Blizzard launches real money in-game pet store (plus some goes to charity)

[Lantyssa]

They'll make Tier armor as ugly as sin so as to encourage people to buy the new cool appearance tab social armor.  Oh wait, they already do...

[Margalis]

But my other, lower-level characters, I can be lazy and never bother with buying or upgrading mounts and just tool around on the star horse.  Looks nifty, is convenient, good enough for $25.

You realize what you're saying here is that getting around in WOW is a pain in the ass and rather than make it easier and thus make the game better Blizzard is instead happy to sell you a basic game improvement for $25.

Man I hate this kind of shit. Developers fixing design problems with paid content is a joke. The fact that "convenience" is a selling point is pretty sad given that fun is largely the point of games.

I honestly can't believe how many people are willing to accept this sort of thing. At this rate I fully expect bug fixes to become DLC within a few years. If you read up on what Chinese and Korean devs are doing they constantly purposely make their games worse so they can upsell to DLC.

[Merusk]

At this rate I fully expect bug fixes to become DLC within a few years.

Business softwares are already doing this.  Autodesk will push out one, maybe two bug fix packages for their products then not touch it again when that year is over.  Want to fix that memory leak in ACA 2009?  Upgrade to 2010 or 2011.  Oh, you can't afford buying the software every year, of course not... so just sign up for the subscription plan at $600 a seat per year.  Convenient, right?! Look how we take care of you for such a small fee!  Ignore the part of the sub license that says you can't resell the software because you don't own it.

It's the way the whole software industry is moving. You own nothing but you pay out the nose for it or get a crippled version for a lesser charge.

[Typhon]

But my other, lower-level characters, I can be lazy and never bother with buying or upgrading mounts and just tool around on the star horse.  Looks nifty, is convenient, good enough for $25.

You realize what you're saying here is that getting around in WOW is a pain in the ass and rather than make it easier and thus make the game better Blizzard is instead happy to sell you a basic game improvement for $25.

Man I hate this kind of shit. Developers fixing design problems with paid content is a joke. The fact that "convenience" is a selling point is pretty sad given that fun is largely the point of games.

I honestly can't believe how many people are willing to accept this sort of thing. At this rate I fully expect bug fixes to become DLC within a few years. If you read up on what Chinese and Korean devs are doing they constantly purposely make their games worse so they can upsell to DLC.

Lol, yep seems completely clear that, internally, they aren't calling this the "Celestial Horse", rather they are calling it the "Trojan Horse".  Now that they have us hooked on a small/specific case for convenience they'll take us straight to charging for bug fixes.   What really sucks is that there's nothing we can do to stop them, say, like, canceling our accounts.

Did you put on your emo makeup and look in the mirror while you typed that?

[LK]

My problem is that they released what amounts to Horse Armor for half the price of a retail game product and at anywhere from 2x to 4x the normal cost of such DLC. But I'm looking at function over form. The steed is jewelry, nothing more. A total waste of cash except for those who want to impress their friends and without the ability to resell.

[caladein]

There is a functional purpose to the Celestial Steed beyond saving your characters a maximum of 261 gold each.

If you have another 310%-speed mount, it works like the Big Love Rocket.  If you don't, it works like the Headless Horseman's Mount.

Both of these are rare seasonal drops and really aren't any more functional than just writing up your own mount macro (or using a mod).  Personally, I think it's gaudy, wouldn't consider purchasing it in a thousand years, and much prefer my current set-up of Rusted Proto-Drake / Grand Ice Mammoth / Small-Single-Seat-Epic-Ground-Mount-of-the-Week.

[Hutch]

In light of the knee-jerk crybaby bitching on this page, I thought the above deserved a repost.

Also, from Wowhead:

[Lakov_Sanite]

and make belieeeeeeve you! 

[caladein]

And I now have a new avatar and desktop wallpaper.  Damn horse was good for something at least.

[AutomaticZen]

I have the Headless Horseman's horse, and I still got the stupid star horse thing.  Why?  Well, I don't mean to ever use it on my character with the HHH, because it's going to wind up being much less common than the star horse.  But my other, lower-level characters, I can be lazy and never bother with buying or upgrading mounts and just tool around on the star horse.  Looks nifty, is convenient, good enough for $25.  When any character finds a better mount (for free), I'll just stop using the star horse on that character, easy.

But, the star horse only goes as fast as you highest mount, so you still have to get the riding skill and all that jazz.

Much like the Headless Horseman's mount from the Hallow's End event, the Celestial Steed will automatically upgrade in speed as the player advances in Riding skill. For example, the Celestial Steed will run at normal ground speed if the character knows Apprentice Riding, and epic ground speed with Journeyman Riding. The mount will be able to fly at normal flight speed with Expert Riding, and at epic flight speed with Artisan Riding. In addition, if the character has a 310%-speed flying mount in his or her collection, the Celestial Steed will also fly at 310% speed.

