LOTRO's Isengard expansion has arrived, and it appears that my post on the pricing (which got quoted by Syp, who in turn was quoted on the Multiverse) turns out to be partially incorrect.
I had gotten the impression from Turbine's marketing materials that the two choices were to pre-order the expansion for $30 or to buy the expansion in the LOTRO Store for $60 worth of Turbine Points (albeit with the option to save money by declining to purchase the group content). Apparently there was a third option, which, in my defense, they chose not to emphasize. The $30 offer, minus a cosmetic cloak and an exp boost for low level alts, remains valid in Turbine's website store.
Long-term value of the VIP?
While I'm sure that Turbine didn't object to trying to pressure people into purchasing early, I think that Spinks (who also quoted me) was much closer to the mark than I was. This pricing model was aimed primarily at long-term subscribers (especially life-timers) who have excess points as a result of not spending their monthly stipends on consumables and fluff items. The Turbine store does not accept Turbine points, only additional real world currency.
This seems like an odd move. There's significant value in a single month of VIP subscription to LOTRO, because any character that has been played with a current subscription gets a bunch of permanent unlocks that cost well over $15 worth of points in the in-game store. There may even be value in subscribing for a few months to "rent" content that you intend to beat quickly and never play again. In the long run, though, you could permanently unlock almost everything that a VIP has through the Turbine Point store for less money than it costs to keep a subscription going for a year or longer.
By pointing out that additional cash is going to be heavily favored over Turbine Points - yes, there could be a discounted bundle later, but waiting three months will not be satisfactory to active, long-time subscribers - Turbine could very easily kick some of these folks over the fence to the Premium non-subscription side, costing themselves money in the long run.
(Incidentally, does anyone believe Turbine's excuse for the lack of a bundle - that they are technologically incapable of selling a bundle in the in-game store that will grant access to the future instances? You'd think they could implement some sort of place-holder if they wanted to.)
Arriving at the wrong conclusion
I was not alone in reaching the conclusion I did about Turbine's pre-order campaign, but I should not have been surprised. A 2009 pre-order deadline for Mirkwood also turned out to be a bluff that got extended, because Turbine priced the expansion and the price they wanted to sell the expansion at. There's very little incentive for Turbine to risk having late-comers decline to purchase some or all of the expansion after the price effectively doubled on launch day.
(Aside: The in-game store makes no mention of the out-of-game discount. Is it really a good idea to let players pay for $30 worth of Turbine Points to unlock the solo content, only to find out later that they could have had all the group content for the same amount of money?)
P.S.
All LOTRO talk aside, this was an interesting lesson for me in that my reaction focused on the specifics of my own situation, as a non-subscriber who was undecided about the expansion. By posting quickly, I missed the bigger picture of the story about VIP's. I don't think of PVD as a news site, but I do think there is some value in having my analysis up while the topic is still news. Then again, perhaps I would have caught more of the story if I had thought and waited a bit longer before posting (if for no other reason than because other folks figured it out). Ah well, perils of being a blogger I suppose.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Merits of Intermission
One of the biggest lessons I've learned as a MMO tourist is to never finish your to do list. In general, the fun goals - e.g. run every dungeon at least once - get done early, while the less fun goals tend to get put off til later. When I stick around "too long", I find that I walk away from the game with less positive feelings and stay gone for longer as a result.
I'm at one of these crossroads in EQ2 at the moment - a bit over halfway through the non-raid dungeon progression, nearing the AA cap, and approaching the maximum on most of the current expansion factions (most of which I don't really need for anything, other than a passtime while I look for groups and some free AAXP). Groups are getting a bit harder to find as I move away from the easy dungeons of the expansion, and the side projects I can do while I try to get a group are getting less interesting (e.g. grinding Desert of Flames factions for an additional housing option, now that we can have multi-housing).
My subscription happens to be due, and now is about the time to cancel if I want to take advantage of the "winback" promotions that will most likely follow November's expansion - this year, the same amount of money spent on EQ2 would have netted me $20 worth of station cash and a vulture mount if I had planned my gaming schedule around EQ2's marketing promotions. In and of itself, that's not necessarily reason to re-arrange my schedule. Then again, if it happens to encourage me to take a break at a time that makes sense anyway, a little EQ2 intermission might not be a bad thing for everyone concerned.
