There’s been quite a lot of fuss over the last few days about some of the holiday additions to WildStar’s cash shop. I think Syp over at Bio Break did a good job of summarizing everything, but it won’t stop me from adding my 2c.
Yup. I’m a satisfied customer.
The general complaint is that some of the biggest ticket items in the cash shop can only be used on one character. I definitely think Carbine got it completely wrong in one case: the Haunted House fabkit. Charging over $10 for an item that can only be used on one character AND that disappears forever if you decide you want to remodel your house seemed completely overboard. Fortunately that’s since been fixed. The item can still only be used on one character, but it will always be available to build when you want it. I’m still not sure if it is a good value for me, but since it does give you an entire second house on your plot it is definitely tempting.
As for the mounts, I honestly have fewer complaints there. People were a little unhappy that the cool Shade’s Eve mount was for one character only, but I saw lots of people riding them and didn’t hear too many complaints. Things didn’t start getting really salty until people found out the delorean hoverboard was a cash shop item. I feel like this is a case of people being cranky that the coolest item from a very short in-game event is only available from the cash shop. The fact that it is only usable on one character just piled on top of that.
I think that if this event and cool mount had happened a bit later after the F2P transition then people would have far less to complain about, since they’d be able to buy what they wanted with omnibits instead of cash. In the end I decided to buy the hoverboard myself because it looks amazing, and frankly because I’ve been playing for over a year and never had a subscription thanks to CREDD. Supporting the game by buying something fun that makes me smile every time I see it seems like a win win. I also know that the devs are looking into making more of the cash shop items available account-wide, so I suspect I might have access to my purchase on all my alts long before the event comes back around next year. And if not? I’m still happy. I can’t look at that hoverboard and not be happy.
