Blizzard Store: Swift Windsteed Mount Now Available

[Silver-Fox]

Don't see myself purchasing one anytime soon. Truthfully the mounts in the Blizzard store haven't appealed to me as much as mounts I can receive in the game itself without paying real-world money.

This one in my opinion might be the ugliest. I don't even know what to make of it.

[Imbashiethz]

That mount should not be in the store. It should be a reward for something. 2400 in rbg or arena for example. Or some PVE achievement. Always the cool mounts for cash. Lame.

[Fumu]

The amount of people posting "GOAT RUDOLPH LOL" make my head hurt. Just goes to show you how many people don't know shit about fiction unless it's shoveled down their throats in high fantasy tv/video games. Hell I can't even say that, they were even in DnD.

Personally I wish the nose/ears weren't that weird skin color too but otherwise it's a faithful rendition of a Kirin and a really cool mount for mythology buffs. I'm just glad to see they acknowledged actual Kirins in the game after giving the name of Qilins (another spelling of Kirins) to FOO DOGS.

I do think it would have been more successful if they "westernized" it a bit more in the face rather than following the traditional pictures so faithfully, as most modern depictions merge it with the western unicorn a bit more. The red cow-like snout and copious facial hair almost makes it look like a baboon. They could've also went with a more appealing color scheme and some glow effects. Kirins were described in mythology as practically shitting magic, if there was one time a mount called for sparkles it's this one.

[randomuser1337]

This has got to be the worst looking mount ever and to charge 25USD for it is just retarded.

Damn that mount made me put my fingers in my mouth and puke.

[Sanguinesun]

Sadly, if only .05% buy it, its a hit for em. PT Barnum was a genius.

[Neliah]

The only thing I dislike, is the strange way your toon moves when you use it on the ground. Even when looking at it from behind it ends up giving me a headache.

[Nexsa]

For something that is optional and not game breaking, there are a lot of angry people..

[Ferrouswheel]

No thanks, I'm not a sucker. My sub fees pay the employees salary who made this mount. I have already bought it, I'm not paying for it again. The sheep need to stop encouraging this crap. A fool parted with his money.

[naq]

Funny how the mounts you have to pay for, actually have crap looks.

[Mudor]

Looks like something blizz spent 5 min on to make

[Glutek]

Buyable or non buyable the riding on sky monts r boring....

[Zoma]

Definitely not buying this one. Heck, I probably wouldn't even chase it in game, and I'm a collector.

[Redblade]

Mounts are acceptable to pay extra for because they don't give an advantage to players that decide to buy 'em. You can't replace it with ''anything and everything'' because that would include things that give an advantage, causing the game to become Pay2Win.

So lets charge extra for everything that doesn't give your character a clear advantage over others then, I'm assuming you would be fine with that?

There's enough mounts in this game to get the 150 mounts achievement, without having to rely on luck.

Sure there are, that doesn't change the fact that buying them gives an advantage when it comes to achieving it though.

I think I post this most times a new mount comes out. Are you seriously complaining about a business making a profit from something that is incredibly successful? Do you complain when you pay too much for drinks on a night out, for cigarettes, for dinner at a restaurant?

Yes I would if they charge way over the norm, which is what we're talking about here, especially as you as the customer don't have the option to take your character and head to the competition.

Don't really get why you complain about them selling a mount in their store even when WoW is subscription based.
Your subscription does not warrant free stuff. You get content and the right to log in for your 12 euros or w/e it is. This is just extra on top of it. But you gotta pay for it.
It isn't game breaking if you don't buy it.

So you to are fine with being charged for secondary professions, use of the transmog feature, use of dummies, pet battles and so on, I mean it's not game breaking if you don't have access to those features either.

There's no difference between a f2p mmo who sells something cosmetic vs. a pay to play mmo who sells something cosmetic.

There is a massive difference, the F2P MMO based their business model and survival on selling things in the shop, that's what pays the developers to keep developing the game, same as the subscription fee does for the P2P MMO.

MMO-Champ should disable commenting on some of their news imho.

Yes lets censor views you don't like, that makes for a great forum community.

[Gasblossom]

That is one stupid looking mount haha!

[Maelleous]

I barely even play but like this one enough that I might have to be a sucker and get it...

[Kryos]

It's the chinese unicorn and was based on the storys about the first giraffes brought from Africa. Like the german Wolpertinger it has very different variations about how it looks. This is the way Blizzard did an interpretation.

[Benggaul]

Already said, half of what WoW brings in pays for all of Activision/Blizzard's development, so no, it doesn't go towards updates and maintenance, in fact it doesn't even go to more resources as Blizzard still after 8 years apparently struggles to find the right people to hire.

<snip>

Yes we would, and they would still make buckets of profit.

As for the rest, it's mostly apart of the "but they are a business" defense which to be quite blunt, a load of crap.

<snip>

Not payed for WoW for years by now, so I did just that, that doesn't mean I can't have an opinion nor discussion on the subject.

Okay then, citation needed for that first. I happen to know for a fact that MMO's are very expensive investments, so I'd like to see the reports you're reading on their distribution of finances just so I can see where you're coming from with this argument and try to understand your position. Also, I don't recall Blizzard claiming to struggle finding developers. I actually find it hard to imagine that they don't have a hard drive full of resumés that just keeps filling as time goes on given that the job of game dev is a pretty competitive position.

For your second point: No, we wouldn't. If WoW's dev team had not had the deep resources it had thanks to the early popularity and skyrocketing subscriptions it would absolutely have changed what WoW was today. WoW is an absolutely massive and content-rich game, a lot of which wouldn't have happened without the subs bankrolling it. Now, if you want to argue that it would have been a better game then I can not say you're wrong because that's based on a wholly subjective opinion. (I'd still disagree, however.)

And as for your casual dismissal of the "but they are a business" arguments...they aren't wrong. You will not find a single MMO out there whose developers aren't looking for more methods to monetize whatever they can get away with. The latest trend is, of course, "Free to play" with microtransactions aplenty, but lately those microtransactions have been set up to be more and more--well, not necessary, but at least strongly recommended. Take the recent uproar over the SWTOR F2P model, for example, where they initially wanted people to pay to unlock an extra action bar...

Okay, and now that you've said you haven't "payed" [sic] for years now, I understand a little more why you honestly don't get why I don't feel the development time they spent on a single mount is significant compared to what they've put into the base game subscription. If you haven't played, and you're getting all of your information solely from these forums and news posts, then you honestly have an uninformed opinion. Noted! I'll stop paying attention to it, then.

[Vasconcellos]

OMG so ugly, please someone kill it with fire!

[Benggaul]

It was nice back when we got stuff for doing in game events instead of paying extra.

You still do get things for completing in-game events. Now there is also this. A lot of people seem to be equating more with less for some reason (as they do with every new announcement of some bauble being sold on the WoW store).

[Wupti]

I dunno what to say, looks like a purple'ish mutated Rudolf