Why is Blizzard removing this from the vendors? What is the logic behind this decision? Because with this move they’ve obviously abandoned their ‘gold sink’ logic behind originally pricing the Brutosaur, and other gold sink mounts, so high.
Does this move from Blizzard mark the beginning of yet another disturbing trend in their treatment of players’ time, effort, and enjoyment? Will we be seeing more gold sink mounts and items removed from vendors and placed on BMAH in the future to catch more RNG lootbox and cash token ‘whales’? Particularly things such as the Brutosaur mount, which are not just cosmetic or prestige items, but actually have an effect on gameplay and game quality-of-life by providing an appreciable function such as a mobile Auction House.
The entire reason for pricing the Brutosaur mount at 5 million gold was to act as a gold sink to get the players sitting on millions of gold to spend it and remove the gold from the economy because a small percentage of players had extremely high bank accounts in game. The entire goal was to remove gold from the system.
Removing the Brutosaur from being obtainable by 5 million from a vendor only detracts from the game and adds nothing of value by either gold sink logic, or player logic and enjoyment of having a solid goalpost to work towards. Making it a BMAH item only dumps more unwanted and unnecessary RNG into the game - and this is in the middle of Blizzard trying to show the playerbase that they are working to move away from that kind of unnecessary RNG (swapping Titanforging for Corrupted gear, Shadowlands expansion, Blizzcon, etc.), and toward respecting players’ time, effort, and enjoyment.
By making it BMAH only, Blizzard are saying that even if you have 5 million gold to spend on it, you still have to wait RNG days for it to show in the BMAH, then have to RNG hope that you have enough to outbid everyone else. Even if you have gold cap, you still have to compete with RNG for the mount. Meanwhile, all the other people with 5 million+ gold who want the mount are competing bidding on the same single mount. And only one of those players can actually buy the mount and spend the gold as a gold sink.
For example: theoretically while you could have 10,000 people x 5 million gold (50 billion gold) removed from the game over the next 1 year by leaving it on a vendor for purchase to anyone with the money to offer; instead you will have it appear on the BMAH at RNG, so far less than 100 times a year x gold cap, even if gold cap is raised to 20 million in Shadowlands, (equivalent of 2 billion gold removed in 1 year if on BMAH 100 times a year). To sink the equivalent amount of gold via BMAH auction wins alone, you would need to have the Brutosaur directly appear on the BMAH 2,500 times in a single year, sold at gold cap (of 20 million). You can only have about 730 black market auctions in a single year per server if they each last 12 hours.
Alternatively the BMAH crates have RNG to drop the Brutosaur mount, with over 200 possible items that can be in the crate, but still only a single winner each time a crate is sold. So maybe a single player on one server drops 80 million to win every single crate from the BMAH for a year until they get the Brutosaur. OR you could have had at least 16 players on that server who just straight out purchased the Brutosaur for 5 million gold that year to remove the same amount of gold. And then also removed from the economy 5 million x however many other players on that single server had amassed 5 million gold to drop on the mount.
Because only the single player winning the BMAH container actually pays for it.
Meanwhile, there are far more players in game who want the mount, but don’t yet have the 5 million gold to spend right now, than there will be actually winning the BMAH even over a 5 year span. So while the BMAH method might guarantee for decades to come that there will be people who want the Brutosaur and do not yet have it (even if they have the current asking price, or even if they have more than the 5 million current price and are willing to drop that much more) - it does not actually remove all of their excess gold.
In fact, by making the Brutosaur a BMAH only item, Blizzard are guaranteeing and encouraging that more players will be farming gold straight to gold cap again, even if they don’t need or want to otherwise, in order to gold cap the BMAH to get the mount. Most of these players would never have wanted or enjoyed farming all that gold, but would have to in order to get that mount, and then hope they place the first gold cap bid on the RNG times the mount actually appears on the BMAH.
Blizzard is once again fishing for ‘whales’ instead of leaving the effective gold sink, they created, working as intended. How about, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Blizzard, instead?
A far more efficient gold sink is to just leave the Brutosaur mount available on the vendors for 5 million gold. So everyone in the future who eventually gets 5 million gold and wants the mount can purchase it and dump that gold out of the economy.
If Blizzard wants to sink even more gold out of the economy, then in addition to selling it for 5 million on the vendor, they can ALSO add the Brutosaur to the BMAH rotation much like other rare but achievable mounts such as the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent, etc. Then even players who don’t yet have 5 million can try their luck at bidding on it, or RNG for the boxes. Or even just raise the vendor price for the Brutosaur to match gold cap inflation in Shadowlands expansion.
Just keep it realistically obtainable through actual effort as a solid goal, rather than hide it away behind RNG on top of RNG lootboxes.
Personally, for me, it may have been multiple expansions later, but it felt good and satisfying to finally have the gold to buy the Traveller’s Tundra Mammoth vendor mount. That feeling is rare these days in WoW. Blizzard should not be removing things that give that sort of feeling of accomplishment to their players, only to lock it behind the same kind of RNG that the playerbase has been very vocal about not wanting more of.
But the sad truth is, Blizzard probably don’t care about it being a gold sink anymore. No, what they’re looking for in doing this is a TIME SINK for players, to coerce players to keep playing, keep farming, keep buying playtime tokens or paying subscriptions, to keep playtime hour numbers high for shareholder meetings, even if the number of hours is disassociated from the actual number of players logging into the game.
If they were really concerned with gold sinks in game to try to ease the inflation of the economy for newer players (and older players too), they wouldn’t be removing effective gold sinks for a much less effective method. If they cared they would not be removing solid content goals for the players and replacing it with unwanted RNG on top of unnecessary RNG.
This BMAH ‘fix’ for the Brutosaur is just RNG lootbox microtransactions in disguise. The only difference is that Blizzard is charging ‘playtime hours’ as currency rather than straight real world cash transactions. And for their shareholder meetings, ‘playtime hours’ statistics are money.