I don't understand what's the problem with buying a simple cosmetic item, ie. a mount. No-one's gaining any advantage with it. Or are we sending wrong signals to the developers and encouraging them to carry on making cosmetic items.

I honestly don't understand why people are called mindless when they simply want their character to either look interesting or have something interesting next to them.

*Edit: I've got the tiger and bought the ice mount, and I'll most likely buy this one as well. Don't know what to do with my crowns anyway.

Actually, it's not that at all.

There has been a lot of speculation as to what the release price of the mount would be, especially after the release of the DLC Costs.

The general feeling was that ZOS would lower the price to make it more obtainable - hence the keenness to find out

they should lower the price for mounts lol, this is pathetic

To be clear; this new mount does NOT give me an advantage in anyway. I just think it looks cool and can spend my own money anyway I choose.

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Trolling & Baiting]

Stay in school and this won't be an issue. I wasn't going to get this but I think I am now so I can ride all over the haters tears. Then switch to my frost mount when my kitty is tired.

They just tweeted about it with a vine video of it running. Looks sweet. But da bear, give me da bear.

Man this thread turned nasty quickly. If someone wants to buy something it is their choosing. Even if it is a "money grab" for people who succumb to limited time offers let it be. The one things about mmo's I have always disliked is that everyone will eventually have the same items and look the same for the most part. So I can understand why some want to buy "limited" things that come on the crown store. It makes you a unique little butterfly!

That being said I'll probably end up picking up the mount so I can be a unique little butterfly. However, I have the crowns to buy it from the ESO subscription I don't mind paying. I do feel that 2500 crowns is a bit steep. Making limited mounts more around the equivalent $10 for standardish looking mounts and $15 for effect mounts would be more fitting.

P3ZZL3 wrote: »

Actually, it's not that at all.

There has been a lot of speculation as to what the release price of the mount would be, especially after the release of the DLC Costs.

I've brought this up before in different threads, but I think it should probably be said here too. Thinking that there should be any sort of direct relationship between the price of DLC and the price of a purely cosmetic item is a mistake. They have completely different pricing strategies, and must be measured on entirely different metrics in order to determine if they have been priced appropriately to be considered a success.

DLC is far more important to the long-term health of the game than purely cosmetic items, because essentially the entire player base (including the potential player base consisting of people who might buy the game and start playing) cares about having more content and more stuff to do. For a DLC to be successful it has to appeal to a large percentage of the player base. Not necessarily the entire player base, but a large enough portion of it that everyone who gets it can go and find lots of other people playing it.

A large part of that is, naturally, making it content that people are interested in and excited to play. At least as important as that, however, is making the price point for the DLC low enough that a large portion (ideally the majority) of the player base will look at it and say "yes, that's reasonable and I will buy it/subscribe for it". The marketing folks will want to look at the DLC price and try to make it low enough to achieve that, while also making it high enough that if the expected percentage of the player base buys it, it will make money. With DLC it's better for them to err on the side of making it cheap enough that it won't make money, though, because if it gets more people to keep playing the game it can indirectly generate revenue. That means that it can be OK for DLC to be priced as a loss leader (although ideally it won't be).

Now the pricing strategy for purely cosmetic items is entirely different. Unlike DLC, with cosmetic items you're not trying to appeal to a majority of the player base. There's a large segment of the player base that doesn't care about cosmetic items at all, and won't ever be enticed into spending money on them. Within the segment of the player base that is interested in cosmetic items the vast majority won't be interested in every cosmetic item anyway, and will only consider buying the item if it's one that they like the look of. As different people have entirely different taste as far as what they do and don't like the look of, each individual cosmetic item has an inherently limited market.

So based on the fact that cosmetics are, by definition, a luxury item with a built-in market limitation, what is the marketing strategy that makes sense? Basically, you price some of them that have more generic appeal (like horses and other things that you would expect to see commonly in the setting) relatively low, because the market segment is more likely to think "yeah, that's OK" and buy them if they're cheap enough to make them not think too much about it, and you price some more "rare" (and by rare I really mean fancier things that stand out in the setting as being special) cosmetics relatively high. For the "rare" ones, even before you consider what you're going to price them at, they will appeal to a smaller segment of the market for cosmetics than the "common" ones, because there will always be a chunk of people saying "I don't like that because it doesn't seem to fit in". So you're not even trying to market those to the entire market for cosmetics. Instead you're marketing those specifically to the people who will look at them and say "hey, that's really cool" and for those people you want to make the price point right where it's high enough to make the item a good little earner (Tina Turner) for the company, but low enough that a decent percentage of the people who look at it and say "hey, that's really cool" will be willing to pay for it.

For those "rare" cosmetic items a price point that equates to $20-$30 is probably the sweet spot (or close to it, anyway). If you price it much higher than that, the only people who will buy it are the whales, whereas if you price it much lower than that you won't increase the number sold by enough to compensate for the lower revenue per unit (due to the inherently limited market).

P3ZZL3 wrote: »

The general feeling was that ZOS would lower the price to make it more obtainable - hence the keenness to find out

The keenness to find out is totally understandable

attenchun wrote: »

they should lower the price for mounts lol, this is pathetic

Different mounts are priced differently, including ones that don't cost you a single penny of real money. If all you want is a mount, just buy the one that you buy in-game for 10,000 gold. If you consider all crown store mounts to be too expensive, then you're not the target market.

I like the mount a lot, I have the other cat mount....I would get this one, but I REALLY don't want to have to start all over with the training that I've done on my first mount :-/