Blizzard has announced that World of Warcraft, the biggest subscription MMO in the world, is
getting a Pet Store that will allow players to get in-game companions for the price of 10 dollars. The pets offer no clear gameplay benefit for those who buy them and are strictly cosmetic in nature. After the money is paid in the official Pet Store, players will get a code they can redeem through their account as long as it has been merged with the Battle.net service.
The newly announced Pet Store is the first time Blizzard has introduced microtransactions for in-game items to World of Warcraft, which could be the beginning of a significant shift for the MMO.
Until now, gamers could actually pay for things like changing the server on which they played or for changing the gender of their characters but no in-game objects were attached to the fees.
If the two pets sell in any significant number, Blizzard will probably offer more of them and will also introduce other microtransaction-based objects for players, with no gameplay value. One could easily find players of the MMO that are willing to pay just to make sure that they look original and different from those met in World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft could actually leverage the huge subscription number it has in order to get a foot into the microtransaction-based market. It might not be too long until we see Blizzard selling gear and weapons for the MMO.
It might just be that Blizzard has decided that the level of growth its MMO could get from releasing actual new content is not sufficient and decided that adding a microtransaction layer to the game could actually attract a new crowd while also introducing a new revenue stream for the company.
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