I pointed out my thoughts about the dlc and microtransactions in my last post, and I thought to continue on the same train of thought with this one. You see, it occurred to me that I have been paying for the raiding 'elites' instance development and raiding without even visiting those instances myself. In WotLK I have been one of the many who has been paying for the development and use of Naxxramas (which I 'lost' in the vanilla already) and Ulduar, neither of which I will not see in a meaningful context anymore. Not with the current toon nor with the up and coming alts, due to the fact that Naxxramas is already 'outdated' gearwise and Ulduar will soon be, as 3.3 hits gold.
So in this sense I could easily see that the content in those -and upcoming- raids could be bought separately from the rest of the content. Granted that Icecrown will be yet another raid which is supposed to be easy enough to enter for the 'casuals', I doubt that everyone will have the opportunity to run it at the designated time before Cataclysm hits Azeroth: we have to remember that there are still new people beginning their journey in the World of Warcraft, who may never experience the vanilla, tBC or WotLK end game content.
So why must they pay for the content they will never see? Much like Outlands for me: why have I been obliged to pay for the content of which I over levelled way too fast and way too easily and was -in a way- forced to move on to Northrend to be able to progress in the content and story?
Genda wrote an excellent piece about the same issue, but he projects his thoughts to the time Cataclysm comes and the new WoW-players are -probably- forced to purchase and pay for the then extinct expansions, too, to enter the game at it's last legs. I would like to as bold as to project this same concern over the current situation with the 800lb gorilla in the room: why are the people who will never see the top part of the content forced to pay/purchase the content anyway?
It's all good money to Blizzard, of course, but is it fair to make majority of the player base to pay for the entertainment of the top tier raiding minority?
That is the age old question which hasn't been discussed for some time now. But which hasn't been answered properly as of yet.
