WoW stays true to form by dropping a $90 dinosaur mount during a controversial balance patch—and of course players are buying enough of them to gather in herds

World of Warcraft's been making a lot of positive changes, recently—a more alt-friendly warband system, a bigger focus on character-driven story, and an overall ease-up on the grind. I mean, there still is a grind. This is World of Warcraft after all, but it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be. The future's looking bright, and—what's that? There's a $90 dinosaur mount? People are mad about balance patches? Ah, crud.

In what looks like an effort to not let players get too excited about the overall positive direction of the game, World of Warcraft's had a bit of a time lately, starting with a patch that, aside from having a bug that meant Outlaw Rogues did obscene damage, seems so unilaterally unpopular that some players have been protesting in Mythic+. I'm not gonna get into the nitty-gritty here, since Blizzard has already started applying hotfixes, but it's had a clunky entry into the atmosphere.

Luckily, good ol' reliable Blizz has a cure for what ails ya—a very expensive dinosaur that also happens to have an auction house and mailbox strapped to the side: The Trader’s Gilded Brutosaur. It costs $90 (£50). In what I can only assume is a fit of madness (or the fact that the only other mount in the game with a mobile auctioneer costs 5 million gold), a lot of players are buying it.

"Maybe we deserve unfinished/half baked patches and sh*tty class balancing after all," writes a numb player on the game's subreddit under an image of $90 dinosaurs flooding the streets, writing with the same dread as a scientist in a movie watching a kaiju knock over a skyscraper.

Blizzard may have just hit the jackpot. from r/wow

"The universal response to one of the worst QA'd patches we've had is to fork over an entire expansion's worth of money. This is what we've chosen, yeah," adds another. Elsewhere on the subreddit, a different player directly thanks Todd Howard before posting the big, gaudy dino next to the infamous Oblivion Horse Armour, a meme of a microtransaction that's endured in the public consciousness for almost 20 years at this point.

Thanks Todd Howard from r/wow

Far from wanting to just take Reddit's word for it, I decided to boot up The War Within for the first time in a while and see if I could find any people flaunting their prehistoric bling. Surely, I thought, this is just some in-joke localised to a few specific servers. I'd logged out next to Brann Bronzebeard in Dornogal. Dear reader, I literally made it three steps before running into a herd of these things. This is during non-peak EU hours, too. The meme is real.

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Honestly? Maybe we do deserve this. If Blizzard can just slap some armour on a dinosaur with a little utility, and if players will flock to buy it and gather in literal herds, I think we've just lost all right to complain about microtransactions. This thing's more expensive than most full-priced games—but I can't deny it's got a certain allure to it.

It's the largest and most obvious way to advertise to everybody that you had $90 and weren't afraid to set it on fire. It's a big, blaring billboard that announces your lack of financial scrutiny. And, as a result, it is inevitably and incredibly funny to look at. We've opened Pandora's door, we've gotten on the floor, and now everybody's doing the dinosaur. Hey, at least Microsoft's making some of its money back.