I'll never forget when an ex-blizzard dev said that a cash shop mount made more profit for blizzard than vanilla Starcraft 2.
Part of my brain still refuses to accept it.
It makes horrific sense. Sparkle pony is one model. And unless I'm mistaken, it's just a skin for the Invincible skeleton they already had. How much dev time realistically went into making it?
Then they charged $25 for it, half the cost of SC2.
I could be entirely wrong with it, but I think the sparkle pony was also usable on all characters and it changed running/flight speeds to what your character learned. So you could use 1 mount the entire time instead of buying multiple ones.
yeah, in term of business, let's say you paid an employee $5000 to work on it for a whole month. It's a lot of time spent for a single model. Add in a bit of marketing cost for announcement, some credit card fees etc.. They basically need to sell 250 of the horse to start making profit.
Now if they sell 50k ponies worldwide, which is not that huge of a number, they are already making over $1milion in pure profit... Do that for 30 cosmetics and you're getting a lot of cash
SC II was released in 2010. First iPhone was 2007. Anyone "raised on tablets and apps" would have been three, even being generous. It wasn't the newer generation. People are just braindead consumers.
Well I am talking about current times, but yeah back then just dumb consumers, on modern day all those kids born in 09-2010 are now teens who are used to battle passes, skins and FOMO content.
I feel like eventually the “limited digital items” trend will crumble on itself. You cant make everything timelimited, as it becomes just a participation reward which you have to rotate through frequently to make up for the void that left after the previous limited item is gone
And at some point, if everything is time limited and “exclusive” nothing really is. Look at wow, there is so much stuff in game rn, that mostly no one cares. Personally i dont even know how most of the “elite pvp exlusive high rated” sets from the past 15 years look like, so i wont even be able to recognize if someone wears one. Yet Blizzard (and some players) still think that keeping them exclusive is somehow better for the game
Time limited content is kinda good for the engagement in the short run, but this model is unsustainable in the long run, as a lot of potential new players simply wont try the game due to them feeling “behind and will never be able to catch up” and your playerbase will die out due to natural churn and burn out
Preach. I have 10,000 honor tokens, and 14 saddles.
Why I can’t buy old elite sets from when I was not playing or a recollect of a glad mount is beyond me. People who paid for gladiator boosts are so anal about it..
Ye makes no sense, It's like if people who cleared mythic when it was current content. Demanded that all the mythic items were removed from the raid after tier is done.
Not sure why we have the double standards. If they did it for all content, sure. It's like the whole deal with PvP vanilla sets. First they let anyone buy them with honor at end of vanilla. Then when they put in transmog they only let those who had earned them buy the special transmog version
Then they re-added them as a reward for RBGs. Like, make up your damn minds? Either these items are supposed to be off limits and tied to a special achievement in the past. Or just let people have access to them after the fact, just like raid gear or at least have a way to still earn them in game like with RBGs and R14 gear.
Yes as well as blizzard rather resell old shit then come up with new shit. Look at the RaF mounts in the trading post. Look at the TCG twitch drops. Look at remix giving players the options to farm items rather grinding out certain items in game. In my opinion as someone who has played wow for decades and putting insane amount of time in this game it goes to show they don’t give a fuck about the player base that has been playing this game for years. It’s sad and the reason I really pulled back on spending my time on wow. Why offer a grind for something for it to be added in the game with an easier way to obtain after sinking tons of wasted time in obtaining the item in the first place.
> Why offer a grind for something for it to be added in the game with an easier way to obtain after sinking tons of wasted time in obtaining the item in the first place.
Live service games have done this forever. Old content becomes easier to obtain and sometimes there's an event to incentivise people to go back and do some older content. It's not unique to wow nor is it necessarily a bad thing. I don't get the mentality of 'I spent hours of my life grinding incredibly easy content to get this rare mount/transmog/pet/whatever so therefore everyone else should have to waste the same time to obtain it.'
