Cata at what cost?

[Owltoid]

I wouldn't be so sure. They sold millions of panda vanity pets and those dumb celestial winged horse mounts. I absolutely see them saying "hey, we want to introduce entire new races or classes or zones, but we don't want to put it in an expansion because it's not that big, so you can buy them ala carte instead for less money, and we can get them out to you more frequently so the game stays fresh." The only time I could see microtransactions causing a massive fanbase revolt like you suggest would be if they offered actual *advantages* ingame. In this case, it would simply be offering distributed expansions over time rather than just these big, huge, every-2-years deals.

Unless they did away with racials, offering new races for money is the same as offering actual *advantages* ingame. I'm not disagreeing with the prediction that Blizzard will eventually go to microtransactions, I'm just clarifying that vanity pets is still a long way off from races for sale.

[kate]

Unless they did away with racials, offering new races for money is the same as offering actual *advantages* ingame. I'm not disagreeing with the prediction that Blizzard will eventually go to microtransactions, I'm just clarifying that vanity pets is still a long way off from races for sale.

Good point! Though racials are kind of a mixed bag - some are better than others, but everyone seems to find different ones to be good/bad for the situation. I guess when I was saying actual advantages it might be something like "buy rep with x faction for $y" or "buy heirlooms" or stuff like that. I was actually a little iffy about the celestial mount because it basically means that you never have to spend however much gold ever again on other mounts on any other alts you make - technically, it could be considered buying gold for money, albeit very, very slowly