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World of Warcraft: New Pets Arrive
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The Blizzard Entertainment and World of Warcraft teams have announced the addition of two new in-game pets to the Blizzard Store. Both Moonkin Hatchling and Lil' Ragnaros run $10.00 and can be found in the Pet section of the Blizzard Store. Proceeds from the sale of the Moonkin Hatchling will be donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Last year's sale of the Pandarin Monk resulted in over a million dollars being donated to Make-A-Wish.
The googly-eyed Moonkin Hatchling, which comes in unique Horde and Alliance versions, will occasionally plant flowers at your feet, and happily /dances with any willing partners. Like last year's Pandaren Monk, the Moonkin Hatchling has a soft spot for helping children. For every Moonkin Hatchling adopted from now through December 31, 2010, Blizzard Entertainment will donate 50% of the $10 purchase price to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Read more here.
Comments
Not even tempted. I would, however, pay 10 bucks to be able to play a Balance Druid without the stupid moonkin form.
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Oh dear lord, thats ridiulously cute. I hate to say, throwing in the donation to Make-A-Wish, if I still played WoW, I would consider purchasing this.
there are already a ton of in game pets that dont cost anything, they even give you some without you doing absolutely anything....why would anyone want to pay for these? ....then again why would anyone wanna pay for that celestial steed it's beyond me.
Because some of us work hard and have money to spend, and you clearly don't. Don't be a hater.
I always wondered that myself...
Because they're cute, they're collectable, and the revenue supports a good cause?
I mean, I wouldn't buy them, but I'm just saying.
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I'll never understand the justification of "but some of the proceeds go to a good cause!" to justify such a frivilous purchase like these $10 non-combat pets that would under normal circumstances be available to players for free.
If people, particularly Blizzard, really cared about the charity, they would be giving the money directly to said charity without Blizzard taking a 50% cut off of selling a virtual item that costs them, virtually nothing (pun intended).
If you're going to buy one of these, your choice, but you're not going to fool anyone with the whole "good cause" nonsense, otherwise you would donate the full amount or more directly to a charity.
At least they are donating money to a good cause.
It's a win for all involved, you get a cute pet, Blizz gets parts of the proceeds, and a charity gets parts of the proceeds.
And yes, they have given the full proceeds for a virtual pet before. To complain that they only gave half the proceeds this time is stupid. Afterall they don't have to give any at all.
Good old Blizz has clicked greed for so long now and 50 % ONLY of the money is going to charity and that by the most profitable mmo which brags regularly to have 12+ million subscribers. Guess where your other 50 % is going, guess why they couldn't give 100% of it to charity? I'm giving myself to medicine help association and world wide fund and strongly disagree with the way Blizzard is doing charity, profit and PR in the same time.
You know, I don't think the kids that get their wishes fulfilled really care if Blizzard makes a little profit. They could have profitted even more by giving nothing and the kids would have gone without. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with making a profit. Nor is there anything wrong with using the capitalist system to share that profit with those who are in need. Without such generosity the world would be a lesser place.
If you buy the pet, you spend $5 on the pet and $5 on charity. It's your right to downplay this but it just really comes across as a disgusting spiteful remark.
And Blizzard has expenses - design of the pet, admin work etc. You say it costs them virtually nothing. How do you know that? Do you have any idea how much it costs to design a pet? What about all the admin work? There are most likely other things they need to pay for this.
Woah those are some ugly pets. *shudders*
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
From a purely business point of view, whoever thought this up is brilliant.
First, they probably had one guy working on the skin, maybe 3 hours. Maybe another few hours spent getting it into the cash shop. That's it. It doesn't cost them anything more to "produce" them for sale, in fixed cost or variable costs.
Instead of charging the full $10 for it, they'll charge $5 and give the other $5 to charity. They'll get a ton more sales from people who wouldn't normally buy it, but will since their purchase helps somebody else.
It's absolutely brilliant. They'll give away $5 dollars that costs them next to nothing in exchange for more sales, while gaining goodwill and most likely to get more total sales then if they didn't give away $5. In short, they are making more money by "giving" away money.
Wow.
"...that would under normal circumstances be available to players for free ..." Like the pets in the C-Store for Champions Online...oh, wait...
Not all of the money is going to charity...very true. But some of it is. How many store items from other games go to charity? Something is better than nothing.