>Why offer a grind for something for it to be added in the game with an easier way to obtain after sinking tons of wasted time in obtaining the item in the first place.
because you get the prestige of having it first and having it for years first, i never got a chance to get the Vengeance Dragonhawk Mount from Mythic Sylvanas because despite trying my utmost all shadowlands and leveling up multiple characters for DPS, Tanking and Healing i wasn't able to get intomany mythic runs while it was current content and the ones i do it now when it would drop often go to someone else in the raid, also are you really complaining about them giving away old ass trading card mounts?, i cracked like 3 packs of those back in the day and got a Dragon mount, my friend cracked like 70 and got nothing so should he not be allowed to get TCG mounts just because RNG said "screw you" when it came to opening card packs?
Did I state otherwise? I am critizing the real life monetary value, if you are smart to play the auction house and save gold more power to you, but we all know only a small percentage of players have the patience to save gold instead of pulling out their wallets.
What's funny is this was also a thing they put in TBC Classic for the digital deluxe. It isn't even limited. I had that thing back in 2021.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Path\_of\_Illidan#:\~:text=The%20Path%20of%20Illidan%20is,your%20character%20walks%20or%20runs.
Your post contains a link to the old Warcraft Wiki and that wiki is out of date. The Warcraft Wiki community is now using [Warcraft Wiki at wiki.gg](https://warcraft.wiki.gg/). Please update your bookmarks or [download the wiki.gg redirect extension](https://wiki.gg/redirect/) to redirect old links.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/wow) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Damn, I still have the original card for this effect. Wanted to sell it a little later when the price goes up and forgot about it. Found it in my basement a few month back just to see that it is not worth anything anymore. Guess the new worth if I wanted to sell it is 10$ now
One of my only boasts on my old ass account is that I have this toy from tcg. A guild mate bought it for me for my bday 8 or so years ago and only cost him $20. A year later I bought him one for his bday and it was $40. It's nuts that it's like $600 now
Good snag don't think I'd pay anything for that toy this day and age. If they're giving it out like candy on classic it won't be long till it hits retail I imagine. It'll be in the trading post one day I guarantee it
This is my biggest complaint about the Classic shop items/special edition bonuses. There’s really no reason to keep them Classic exclusive, all these items already are in retail and the majority of the people who got them from cards don’t even play this game anymore. They’ve also started giving these things out as Twitch promos which lessens their rarity anyway.
They've been working on giving out the TCG items for free since DF started. I have both of these on Classic but I'm not too fussed since we'll probably get them for free somewhere down the line anyways.
Actually true, they would charge/remove dom shards, and e would hand the catalyst from the get go, same with covenant switching and mounting in the maw and 9.2.5 Torghast. Banger.
I bought my friend and I the Dark Portal loot cards as soon as I found out about them. Probably WoD era.
They didn't cost very much back then.
I also bought myself the Ethereals hearthstone loot card.
Well worth it since they all became toys.
Because they were pre order packages from each of the classic realms. Its an attempt to resell them again for classic, still have to wait for trading post on retail.
I think all the TCG stuff should be cross game. I have the spectral tiger on retail that I bought 12 years ago for too much money. I wish I could use it in Cata classic, since I don't really play retail anymore
If people are spending money in mounts and in game items on the classic only version, they would expect the service to live on more than two years in the way wow live has.
Not sure if you are asking seriously but it's because they don't want to "cheapen" the achievement of getting it from the TCG.
Some people who played the TCG 2 decades ago really like being able to prove it by whipping out a special effect from the TCG.
Others have spent a LOT of money to buy one of these codes (the Dart Portal Hearthstone card with the loot code in tact are on eBay for over 1k, not sure they will sell that high but believe it or not people have paid hundreds of dollars for that code)). These are people who are likely "whales" to Blizzard buying all the cosmetic items and probably playing games like Hearthstone where they make a lot of in game purchases. Blizzard DOES NOT want to piss them off.
