World of Warcraft Pet Store Adds $25 Mount

WHAT A RIPPED OFF STUFF! Where is my missed point? Hey Blizzard, please do not rip off a million of people's own money with your own idea to make a new stuff. What the heck is with your new expansion pack plus a world of warcraft pet store $25 mount. You guys in the dirty business are being greedy like Bill Gate.

Hey everyone in WOW. Please don't buy that ones from WOW. Thanks. To save your money up for new latest games.

Either be logged in 24 hours raiding without RL / employment or pay a peanut amount for a really nice mount. 20 EUR is not much for getting a mount without any raiding/rolling/DKP blah bullshit. Still do not l ike the tendency Activision is moving WoW to F2P with item shop.

$25 for something cosmetic is insane

Nice to see companies are still taking full advantage of addicts.

I'd like to think the pricing on this would cause some sort of backlash, but it won't. People will line up to pay $25, the same as they line up to pay $25 *per character* to transfer from a dead/broken realm to one that actually performs as expected.

Coupled with the fact that there are good indie developers struggling to sell entire games at $10-20, this makes me kinda sad.

25$ ?? I though micro-transaction meant small transaction

No one needs it, no one must buy it. Other than the fact there is currently a *60,000 person queue* (estimated 6 hour wait time) to buy something which has unlimited resources, I intend to pick one up because it just looks neat. And functions as one mount for all occasions; trash, epic, flying and epic flying.

The phrase nickel and diming doesn't really apply any more.

Dalaran was full of them last night. I look at as sort of a Badge of Stupidity. Not only did people blow $25 on a mount....it looks like a f'ing My Little Pony. I'm okay with people doing what they want with their money, and I would understand (maybe) paying $25 for some badass!! mount, but not this POS with it's stubby little legs and fruity looks.

Sad part is I just saw 6 or 7 of them on just the horde side in a battlegound I just played in. Pathetic.

Pot (me) calling the kettle black...;)

Pretty sad they're charging $25 a pop for a single model that probably cost them less than $1000 to make when you factor in the one artist it took and the 5 minutes it took their code team to add it in to the game. And we wonder why our monetary economy is so out of proportion and screwed up.

Bah, $25 and it doesn't even give you a 310% mount (unless you already have one). I understand that they want don't want people to feel they are charging money for something that actually benefits players and isn't just cosmetic, but fuck thats expensive.

It's, funnily enough, the same model/animation as the 25-man heroic mount that drops off the Lich King. Only you can have a reskinned version for $25, yay. I wonder if they plan on doing this for all raid bosses that drop super rare epic mounts?

Bleh, I sincerely hope this doesn't dovetail into actual gear you can buy. As long as it's pure vanity pets and mounts for vain people then fine.

At least the $25 plushies make sense. You actually get something physically as well as a pet.



(coughcough wonder if activision had any sort of influence on this coughcough)

One thing that is not appreciated enough in discussions of micro-transactions of otherwise subscription-based MMOs is that the items commonly sold are key to the social aspect of the game.

Those who would defend the practice often argue that these additional items - pets, mounts, unique clothing, etc - are vanity or fluff items; they don't really affect core gameplay. Yet, MMOs are by their nature social experiences, creating rich worlds where a player's avatar has a particular status and value.

Raiding, end game PvP, questing - all of these are the main procedures of Western MMORPGs. Though often repetitive, they are made more meaningful by the social context they occur in. It matters not only that you killed X raid boss, but also that you won Y gear from that boss, gear that you can show off to others and an achievement you can take pride in. Whether the carrot you're interested in is gear, achievements, vanity pets, mounts, or titles, they're all enhanced by the fact that they are valuable commodities in whatever virtual world you play in. And they only have value because a community of players have collectively determined they are valuable.

So to return to my main point, one cannot easily compartmentalize what is core gameplay from what is periphery in a MMO particularly when, as I argued, they both affect the social experience of the game. Vanity pets and mounts in WoW are valuable because they represent achievements, rare commodities that say something about your character and your goals in the game. Selling these items for cash erodes that. Caveat emptor.

I don't think this is a legitimate price... I think this is just a probe to see how much they can actually sell things for and how much people will actually pay for them.

This is half the price of a normal game and about the price of a fucking expansion pack all for a glittery horse.

Expect to see more of this shit in SC2. 'New marine skins for 5$!'


Sounds cool until you realize DoW had a built in army painter that was free and games like Aion and other mmos let you clone and paint your armor as you see fit. Welcome to the age of micro-transactions and it wont stop till people relearn the value of a dollar online.

this just makes me even happier that i never played WOW

Charging people for a mount while the game is still expensive... what a bunch of crap. Especially during times like these.. I know people gotta live but seriously that is alot of money just for a mount. Why I gave up playing wow over 1 year now..

What happened to Blizzard?

A horse WITHOUT armor? What were they thinking???

May I not be the first or last to say: Holy *SHIT* I'm in the wrong business.

2006: Bethesda: Oblivion horse armor: $2.50

2010: Blizzard: WoW "Celestial Steed": $25

I wonder what's next. Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it... and pay a higher price for it.

New internal Blizzard newsletter leaked to reveal that their toilet service wase upgrading from $10 bill to $100 bill toilet rolls. Company execs commented, "$10 bills just don't have the panache of $100 bills. My ass demands a crisp $100 bill. It accents the solid gold thrones and silver plumbing well. Only plebs use the simple $10 bill service, and we aren't having that shit."

Hmmm.......makes the 100+ times I plowed through Stratholme trying to get the deathcharger reigns seem even more silly.

No changes to gameplay for money, no problem. Enjoy your mount to those who bought it and enjoy your revenue Blizzard.

As soon as you can buy a gameplay advantage in the game I'll be the first to denounce Blizzard.

I see Activision got their grubby little fingers into WoWs financial decisions. I'm glad I got to play WoW in the early days. Same goes for UO

You WoW people are a wacky bunch. All I can think about is that South Park episode.

there were over 70k people just in the EU queue to buy the mount, this makes Kotick forget about the departures for a while.

Maybe if the mount was available to all your characters, im too lazy to go look it up.