That was not remotely the only money-related drama in Warlords.
In the Wrath write-up, we covered the controversial sparkle pony. Players had been furious at the idea of paying real money for a mount. But Blizzard had assured them that it was only so expensive because half of the profits were going to charity.
Then, they added another mount to the store. And another, and another – each costing $25 or £19. Blizzard’s half-hearted excuse was that they didn’t ‘fit the theme’ of the expansion, and so there was no logical place to get them in game. But that logic didn’t persuade anyone - Blizzard had deliberately designed them that way.
Around the time of Warlords, it really kicked off. This was due to the addition of the Iron Skyreaver and the Enchanted Fey Dragon (the latter changed colour). These two mounts not only ‘fit the theme’, they were actively present throughout Draenor, both on the ground and in flight paths. It was pretty obvious that Blizzard had picked through the mounts of Warlords late into development, chosen the two most attractive ones, and cut them away to add to the in-game store. There was even an area in Shadowmoon Valley full of fey dragons and NPCs labelled ‘dragon trainers’, which suggested there had been a whole section of content surrounding these faction mounts, like the dragon serpents in Mists of Pandaria.
And it escaped no one that a vast majority of the mounts in Warlords were slight recolors of the same half a dozen models. There were, for example, nine different variations of the same wolf mount. It was almost like they had to compensate because they’d lost two of their main mount models.
“The best mounts should be ones earned in game no excuses, it ruins the game when you can just buy all the coolest stuff.”
Since mounts were technically cosmetic, there were some players who didn’t care.
“Don’t like them don’t buy them. Very simple.”
But for the most part, the community was incensed.
“Would someone please think of the wealthy corporate executives and majority shareholders!”
This usually always led onto the debate of whether Blizzard needed to sell store mounts. Costs were going up and subscribers were going down, some said, so Blizzard had no choice but to push harder on microtransactions. Profits were higher than ever, others replied.
And so the response would always be that Blizzard was a business, their goal was to make money.
A company providing a service, they were told, and the customer is king, not the shareholder.
Then quit, they’d say. Vote with your wallet. If you’re going to keep paying your subscripton, you’re implicitly supporting Blizzard’s choices, and so your arguments are in bad faith.
This was an effective rebuttal. It left the complaining party with two choices – sit down and shut up, or leave the game (and shut up). It may have been effective at stifling arguments, but more and more players were taking the latter option these days. That was becoming a problem.
When you’ve been in the WoW community long enough, you look at disputes in the forums the way Doctor Strange looks at timelines. The exact wording changes, but it always plays out the same way.
Regardless of what discourse went on, store mounts were insanely successful, and so they have become more and more prominent. For context, there are now twenty-two. It would cost you $550 dollars to buy them all.
Another money-grubbing addition was the level 90 boost. This isn’t the same as the boosting I described in the previous section. When pre-orders became available for Warlords, one of the perks used to justify the higher-than-usual upfront cost was the ability to send any character straight to level 90 – max level in Mists of Pandaria.
After Warlords released, you could buy as many Level 90 boosts as you liked – for $60 dollars each.
Casual players rejoiced.
“Free lvl 90 is exactly what this game needed. I’ve been playing off and on since vanilla, and leveling a new character to max level is the absolute LAST thing I want to spend my time doing. I’d literally rather be outside shovelling snow because I’d at least be getting a bit of exercise.”
[…]
“Hey, this isnt a bad thing ._. why does everybody treat it as such. Gives players who dont have the oodles of time to spend leveling 1-90 a character tht they can play endgame stuff with. Thats pretty awesome.”
It goes without saying that not everyone was happy. To many hard-core players, it was a slap in the face. The early World of Warcraft experience was defined by painful grinding, and now yet another rite of passage was being stripped away to pander to casuals.
“I guess this makes sense if you hate levelling (LINKS TO REDDIT) so much that it feels like work that you should be paid for, but it’s just part of the game to me. Paying extra money to skip part of the game that you’re paying a sub fee for seems crazy to me.”
It’s certainly true levelling gradually teaches players the basics of the game, and their class. Skipping that risks overwhelming newbies with systems and challenging content and an interface full of abilities they have no idea how to use.
“While endgame raiders have always bellyached about bad players, the sudden influx of level 90 characters without 90 levels of player skill has caused drama in WoW’s Looking For Raid feature. And while it’s hard to quantify the issue, it’s not hard to imagine that many low-DPS accusations are based on players who haven’t mastered their new characters.”
“In terms of the pricing, honestly a big part of that is not wanting to devalue the accomplishment of levelling,” Hazzikostas said.
"If our goal here was to sell as many boosts as possible, we could halve the price or more than that - make it $10 or something.”
How benevolent of them.
“So what are we to Blizzard? Are we just poorly educated pissants who flock to their games no matter what they do? Are we actual people who make their game live or die, or are we just cash cows to be milked until we can be milked no more (or until we start kicking)?”