Would You Buy a $900 Mount For World of Warcraft?
Posted on January 3, 2008
Filed Under News, World of Warcraft
My answer would be a quick ‘HELL NO’, but some people are willing to dish out that much or more. The above picture is the Ashes of Alar mount, which is an extremely rare drop. Teza from World of Raids reported that this mount went for an astonishing 190,000 gold on a Chinese server. No not a typo that’s 190,000 gold, enough to buy a guild of 30 players their Epic mount training costs. That’s not a small amount of chump change. Remember I was surprised when someone said they had they had made 58k gold when the season 3 Arena gear came out?
What surprises me most about this amount of gold the player had, was its value(7000RMB) when converted into dollars, it was only worth some $900 or so. It makes me wonder if the game servers over there really are flooded with ‘Chinese farmers’. For U.S. servers if you go by the current rate of around $35/1000gold that same amount would be worth $6,650.
While rare virtual property items being sold isn’t a first time for such a large sum. The sheer value of what one item can be worth to other people is still pretty amazing. The fact that people can get banned from selling their items still doesn’t stop them(myself included). People buy/sell Diggs & Stumbles just the same even though it can get them banned too.
Oh, and yea for those of you readers who do pay attention to names. That pic of the Pheonix Mount was from the world’s first drop of the item. Which also happens to be the same guild that had the rogue who sold his character for almost $10k for being one of the world’s first few to get another rare item in World of Warcraft. Maybe I’m in the wrong business just selling gold =P.
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Nice post. I remember that Rogue being sold and then he was no more, just gone.
I would try out some other games like ultima Online Star Wars and a few others to earn… Too hard on wow and I farm and have epics.
I would not give up that much gold for a rare mount. some people have no problems with that, but i’m not ever going to do it. Could be used for allot of other items and also gearing up other toons you may have.
zawadi’s last blog post..Frostwolf Banner
With the amount of epics available for free via pvp, my response is definitely a no to paying that much for it.
I hate farming for gold or items. Its why I only make my gold via the AH. I’ve timed myself, and can only make like 100-150g/hr via farming with my green instance geared chars at lvl 70. At that rate it would be like minimum wage to try to sell gold, and I wouldn’t enjoy the game much.
I’ve heard some people play Eve online, or Second life to earn. I’m not patient enough to play Eve, and Second life has too many scammers lately. Especially with that recent one that people reported they lost almost $700k from.
What’s your professions Zawadi? I know your a smith on one side.
It’s shocking to see the lengths some people will go to to get the absolute PRIMO items for an online game, even if they are like 1 or 2 stat points better, or just look cooler.
Yeah, I used to play WoW… I had 300 gold, and was happy hahaha
Glad I got out of that game when I did, but not before playing it for like 3 months straight
I would never pay real money for any item in MMORPGs. It took me month after I got to 70 to get a normal flying mount, as getting a Epic land mount came until later in the mid level 60s, leaving me in the hole until 70. It paid off in the end. lol
I only paid $500 for a Lightstone in EQ1 for my druid. There were only 3 on the server as they were removed because they were too powerful.
How sad eh? :/
@ Tim – do you play any MMOs now? Getting out while you still can might not be a bad idea, I’ve been playing WoW for almost 4 years now =P
@ Sanjo-Chan – Do you still play WoW? I had a warlock before that, I didn’t get the Epic land mount until level 68 or so. I hated it since it was soo slow. I was too cheap to buy the riding skill since I was going for the Warlock’s Epic mount quest. Just couldn’t get the group till I was lvl 68 even though I had all the items for it.
@ Toni – Ouch that’s almost like getting a character banned. =P I only made it to level 45 in EQ, after spending countless nights trying for the Glowing Black Shard thing which was supposed to be one of the better off hand items for casters.
Lol, it’s bringing all the memories back now, I used to love camping lower guk for the fbss, ahw them were the days!
Ugh. Ghoul train! I don’t want to remember that. I’ve had to get my corpse via necromancer several times. Retrieving corpses was one thing that made me dislike EQ.
@ Mitch: Yeah, I still play WoW. I have a 70 Blood Elf Warlock and a 58 Blood Elf Paladin. I didn’t do the Dreadsteed quest because getting the items for the quest where difficult to obtain. I could have asked a Warlock friend for help, but they were on different parts of the day (I play late) and all my friends were Shamans and Mages, lol.
Sanjo-chan’s last blog post..Top 7 Posts of 2007
Hey Mitch,
No luckily my life is unplagued of MMORPGs at the moment
I played WoW, FFXI, and ragnarok online fairly seriously for a few solid months each, but after that I just got bored.
I’m still a gamer though, and will choose a traditional rpg over an mmo anyday. I like a good story, as well as getting a level in less than 3 hours hahaha
Tim’s last blog post..Sunday Blog Review, Third Edition
@ Tim – Hrmm does that mean your waiting for the next Warhammer game or Age of Conan to try out next? Maybe lose a few months playing each of those perhaps? =)
@ Sanjo – I hear you about the items, they were still fairly expensive. I have like 3 warlock buddies on the same server who each have the quest items, but were always raiding when I was on so I couldn’t do the quest. We ended up doing a 3 Warlock, 1 priest, 1 Druid tank pug into Dire Maul, and wrecked the place. All 3 of us got our mounts =) Btw when is the Diamond dust rebellion coming out on fansub? I’m a big Bleach/Naruto fan.
Wow, I had no idea that the difference in price between US and Chinese servers for the mount was THAT significant. That’s insane.
And yeah–I’d never pay that much gold for that sort of thing. In fact, I doubt I’d ever spend that much gold on one item at all.
David Price’s last blog post..No Philosophy Blog is an island: build incoming links
@ Mitch: I don’t really know. Maybe in a few months. I really want to see it, too. But I’m going to wait and see it when it comes out on DVD (which will probably be in July/August), so the quality will be better than in the movie theater.
Sanjo-chan’s last blog post..Top 7 Posts of 2007
wtf!
I refuse to believe this
I managed to buy my epic mount while playing on the road periodically in 20 countries by doing daily quests. There is no reason to spend real money for a mount.
Gary’s last blog post..Daily Photo – Hong Kong
[...] still stuck in the jaw dropped position of someone being able to afford the Ashes of Alar mount for 190k gold. You can only image my surprise now to find out that World of Warcraft does indeed have a [...]
[...] wonder what she’ll be spending the money on. Lets see, $900 for an Alar mount, and $10,000 to buy a World of Warcraft char. [Subscribe to these posts free via a rss reader or [...]
Seen one of these in game.