The Trader’s Gilded Brutosaur is considered the most expensive mount in the MMO and provides tangible in-game advantages.
In October 2024, WoWoffered the Trader’s Gilded Brutosaur in the in-game shop. With a price tag of almost 80 euros, the dinosaur was by far the most expensive mount ever seen in the game – and the Brutosaurus was met with a lot of controversy in the community.
Now the editorial team of the WoW fan site WoWHead has calculatedhow much money the manufacturer Blizzard was able to generate with this questionable offer – and comes up with a dizzyingly high sum of over 16 million US dollars.
What was calculated?
WoWHead admits that this is only an approximation, as they can only rely on publicly available data for the calculation. Regional price differences have not been included in the calculation.
Based on statistics and account data from Data for Azeroth and Raider.io, two of the largest data collections for World of WarCraft, calculations were made to determine how often the Trader’s Gilded Brutosaurus was sold.
Assuming a price of $90, WoWHead calculates that the dino has generated a total revenue of $16,946,010– significantly more than many entire games make over the course of years.
Advantages and FOMO
The huge dino mount gives WoW players a huge advantage because it is equipped with two exclusive services: : direct access to the auction house from almost anywhere in the game and a mobile mailbox. Both are valuable and time-saving advantages when you can take them with you everywhere as a mount.
Accordingly, many players rushed to get the limited-time offer despite the high price. However, criticism was not only directed at the price, but also at the business practice »FOMO« (fear of missing out), which is caused by artificially creating scarcity or limiting the time of an offer.
When hordes of the outrageously expensive dino gathered in WoW, a user on Reddit wrote : “I think Blizzard has just hit the jackpot.” Another player cynically replies, “Maybe we deserve half-baked updates and lousy class balance after all.” He gets several thousand thumbs up.
The future belongs to the in-game shops
Whether you consider the mount a great service or manipulative profit maximization, the demand is undisputedly huge. That’s why WoWHead comes to only one conclusion at the end of his analysis:
At a time when investors and analysts are encouraging developers and publishers to increase the revenue generated by their games, we expect to see more expensive mounts and cosmetic content in the store in the future.
Since Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, there has been a growing wave of monetization of WoW, such as coupling cosmetic in-game items with the purchase of sweets or energy drinks, the article says.
The trend towards more microtransactions in games has been observed for many years. Offering additional content or advantages for extra costs has now become established not only in the free2play area, but also in full-price or subscription titles.
