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The Queue: Almost our celestial anniversary
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Today's Queue is brought to you by Mathew McCurley and the letter F. Yay, I get to write The Queue today! With a patch 4.1 release candidate on the PTR, as well as the one-year anniversary (April 15) of the Celestial Steed, it seems that we should be expecting many things happening within the next few weeks in WoW. Oh, boy! We live in exciting times. Sparkle pony, it was almost one year since I wrote about your majesty, your grace and starry beauty. How could anyone say no to the steed from the stars? Now, we have your successor, the winged guardian, a presumably Uldum-esque creature that soars through the cataclysmic skies with the strength of the desert it has been unearthed from. I hope part of the story involves Harrison Jones finding a secret factory under the Temple of Uldum, where 5 million winged guardians await, ready to be sold and taken home "off the lot," as it were. walkerspace asked: Dear Queue, There seems to be an increase in bot activity (while I'm herbing; I want it all!). Is there anything Bizzard can do about it? Or, is the perceived activity simply more characters in the game fighting over the same limited resource?
Breakfast Topic: I just bought a $25 imaginary horse
digg_url = 'http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/04/19/breakfast-topic-i-just-bought-a-25-imaginary-horse/'; Over the past few hours, I have come to the realization that I have purchased a $25 imaginary space horse. To be honest, I do not regret my horse purchase. I do not have horse remorse. What I have gleaned, however, is a keen understanding of the nature of video games moving forward, in particular the massively multiplayer genre. World of Warcraft is not new to the world of microtransactions, or in this case, macrotransactions. I do not believe anyone considers $25 to be a microtransaction, which seems like a healthy bit of cash. A few thoughts came to my mind. First, we now have the Blizzard price list for all sorts of purchased add-on content and the range of money we will be shelling out in the future. Pets are $10; mounts are $25. The celestial horse's success yesterday proved beyond a doubt that the $25 pricetag was not a deterrent for many purchasers, as the queue pushed over 100,000 people at times in the U.S. store alone. Early sales were estimated to be in the 400,000 area, with more climbing steadily. This horse is a hit. My second thought was how drastically the dynamic has changed for Blizzard and why, potentially, it has changed. This past year showed a stagnation in the number of accounts created for World of Warcraft, leaving Blizzard with the same number to tell shareholders at their next meeting a year later. With new ways to monetize the player base other than the number of accounts, Blizzard has essentially given shareholders the go on holding onto increasingly valuable Activision Blizzard stock and to expect wonderful new profit generators. New ways to monetize existing subscriber bases are always being explored, and the Celestial Steed has cemented the pet and mount store as one of the absolutely critical endeavors. This is only the beginning for macrotransactions in World of Warcraft. As long as the items up for sale do not give another player an advantage and stay purely cosmetic (with the exception of the race change, which has the potential to alter balance), I am confident Blizzard will provide some compelling additions to the already mind-blowingly successful pet and mount store. What do you think about the Celestial Steed and what it represents? $25 seems to be a sweet spot if the sales are to be believed, but what do you think?
Celestial Steed mount and Lil' XT pet to be sold on the Blizzard store
Early this morning our staff uncovered pictographic evidence of the Celestial Steed and Lil' XT Pet being sold soon at the Blizzard Store. The image is no longer in their front page rotation, but likely it won't be gone for long. We don't know any details. That's all there is to say on that. So any speculation about price, functionality, etc... it's all just that. Speculation. We do know, however, that this is the first mount being sold at the store; and the first useful in-game item you can directly buy with real world money (if you don't count the mounts from the WoW TCG game). Video of the steed after the break.
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: Celestial steed video
We just received this mouth-gaping footage of the celestial steed mount in action. The model for the mount was uncovered in the latest patch 3.3.3 PTR but as of now no one knows where it will come from or when. The video shows what looks like an orc warlock flying over Icecrown, then swooping down to the steps of Icecrown Citadel into a gallop. At around 2:30, the steed rears and you can see a small galaxy of particles that have accumulated from the mount idling. The celestial steed is certainly drool-inducing, and the music in the video adds an extra "oomph" to its beauty. (Or hamminess, depending on how you look at it.)
