WoW: Trading Post? More like a Season Pass – with potential, but also risk
With the upcoming patch 10.0.5, WoW: Dragonflight will be expanded with a new feature. The trading post is aimed at the many, many collectors in WoW who like to farm cosmetic items such as pets, mounts or transmog sets. We will be able to earn a new resource in different content, which we can then exchange for special cosmetic items in the monthly changing offer of the trading post.
Above all, the “changes monthly” is strikingly reminiscent of the concept of a season pass. The Blizzard developers recently integrated this feature into their hero shooter quite successfully when Overwatch 2 was released. And this procedure is known from Blizzard. If something works well in game A, the developers are happy to adapt it for game B.
Playing the game, earning resources and dusting off cosmetic items – whether you call it a Season Pass or a Trading Post doesn’t really matter. The stumbling blocks are the same. And also when Blizzard in WoW (buy now ): Dragonflight gets an awful lot right, they must be careful not to let the Trading Post backfire. Because it poses the same dangers as the Season Pass in any other game.
FOMO – the fear of missing out
The “fear of missing out” is one of the basic motivations that season pass systems work with. Item X is only available for so and so long and players are dying to have it. That should motivate us to play a little more. Sounds good, but can also quickly turn into self-made pressure. I absolutely HAVE to do this and that now.
This is especially the case if the earnable items then disappear again. For example, in Overwatch 2, the Mythic Hero Skins, the final reward in the Battle Pass, will disappear forever afterward, never being able to be earned again. As a result, at the end of the season, many players bought the missing Season Pass levels with real money.
WoW: Trading Post? More like a Season Pass – with potential, but also risk (2)
Source: Blizzard
The WoW developers would like to at least partially prevent this by revealing in the first announcement that the items will disappear with the monthly change, but will return later. Not a syllable was mentioned that these things are gone forever. Even if “later” is of course a very flexible term if you don’t know when something will return.
It is unlikely that we will be able to buy missing resources with real money afterwards (because then they could throw the things directly into the shop), but I would not rule it out at this point.
Tasks for resources – a dangerous stumbling block
In order to be able to earn the new resource, we have to do things in WoW. We don’t yet know exactly what that will be. However, the first screenshot reveals that we can work through tasks in a wide variety of content – from PvP to raids to pet battles and professions.
WoW: Trading Post? More like a Season Pass – with potential, but also risk (4)
Source: Blizzard
This is also nothing unusual so far and is simply taken from other Season Pass models. In principle, this is also a good thing, since we can earn the resource in the content we enjoy. In addition, since the amount of resource that can be earned is limited, we are not pushed into other content or into an endless grind. Provided at least that the tasks from one area are enough to reach the monthly limit.
However, there is one major stumbling block that developers should definitely avoid. Such tasks become dangerous when they affect group play. And that is exactly what is massively the case in some such models and WoW has already suffered from it.
WoW: Trading Post? More likely Season Pass – with potential, but also risk (3)
Source: Blizzard
Nobody has a problem with this if the tasks are: “Defeat Boss X in Dungeon Y”. This has no influence on any other players. Because everyone in the dungeon has the same goal: defeat the boss. But if the task is, for example, “Defeat every trash mob in Dungeon X,” “Kill Boss Y without interrupting ability Z,” or “Successfully complete Dungeon X without casting a single heal,” then such have Tasks do have an impact on the rest of the group. If they are still lockable in the dungeon browser, four players may suffer when one player wants to complete a task.
In shooters, such tasks often cause trouble because they sometimes get in the way of team play. In WoW, PvP players were annoyed for years when Children’s Week was running again and PvE players in Alterac Valley tried to complete achievements with their orphans and didn’t really pay attention to what you actually have to do on the battlefield. Blizzard took out the achievement at some point. Let’s hope they learned from this and don’t make similar mistakes at the Trading Post.
Much more money is made today with the Season Pass, in-game shop and similar systems than with the sale of the actual games. As a result, developers think differently and act differently. Instead of focusing on making the next part of a series or expansion even better than its predecessor, it’s more and more about how to implement systems that should make even more money out of the players’ pockets.
EA has more or less crashed several game series in this way. Of course a FIFA or an F1 is still successful – but there hasn’t been any further development in the game for a long time. Instead, more and more ultimate systems, weird points, skins and whatnot to buy in the shop.
In WoW, this will probably not happen to this extent. However, the developers run the risk of at least tending in this direction. If future content is developed in such a way that it has good synergy with the trading post, then of course that’s not a problem. But if the new dungeon falls victim to the scissors because not enough new transmog sets have been developed for the trading post for the next month, then very few players would find that acceptable.
The remaining content must not be relegated to a means to an end, but must continue to form the core of WoW, which is supported by the trading post. Many other developers have forgotten that. Let’s hope Blizzard doesn’t forget about it.
Conclusion: Great idea with some stumbling blocks
The trading post is basically a pretty good idea from the developers and has a lot of potential. In the implementation, however, some stumbling blocks have to be avoided, which otherwise quickly turn a good idea into a crap feature. The developers certainly already have some of these points on their radar (see FOMO). For others, they hopefully listen to community feedback. After all, they also stated that nothing is set in stone and that the trading post will soon be tested extensively on the PTR.
In the past, as a WoW player, you always immediately fell into the same train of thought at this point: “How are the developers screwing up the great feature this time?” Because many of the past features had a lot of potential and were just terrible in the end when they were implemented. But since we’ve been able to convince ourselves live for a few weeks how much the devs have done right with WoW: Dragonflight, we’re actually confident that the trading post will soon be a great and indispensable feature in WoW.
Reference-www.buffed.de