They used to have bonuses, but not anymore. All mounts are purely cosmetic now. I don't know why ZOS left the higher price.

When they added the Crown store with mounts, they reduced the price of the basic mount to 10K gold so that it would be more easily attainable, in order to avoid the appearance of the Crown store mounts being pay to win items.

At the same time they made all mounts have the exact same stats for the same reasons (if any Crown store mounts had any better stats than what you could buy for gold they would be considered pay to win, while if any of the ones you could buy for gold had better stats it would hurt Crown store sales).

They didn't reduce the price on the mounts that used to give you bonus stats, though. Why? Because the only reason people would buy them now is for aesthetic reasons (ie. because they like the way they look), and if you like them enough to buy them, you'll probably do it at the higher price just as readily as you would at the lower price. The game doesn't have a lot of gold sinks, so keeping this gold sink in the game (even if it will only apply to a relatively small segment of the player base) makes sense.

Violynne wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Because the only reason people would buy them now is for aesthetic reasons (ie. because they like the way they look), and if you like them enough to buy them, you'll probably do it at the higher price just as readily as you would at the lower price.

I hope people weren't reading my post as a rant.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I didn't read it as a rant; just a question about something that was obviously puzzling you (and that has puzzled many other people - I've seen lots of people ask the same thing).

Violynne wrote: »

Never paid attention to the mounts before a few days ago, and it's funny regarding the gold sink, because that's why I looked. I figured I'd buy one since I have a bucket full of gold with nothing to buy. I was going to start a "stable mount collection", and that's when I noticed the descriptions.

Too bad about the lost bonuses, though. I'd gladly buy that horse built for speed.

Well, don't feel too bad about the lost bonuses. When the horses had individual bonuses, the maximum level of a horse (ie. the upgrades you could give it) was 50. The horses with bonuses started at +10 to one stat, so by upgrading that stat 50 times you could get them to a total of +60 in that stat above what a base horse would have. They would then have no upgrades in the other stats, though (actually that's not quite true - at some point an upgrade would give the horse +1 in all 3 stats instead of just in one).

Now with any mount you can get up to +60 in all stats. So although it starts 10 steps behind where an old "special" horse started, any old mount now can get 3 times better than a "special" horse could under the old system.

Oh, and for the record, I've got each mount available from the stables. I bought the former speed one and the former capacity one under the old system, and I bought the former stamina one (and the base 10K one) under the new system just because I felt like getting one of each of the ones you can buy with gold. I've got a bunch of the crown store mounts too, but I haven't felt the desire to get all of them.

I want to bring back this old thread.

Is there a way PLEASE for Zenimax to lower the prices for these mounts currently in the stable, and, can Zenimax Please add all mounts or more mounts for sale at the stables? I mean it's ok we have crowns store. BUT they (They being ZoS) said it themselves, crown store is ONLY a convenient way to get items. So if Crowns store is convenient, then why not just add them to the stables so we can purchase the mounts with in game gold.

Why make it so hard being greedy selling for real money? I'm sure every 15 year old in the Country (World zone) has tons of money to spend instead of paying rent, buying food, getting clothes, paying bills, blah blah.

I'm sorry if this looks like I'm stingy or a penny pincher, and that's ok. You don't know me or the fact I already spent thousands of real money dollars on this game and like a moron continue to do so because I have no good life and want to throw money I don't have at complete nameless faceless strangers so they can pay their rent, buy food, pay for their dates, gas in their cars so that they can have a life best suited to make someone like me docile with pretty sench tiger mounts.

(LoL)