It’s nice that you don’t mind spending the money to purchase them. That’s not the issue that I have, though. Six hours ago, Blasco said this: “Once the model is made, they can sell infinite copies of the virtual pet, so the cost of making it isn’t as relevant to the price as what they think people will be willing to pay for it.”
I suppose that’s probably my biggest gripe with the pricing. They make the mount, and then the cost of reproducing that mount for sale is effectively nothing. I’d imagine that they wouldn’t have to sell too many of them in order to get back what they put into making the mount in the first place. So, after that, it really is like printing money.
This is why I mentioned that I wouldn’t mind spending a bit of money on a store mount if it offered some level of convenience that non-store mounts don’t. Yes, you can just farm gold to purchase the store mounts, and I’d be perfectly fine with this if there also wasn’t the alternate way of spending real money to buy them, as well.
You do know that you can buy it with gold right? Thanks to the WoW token system. You can buy a wow token with gold, use it to boost up your Battle net balance and boom, you can buy the mount.
“Once the studio recording is made, they can sell infinite copies of the digital tracks.”
“Once the book has been written, they can sell infinite copies of the ebook.”
“Once the sculpture has been 3d-scanned, they can sell infinite copies of the 3d model.”
“Once the photographer has captured the image, they can sell infinite copies of the digital photograph.”
“Once the motherboard has been designed, they can sell infinite copies of the circuit diagrams.”
“Once the software has been written, they can sell infinite copies of that software.”
That’s not a new argument. While not every developer or creative or other professional is trying to make money, it is the bread and butter for many.
You’re basically arguing that the mount isn’t worth the price. That’s perfectly reasonable, and it’s understandable you’re not inclined to pay the asking price for what’s on offer.
That doesn’t mean the pricing is wrong for everyone. It just means it’s not right for everyone.
New mounts cost blizzard almost nothing to create and generate an exceptional amount of revenue. I would be surprised if there is more than one person that created this mount and even more surprised if they spent more than a single work day on it.
Cosmetics items traditionally have the highest profit margins, require 0 technical integration as they are often done in pre-developed tools for the platform, use pre-existing animations and models. If history tells you anything Activision most likely didn’t even test all the race/class combos for things like animations clipping through character models.