, either that's a lot for you and you shouldn't be wanting to spend money on donations to get items because you use that for a living, or you get leftovers to use on entertainment and it would be up to you to use on something else or save to get coins.

It gets down to if you can't buy an imported car, you either save for it or don't get a car. You won't complain to the overseas dealership that it costs too much in your country's currency.

[LordSerphroth]

Donation "prices" have to keep one and only thing in mind - maintenance costs of the server. Those costs won't be lowered if we claim many players come from places where 30 euros is a lot. The servers aren't hosted where you live.

Thee prices can't take into consideration how much one person earns or how much is normal to earn in a country or another. If you earn 150 euros per month, either that's a lot for you and you shouldn't be wanting to spend money on donations to get items because you use that for a living, or you get leftovers to use on entertainment and it would be up to you to use on something else or save to get coins.

It gets down to if you can't buy an imported car, you either save for it or don't get a car. You won't complain to the overseas dealership that it costs too much in your country's currency.

But what if Warmane can earn better profits through increased frequency of transactions? I am not saying lower your earnings. I am saying optimize them so that people who want to donate are able to donate thereby allowing you to earn more.

[Obnoxious]

If we were here to make as much money as we could, we would do things very differently. We could be selling as sorts of things and services, instead of simply saying "no" to many of the things players ask for. Despite all some people say, we actually do many things to limit how many items got with coins are in circulation. So no, earning more wouldn't change this.

[LordSerphroth]

If we were here to make as much money as we could, we would do things very differently. We could be selling as sorts of things and services, instead of simply saying "no" to many of the things players ask for. Despite all some people say, we actually do many things to limit how many items got with coins are in circulation. So no, earning more wouldn't change this.

That makes sense. You wouldnt want every other guy running with donated gear all over their face.

However, there is a large population of users who depended on the point shop for gear and items. With the increased valuation of point shop items, this seems like a really really good opportunity for Warmane to convert these players into low value donors and re-engage with them, instead of completely blocking them out.