There’s a new mount available in the World of Warcraft item shop. The Trader’s Gilded Brutosaur is a giant, Brontosaurus-like creature that comes with some handy features and is decorated in golden armor themed around the game’s 20th anniversary.
It costs $90. It’s only available until Jan. 6. It’s very controversial. And, by all accounts, it’s selling like hot cakes.
The WoW subreddit is currently on fire with memes, angry screeds, subscription-cancellation oaths, and screenshots of Dornogal (capital city of current expansion The War Within) comically crowded with the absurdly large beasts.
Why (apart from the obvious) is everyone so upset about the Trader’s Gilded Brutosaur? And, perhaps more to the point, why does such an eye-wateringly expensive in-game trinket seem to be selling so well?
The Trader’s Gilded Brutosaur looks majestic, as befits any special mount — Blizzard says the gems encrusting its armor represent WoW’s 10 expansions — but that’s not why it commands such a high price. The mount, which can be summoned instantly almost anywhere in the game, belongs to a very special class that comes with NPC vendors seated on it, offering functions that can usually only be found in town. In this case, the Bruto’s two vendors offer access to a mailbox and to WoW’s auction house.
In an MMO like WoW, convenience is everything. There are restrictions on fast travel, and travel times back to town (or back from town) can be long. Vendor mounts offering armor repair, the ability to sell junk in your inventory, and other conveniences are relatively easy to get. A mobile mailbox is trickier; there are various ways to get one, but they’re either time-intensive grinds, or restricted to certain professions or situations.
But a mobile auction house is something else. Until now, it has only ever been available on the Mighty Caravan Brutosaur mount, which was on sale for the princely sum of 5 million gold during the Battle for Azeroth expansion in 2018-2020, but is now discontinued and very rare. (It can very occasionally be found on WoW’s in-game black market for even more eye-watering sums.) For trading-minded players who play the auction house to make gold, a mobile auction house is a massive time-saver and, potentially, revenue-increaser. So it’s extremely desirable, and could be a worthwhile investment.
Even so, $90 might seem an awful lot for a single in-game convenience. But consider the exchange rate between WoW gold and real money (an item called the WoW Token enables in-game gold to be traded on the auction house for Battle.net balance that can be spent at the item store, on WoW subscription fees, or on other Blizzard games). At current rates, $90 is worth around 1.5 million gold — a huge saving on the Brutosaur’s original in-game cost, and within reach of many players, if they are prepared to cash out their in-game bank balance.
In fact, the Trader’s Gilded Brutosaur is so popular that some players are reporting WoW Tokens are sold out on their servers’ auction houses. This, in turn, may drive up the exchange rate in the coming days, and make the mount a little bit less of a “bargain.”
Some players are incensed at Blizzard slapping such a high price on an in-game item, part of a perceived increase in the developer’s nickel-and-diming of the WoW audience. (For the first time, The War Within offered early access to players who bought a premium edition.) Conversely, some players are distraught that their huge investment in the original Brutosaur has just been undercut.
But it seems a lot of players are happy with their new $90 mounts — and Blizzard has a major new sales success on its hands.