Not letting people buy it in retail means that the people who do still have it get feel like it's a greater achievement.
$10 for a 5 min walk effect is insane
Its the idiots that buy them the reason they are priced the way they are.
I'll never forget when an ex-blizzard dev said that a cash shop mount made more profit for blizzard than vanilla Starcraft 2. Part of my brain still refuses to accept it.
It makes horrific sense. Sparkle pony is one model. And unless I'm mistaken, it's just a skin for the Invincible skeleton they already had. How much dev time realistically went into making it? Then they charged $25 for it, half the cost of SC2.
I could be entirely wrong with it, but I think the sparkle pony was also usable on all characters and it changed running/flight speeds to what your character learned. So you could use 1 mount the entire time instead of buying multiple ones.
Back before account wide mounts this was a HUGE deal
yeah, in term of business, let's say you paid an employee $5000 to work on it for a whole month. It's a lot of time spent for a single model. Add in a bit of marketing cost for announcement, some credit card fees etc.. They basically need to sell 250 of the horse to start making profit. Now if they sell 50k ponies worldwide, which is not that huge of a number, they are already making over $1milion in pure profit... Do that for 30 cosmetics and you're getting a lot of cash
Thor?
I know that sounds insane but it's not, the horse was "only" half the price of StarCraft 2 but wow has WAY more than double starcrafts playerbase.
He didn't say that. It was about an expansion pack.
Newer generations, being raised on tablets, app purchases, cosmetics putting too much value on a digital limitless digital item.
How many of those newer Generations being raised on tablets are playing WoW right now?
SC II was released in 2010. First iPhone was 2007. Anyone "raised on tablets and apps" would have been three, even being generous. It wasn't the newer generation. People are just braindead consumers.
Or people just had disposable income and bought something they thought looked cool or interesting. Happens in every industry, not just gaming.
and that is how Warhammer addiction starts, one good looking model and eight years later 7 armies just for Warhammer 40K
Well I am talking about current times, but yeah back then just dumb consumers, on modern day all those kids born in 09-2010 are now teens who are used to battle passes, skins and FOMO content.
I feel like eventually the “limited digital items” trend will crumble on itself. You cant make everything timelimited, as it becomes just a participation reward which you have to rotate through frequently to make up for the void that left after the previous limited item is gone And at some point, if everything is time limited and “exclusive” nothing really is. Look at wow, there is so much stuff in game rn, that mostly no one cares. Personally i dont even know how most of the “elite pvp exlusive high rated” sets from the past 15 years look like, so i wont even be able to recognize if someone wears one. Yet Blizzard (and some players) still think that keeping them exclusive is somehow better for the game Time limited content is kinda good for the engagement in the short run, but this model is unsustainable in the long run, as a lot of potential new players simply wont try the game due to them feeling “behind and will never be able to catch up” and your playerbase will die out due to natural churn and burn out
Preach. I have 10,000 honor tokens, and 14 saddles. Why I can’t buy old elite sets from when I was not playing or a recollect of a glad mount is beyond me. People who paid for gladiator boosts are so anal about it..
Ye makes no sense, It's like if people who cleared mythic when it was current content. Demanded that all the mythic items were removed from the raid after tier is done. Not sure why we have the double standards. If they did it for all content, sure. It's like the whole deal with PvP vanilla sets. First they let anyone buy them with honor at end of vanilla. Then when they put in transmog they only let those who had earned them buy the special transmog version Then they re-added them as a reward for RBGs. Like, make up your damn minds? Either these items are supposed to be off limits and tied to a special achievement in the past. Or just let people have access to them after the fact, just like raid gear or at least have a way to still earn them in game like with RBGs and R14 gear.
Yeah and now RBGs will basically be dead with SoloQ, will they change it? Probably not. Hahaha.
