Adding shop mounts when game is terrible

[Lenaryia-wyrmrest-accord]

I feel like this thread is made every time there’s a new store mount

[Mekgrim-moon-guard (Mekgrim)]

You don’t have to use your real money. Use someone else’s and buy some tokens.

[Fallynn-wyrmrest-accord (Fallynn)]

I get the feeling they would have released it no matter how the game was doing. It’s December. Store mounts are often bought as gifts. There also hasn’t been a store mount in awhile.

Again with me being out of likes. But yes, good point. People act like this hasn’t been a thing in the game for a while, and that somehow it means they’re forced to get the mount when it isn’t reality. But we all have to complain about something I guess

[Kwashiorkor-stormrage (Kwashiorkor)]

You shouldn’t tell people to not buy/play your game. That’s what EA did and look how that turned out.

[Righteous-garrosh (Righteous)]

I’ve always felt that the tin foil works best when shaped into a skullcap.
Plus, it allows for additional headgear to be donned as well, like in winter when I put on my tinfoil toboggan.

[Kaelon-argent-dawn (Kaelon)]

Yeah, no, I don’t see a problem with them adding a cosmetic mount to the cash shop during the Holidays, since that’s what they’ve done for many years.

Adding the floating pirate ship and making it available for only people who pre-purchased 6 months of subscription time, on the other hand, was a pretty transparent effort to inflate subscriber numbers.

They did a cross-promotion with Diablo 3 during Cata where you could buy a year of game time (broken up into chunks if you wanted) and you got both D3 and a WoW mount out of the deal; it’s not like they haven’t had bonus incentives like mounts, specifically, for purchases of services before.

Hell, that’s the whole reason I got a Virtual Ticket to last year’s Blizzcon. I tuned into some things, but not all of it; I mostly just wanted the sweet blimp mount. Totally worth it. I’m going to get the Meat Wagon mount, too, because I also happen to really want Warcraft 3 Reforged anyway and the bonus mount is, well, a nice bonus. Why would it be bad if I happen to get a fancy ship mount if I also get a six-month block of time instead of the one-month block I usually get? I was going to be subscribed anyway, free things are good.

The timing could be only slightly suspect, in that they might have projected a lull between content patches. So they’d have planned (long in advance, by the way, as parts of the whole information about it were datamined months prior before BfA even launched) to have an incentive for people to stay subscribed, and even gave it to the people who had six-month subs active anyway. So sure, they might have wanted to shore up sub numbers at a time when people might have dropped for a bit, but that’s just intelligently incentivizing a subscription-based model in general, not some last-ditch reactive measure to hold onto subscriber counts for dear life amidst a lot of complaints.

You misunderstand. I have no problems with mount promotions and cross-game give-aways. You definitely want to incentivize your players to buy your games and products, and this helps drive sales. It’s a nice bonus! I agree.

However, the Ship was the first time Warcraft gave away a mount – and, separately, made a model that was otherwise only available to people who had subscribed to last-year’s Blizzcon had obtained – as a reward for buying a fresh new 6-month subscription. This wasn’t a reward you got if you were already subscribed; you had to have a brand new 6-month purchase and you’d receive this as a reward.

This is a pretty naked attempt to inflate subscriber numbers. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course - and every company should do what they can to drive numbers. But let’s not pretend like they weren’t cooking the books here.

It also makes discoveries, like last month’s revelation that WoW is sitting at ~1.3 million subscribers, all the more believable given the panicked state at Blizzard.

[anon33408142]

The game has tons of awesome mounts being added all the time (ally horse fiasco excluded). This is not a WoD with in game vs store mounts. There are great mounts to chase in game, and some being added to the store. Get over it. The sky is not falling.

[Zeusgodofsky-thrall (Zeusgodofsky)]

You mean your opinion that it is terrible because im enjoying the heck out of BFA.

[Ithallaine-whisperwind]

Ooh, Ishnu Alah weary, Level 58 DK, uhgn, is that a 2H weapon you have there, or are you just pleased to see me? Ooh

[Grathok-terokkar (Grathok)]

@Snikrot-silver-hand

Let’s just face reality OP, you were going to complain about the shop mount whether Bfa is doing well or not because you’re just looking for things to complain about.

Yup, that’s pretty much the size of it.

@Lenaryia-wyrmrest-accord

I feel like this thread is made every time there’s a new store mount

This. We’ll see it again next time too.

@Kaelon-argent-dawn

You misunderstand. I have no problems with mount promotions and cross-game give-aways. You definitely want to incentivize your players to buy your games and products, and this helps drive sales. It’s a nice bonus! I agree.

However, the Ship was the first time Warcraft gave away a mount – and, separately, made a model that was otherwise only available to people who had subscribed to last-year’s Blizzcon had obtained – as a reward for buying a fresh new 6-month subscription. This wasn’t a reward you got if you were already subscribed; you had to have a brand new 6-month purchase and you’d receive this as a reward.

