Originally Posted by
Vakir
Dragon Soul was a shitshow, but nothing stops them from, prior to 8.3 release, going ahead and removing the Wicked Swarmer from Wrathion, making it the Mythic N'Zoth drop, and throwing up the Allseer on the mount shop 6 months later. They'd make a ton and it would only upset the top 0.1%. The thing that prevents them is how transparent it would be and how negative the reception to paid mounts is now vs. 9 years ago.
It's very, very easy to reverse the same logic for any mount put into the game. The Honeyback Harvester was a rep grind created out of wholecloth to allow acquisition of the mount for no direct cost beyond time invested. It would be very, very easy to sell it for money and not make that rep grind. It would actively benefit Activision-Blizzard's shareholders and bottom-line. But hoo boy would people lose it after it was MIA for several patch cycles despite being datamined.
In a perfect world, the income from these same mounts would go towards development of a better game, but late capitalism means that it generally doesn't. It goes to the top.
In agreement, though, that the quality is subjective, and I'd disagree that any are the "best" looking ones. It just grinds my gears when it feels like content that fits naturalistically into the game has been moved somewhere else. It feels like a bit more of the imaginations of talented artists have become business and the game world feels just a bit smaller.