And riding skill is what costs most of the gold, not the mounts.

This is purely a cosmetic shell over any existing mounts you would have.  Which makes Margalis' post a bit odd, but hey, if you want to rage, rock out.

[Sheepherder]

You realize what you're saying here is that getting around in WOW is a pain in the ass and rather than make it easier and thus make the game better Blizzard is instead happy to sell you a basic game improvement for $25.

The total cost saved per character is 161 - 128.8 gold total per character.  For the first three mount speeds (rare ground, epic ground, rare flying) it's 61 - 48.8 gold.  The value of a stack of level 30 herbs.

[Velorath]

But my other, lower-level characters, I can be lazy and never bother with buying or upgrading mounts and just tool around on the star horse.  Looks nifty, is convenient, good enough for $25.

You realize what you're saying here is that getting around in WOW is a pain in the ass and rather than make it easier and thus make the game better Blizzard is instead happy to sell you a basic game improvement for $25.

Man I hate this kind of shit. Developers fixing design problems with paid content is a joke. The fact that "convenience" is a selling point is pretty sad given that fun is largely the point of games.

I honestly can't believe how many people are willing to accept this sort of thing. At this rate I fully expect bug fixes to become DLC within a few years. If you read up on what Chinese and Korean devs are doing they constantly purposely make their games worse so they can upsell to DLC.

If it's any consolation, WoW is probably one of the only games where there's a sizable enough amount of people that actually support this kind of thing.  These are the same people who will probably spend $100 on the Starcraft 2 collector's edition for the in-game WoW pet, even if they have no interest in Starcraft.

Point being, it's not like $25 horse armor is something that's in danger of catching on with other developers.

[Lantyssa]

Other devs try to make WoW.  Everyone is doing DLC out the wazoo.  What makes you think they're smart enough to realize only Blizzard can get away with $25 mounts?

Good for Blizzard for milking their player base for tens of millions on a reskin that probably took an afternoon, but this whole thing is surreal.

[Shrike]

I'm still stuck on the draenei in the comic. Ummm...what are they trying to say there?

My shaman has a purple dress like that somewhere...

More beer is clearly the answer.

[Margalis]

Lol, yep seems completely clear that, internally, they aren't calling this the "Celestial Horse", rather they are calling it the "Trojan Horse".  Now that they have us hooked on a small/specific case for convenience they'll take us straight to charging for bug fixes.   What really sucks is that there's nothing we can do to stop them, say, like, canceling our accounts.

I think you have to be quite naive to think that bug fixes won't soon be parceled with other DLC content. Just as now there is plenty of DLC that introduces new content bundled with basic obvious gameplay improvement like increased inventory space you can be pretty much 100% certain that at some point relatively soon some developer is going to release a content + bug fix paid package and claim that for some unexplainable technical reason the bug fix can only be included with the rest of the paid content.

Developers are already willing to sell DLC that fixes logical and gameplay problems, to think that they aren't willing to charge for fixes to technical issues seems silly.

You can say that at that point you'll cancel your account but we all know that if you're willing to pay $25 for an in-game My Little Pony you're probably willing to pay $5 to fix an issue with you character's hat not properly displaying.

[Lakov_Sanite]

You guys really don't pay attention do you? What do you think cataclysm is besides new content? it's bug fixes and class revamping. It's what they did in both past expansions.

[LK]

Normally I'd go "HEY!", but this situation isn't as cut and dried as previous.

- There needs to be a distinction made between normal gamers and WoW gamers. What Blizzard is doing for WoW gamers wouldn't be as successful, if at all, if done by another game dev company with gamers. Another MMO dev is more likely to sell stuff that enhances their game. Look at every browser game ever.

- But what about Cataclysm? I would need to see the details but previous expansions always released a patch that put all the gameplay chnages to everyone and allowed people to not buy the expansion to benefit them. They'd just miss out on the content, the new classes... with that hanging over you, who WOULDN'T upgrade?

But with Cataclysm, they are revamping all the old worlds. Are they doing Classic / Caavlysm servers? Upgrading be ones almmost necessary at this point. But any bug fixes and other *critical* elements should be made available to all subscribing customers (note: the doomcasting is more spot-on with a game that doesn't require a subscription).

[WindupAtheist]

All the 1-60 cataclysm content is available whether you upgrade or not. Then it's off to Outland and Northrend, after which you need the expansion to do the 80-85 stuff. No 'classic' servers.

[caladein]

Other devs try to make WoW.  Everyone is doing DLC out the wazoo.  What makes you think they're smart enough to realize only Blizzard can get away with $25 mounts?

Good for Blizzard for milking their player base for tens of millions on a reskin that probably took an afternoon, but this whole thing is surreal.

