April 26, 2010
Hey there peoples, time to play to my core demographic again, that being World of Warcraft players. Or, to be more to the point, people who play WoW with me. But in truth, it's been awhile, and I've been wanting to do another WoW comic for a while.
Now World of Warcraft, as I'm sure most of you know, is an online role-playing game for which you must pay $14.95 a month to play. Essentially, Blizzard makes something around the lines of 170 million dollars a month as they slowly harvest out souls. You'd think Uncle Blizz would be fine with that, but sadly no, no, they found a way to harvest said souls just a wee bit faster. Recently, Uncle Blizz added the Celestial Steed, a special mount in the game that you can be yours, for the low, low price of $24.95. No, seriously.
For $24.95, you get a wacky sparkly new flying horse and nothing else. Granted every character on your account past, present and future can use this mount, but for $24.95, ten dollars more than a month than play, they'd at least give you a free month of play, hell, they could at least give you a week. But now you're out $24.95 and all you have to show for it is a sparkly flying virtual horse.
Funny sidenote: while I was getting screenshots in game to use for source material, I asked my friend Caitlin if I could use her character for the comic. So she flies in to where I'm waiting for her in the game, and does she come flying in on her new glitter horse? No, she's riding a green dragon, a normal in-game mount. You'd think she'd be riding the sparkly stallion she paid actual money for. Furthermore when she sees me with my bad-ass black dragon mount, again another in-game, free-as-long-as-you-earn-it mount, she expresses minor jealousy. Hey, you listening, Uncle Blizz? I think I found a way you could milk some more cash out of Caitlin!