My understanding is that the term, “whale,” was invented by mobile game publishers to describe their favourite kind of customer.
You can just see the strategy meeting:
“If we price it stupidly high, we won’t get many buyers, but we only need a few to get enough money to buy a new Porsche.”
“True. You get a lot more meat by catching a couple of whales than a netful of sardines.”
Alternatively, it may have been coined by a game reviewer noting the marketing phenomenon for the first time.
It’s definitely perjorative, but not necessarily towards the person making the purchase. It’s more like: we’re annoyed that people exist who have such crazy amounts of money that they’re willing to pay stupid prices for things. And we’re jealous that we can’t get those things. And angry that the devs/publisher are pricing things that way. And thankful that the whales keep us able to play the game for free.
In a sense, that last is the reason the Campaign Passes are so annoying.
TL;DR - Whales aren’t going to care enough about something so small, to get offended.
Thinking about the last patches it seems they now use the concept I know from other F2P games:
Stop fixing bugs unless it is game breaking or a developer has some free time that can not used by different task.
Stop balance changes unless a developer has some free time that can not used by different task.
Rework or make change for new players multiple times per year. Then start marketing about those “great” changes.
Create one large and good update per year for existing community.
And, of course, adding new ways to create money and advertising them as features.
But maybe I am wrong and they use the classic model: Send game to death by adding more and more money making “features” until everybody left. Then release a new game. Repeat.
@Izibaar … They have been adding quite a bit of monetization focused things, which kinda makes me wary. Because, what drew me to GoW, and made me recruit friends, was that it wasn’t constantly “robbing the train.” Ironically (hope someone is listening) that was a vibe was a thing that made me spend money. When I spent, it felt like I was choosing to spend on a game I enjoyed. I believe is financially supporting good games, so it just felt right. I didn’t feel pressured or hammered. I just felt like, “Hey, this is fun, I’m gonna pay these people.”
The minute a game starts pressuring me to spend, I’m gone.
That said… I still think GoW has not crossed that line. They have emphasized monetization lately, for sure. And that has made me less likely to spend (hope someone is listening), for sure. But it’s still way more ftp friendly than most games in this league.
Everyone should be able to make a living at their job, so I am not against monetization. I will also pay for a good game. I will pay a little too much so that ftp who can’t afford to support the game can play. But I can’t financially support a game that spends all of their money on new ways to force people to spend money, while ignoring the product. So far GoW is still on the good side of that line. But ya… it’s getting close.
@Izibaar - Great points. But I contest the idea that they actually market the game at all, sadly. It seems 505 is happy to reap the benefits of publishing the game without ever spending any money on marketing it.
@Tresk - I agree. The more pressure I feel to buy, the less likely I am to do so. Of course, pricing a single Mythic at the cost of a AAA game doesn’t encourage me to buy, either!
My alt got 15 war coins for finishing Merlantis quest line… so unless there’s a different number of coins for differant kingdoms, you need quests from 4 kingdoms for 1st warband, and all 5 will require 250/15 = 16,666 ~17 kingdoms-> half of them. 2nd half stays for “boosting” them.
Okay, that’s kind of annoying actually, but also confusing in terms of the shop purchase, since it will be irrelevant for any new player and only relevant for those having finished quests.
Could you update us if you finish another quest line to see if they do all in fact give 15 Coins? Ty regardless, @Sytro.
Will be interesting to see how frequently any Adventure Board task shows up…
Small update on the topic: haven’t done quest line on my alt, but got offered warbands after arena…
So these offers exists and aren’t limited to new players only…