Specifics of this case aside, I wonder if there is a niche for a game that actually plans on players wandering off every few months. A Tale in the Desert is notable for doing something almost like the season finale of a TV show, actually bringing down the servers at the end of a "telling". Obviously, no developer wants to not get paid during the "season break", and perhaps the effect on the community would be disruptive. Then again, there could be long-term gains in avoiding player burnout, and I could see the new trend of story-driven MMO's - SWTOR chief amongst them - being well positioned to taken advantage of a tourist-driven playerbase that will naturally wax and wane as content is released.
I'm at one of these crossroads in EQ2 at the moment - a bit over halfway through the non-raid dungeon progression, nearing the AA cap, and approaching the maximum on most of the current expansion factions (most of which I don't really need for anything, other than a passtime while I look for groups and some free AAXP). Groups are getting a bit harder to find as I move away from the easy dungeons of the expansion, and the side projects I can do while I try to get a group are getting less interesting (e.g. grinding Desert of Flames factions for an additional housing option, now that we can have multi-housing).
My subscription happens to be due, and now is about the time to cancel if I want to take advantage of the "winback" promotions that will most likely follow November's expansion - this year, the same amount of money spent on EQ2 would have netted me $20 worth of station cash and a vulture mount if I had planned my gaming schedule around EQ2's marketing promotions. In and of itself, that's not necessarily reason to re-arrange my schedule. Then again, if it happens to encourage me to take a break at a time that makes sense anyway, a little EQ2 intermission might not be a bad thing for everyone concerned.
Specifics of this case aside, I wonder if there is a niche for a game that actually plans on players wandering off every few months. A Tale in the Desert is notable for doing something almost like the season finale of a TV show, actually bringing down the servers at the end of a "telling". Obviously, no developer wants to not get paid during the "season break", and perhaps the effect on the community would be disruptive. Then again, there could be long-term gains in avoiding player burnout, and I could see the new trend of story-driven MMO's - SWTOR chief amongst them - being well positioned to taken advantage of a tourist-driven playerbase that will naturally wax and wane as content is released.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Perils of AA Inflation
Lyriana, my EQ2 main, first hit the game's level cap (then 80) in 2009, with 127 out of 200 possible AA points. Two expansions since have increased the level cap once and the AA cap twice, with a third increase in a two year period slated for November's expansion. Right now, Lyriana has 264 out of the current cap of 300 AA - when she gains thirteen more, she will be able to access the expansion's final ability (a two-point cost, which requires 275 spent elsewhere). Raiding guilds that advertise on Crushbone generally include this 277+ point ability as a pre-requisite for would-be recruits.
As it now stands, the daily quests that I do routinely while waiting to see if I can find a group get me enough experience for one additional AA. I don't mind the system, since it rewards me for stuff that I'm doing anyway, and it's not keeping me out of content - I'll have the AA's well before I meet the gear requirements. I could see how someone who had a guild waiting on them might feel differently.
That aside, there is one significant aspect of the way in which the AA cap has risen - each time it has done so, there has been a free respec, and additional respecs are available for a price. Meanwhile, in Telara, Trion apparently plans to increase Rift's not yet launched Planar Attunement cap at least once, if not twice, to unlock the second and third tiers that are currently sealed on the UI. Trion's system controversially does not allow respecs even though the game's entire class system is balanced around players changing roles at a click of a button.
I'm not entirely opposed to the lack of respec, especially since no one really knows how the system will play out. However, it does beg a philosophical question - when those additional tiers open up, will there be a respec? If not, should players who have cherry-picked the best abilities out of the current trees save up their planar attunement points to buy future abilities, rather than picking up less desirable abilities now? Bear in mind that we have no indication whether attunement point costs will be higher on future trees - higher costs would slow power inflation due to the system, but could leave players regretting a spending spree on filler points today.
At the end of the day, it is kind of fun to get the occasional new ability, whether it's through an increased level cap or alternate advancements. It just seems that the consequences - power inflation on the high end and an ever steeper curve for newbies on the low end - bear some watching.
As it now stands, the daily quests that I do routinely while waiting to see if I can find a group get me enough experience for one additional AA. I don't mind the system, since it rewards me for stuff that I'm doing anyway, and it's not keeping me out of content - I'll have the AA's well before I meet the gear requirements. I could see how someone who had a guild waiting on them might feel differently.
That aside, there is one significant aspect of the way in which the AA cap has risen - each time it has done so, there has been a free respec, and additional respecs are available for a price. Meanwhile, in Telara, Trion apparently plans to increase Rift's not yet launched Planar Attunement cap at least once, if not twice, to unlock the second and third tiers that are currently sealed on the UI. Trion's system controversially does not allow respecs even though the game's entire class system is balanced around players changing roles at a click of a button.