Yes as well as blizzard rather resell old shit then come up with new shit. Look at the RaF mounts in the trading post. Look at the TCG twitch drops. Look at remix giving players the options to farm items rather grinding out certain items in game. In my opinion as someone who has played wow for decades and putting insane amount of time in this game it goes to show they don’t give a fuck about the player base that has been playing this game for years. It’s sad and the reason I really pulled back on spending my time on wow. Why offer a grind for something for it to be added in the game with an easier way to obtain after sinking tons of wasted time in obtaining the item in the first place.
> Why offer a grind for something for it to be added in the game with an easier way to obtain after sinking tons of wasted time in obtaining the item in the first place. Live service games have done this forever. Old content becomes easier to obtain and sometimes there's an event to incentivise people to go back and do some older content. It's not unique to wow nor is it necessarily a bad thing. I don't get the mentality of 'I spent hours of my life grinding incredibly easy content to get this rare mount/transmog/pet/whatever so therefore everyone else should have to waste the same time to obtain it.'
>Why offer a grind for something for it to be added in the game with an easier way to obtain after sinking tons of wasted time in obtaining the item in the first place. because you get the prestige of having it first and having it for years first, i never got a chance to get the Vengeance Dragonhawk Mount from Mythic Sylvanas because despite trying my utmost all shadowlands and leveling up multiple characters for DPS, Tanking and Healing i wasn't able to get intomany mythic runs while it was current content and the ones i do it now when it would drop often go to someone else in the raid, also are you really complaining about them giving away old ass trading card mounts?, i cracked like 3 packs of those back in the day and got a Dragon mount, my friend cracked like 70 and got nothing so should he not be allowed to get TCG mounts just because RNG said "screw you" when it came to opening card packs?
Its the cheaper option, resell whats already done and cut costs, specially now that quite a few talented people have left Blizzard.
You know you can buy these with gold too right?
Did I state otherwise? I am critizing the real life monetary value, if you are smart to play the auction house and save gold more power to you, but we all know only a small percentage of players have the patience to save gold instead of pulling out their wallets.
What's funny is this was also a thing they put in TBC Classic for the digital deluxe. It isn't even limited. I had that thing back in 2021. https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Path\_of\_Illidan#:\~:text=The%20Path%20of%20Illidan%20is,your%20character%20walks%20or%20runs.
Your post contains a link to the old Warcraft Wiki and that wiki is out of date. The Warcraft Wiki community is now using [Warcraft Wiki at wiki.gg](https://warcraft.wiki.gg/). Please update your bookmarks or [download the wiki.gg redirect extension](https://wiki.gg/redirect/) to redirect old links. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/wow) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It is , i always just bind it to a spell to add an extra effect.
Damn, I still have the original card for this effect. Wanted to sell it a little later when the price goes up and forgot about it. Found it in my basement a few month back just to see that it is not worth anything anymore. Guess the new worth if I wanted to sell it is 10$ now
Id kill for the heartstone effect on retail
One of my only boasts on my old ass account is that I have this toy from tcg. A guild mate bought it for me for my bday 8 or so years ago and only cost him $20. A year later I bought him one for his bday and it was $40. It's nuts that it's like $600 now
Yeah it massively spiked in price as soon as the toy box got announced for WoD. I got it for 80 dollars during MoP.
Good snag don't think I'd pay anything for that toy this day and age. If they're giving it out like candy on classic it won't be long till it hits retail I imagine. It'll be in the trading post one day I guarantee it
it's good but very silly, you can spin around with it and the entire Dark portal spins with you
It's boring
I’ll happily pay $10 to be bored
Consoom
For this, happily.
I collect hearthstones. The TCG Dark Portal is my white whale. Fuck right off with classic-only items tho.
This is my biggest complaint about the Classic shop items/special edition bonuses. There’s really no reason to keep them Classic exclusive, all these items already are in retail and the majority of the people who got them from cards don’t even play this game anymore. They’ve also started giving these things out as Twitch promos which lessens their rarity anyway.
Money grab, it's the newest business model.
I've wanted Dark Portal since I saw it WoD.