Blizzard has been milking their player base for lots of things.  Be it the Race/Faction Changes, Server Transfers, Character Re-Customizations, or the TCG stuff.  Honestly, the Celestial Steed is just them cutting out the middle-man from the TCG loot card sales on eBay (with the added benefit to the player of making them account-wide instead of character-specific).

[Sheepherder]

You guys really don't pay attention do you? What do you think cataclysm is besides new content? it's bug fixes and class revamping. It's what they did in both past expansions.

Yes, if by "did in both" you mean "patched in before".

[Velorath]

Other devs try to make WoW.  Everyone is doing DLC out the wazoo.  What makes you think they're smart enough to realize only Blizzard can get away with $25 mounts?

Because as you said, everyone is already getting involved in DLC and most of them have found out that it's hard to even sell a substantial amount of content for $25 let alone something thats largely cosmetic.

[WindupAtheist]

Also, from Wowhead:

I don't really care if Blizzard sells silly shit to people who can't think of a better use for $25, in and of itself. Replace "$25" with "$15/month" and that pretty much describes their entire business plan. But the people behind this comic can feast on my succulent balls.

Ride smugly off into the sunset, little pedo-draenei, having stood up for your right to pay the price of some entire games for a bit of fluff like a good little sheep. Everyone who thinks this is a bad thing just wants to "ruin something awesome" because they "can't afford" twattery like this.

Then again what else would I expect from one of these bullshit goldseller-owned fansites?

[Merusk]

I'm just marking everyone who bitches about it as "too old."   People pay $150 or more for Mafia Wars points on Facebook. Right now Mafia Wars is selling "limited edition" loot for 30-40 points.. it costs $10 to get 42 points.  Think about just how useless those particular items are, as they sit on a page doing nothing. 

It's a different generation of gamer, one who's already been brought up on paying for small bits and pieces of useless fluff.  I fully expect this to expand in to the 'pay for your loot' mechanic of the F2P games sooner rather than later.  Nothing to do about it except not play.

[Typhon]

Replace "$25" with "$15/month" and that pretty much describes their entire business plan.

This.  It's a business.  You don't HAVE to buy any of this shit.  If you don't like their business, you definitely have the option to go somewhere else. 

The horse is only worth the convenience when creating alts and the joy it brings you if you can taunt your friends with it.  Is that worth $25?  Not to me!

The QQs though, they are priceless.

[Lantyssa]

Ride smugly off into the sunset, little pedo-draenei, having stood up for your right to pay the price of some entire games for a bit of fluff like a good little sheep. Everyone who thinks this is a bad thing just wants to "ruin something awesome" because they "can't afford" twattery like this.

If it shot beams from its mouth and created rainbows it might be worth the money.  It's funny how they inflate it's value to justify its purchase.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Remember AOL?  Remember gemstone?

[Simond]

Ride smugly off into the sunset, little pedo-draenei, having stood up for your right to pay the price of some entire games for a bit of fluff like a good little sheep. Everyone who thinks this is a bad thing just wants to "ruin something awesome" because they "can't afford" twattery like this.

If it shot beams from its mouth and created rainbows it might be worth the money.  It's funny how they inflate it's value to justify its purchase.

Or, you know, it's a direct reference to Robot Unicorn Attack.

[Merusk]

Remember AOL?  Remember gemstone?

"What the hell do you have a $500 AOL bill for?  What the fuck is Gemstones III and what do you mean you 'know a guy' who pays $1,000 a month to play it?!"

[Margalis]

I admit it, the real reason I don't like this is that I can't afford the $25 price tag and I really really want one. That's totally it!

[WindupAtheist]

UO started selling shit like this years ago, it didn't bother me then and doesn't now. It also doesn't bother me that Blizzard is basically announcing "Our customers are sheep!" by charging half the price of a AAA box game for a mount rehue some intern probably banged out in a day. It doesn't even faze me that some people think half the price of a box game is worth not having to pay a whopping 500g or whatever for mounts each time they level an alt.

I just have an involuntary urge to throw my middle fingers up when I see something like that comic, which to me just says "Yes I'm a sheep and I'm smug about it! Maybe I'll pay Blizzard FIFTY bucks next for... uh... I don't know but you can't stop me!"

[Lakov_Sanite]

I hear it's hip to not like things.

[Ratman_tf]

PEOPLE SHOULD GRIND FOR THEIR LOOT LIKE GOD INTENDED!

[Ratman_tf]

The QQs though, they are priceless.

Is anyone actually QQing, or is this some Onion bullshit like the Star Trek movie garbage? Everywhere I go on the net people are just 'meh' or 'yay'.

[tazelbain]

Breaking news, people buy stupid shit.

[Margalis]

PEOPLE SHOULD GRIND FOR THEIR LOOT LIKE GOD INTENDED!

If grinding for loot makes the game suck selling an option to make it suck less seems less good than just making it suck less.