Over 140,000 gamers queue to buy WoW Celestial Steed
£17 virtual item expected to generate millions in revenue for Blizzard
Demand for Blizzard's latest virtual items - the Celestial Steed mount and the Lil'XT Pet - has reached unprecedented levels, with queues of 140,000 people forming within hours of the items going on sale.
The two items were released on April 15, with the Celestial Steed selling for $25 on the US Blizzard Store and £17 in the UK.
Within three hours of their release, the queue for the Celestial Steed was seven hours long, according to wow.com, with a 140,000-strong queue worth $3.5 million for the one item alone.
In response to concerns that stock of the items would run dry, a Blizzard spokesperson said on the game's official forum that their numbers would not be restricted.
"The number of available mounts is limited in the sense that there is a fixed number of codes available in the store. These codes are not generated automatically with each purchase, instead they are generated separately and then added to the store in batches," they explained.
"The Celestial Steed is not supposed to be a limited time offer only, so we will of course add more codes in case the current batch of codes gets sold out."
Blizzard, however, will do nothing of the sort. That price point means 2 things - rarer in-game (since less people buy it at such a cost), which increases it's value to the customers who did buy it, and the desire to own it for those who haven't yet. The rarer something is, the more awesome - that's MMO culture for you!
Eventually, there'll be sales for a short time, to encourage people to visit the store and browse, but I doubt we'll ever see prices that are deemed "reasonable" when wow is involved.
profit much?
I wonder what the response will be when Blizzard starts selling ingame gold and elite items.
Hehe, I made the same statement to a class, mockingly, only to have 5 of them say they had bought it that morning.
Played it almost religiously for 2 years and never once saw the appeal of mounts, pets and the like. Paying for them is just beyond me
*slaps head*
Fair play to Blizzard for working out exactly how high they can set the price for this 1 extra mount and still sell extraordinary amounts of them, but I instantly lose respect for any player superficial enough to buy this and then sit motionless in the middle of town... which is exactly how all the one's I've seen so far have been 'used'. Within a month hardly anyone will be using them anymore.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Edward Buffery on 23rd April 2010 12:29pm