I thought this was a joke but it seems like it’s actually legit. WoW, which has a subscription and paid expansions, just added a $90 item to their store. This is Korean MMO levels of absurdity. What do you think of this?

Seems like hundreds of people bought it immediately

  • Mandy@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    they are starting to employ the star citizen model it seems with how cultlike wow sometimes felt im surprised it took that long

  • Tilgare@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I’m a former player, but played continuously from release for 11 years. This is undoubtedly ridiculously expensive, but the convenience of having your mail and auction house anywhere in the world - the value to certain players is immense. I think if I played still today, it would probably be a struggle deciding whether this limited time offering was worth jumping on - I certainly don’t need it even a little bit, but when I want it, this thing would be incredibly convenient to have. Maybe that would just be the addiction talking. But when you spend all your free time with one game, you do feel a sense of good value relative to things like drinks at the bar or a movie or buying 1 or 2 full priced games a month.

    But truly, the utility this provides for you and your guild is immense and impossible to replicate. They definitely shouldn’t be selling mounts on the shop for $90. That’s fucked. But compared to some of the video game devs selling weapon or character skins for as much or more, there IS at least a unique value proposition to the player. I guarantee there will be people with it the second it releases, for better or worse.

  • rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 month ago

    People will buy it. And then they will wonder why content quality declines and more and more micro transactions appear in a game they bought and pay subscription for.

    The capitalism will always look for the easy route to even more money, and monkey brains with need for status symbols will follow.

  • Firestorm Druid@lemmy.zip
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    1 month ago

    In line with the recent 60$ Ragnaros skin for Hearthstone. The Faker Ahri skin set a precedent and now every company wants a slice of the cake

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    That’s a cool as fuck mount…

    And it’s not worth what I could spend to get one AAA game and two decent quality Indie Games

  • Destide@feddit.uk
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    1 month ago

    Imagine a parallel world where no one brought the horse armour

    • roon@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      I think it’s an eventuality. If not the horse armor it would have been something else. Humans are easily exploitable

    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      to me this is the wrong way of looking at it, it’s like saying “imagine a world where plutocrats just didn’t do pollution, imagine a world where plantation owners didn’t use slave labor, imagine a world where industrialists didn’t employ children”

      it was always going to happen, just society has to force capitalists not to be cunts. Only way, always was, always will be, still is.

      • itsathursday@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Yes but no. Imagine before the horse armour, parents both showed love to their children and also disciplined them for doing stupid shit and also taught them the worth of a dollar. No horse armour in that world.

    • Hobo@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      What the fuck? Do people actually pay that for virtual bullshit? That’s like the price of a used Honda!

      • Sludgehammer@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        There’s also a pack containing every ship they’ve sold which you can only see/purchase if you’ve spent one thousand dollars in their ship store. I’ll spoiler the price so you can try and guess how much it is first:

        spoiler

        $48,000, not counting the $1000 you have to spend to be able to see it.

        Edit: I should include the source for that price since (as mentioned) you can’t even see the pack until you’ve dropped $1k

  • Euphorazine@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    It’s actually more insidious. Blizzard facilitates gold buying by being a middle man. 30 days of wow subscription is $15. Blizzard sells a $20 wow token. Buyers of the token automatically sell it in game to players for gold. Players who sell their In game gold can redeem the token for game time or $15 Blizzard bucks, which can buy any virtual item in the Blizzard store. Games, expansions, and mounts such as this.

    If you don’t want to spend $90 in real life, you can sell your gold for 6 tokens for $90 Blizzard bucks and get the mount.

    The token has been hovering around $170k all month and now it spiked to almost $360k (token price tracker). So now cash buyers can get way more gold for their bucks, and the 6 tokens exchanged for gold (to buy the mount) will net Blizzard $120.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I’ve known about the gold tokens system, it has made sense as a way to invalidate black market gold sellers, equalizing WoW gold against the US Dollar. Still don’t quite understand why the token would now sell for 170k though…? Unless you didn’t mean to use the dollar symbol.

      • TrousersMcPants@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        They probably meant 170k gold in-game

        Also what they haven’t said is that the price is set by players of the game,. When someone buys a WoW token and exchanges it for gold, that’s because a player has paid them with gold they earned for the token. These tokens can be then used to pay for your monthly subscription.

        • glimse@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          You are correct. Token value is decided by players on the auction house, not Blizzard, though I’m sure someone will argue that they are capable of manipulating the AH and therefore they are driving it up

          • TrousersMcPants@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            They are capable of it, but I don’t really see why they would. Making the tokens cost more gold would mean less people willing to buy them on the AH and therefore less people selling tokens. I think the prices have just exploded because of the mount releasing. As someone else mentioned on here, I believe Blizzard just sets a minimum price for tokens.

      • Promethiel@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Those amounts aren’t USD yeah, probably habit when writing down money. The 170k and 360k figures are the WoW virtual currency aka “gold”.

        There is a floor to WoW token’s gold value from what I recall (it’s been years since I interacted with Blizzard and WoW) but no ceiling.

        Dunno how hard it curbed bots/unsanctioned gold sellers/fascist scum grassroots campaigns (no, really, look into Stephen Bannon and WoW gold it’s so fucking stupid) but!

        Blizzard absolutely realized and then moved to take all the money that was being left on the table from 3rd party virtual currency sales, and they apply every measure and analytical tool to maximize that profit because of course.

        This mount’s release is literally them inflating the price of the virtual currency ahead of real life earnings calls, because it absolutely will sell and give them the revenue infusion that the WoW token’s rise in value is meant to provide for as long as they want until it’s time to pump the numbers again with another mount/high sought store item.

        A very similar variant in form and function to this mount was once available in-game and trade able with a rarity tuned that it ended up being sold for the WoW Token equivalent of ~$500 at the prices at the time, as there was no store version or similar option elsewhere.

        It’s no accident that when the price of the WoW Token is at its lowest, here comes a slightly updated and dolled up version of that same highly sought mount version.

        WoW is where real economics, car ownership culture, hoarding, and dopamine treadmills collide and Blizzard doesn’t just know this but have it charted on 5 year plans.