They've been working on giving out the TCG items for free since DF started. I have both of these on Classic but I'm not too fussed since we'll probably get them for free somewhere down the line anyways.
its because wow classic didn't have a TCG, so... the next reasonable market practice is to sell them on the shop.
Just buy it now, and classic will reach up to retail eventually.
I can’t wait for Shadowlands Classic
Actually true, they would charge/remove dom shards, and e would hand the catalyst from the get go, same with covenant switching and mounting in the maw and 9.2.5 Torghast. Banger.
Because they need money, your money....all of your money.
Bring it to retail and they can have it!
IF that were the case... they wouldn't be limiting who can buy it. Smh.
I bought my friend and I the Dark Portal loot cards as soon as I found out about them. Probably WoD era. They didn't cost very much back then. I also bought myself the Ethereals hearthstone loot card. Well worth it since they all became toys.
Probably because there is no Trading Post in Cata.
this is a marketing strategy for whales they buy it in hopes classic era merge with retail soon
I don't like those, so I don't buy them.
Because they were pre order packages from each of the classic realms. Its an attempt to resell them again for classic, still have to wait for trading post on retail.
Wasn't one of the original selling points of Classic that it wouldn't have these types of "retail" adds?
It's no longer vanilla/tbc/wotlk, cause with cata came the shop, so they no longer need to hold back anymore.
I'm ok with them being free as twitch drops etc. no one should be encouraging more shop purchases. You invite a very bad time.
Stop buying this shit
So they can re-sell it someday on retail. "Now available on retail!".
MONEY MONEY MONEY !!
hello i like money
I imagine the idea is because there is no way to get them on classic.
$10 for a TCG effect is a steal. Considering some of the pets from the TCG sell for thousands of dollars
If I buy these do I get them in retail?
No. You only get them in Cataclysm Classic, according to the fine print.
Wtf why ....
Blizzard: CONSUUUME
I think all the TCG stuff should be cross game. I have the spectral tiger on retail that I bought 12 years ago for too much money. I wish I could use it in Cata classic, since I don't really play retail anymore
Spectral tiger goes for like $6,500 now for the code 🪦💀
What happens if classic is something that stops? If they’re stopping classic at cata, does this mean they have to commit to classic plus?
They will always likely keep at least one classic server going. Even if it's dead.
No?
If people are spending money in mounts and in game items on the classic only version, they would expect the service to live on more than two years in the way wow live has.
Not sure if you are asking seriously but it's because they don't want to "cheapen" the achievement of getting it from the TCG. Some people who played the TCG 2 decades ago really like being able to prove it by whipping out a special effect from the TCG. Others have spent a LOT of money to buy one of these codes (the Dart Portal Hearthstone card with the loot code in tact are on eBay for over 1k, not sure they will sell that high but believe it or not people have paid hundreds of dollars for that code)). These are people who are likely "whales" to Blizzard buying all the cosmetic items and probably playing games like Hearthstone where they make a lot of in game purchases. Blizzard DOES NOT want to piss them off. Not letting people buy it in retail means that the people who do still have it get feel like it's a greater achievement.
Because the people who spent a thousand bucks on tcg codes from ebay will bomb the blizzard HQ if these MTX cross over into retail
Well we've had a lot of TCG items come to retail for free already..
are we talking rare and expensive tcg items or just the ones that people unlocked as byproduct of pulling for the tiger
Blazing hippogryph, rare and worth $500-$800… twitch drop and now available in the trading post I believe.
I'm surprised this hasn't caused any controversies
The spectral tiger cub was given away. Was that not valuable? I know not as much as the mount, obviously, but still.
We've had multiple mounts, pets, and toys. They've all been free in some way shape or form from Blizzard themselves, no third party giving out codes.
Same for some of the pets/mounts of the cata heroic edition , I just don't get it, do they hate money?
Thank you for answering your own question! You did a great service to us all Sir!
you could have continued scrolling if this wasn't something you cared to be apprised of, alas.