One of the most controversial aspects of Shadow of War when it released last year was the nature of the microtransactions in the game. Warner Bros. and Monolith built a massive open world to explore and gave players the ability to create an equally large army. The complaint was in the ability to purchase the items necessary to bolster that army, and some players didn’t like it.
Apparently Monolith and Warner Bros are going to be removing these things from the game in an update that is dated for later this year. An excerpt from a lengthy post on the game’s forums reads:
“In order to fully restore the core promise of the Nemesis System, we’ll be permanently removing Gold, War Chests and the Market from Shadow of War. This means the option to purchase Gold with real-world money and the ability to gain Orc Followers from War Chests will be removed. There will be a specific amount of time given for players to utilize their unused Gold. If players have unused Gold by the end of the time allotted to spend it, any remaining Gold will be converted to in-game items.”
The note adds that the ability to purchase Gold will permanently end on May 8th, 2018 with the removal of Gold, War Chests and the Market taking place on July 17th, 2018. The developers tease other news and features will be inbound ahead of these major features.
Shadow of War isn’t the only game to start walking back their microtransactions in a holiday season that was plagued with them. Star Wars: Battlefront saw a similar controversy last year and decided to abandon pay to win mechanics at the very last moment. They only recently updated that game with a new progression system. Nevertheless, something made the developers to decide to remove this features from the game, but even if it is a bit late this sounds like an improvement.  Despite the pervasive nature of the microtransaction system in Shadow of War, our review of the game was positive — with this aspect of it being the one big glaring weakness.
Look for the Shadow of War update that removes microtransactions later this year.
Published: Apr 2, 2018 06:18 pm