This is a pretty naked attempt to inflate subscriber numbers. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course - and every company should do what they can to drive numbers. But let’s not pretend like they weren’t cooking the books here.

It also makes discoveries, like last month’s revelation that WoW is sitting at ~1.3 million subscribers, all the more believable given the panicked state at Blizzard.

They refuted the 1.3 million subscriber thing to the point where the original tweet was taken down; they’ve still never released any hard data, but I’m fairly certain that if there was any actual evidence other than an accidental API leak of incomplete information, there would have been a lot more of a storm about it around the news sites. I mean, it’s still possible, I guess, it just doesn’t seem very likely given the fact that the whole thing died down with such rapidity.

And like I said, they probably were trying to shore up the numbers when some people might have otherwise unsubbed, temporarily or otherwise; we’re in agreement, there. Just because it was preplanned doesn’t mean it wasn’t designed to accomplish exactly what it seemed to be designed to accomplish.

Lastly, though, and I can’t confirm this 100% because I didn’t have a six-month sub active at the time (I do now, and have a mount as a bonus), people who already had a six-month sub did obtain the mount automatically. There were people I saw on both Twitter and here on the Forums that literally logged on to say “Hey, thanks for the free mount!” because they were already in a six-month sub and were credited the mount automatically. I even dug up a couple posts from that time:

World of Warcraft Forums

World of Warcraft Forums

World of Warcraft Forums

(The third one quotes an actual Blizzard informational post about it, which I also dug up thanks to Wowhead. Apparently you got it if you bought 180 days of game time within the past 30, bought a new six-month subscription or 180-day game time block, or already had an active six-month subscription.)

Celebrate International Talk Like A Pirate Day in Style! - WoW

So… yeah. A reward for having a six-month sub, just as much as an incentive for starting a new one.

[Grathok-terokkar (Grathok)]

Ooh, Ishnu Alah weary, Level 58 DK, uhgn, is that a 2H weapon you have there, or are you just pleased to see me? Ooh

THIS IS THE BEST RESPONSE POSSIBLE TO THAT POST.

ahem

Thanks for that. XD Pity I can only like it once.

[Zeusgodofsky-thrall (Zeusgodofsky)]

As long as it pays the bills for WoW to keep going all is well with me love this game

[Ithallaine-whisperwind]

Ooh, Ishnu Alah weary, Level 58 DK, uhgn,

Ooh, Ishnu Alah weary, Grathok uhgn, you really need to visit more often, so I can handle that immense quest log of yours. Ooh

[Rhielle-sentinels (Rhielle)]

You are either painfully stupid or willfully ignorant.

Because of course starting off your posts with insults is always the best way to have a productive conversation. Welcome to being reported.

it’s the gall of blizzard to sell a beautiful, original mount that could’ve been added into the game to give people something to do

It’s not original. It’s a reskin. It even has the same stupid wings they all do. And you’re just butt hurt that you can’t afford it. There are other mounts in game that were just added for you to go after in 8.1. Along with pets and toys.

Blizz is a company. Not a charity. They will add a mount every once in a while to supplement their revenue as a business. Especially around the holidays.

It’s about the audacity for Blizzard to try to sell people something to the average player where they have already paid 125 dollars hoping this unfinished mess of an expansion will finally be worth playing.

Audacity of a business to make a profit? LOL Okay.

This isn’t game breaking. One mount doesn’t make or break the expansion. One mount isn’t going to fix the expansion. Nor does anyone believe that it would-- including Blizz.

Sounds to me like you just need to quit playing if you despise the game and the store that much.

You might not share this opinion, but to deny the hundreds of thousands of people who feel this way is beyond ignorant and deluded.

No it’s not. But thanks for insulting me at the beginning and end of your post. There aren’t “hundreds of thousands” of people flipping out about this. But nice try.

[Zeusgodofsky-thrall (Zeusgodofsky)]

Nice crystal ball you have there sir!

[Cartwheel-silvermoon]

My only complaint about the pretty pretty fox mount is I don’t want it to be flying. Good thing LiteMount lets me set different mounts for ground and air though!

[Nawat-emerald-dream (Nawat)]

Didn’t you see the threads made by the dummies looking to spend more money on top of the sub.

People will spend money on then so why not? For companies profit = all

[Ramsay-eldrethalas (Ramsay)]

fact this expansion is simply riddled with terrible decisions

The only thing riddled with terrible decisions is my love life

[Damalys-kaelthas (Damalys)]

Pretty much this,common sense dictates when you dont like something just pack your things and move on to a game that makes you happy. And by move on I mean go their separate ways without saying a word and not staying on the forums just to crap on the game and the people still content playing it. It just comes off as sour grapes/being salty.

[Ågnarr-stormrage (Ågnarr)]

I’m not gonna be rude like others op. But I concur because I’m having fun.