Take a second to read this article because it beautifully articulates the general defense of the $25 pony. There are lots of them out there but Cuppy was kind of enough to throw them all into one.

Sold his pwn-y on eBay

First, let’s acknowledge a few things:

• Value Added Transactions (you can’t call $25 micro) are here to stay.
• Some people will find the cost worth it, regardless of the cost. They’re not wrong, nor are they any more right than those who find it too expensive.
• Blizzard *does not* bear comparison to other gaming companies, on virtue of their position as the single biggest MMO studio and industry leader.

All that being said, the issue was never about whether the item was worth it or not, or how I felt about cash shops in subscription games. The issue is that Blizzard (see point #3), is raising the bar for what is considered acceptable to charge their player base.

Put another way, they’re proving that they can price gouge (by comparison to standard subscription rates) and get away with it because ‘X amount of players’ will still buy it.

Here’s the thing though, that’s a totally false assumption on the grounds of the sheer size of their potential customer base and market penetration. When you have 12 million players, you could charge $100 for that same mount and 50k people will still buy it and rave about how “worth the money” it was.

Value Added Services

You see, what bothers me is that people defend how much this thing costs on the basis of “money left on the table.” Frankly, that’s stupid. If you really think about it, you could monetize lots of things because it’s “money left on the table.” Respecs? Five Dollars. Extra Flight Paths? Ten Dollars. That new raid dungeon? On sale for $14.99, so Buy Now! And remember, computer code comes in limited quantities, so you’d better act quick.

There’s also this idea that we’ve somehow forgotten that MMOs are businesses, out to make money. We know this but thanks for the reminder. If you expect people to willingly lump them into the same category as our cable and telephone companies, you’re out of your mind. Is that really what you think is best? Grabbing money for money’s sake… because you can? That’s why we have $30 “data” plans from Verizon that don’t include text messaging. That’s why PPV sporting events are $40+ when almost everything else is less than $20. That’s why we have tiered content in either scenario. I’m sorry, but is that what you want? Tiered MMO gaming?

Then again, maybe if you’re in support of the Facebook model overtaking subscription gaming, maybe that is what you want. And maybe your opinion is a little skewed because you’ve spent too much time invested in the different FarmVilles and Mafia Wars.

I’d also like to take a second to address the fallacy that blogger opinions don’t matter because “we don’t represent the player base.” That might be so, through the numbers. Here’s what’s being left out of that statement though, the writers and frequenters of blogs are probably the single most educated, experienced, and invested group of MMO fans in existence. “Hundreds of thousands” of people will still pay, no matter the cost, but it’s the vocal minority that watches over the rest of the flock.

Bloggers in the making

Think of the gasoline hikes over the last few years. Millions of people still bought gas. Millions were unaffected by the raising prices. Yet, if it wasn’t for the “vocal minority” speaking out against the rampant price gouging taking place, we’d probably be at $7 a gallon right about now. Thank you, protesters, because you’ve saved me money, just like those of us upset by the $25 horse are trying to do for you.

The fact is, businesses do not operate on the basis of altruism. If everyone silently accepted what they were given because “it’s a business, they need to make money” the MMO, gaming, and whole freaking economy would be drastically different.

Businesses without the balances of vocal consumers quickly learn to take advantage of the situation.

People that willingly support drastic inflation from the market norm either have a) too much money; or, b) aren’t educated/don’t care enough about the world outside of their own.

Like a lot of other players, I was a little taken aback today when I read about Blizzard’s latest addition to their cash shop: a $25 flying horse. Unlike the pets, this is the first truly functional additional to the cash shop we’ve seen and marks a transition out of the sphere of vanity items.

Some people love it and some people hate it, but the undeniable fact is that we’ve entered into the Age of the Microtransaction. The publishing companies supporting our favorite MMOs have found out that there is a market tolerance for paid “extras” outside of our subscriptions. Actually, if the queue tells us anything, I’d say there’s more than a tolerance, there’s market enthusiasm for these upgrades. Kind of flies in the face of the public outcry we heard a couple years ago over these same things.

Seventy-one thousand people can’t be wrong, right? Or, in business speak, $1,775,000 like the horsey.

Except, here’s the thing: it’s not about the horse. It’s not about the vanity pets. It’s not about anything you’re walking away from that cash shop with in-hand.

It’s about the cost and the message it sends.

As Syp so rightfully pointed out, that one pet costs half of a full blown expansion. Let that sink in. Shiny blue horse-thing vs. 60%+ of WotLK. Kind of puts it in perspective, doesn’t it? It seems a little outrageous when you compare the realities of what you’re getting per dollar.

But let us consider, for a moment, that the actual content is irrelevant.

Paying this much for a fancy mount or special pet sends a message that the MMO industry has underestimated how much we’re willing to pay.

Yep, that's 71 THOUSAND, waiting in line

If the queue for this mount tells us anything, it’s that tens of thousands of people are willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money for small bits of content. It tells us that the value vs. content ratio has been skewed in our favor.

Did I mention I bought a $15 Mr. Goodbar today? White chocolate and almonds.

Think like Bobby Kotick for a minute. When you’re done imagining yourself rolling around in piles of money like Scrooge McDuck, ask

Scrooge McDuck: Gold Seller Extraordinaire?

yourself, what would you do with this new information?

Why, supply customer demand of course. It’s the only patriotic thing to do.

If people are literally waiting in line to throw their money at Acti-Blizzard for something this small, what do you suppose they’ll do when Blizzard unleashes its next MMO? $60 box, maybe?

I’d be willing to bet, though, here and now, that the subscription cost will hit $19.99 a month. It’s an inevitability. We’ve sat for too long at our current price point. When all the rest of the world becomes more expensive, and horses now cost as much as DSL for a month, we find ourselves safe from inflation for only so long.

After all, we’re enthusiastic about our games, aren’t we? We might guffaw at high prices but, I mean, come on. Does that really matter? If you bitch about the price of a car, then still be the car smiling on your way out, does it really matter how you got there?

Ask yourself, would the extra few dollars really stop you from paying if it seemed cool enough?

The horse says no. I mean really, when we can justify it by all the things we’re not spending our money on instead (movies, dinner, cat food), that negative logic starts to make a lot of sense.

A penny saved is a penny earned toward 1/100^th of an XP potion.

So, to be clear, the horse is cool. I don’t care about it, or the pets, or any of that really, because, at the end of the day, they don’t hurt anyone. The precedent we set by paying for it is a different matter.

The fact that I feel like the price point on this particular item is too high is irrelevant. The raising of what we, and, more importantly, MMO publishers, see as an acceptable price point is another matter entirely. It affects all of us, whether we’re for this or not. I, for one, don’t want to see my sub cost go up next year, or later, because no one acknowledged what’s really going on behind economic curtain here.

Like analysts have said about the latest upgrade to the behemoth console title Modern Warfare 2, it was already priced high, but, hey, people lined up anyhow, so why not charge a little more next time around?

Gamer exploitation is like boiling a frog and we should all feel a little warmer.

Or maybe Bobby Kotick really has altruism in mind as he leads Blizzard into the next generation of depression climate MMO gaming. The hair makes me trust him.