I'm not entirely opposed to the lack of respec, especially since no one really knows how the system will play out. However, it does beg a philosophical question - when those additional tiers open up, will there be a respec? If not, should players who have cherry-picked the best abilities out of the current trees save up their planar attunement points to buy future abilities, rather than picking up less desirable abilities now? Bear in mind that we have no indication whether attunement point costs will be higher on future trees - higher costs would slow power inflation due to the system, but could leave players regretting a spending spree on filler points today.
At the end of the day, it is kind of fun to get the occasional new ability, whether it's through an increased level cap or alternate advancements. It just seems that the consequences - power inflation on the high end and an ever steeper curve for newbies on the low end - bear some watching.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Technology Barriers to Aging MMO Demographics?
Chris at Game by Night argues that the MMO demographic is getting older, and acquiring real life responsibilities that preclude the time commitment of older games. It makes for a great quote, and I don't disagree with the sentiment - I wrote about the push for transient content last week - but I wonder about the premise.
Those of us who have been playing MMO's for 5-15 years have obviously gotten older during that time, but has the audience as a whole? Or, is there some other factor, such as entry barriers to even getting into an MMO, that is letting the dreaded WoW Tourists into the genre?
Getting Online
Back in the day, even a CD-ROM's worth of data was a hefty download and a game that required an always-on internet connection was tying up the only phone (a landline) in your house. I would suggest that there was no possible value added for the solo player demographic that justified going to this degree of trouble; the early MMO's focused on multiplayer because that was the only thing that would make it worth the bother of being online.
Maybe the demographics of being online at all skewed against people who were 30-40+ in 1998, and this in turn kept them out of the MMO market. Even so, I would suggest that this aspect of the audience was incidental to the era, rather than a conscious decision by people with mortgages, jobs, and families to spurn the genre.
Flash forward to today, where it is feasible for the largest of games to be delivered digitally and for single player games to require an always-on internet connection (to the chagrin of various customers) because it's safe to assume that even your television has its own broadband connection through one or more consoles. Today, the "cost" of a solo player going online is greatly reduced. In 2004, this trend opened the door for Blizzard to support solo play - albeit at a much less "supportive" level than what we see today - and started the genre down the slippery slope towards including as many paying customers as possible.
The barriers continue to come down
In some ways, the point of this point sounds self-apparent - making it easier to get into MMO's has allowed more people to get into MMO's. Then again, it seems to have taken a while for the model to catch up. It's now late 2011, and we have MMO vets like John Smedley and Scott Jennings proclaiming that the free to download, non-subscription model is the way to go because this is somehow still news to the people who write the business plans.
Streaming client downloads are the new standard, until it moves even further - Runes of Magic is developing a Facebook client that runs the full game. Companies have to be starting to hear the message that their game needs to be a special product indeed to cross the hurdle of having customers pay $50-60 for a one-month trial that lets them decide if they want to charge $15 to their credit cards every month from now til they quit.
Did the aging of the EQ1 and WoW 1.0 players bring the age (and life/responsibility) balance of MMO players closer to the general population? Perhaps, but those numbers are also swelled with the younger players that studios are eagerly courting. I would argue that we have players who only want to play easier games in the market today because it is getting progressively easier to actually get those games in the first place. Here, I agree with Chris' bottom line - this is one trend that won't be rolling back.
Those of us who have been playing MMO's for 5-15 years have obviously gotten older during that time, but has the audience as a whole? Or, is there some other factor, such as entry barriers to even getting into an MMO, that is letting the dreaded WoW Tourists into the genre?
Getting Online
Back in the day, even a CD-ROM's worth of data was a hefty download and a game that required an always-on internet connection was tying up the only phone (a landline) in your house. I would suggest that there was no possible value added for the solo player demographic that justified going to this degree of trouble; the early MMO's focused on multiplayer because that was the only thing that would make it worth the bother of being online.
Maybe the demographics of being online at all skewed against people who were 30-40+ in 1998, and this in turn kept them out of the MMO market. Even so, I would suggest that this aspect of the audience was incidental to the era, rather than a conscious decision by people with mortgages, jobs, and families to spurn the genre.
Flash forward to today, where it is feasible for the largest of games to be delivered digitally and for single player games to require an always-on internet connection (to the chagrin of various customers) because it's safe to assume that even your television has its own broadband connection through one or more consoles. Today, the "cost" of a solo player going online is greatly reduced. In 2004, this trend opened the door for Blizzard to support solo play - albeit at a much less "supportive" level than what we see today - and started the genre down the slippery slope towards including as many paying customers as possible.
