I wish they'd let me design a pet for them or something and give me 1% profit, lol.
coincidence? IRS tax day deadline? blizzard is in need of money and is providing a digital item to help pay their taxes?
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Don't forget that the queue was increased by those of us who just bought the new pet as well.
I hope Blizzard will soon make the step many other games have made and reduce their subscription fee to 0$. Yes, 0$, but they add alot of goodies ingame that you need to pay to get, like this mount. At 25$ the mount, it only require 170000 players (1.6% of their player base) to covert their expense. The rest is pure profit.This would be awesome to not have to pay to play the game, but it would also bring more players to their game, which would also buy mount-like stuff, which would generate even more profit.Also, many economist (or whatever you call them) say that it is the future of video game. Give the product for free, but charge to get the "special stuff".
Aye, when I was in queue for mine earlier, I was blown away by the numbers. Say what you will about Blizzard, but they're freaking business savvy like nobody's business.
@sustasafaia: Activision Blizzard made $711M Net Profit during the 3rd Quarter of 2008. If you consider 15$ for 11 millions, thats $495M from subscribtion (and its raw, not net profit). So even if you would remove subscription, Blizzard would still have managed to make $216M. So yeah, they could remove subscription and still roll on gold.
Another thing you gotta consider are taxes: I'm pretty sure that Blizzard is paying some big taxes on running their company, both federal and state. The federal government taxes a good deal on corporations as large as Blizzard, and California isn't too forgiving on taxation either. While I'm not intimating that Blizzard is having a hard time making ends meet (Mike Morhaime's estimated net worth is $300 million!), they're not as filthy-rich as you'd like to believe. They're going to get a nice amount of money from this brilliant sales idea, and I am not ashamed to say I helped contribute to it. :]
I think the funniest part of this is how many idiots are about thinking that it cost Blizzard nothing to make the mount. Might help if some of you folks understood basic economics before you spout @#$%.That said, I'm indifferent about buying one of these steeds because of a/. the obvious influx of them and b/. I don't actually feel that the design of it fits either of my characters; or any of the new alts I'm going to be making come Cataclysm.My partner, on the other hand, will lap it up because she's an impulsive mount and pet collector.
Also, I wonder how many people are queuing up solely for the purpose of being dead space? Never underestimate da power of da trolls, mon... :/