From these comments I expected Luke to come off badly (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Tuesday, June 23, 2015, 14:50 (3443 days ago) @ Spec ops Grunt

And he didn't, really. It was weird when he kept the interview focused on the shaders instead of moving forward, and his ominous rumblings about microtransactions don't make me particularly happy, but he wasn't an out and out a-hole like I expected him to be after reading these.

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It's been clear to me for a LONG time that Destiny is following a hybrid business model of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. The gameplay loops, strike/dungeons, and various cosmetic items all scream WoW. The every-few-monts expansions (and their price points and content) are more reminiscent of CoD to me. This new "major expansion" is like buying one of WoW's expansions. And, to be fair, Destiny is doing this without a monthly subscription fee.

I will not be at all surprised if Destiny adds in things like $10 for a special spaceship or $5 for a new dance emote. And those additions will not ruin the game. They won't even make me sad, except when I see people buy them. I'm sorry, but a dance emote is not 1/4 of the content of an expansion. It's not even close. I get that your one animator had to work for a day or maybe two to make it, but that ain't worth $5 to over 1 million players.

That is, of course, why it's likely to happen. The ROI is huge for micro-transactional stuff like that. And if the expansions were free, I'd buy those things to support the game. But tying them to the collector's edition *only* is pretty lame (and, again, very WoW-like).

This game is a cash cow. It's designed, in every way, to milk our wallets to the last drop. No one should be surprised by this interview.