Don't Look a $25 Horse in the Mouth

[Marco]

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178849&cmpid=0101

People go apeshit over the craziest things.  If people have money to spend on stuff, let them spend it.  It's up to them to determine the risk vs the reward regarding where their money goes.  Make a few million off a 3d model with particle effects?  I'm about to invest a lot of money in ATVI.

[IskatuMesk]

Blizzard = good business sense
People whining about it = dumb

[AA7Dragoon]

Wow.  That is impressive.  Apple has been doing this with their iPhone apps.  The idea is people are welling to pay for "expansion" pieces to a game they've already paid for.  Clearly Blizzard has proven the potential to reap millions off of customers by providing just enough of an incentive to have customers pay beyond their monthly subscription.

[Thalraxal]

$25 for a pony made of stars, and you'll never need to buy another mount in-game for any new character you create again.  And did I mention that it's made of stars?

I'm not currently playing WoW, and I'm way too much of a miser to want to spend a dime on it, but I can understand why a lot of people would want one, and why a lot of people would complain about it (they're just jealous because they wanted a star pony too).

Still, I'm not sure how long it takes to model a star pony and create the mount item for it, but I'd suspect that Blizzard definately got their money's worth out of this one.

Actually, this kind of makes me wonder what they'll put in the online store for SC2.

[wibod]

Less than 1% of the people playing WoW bought it if the sales numbers are right.

[UntamedLoli]

This horse?

[imgwh 640x400]http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/8562/thishorse.jpg[/imgwh]

[IskatuMesk]

you don't have as many mounts as my shaman does wtf is this shit farm more

[Xelxiuz]

Even Mucky has more.

[Lavarinth]

Wow.  That is impressive.  Apple has been doing this with their iPhone apps.  The idea is people are welling to pay for "expansion" pieces to a game something they've already paid for, an iPhone, but new.  Clearly Blizzard has proven the potential to reap millions off of customers by providing just enough of an incentive to have customers pay beyond their monthly subscription.

Fixed.

[RazorclawX]

(they're just jealous because they wanted a star pony too).

I didn't buy the horse. I went down to Gamestop and bought Shiren the Wanderer for the Wii for $30 instead. That game is fucking awesome.

The horse is ugly as hell.

[Gemineye]

Still, I'm not sure how long it takes to model a star pony and create the mount item for it, but I'd suspect that Blizzard definately got their money's worth out of this one.

Not very long, the base model for the horse has been in the game since the Lich King was added as he drops a mount that uses the exact same model with a different skin.

So Blizzard added a different skin, charged $25, and made a couple million. I see no reason to complain about it, people who want it will purchase it those who don't shouldn't worry about it. It's not like they're charging for gear... yet.

[Dread]

$100 USD for full set of Tier 10.5, done deal. 

I still haven't tried transferring over the decked out character from our arena server, lol.

[superdoughboy4]

$100 USD for full set of Tier 10.5, done deal. 

I still haven't tried transferring over the decked out character from our arena server, lol.

If that ever happened, and Blizzard added the tier sets in the Blizzard store, WoW would just turn into another one of those free MMOs, that if you pay for their stuff, you'll be the best, and there would be no point in farming or running raids anymore.

[Doublehex]

So, with that $25 you could instead...

- Buy a decent game online.
- Any Dune book in hardcover from a 3rd party, with change to spare.
- A decent book.
- Plenty of food.
- Soundtracks.
- Ticket to the movies to spend time with people.
- Something that actually matters.

Of course, I don't like MMO's based off of the waste of time they are, so color me biased.

[Negi]

$100 USD for full set of Tier 10.5, done deal. 

I still haven't tried transferring over the decked out character from our arena server, lol.

If that ever happened, and Blizzard added the tier sets in the Blizzard store, WoW would just turn into another one of those free MMOs, that if you pay for their stuff, you'll be the best, and there would be no point in farming or running raids anymore.

Sure, but you should be able to buy a level 60 character.  The beginning of WoW is alright, but once you hit about level 20, it just becomes really tedious.