Activision-Blizzard is a corporation, and behaving just as expected. They have developed something that makes them additional profit, and did a bit of PR to generate sales. There is not a single major corporation left on this planet that does otherwise...sorry to burst your bubble...
Shouldn't there be like an 80% or more to Make-A-Wish? I mean I understand some artist and modeler worked on the critter and should be financially compensated.
But just 5 bucks out and 5 bucks in just doesn't appeal to my charity side; and I'm a bleeding heart tree hugging liberal.
I think you are naive. Those people who collect pets will get it regardless. Maybe a small portion of people might get it due to the charity aspect, but not enough for Blizzard to make anymore money than they ordinarily would have without giving half of it away. I'm enough of a cynic that I just don't believe that many people will be persuaded by the charity aspect. I'll point to your own post and the two prior posts as examples of how most people will think of it.
Plus, I seriously doubt they designed and rendered this in so short a time. That's simply not how a business like Blizzard works. There were probably a number of idea's for the pets. Each pet was probably drawn a dozen times or more to find the right design. Then once a design was chosen it had to be rendered virtually. If you think there's no work on something like that you're kidding yourself.
There's already a poster up top that said he may be tempted to buy because of the donation. A couple posters gushing about how great they are for donating.
You have absolutely no idea how effective good marketing is to getting people to open their wallets. The human psyche is easy to manipulate. People want things, but common sense gets in the way ("I'm not paying $10 bucks for pixels!"). Give them a reason to buy that makes them feel good, and they'll come running.
As for cost, even if it took more time, I cannot see that it'll take more than $10,000, and that's stretching it alot. It costs them absolutely nothing as they sell more "units." With the sales they'll get, they'll really be giving away nothing.
[Mod Edit]
Hey guys, lets try to keep any baiting out of your discussions.
EDIT: Also, lets remember this isnt the Politics discussion forum. Please keep politics out of this one.
But this is even better than the normal case. They are not giving things, or man hours...they are giving the value of virtual goods.
I believe they getting all the benefits plus increasing their profit at the same time. The benefits of goodwill will show up later and last longer.
I really would like to meet the person who came up with this.
Yep, this was about due for its return, considering last year they made millions after shaving their "fees" off the top. Expect another 25 dollar sparkly retarded mount that should have been boss loot in about a month or two.
I believe you are the one whom is nieve.
Even if Blizzard isn't making "more" money directly, they're making good PR from this, particularly because of peopel like yourself who so easily accept it at it's face value.
Is it nice that Blizzard is giving some of the money to charity? Yes, it is.
But, it's also pretty damn greedy of Blizzard to keep 50% of the amount. These pets did not cost a lot of money or man-power to create, they are low polygon count models with re-hashed textures. The mere fact that the game sports over 100 non-combat pets that were available "as included" with the entireity of the rest of the game, all for just the base price of the game, should hint that these take very little in effort to create.
Blizzard has never given 100% of the proceeds of any of these things to charity. It's always only been 50%, and only for a limited time. There are a lot of misinformed players who believe that ANY of the non-combat pets have their proceeds go to charity, paritcularly that the pandaren monk still does, even though that's long since expired.
Sure the charity makes a bit of money off this, but Blizzard is the winner in the end. It's more of a PR stunt than it is an actual,genuine, good will gesture. To believe otherwise is to truly be nieve.
See, this is where you and I differ. You look out there and think everybody are idiots who are taken in by marketing campaigns. I just don't see that. I think people who were inclined to get this will get it regardless, and those who might have been on the fence might fall either way due to charity bit. It's not going to make a huge amount of difference. If it were the first pet that they used this campaign on, in which they gave 100% of the proceeds to charity, would be seen everywhere, but it's not. The truth is it just doesn't make that much difference to people.
Also, you're assuming that just because I think what Blizzard is doing is a good thing, means I will buy this pet. I won't. I don't have the money to spare to buy virtual pets, charity or no.
Edit: Just saw the moderator post and I think maybe he's not happy with the direction this is going, so this will be the last post I make on the topic.
The best way to combat illegal RMT is to just develop it yourself, I guess. Maybe they should start selling gold to players so everybody doesn't have to get hacked w/o buying an authenticator.
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What does this have to do with RMT? This is more akin to item shops in a f2p game. RMT is strictly trading game money for real money.
Edit: That said, that's not a bad idea however. Afterall that's what Eve does with plex and I think that has cut down on the money traders rather significantly. I'm not sure that would work with WoW though, it's game economy would probably break even worse than it already is.