Thoughts on the Gilded Brutosaur

Last week, Blizzard added a new Auction House mount, the Gilded Brutosaur, to the Blizzard store for $90 USD. Naturally, it became a focal point of discussion in the WoW and MMO community.

First, some context. Back in Battle for Azeroth, you could buy the Mighty Caravan Brutosaur for 5 million gold. It was the only way to access the Auction House outside a major city. The mount was only available during the expansion, and was removed when the next expansion launched. The only way to currently obtain it is when it very rarely appears on the Black Market Auction House, where it regular sells for the "gold cap", or the maximum possible bid.

So this is the first time Blizzard is making an AH vendor available in several years.

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. The problem is that you cannot talk about expensive items, whether in in-game gold or real-world currency, without bringing in the WoW token. And the WoW token greatly muddies the issue.

As you may recall, the WoW token essentially allows you to to trade real-world currency for in-game gold. Let's say the exchange rate is 400,000 gold to $15 USD. At that rate, the new Brutosaur costs 2.4 million gold. And the old Brutosaur cost $187.50. Does that mean the new Brutosaur is actually half the cost of the old one?

A second important point is that the WoW token exchange rate is not fixed, but floating. 

Amusing graph of the WoW Token exchange rate when the new mount was released. From Reddit.

The floating rate means that only one price is fixed, the other is variable. Which currency is better to fix? If you fix the gold value, that means the USD side might range from, say, $60 to $120, depending on when the player tries to buy tokens. To me, that seems worse than letting in-game gold vary.

Building on the floating exchange point, the side which is fixed changes the exchange rate. If the gold side is fixed, that means the supply of tokens increases as players without gold buy tokens. The rate then falls, requiring players to buy even more tokens to purchase the item.

On the other hand, if the USD side is fixed, the demand for tokens increases, and the rate goes up. This means that players who do supply tokens get a better deal in terms of in-game gold.

If you look at the issue strictly from this point of view, I think it's clearly better for expensive items to be priced in USD. It's better for the USD price to be predictable. Once you're past a certain point, there's not a lot of use for in-game currency, so it matters less if it is variable. As well, the effect on the exchange rate is healthier for the game, and a better experience for those buying WoW tokens for real-world currency.

For those reasons, I think that we're not going to seen any more items which cost a million or more in-game gold. It's awkward, and looks unfortunate on social media, but super-expensive items just work better when they're on the store, priced in real-world currency.