The barriers continue to come down
In some ways, the point of this point sounds self-apparent - making it easier to get into MMO's has allowed more people to get into MMO's. Then again, it seems to have taken a while for the model to catch up. It's now late 2011, and we have MMO vets like John Smedley and Scott Jennings proclaiming that the free to download, non-subscription model is the way to go because this is somehow still news to the people who write the business plans.
Streaming client downloads are the new standard, until it moves even further - Runes of Magic is developing a Facebook client that runs the full game. Companies have to be starting to hear the message that their game needs to be a special product indeed to cross the hurdle of having customers pay $50-60 for a one-month trial that lets them decide if they want to charge $15 to their credit cards every month from now til they quit.
Did the aging of the EQ1 and WoW 1.0 players bring the age (and life/responsibility) balance of MMO players closer to the general population? Perhaps, but those numbers are also swelled with the younger players that studios are eagerly courting. I would argue that we have players who only want to play easier games in the market today because it is getting progressively easier to actually get those games in the first place. Here, I agree with Chris' bottom line - this is one trend that won't be rolling back.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Will Even Free Get Me Into DCUO?
John Smedley is off on a PR tour to try and make the case that DCUO's seemingly overdue conversion to a free to play model is in response to "player feedback" from PS3 players - which was loud and clear before the game ever launched - rather than a desperation move born of underwhelming performance. In recent months, the game has:
Whether the change actually results in more revenue is a separate question. As nearly as I can tell, the restrictions on free players (upgraded permanently to "premium" with virtually any purchase - possibly including use of Station Cash balances from other games on the PC side) are things that I wouldn't care about as a tourist come to solo to the cap and then leave. Character slots only matter if you're rolling alts (which I don't plan to), inventory slot restrictions can be dealt with (especially on a character you're not keeping around in the long term), and only the currency restriction sounds like a potentially significant issue.
Ironically, this change fails to address the biggest complaint I've had about the business model since its launch - I want to be able to play the game on my large-screen TV with stereo sound and PS3 controller in hand, but I'm not sure I want to shackle my account to a device that sits in my TV room when I spend so much of my time elsewhere with my laptop. I would have paid for this game if I had been able to share one account across the two platforms. Instead, I'm still going to remain conflicted even after the game is free, because I'd still be forced to choose a platform to invest my time in.
- Completed its merge down to the smallest number of servers the regional (US/EU) and platform (PC/PS3) restrictions will allow (4)
- Introduced a RMT cash shop, to zero outcry that I saw anywhere because no one seems to be covering this game
- Announced plans to charge an additional $10 fee, on top of the fees for the disc and the subscriptions, for a Green Lantern-themed patch that was presumably intended to coincide with the movie in June. When Champions Online tried the same trick similarly soon after launch, shock and outrage forced Cryptic to reverse their decision. SOE reversed their course at the last minute with little fanfare - apparently having already realized that even the monthly fee was too much of an ask for many players, especially on the PS3 - when the patch finally launched this month.
Whether the change actually results in more revenue is a separate question. As nearly as I can tell, the restrictions on free players (upgraded permanently to "premium" with virtually any purchase - possibly including use of Station Cash balances from other games on the PC side) are things that I wouldn't care about as a tourist come to solo to the cap and then leave. Character slots only matter if you're rolling alts (which I don't plan to), inventory slot restrictions can be dealt with (especially on a character you're not keeping around in the long term), and only the currency restriction sounds like a potentially significant issue.
Ironically, this change fails to address the biggest complaint I've had about the business model since its launch - I want to be able to play the game on my large-screen TV with stereo sound and PS3 controller in hand, but I'm not sure I want to shackle my account to a device that sits in my TV room when I spend so much of my time elsewhere with my laptop. I would have paid for this game if I had been able to share one account across the two platforms. Instead, I'm still going to remain conflicted even after the game is free, because I'd still be forced to choose a platform to invest my time in.
The Science Fiction Convention And The Raid
I spent the weekend finally wrapping up the latest in George Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. I'd been saving the new book for my vacation in August, and I didn't quite get through it due to the 950 page length. Anyway, finishing the book got me thinking about something from many years ago.
