Smolt wrote: »

is a HUGE waste of money. If you are thinking of buying crowns, just think about what you're getting... stuff you'll hardly use in a game nobody will be playing in 5 years. Honestly though... looking through my own billing history was a wake up call and I'm embarrassed to admit I've wasted almost 1k on these stupid pixels... (sub fees not included). I'm still gonna play, still gonna sub but for me I now donate 20$ to charity every time I am tempted to buy crowns. It makes me feel better and alleviates my need to spend a bit of cash... I'd encourage others to look at their billing history and think of what else they could have done with the money! I like www.charitywatch.org to figure how best to spend my cash. So far I've given about $120, and I feel much much better about it than useless crown crate kiddy gambling nonsense.

The value of money is somewhat subjective. Once the basics of survival and comfort have been met, anything else is extraneous. While you see 1K as a waste of money over the course of a year, someone else might have been enthralled with their housing purchase (20K crowns, minimum), their stable of mounts, or even the million alts that they leveled with crown store boosters.

If you want to get really philosophical, money is inherently a construct and its value is wholly based and governed by perception. You do not take it with you when you die, though you can leave a legacy behind with enough of it spent on monuments. In that latter case, it has value. In the present tense of life, and in the amounts that most families posssess, it doesn’t. If the economies of the world were to collapse or *** toward a different currency (or no currency at all), whatever cash you had accumulated would be worthless. Happiness is a more measureable commodity and resource, and if someone spending $1000 on crowns and related goods brings them happiness (while not suffering from starvation or neglect), then who are you to deny them that?

I respect your choice to donate to charity, but I'd like to present an opposing viewpoint that buying crowns isn't necessarily the waste you think it is. The reason being: it supports a company whose product you enjoy and would like them to continue developing content for it in the future.
While MMOs do have a fluid player base, Zenimax (and by extension Bethesda) will theoretically develop future content with a stable to increasing stream of revenue. Part of that revenue is from subscriptions to ESO, another from buying the base game as a new player, and another part are crowns/crown store purchases.

Ethically speaking, donating your surplus income to charity is probably morally superior to buying crowns from a faceless company. On the other hand, crown purchases do indirectly go toward employee paychecks for this game company. The rationalization of where income is spent is an entirely personal decision, but not necessarily a wasteful one simply because it can be given to a faceless entity.