World of Warcraft’s $90 Mount Is So Popular the In-Game Auction House Is Selling Out of WoW Tokens

IGN : Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is no stranger to costly in-game cosmetics, but its latest super expensive mount is so popular it’s causing a shortage of WoW Tokens in the in-game auction house.

[Kaii]

Yeah you've got D4 selling armor sets for £28 & you've got WoW selling mount with mail/AH attached for £60 o_O
The expansion is £35? which is really where I look at things In terms of value, so you Idiots that are purchasing this, it will continue to get worse.

What next? They'll add some poe spell effect store into the game -_-

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

I heard a $15 horse DLC for WoW made money for Blizzard than StarCraft 2.

[CantThinkOfAUsername]

You heard right. A former SC2 Developer confirmed this.

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

SC 2 sold 6 million copies, which is 40% of SC 1. I was surprised that SC 2 essentially underperformed. It’s shocking how a single micro transaction can make more money for a studio than a AAA-project. Unfortunately, I’m confident that microtransactions in Black Ops 6 will generate more revenue than most games released within 12 months of its launch.

[Knushwood Butt]

Is this horse armour?

Still, can't really blame the company; if there's demand then keep testing the market to see how much customers are prepared to pay. That's a smart business strategy.

If you want to focus on blame (which is the top priority in this world, even though it rarely achieves anything because nobody attempts to fix root cause) then blame the people that buy this stuff. Which leads on to the question of why? More money than sense? They feel there is sufficient value here? There is peer pressure because someone they know has it? They are addicted to buying cosmetic DLC?

[babadivad]

I'm ashamed to say I bought horse armor in Oblivion. I immediately felt ripped off. Especially when I realized it was purely cosmetic armor for a horse that essentially can't die. He will always revive if the game doesn't glitch him eternally into the aether that is.

[Knushwood Butt]

I respect your honesty.

I once bought some in-game currency for Uncharted 4, and some of that may have gone on cosmetics (it was a while back), but either way, I spent money to unlock things that could be obtained simply by playing the game. I probably had more disposable income than sense at the time.

[babadivad]

@Knushwood

It was the novelty of it at the time. DLC like that was unheard of in console gaming. We didn't know we were opening Pandora's box.

It was good for a little while until it started being exploited by greedy executives and lazy publishers.

Initially, having the ability to fix a bug that slipped by quality control was a good thing.

It eventually became a crutch to rush out unfinished games to cash in and fix it later (only if enough people bought your broken game).

Even in Oblivion, it wasn't predatorial yet. Horse armor seemed more like a proof of concept than anything. Then we got proper story DLC(again, a concept unheard of in console gaming) for the game.

Again, it was a good time for a while. I believe that when executives saw the massive revenues that can be had from mobile games nickel and diming, they jumped in with both feet.

Sad really. They had a good thing going, but it's never enough.

[Knushwood Butt]

I hear ya.

These days you actually feel thankful if they patch the bugs, as not everyone does.
Makes you wonder how things worked when it wasn't possible.
For example, just a couple of weeks ago I was playing Super Mario Bros. on a GBA to verify functionality, and it bugged out with Mario stuck in mid-air after using a trampoline like thing. I had to power the GBA off. Whatever caused that will never be patched, but such cases were quite rare.

[Lionsguard]

Give it time and we'll start seeing $70,000 packages like Star Citizen.

[Exvalos]

Dont hate the player hate the game, these companies going to keep trying us. To keep it 100 I would do the same thing if i owned a studio. Vote with your wallet people.

[MeteorPanda]

its not that bad. FF14 sells a huge amount of mounts and all they do is carry more ppl with the most archaic method ever made for hopping in.

Considering you can buy it with wow gold for 1.2mil and theres toher optional mounts for 30-50....its not bad. so much value.

if you were smart you could of bought wow tokens when they were like 180k each, bought the mount, buy a wow token when it hit 350k and you woulda had made your currency back + more

[PapaBop]

FF14 doesn't sell mounts for $90 though or anywhere near that cost. The most expensive mount was $42 and they got a lot of criticism for that too.

[MeteorPanda]

This mount is 1.2mil wow gold. It can cost players who can spend a lot of time or skilled enough to sell runs buy it without a $ along with playing the game for free with selling gold for tokens.

Whales like me...can just buy it, the economy is a win/win for players who wanted it.