"Premium Service" and their true cost

**This is, in no way, shape or form, an indictment of Activision, Blizzard, the Devs nor our gracious CMS who do constantly work to beat back the flames of the forums. This is merely speculation and observation on my part as an individual. That, my friends, is a disclaimer!**

There are things, I agree with Blizzard on insofar as what premium services are. Such things include vanity pets, mounts, realm transfers, faction transfers, and race/gender changes. Why do I consider these things premium? Well, to put it bluntly, we don't NEED the extra pets or mounts. To play with friends who faction/server transfer, it's absolutely free to re-roll on that particular server. If I wanted to be a female Draenai and make money dancing on mailboxes in a full set of Bloodscale armor instead of being a human male paladin, again, I'd simply re-roll which would be free of cost to me.

In the realm (no pun intended) of pets, mounts, factions, realms, races and gender, we the players ALWAYS have a choice.

But there's more to this costwise than just what comes out of our wallets. I'm not talking so much about the pets and mounts, but more about the faction and realm transfers. There's actually quite a significant cost to those no one really talks about: realm and faction imbalances. Blizzard has fought this particular raidboss since I can remember five years ago and it's still not below 90% and the enrage timer is approaching rapidly. There are some very well documented posts/stats about realms being in their death throes and some others who are in the cross hairs. This is not a good sign for any MMO. This is the price that has been paid for these 'premium' services. Realms dying off, realms becoming too desolate, realms, by virtue of rarely any players being on, unable to complete content. This is a horrible horrible price we've paid.

So last year, Blizzard implements Real-ID with much controversy. This was an astounding feature and I applaud it's current incarnation. For instance, if I meet someone in a random pug who I get on well with, I might feel free to add them (or vice versa) to Real ID. This was an innovative solution to the 'cross realm' issues. For instance, if one of my buddies transfered to a 'now dead realm', I would easily be able to communicate with them about my, in contrast, thriving realm hopefully convincing him/her to re-roll. But this, in and of itself, only leads to the death of a realm, right? You're absolutely correct.

So now, Blizzard expands on their Real ID feature with yet ANOTHER 'premium feature' and that's the often asked for 'cross realm grouping with Real ID friends'. This is an excellent feature, and I'm truly glad that Blizzard has decided to implement this. However, I hope they understand that the more 'premium features' they introduce, the bigger the overall price we, the players pay, and in the end, the bigger price Blizzard will pay. Blizzard, you've often said that the very best way to play is with friends. Do you really, truly feel that asking us to PAY to play with friends is the best option?

Truthfully, I feel the best way to implement this feature is to have it be free of charge. Why? Because then, if say, I had a group that needed a healer, I could invite someone from another realm and bam. They get their run, I get my healer and we both stay where we want to further improve the quality of our individual realms without furthering the demise of already dead/dying realms.

TL,DR: Blizzard, I truly understand the reasoning behind introducing this as a 'premium', but please, we've already paid (and I don't mean with our wallets) enough for previous 'premiums'. And I think I can speak for the majority of the player base when I say we'd rather keep our hands on our keyboards and mouses rather than our wallets.