Imagine that I told you that there was an all-new chapter that says what happens next, after the book that everyone paid some portion of the $35 MSRP to read, but that this new material was only available to people who showed up at a specific time and place to hear the text read aloud. Everyone else will maybe be allowed to read this new chapter in five years.
You might think that I'm telling a parable about raiders' currently-exclusive access to story content in MMORPG's, but it's also a true story. Back in 2006, I attended two science fiction conventions where George Martin showed up to read chapters from the forthcoming book - chapters which ended up being exclusive to hardcore fans for far longer than anyone expected or intended.
George Martin has been criticised for the amount of time it has taken him to work on the novels, suggesting that he is falling shy of a responsibility to readers to finish the story, a common accusation thrown at devs for various reasons with various merit on MMO forums. I would suggest that these folks are doing it wrong.
Any given reader either is or is not enjoying the books; if you are, then does it really matter if/when the story ends, and if you're not, might you perhaps be purchasing and reading the wrong books? Any given raider either does or does not enjoy the actual experience of raiding (through some combination of the gameplay and the company they keep). For any given fan, the experience of attending the convention either is or is not worth the time and expense of attending.
More to the point, there are ways for that experience to be unique - hearing the words in the author's own voice, as he holds a pencil to make notes on words he wants to tweak after hearing them aloud - that do not hinge on the exclusivity of the experience. Millions will read the same chapters that we heard at those conventions five years ago, without diminishing the experience for the fans who showed up for a preview. Perhaps MMO players - and the incentives that developers produce for us - could use a bit more of that outlook.
Imagine that I told you that there was an all-new chapter that says what happens next, after the book that everyone paid some portion of the $35 MSRP to read, but that this new material was only available to people who showed up at a specific time and place to hear the text read aloud. Everyone else will maybe be allowed to read this new chapter in five years.
You might think that I'm telling a parable about raiders' currently-exclusive access to story content in MMORPG's, but it's also a true story. Back in 2006, I attended two science fiction conventions where George Martin showed up to read chapters from the forthcoming book - chapters which ended up being exclusive to hardcore fans for far longer than anyone expected or intended.
George Martin has been criticised for the amount of time it has taken him to work on the novels, suggesting that he is falling shy of a responsibility to readers to finish the story, a common accusation thrown at devs for various reasons with various merit on MMO forums. I would suggest that these folks are doing it wrong.
Any given reader either is or is not enjoying the books; if you are, then does it really matter if/when the story ends, and if you're not, might you perhaps be purchasing and reading the wrong books? Any given raider either does or does not enjoy the actual experience of raiding (through some combination of the gameplay and the company they keep). For any given fan, the experience of attending the convention either is or is not worth the time and expense of attending.
More to the point, there are ways for that experience to be unique - hearing the words in the author's own voice, as he holds a pencil to make notes on words he wants to tweak after hearing them aloud - that do not hinge on the exclusivity of the experience. Millions will read the same chapters that we heard at those conventions five years ago, without diminishing the experience for the fans who showed up for a preview. Perhaps MMO players - and the incentives that developers produce for us - could use a bit more of that outlook.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Easy Raids And Player Conversion
Rohan at Blessing of Kings is looking vaguely prophetic. On Thursday, he wrote about a split between what he calls "transient" players - those only willing to tackle content designed to be completed in a single session - and "extended" players - those willing to invest greater amounts of time over multiple sessions in traditional raid content. He wrote:
Dealing with Transience
To greatly abuse numbers, I'd suggest that transient players make up 80+% of the MMO market - that's the approximately 5 million NA/EU WoW subscribers versus the approximately 500,000 subscribers to the most successful MMO's that pre-dated WoW. Some portion of that increase may be the fabled Blizzard "quality"/"polish", the popularity of the IP from previous games, etc. However, I just don't think that these things account for an order of magnitude. Instead, I believe the additional numbers are transient players, who Blizzard chose to invite into a previously closed genre by allowing them to solo to the level cap.
The challenge ever since has been how to entertain transient players now that they are here, providing the majority of the revenue for the genre and voting down the extended players (including the EQ1 vets who now work as developers at places like Blizzard) on questions about whether it's appropriate for expansion storylines to culminate in raid zones that only elite players can complete.
Some games, like LOTRO, have effectively punted - that game's core story is now soloable, with group content as an optional additional-fee add-on. Others have struggled to find the resources to tack a solo game onto a model that was intended for something else. Meanwhile, a few hold-outs, notably WoW, have tried to hold the line for the extended old-guard, selling everyone the same expansion with the same storyline, but reserving the ending for not merely regular raids but harder "heroic" raids, with heroic-only encounters like Sinestra and the final phase of the Firelands Ragnaros encounter.
