My musings on micro-transactions

Considering what a hot-button issue this is, I knew I'd have to address it eventually. The Celestial Steed is now available in the Blizzard store, and it is the first mount available to those willing to shell out the cash for one. Since this is the first time Blizzard has added a mount to their store, a certain amount of backlash is to be expected, at the very least from the "they changed it, now it sucks" crowd. But how much of this backlash is warranted?

One of the most reasonable arguments against the selling of the Celestial Steed is that it allows people to save on gold by not needing to buy mounts for their alts. While this is true, it is also a necessity in order for the mount to be sold in the first place, unless Blizzard were to set up a system where you needed to have another mount of a certain riding level to use the Celestial Steed at the level. This issue partially solves itself in that if a player uses the Celestial Steed to save money on mounts, it will lose its coolness appeal, which was, after all, the original reason to buy it. While that doesn't negate the argument that people are still buying utility, I'd say it's a relatively fair trade.

Of course, the real question is, should people be able to buy cool looking mounts? They've been doing it through the trading card game for years; Blizzard just decided that they would like to get a bit of the profits. While the trading card mounts may not be very different functionally from the Celestial Steed, the trading card mounts were made to create an incentive for WoW players to get into the WoW trading card game, while the Blizzard store provides no such incentive for WoW players to try something new. For that reason, the two are not quite analogous, so the fact that the community finds one acceptable doesn't mean it should accept the other one.

As I said in my post on the Violet Proto-Drake, there is a distinct difference between aesthetic rewards and practical rewards, and it's difficult to compare the two. Many mounts are aesthetic rewards, in that they serve the same functionality as the gryphons/wind riders you can buy relatively cheaply from mount keepers, yet their looks are symbolic of the effort you have put forth to acquire them. It's generally agreed among players the harder something is to get, the cooler it should look. While it is a logical fallacy to assume that if that fact is true then the reverse must also be true, most players are the under the impression that the cooler something looks, the harder it should be to get. That is one of the reason why many are so indignant about this mount being sold in the store for anyone who can afford to fork over the cash for it: the ratio of effort to reward is simply minuscule. Players would probably be equally indignant if a 280%-speed version of the Ashes of Alar became available to anyone who killed Kael'thas Sunstrider in Magister's Terrace; though the original mount would still confer an objective advantage to those who own it, the coolness factor would be lost.

But is it reasonable for the community to always expect that the coolness of a reward be proportionate to the effort it takes to get it? Coolness is in the eye of the beholder (I, for example, think that the Sprite Darter Hatchling is the coolest pet in my collection, though I have many other pets that others would consider cooler), so if the community looks down upon an aesthetic reward because it doesn't take much effort to acquire, the coolness factor will be lost, which will help to keep things even. In that respect, the issue of the ratio of coolness to effort is a somewhat self-correcting issue. Of course, as the comments on the WoW.com posts considering the Celestial Steed have shown, many people who buy the Celestial Steed derive its coolness for themselves within themselves, rather than by the community's opinions, so they are not subject to this self-correcting.

It is here where I draw the line for further consideration of the issue. I am very much a "live and let live" kind of person, and to consider whether a person is justified in finding something cool (which is, after all, a subjective issue) is not something I am comfortable doing. Were this a factual or logical issue, I would consider it without hesitation, but considering the ground I would tread by philosophizing something as subjective as personal coolness, I'd rather just halt right here.