No sooner did Blizzard offer up two new virtual beasts for World of Warcraft players to buy—one mount, one pet—than did the fanbase queue up in the tens of thousands to buy them, netting Blizzard millions.
Blizzard put the Celestial Steed mount and Lil’ XT pet up for sale today, priced at $US25 USD/20€ and $US10 USD/10€, respectively. According to a report from WoW.comf, the queue to grab these virtual items from Blizzard’s store at one point topped 140,000 people, with waits for more than 7 hours to download the digital beasts.
The quick math puts that somewhere between $US1.4 million and $US3.5 million in revenue for Blizzard in just a matter of hours.
Queue for Celestial Steed and Lil’ XT is above 140,000 [WoW.com]
Riavan
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 2:29 PMI’m assuming they will make more, lol.
spiz
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 3:46 PMdefinately, but i wouldnt say they would make them anytime soon, because most people who bought it wouldnt buy/need another one. thus the amount of people that will buy it will be much smaller.
if they wait for a little while until the items become fairly common, the potential audience resets.
MrBS
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 3:36 PMLook forward to the future of WoW! Cortesy of your friends and Actiblizzard.
Dire Wolf
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 4:07 PMI love how anytime Blizzard does something that people don’t agree with it’s Activisions fault. Activision did not force Blizzard to do this.
Mic
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 5:25 PMHave you heard the stuff that the Heads of Activision used to come up with? They only wanted to make franchises that they could, quote, whore out.
Mooshis
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 3:44 PMThat is ridiculous.
Tyr
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 4:37 PMMissus grabbed the mount earlier today and apprantly it may be a limited offer… There was a bar on the screen that said something along the lines of 88% of stock left…
Mr Waffle
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 4:38 PMUS$25?! Are you serious? I could understand like a couple of bucks, but… sigh.
Jordaan Mylonas
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 4:54 PMHow much would it cost those WoW players to buy back their dignity?
alinos
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 5:33 PMwell the only way to solve that would be to have Einstein make a timemachine to assasinate the people who came up with the original idea of WoW
(though this may create a subset of RTS games :P)
WaNgTaCuLaR
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 7:37 PMGod damn it. I wonder how the people who bought this crap feel about helping destroy the gaming industry.
Darren
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 9:19 PMYou see, it’s crap like this that almost brings me back to that game. I hate/love it.
I really enjoyed my time with WOW. Had a ball. But that is all done and dusted now.
Dragonseer
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 9:25 PMThis is one of those things that makes me lament at the state of humanity.
Strand0410
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 11:27 PMSaw a billion of these in Dalaran today, it’s a very sweet looking mount I must admit but the very fact it’s so easily available means the charm is lost as it’s just become another thing every Tom, Dick and Harry has.
Shocking that Blizz literally made money out of thin air last couple days. Millions of dollars with practically 0 investment or cost.