Continuing the trend?
Assuming that this does play out the way it sounds like it will, transient players will indeed get to see all of the zones in the game. The real question I'm wondering about is "why". If the answer was "to provide more content, without having to re-design raids for 5 players", this plan would make sense. However, according to the interview summary, the one of the goals of the system is to teach players how to raid for future efforts in the "real" difficulty settings. If so, I believe the effort is doomed to failure because it continues the mistake that Rohan pointed out - the belief that somehow players who are paying to play a game on their own schedules can be convinced to switch over to more structured raid schedules, if only they can be made to see the light.
Nothing that Blizzard or anyone else has attempted since 2004 has succeeded at this, and I don't expect that exposing players to 24 strangers in WoW's notorious random dungeon pool will do the trick. Meanwhile, if Blizzard intends to reserve the real ending of the raid storylines for players who do the traditional non-easy versions of the raid, I doubt that most transient players will be impressed.
In principle, this whole thing should have limited impact on "real" raiders, who are supposedly raiding because they actually enjoy raiding. If the plan succeeds, real raiders might even see more experienced recruits coming out of the raid finder. That said, to the extent that some raiders are motivated by exclusivity, Blizzard may see some customers heading for the exits. Whether this number will be offset by increased retention among players who can now PUG all the raids remains to be seen.
The single biggest problem with the endgame of WoW is that it persists in believing that if the incentives are just right, Transient players will transform into Extended players, and everything will work out properly.In a followup post on Monday, he suggests that having a lower difficulty raid setting with automated group finding is a compromise solution that could provide transient players with an endgame, while preserving the more traditional endgame. Today, we learned that Blizzard has been hard at work implementing his suggestion, and that the looking for raid tool in patch 4.3 will indeed send players into a lower difficulty level.
Dealing with Transience
To greatly abuse numbers, I'd suggest that transient players make up 80+% of the MMO market - that's the approximately 5 million NA/EU WoW subscribers versus the approximately 500,000 subscribers to the most successful MMO's that pre-dated WoW. Some portion of that increase may be the fabled Blizzard "quality"/"polish", the popularity of the IP from previous games, etc. However, I just don't think that these things account for an order of magnitude. Instead, I believe the additional numbers are transient players, who Blizzard chose to invite into a previously closed genre by allowing them to solo to the level cap.
The challenge ever since has been how to entertain transient players now that they are here, providing the majority of the revenue for the genre and voting down the extended players (including the EQ1 vets who now work as developers at places like Blizzard) on questions about whether it's appropriate for expansion storylines to culminate in raid zones that only elite players can complete.
Some games, like LOTRO, have effectively punted - that game's core story is now soloable, with group content as an optional additional-fee add-on. Others have struggled to find the resources to tack a solo game onto a model that was intended for something else. Meanwhile, a few hold-outs, notably WoW, have tried to hold the line for the extended old-guard, selling everyone the same expansion with the same storyline, but reserving the ending for not merely regular raids but harder "heroic" raids, with heroic-only encounters like Sinestra and the final phase of the Firelands Ragnaros encounter.
Continuing the trend?
Assuming that this does play out the way it sounds like it will, transient players will indeed get to see all of the zones in the game. The real question I'm wondering about is "why". If the answer was "to provide more content, without having to re-design raids for 5 players", this plan would make sense. However, according to the interview summary, the one of the goals of the system is to teach players how to raid for future efforts in the "real" difficulty settings. If so, I believe the effort is doomed to failure because it continues the mistake that Rohan pointed out - the belief that somehow players who are paying to play a game on their own schedules can be convinced to switch over to more structured raid schedules, if only they can be made to see the light.
Nothing that Blizzard or anyone else has attempted since 2004 has succeeded at this, and I don't expect that exposing players to 24 strangers in WoW's notorious random dungeon pool will do the trick. Meanwhile, if Blizzard intends to reserve the real ending of the raid storylines for players who do the traditional non-easy versions of the raid, I doubt that most transient players will be impressed.
In principle, this whole thing should have limited impact on "real" raiders, who are supposedly raiding because they actually enjoy raiding. If the plan succeeds, real raiders might even see more experienced recruits coming out of the raid finder. That said, to the extent that some raiders are motivated by exclusivity, Blizzard may see some customers heading for the exits. Whether this number will be offset by increased retention among players who can now PUG all the raids remains to be seen.
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