Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is no stranger to costly in-game cosmetics, but its latest super expensive mount is so popular it’s causing a shortage of WoW Tokens in the in-game auction house.The mount in question is the Trader’s Gilded Brutosaur, which you can see in the screenshot below.World of Warcraft’s $90 Trader’s Gilded Brutosaur Mount. Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment.What’s so special about it, and why does it cost an eye-watering $90? It comes with a 20th Anniversary themed harness encrusted with gems representing World of Warcraft’s expansions. But beyond that, it features actually useful systems not normally found on mounts: it lets you check the in-game auction house and the mail while riding it out and about the world of Azeroth via characters Morten and Killia riding alongside the beast.Fueling the mount’s popularity is Blizzard’s decision to make it only temporarily available for purchase. It plans to pull it from the World of Warcraft store on January 6, 2025, so players know they only have a few months before it’s (potentially) gone forever.To put the cost of this mount into context, it’s the same price as the deluxe edition of World of Warcraft’s latest expansion, The War Within, or about half a year’s subscription to the long-running MMO.The mount lets you check the auction house and the mail on the go. Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment.Still, some players are saying the Trader’s Gilded Brutosaur is a bargain at $90, and that’s because its value in WoW Tokens compares favorably to the five million in-game gold people paid for the original version of this mount when it was sold for a limited time back in 2018.WoW Tokens can be exchanged for Battle.net Balance, not just game time, which means players can indirectly buy anything Blizzard sells for real-world money with in-game gold. Here’s how it works: players can buy a WoW Token from Blizzard for $20 and either keep it for later or put it on the in-game auction house. Another player will then buy that token from the auction house for in-game gold, then exchange it for $15 of Battle.net Balance (Blizzard effectively takes a $5 tax from the transaction). Battle.net Balance can then be used to buy anything Blizzard sells for World of Warcraft for real-world money, including $90 mounts.This method relies on players selling WoW Tokens in the game’s auction house, and right now they’re scarce because so many players are snapping them up to use to buy this mount. Because of that, WoW Tokens are selling out and their price in gold has skyrocketed.”The auction house’s WoW Token right now is out of WoW Token supplies since you need suppliers to supply the demand, and currently skyrocketing given the 3% price cap per 20 minutes,” redditor arasitar explained. “WoW Token was 200k on NA. Probably going to go to 400k in a short bit.”At the time of this article’s publication, a WoW Token costs 335,171 gold on U.S. servers. You need six WoW Tokens bought from the auction house to buy this new version for $90, or, at the current rate, just over two million gold. The original Brutosaur cost five million gold.What does this all tell us? Not much that we didn’t know about the World of Warcraft community, anyway. Mounts have, over the years, proved incredibly popular no matter how much money they cost to buy. The original Brutosaur, released in 2018 alongside the Battle for Azeroth expansion, sold like hot cakes, too. World of Warcraft players love their mounts!For Blizzard, it’s laughing all the way to the bank. Or, as redditor Chuckieshere put it: “This mount probably just made more money than StarCraft 2 for 1/1000th of the effort.”Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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