Why A Little RMT Can Be A Good Thing

Blizzard introduced two non-combat pets for money this week, and a furor ensued. I don't visit the official WoW forums anymore, but I'm guessing that at least a dozen threads were filled up by people who promised (promised!) to cancel their accounts. Larisa portended a slippery slope to pay-for-epics.

I'm going to be a little contrarian, for the first time ever.

When I got out of school I had a number of avenues in terms of searching for a job. It pretty much boiled down to this : I could work for a company that sold my services, or I could work for a company that sold something else -- insurance, for example.

I decided on the former. A company that sold my services was making money on me, and would never have a reason to lay me off to "save money". Whereas an insurance company would probably always see me as overhead (unless I somehow ended up making a product for them) and I would be expendable.

The moral of the story is that you want your employer to make money from your employment, in the most direct way possible.

Which brings us to paid pets. If you are a pet collector this should be a bonanza -- an opportunity to pay Blizzard directly to make more (and cooler) pets. As a result, Blizzard will never think of pets as overhead, and they will always be given their due.