No it doesn't. The principle of charging for game changing items is different from charging for fluff.

And they HAVE done this since day one. What do you think the collectors edition was? You paid more and got... pets. The BC and Wrath expansions also had collectors editions, and again both feature pets in exchange for more money. The 2009 arena tournament featured a pet for people who participated (causing people to make teams and sign up just to get the pet), and the past several Blizzcons have all given pets (or mounts, or costumes) to attendees (and most recently to people watching on DirecTV). The trading card game has rare cards with all kinds of frivolous effects, including a rare spectral mount. Hell, the pet store itself opened months ago.

So... where have you been? All they've done differently is eliminate the middleman. You want the goodie, you now buy it directly instead of buying some other box that contains it, or having to go to ebay. We're five years into this, and there's still no sign of gameplay affecting items.

They wouldn't do it unless they are going to make money out of it and they don't have to do it to stay ahead (they are doing that with game content - not external features).

Put simply - no MMO is half as good as WoW. (THIS IS MY OPINION! Not based on popularity but how much I care about the game, the world, lore, story, features, options, my agency within the game etc) They are also the most popular western "sub" game and that means no competition, that means they can charge whatever they think people will pay.

All these other MMOs have to do deals, cut corners (and they STILL don't know how to get players properly - Im constantly seeing customers turned off because of bad design).

Sometimes you do things like this to maintain customers, not just charge them more. WoW won't be on top forever. They just won't be. It's only a matter of time. Nickle and diming their playerbase to death will only speed the process.

Okay its my opinion. As in its features, its playstyles, options and content are - in my opinion - far better than any other MMO I have tried (thats means the features fit me more than other MMOs) and the others I extrapolate from others opinions to be the same. Thus, my "Put simply" statement.

Nesrie, your correct. Note that EQ2 is doing a $25 mount also now* (which is crap since it dosn't have wings - I wonder if the EQ2 developers from 2003 acttually knew their bad designs would screw over the game for the next decade?).

* as opposed to a $26 or $22 one - all they ever seem to do at SOE is steal everyone elses methods, they sell other crap as well I think. I havn't played EQ2 since RoK.

Pricing on the next two hasn't been announced yet, so that's speculation. The only real difference is that you don't need the first one to play the second one, whereas with a normal expansion you do. But really all they did in this case was pre-announce the expansions, rather then waiting until release then telling people what everybody already knew was coming.

The problem is the MMO business model has shifted from let's sell this game, build a playerbase, and maintain that playerbase by offering an ever evolving world with constant free updates, new content and well goodies and when we have something really big in the works charge for an expansion pack.

Now it's more like, forget the playerbase, let's hype the hell out of our unfinished often still in beta status game, sell the hell out of it, watch most those players leave, while those remaining players are asking for ridiculous things like fixes to bugs and features we promised and might even have written on the box, open up a cash shop and start selling them more while we still can because we're just going to loose them anyway. Later down the road, what, we still have players left, obviously we're not charging enough! Let's get these sucks, err players, again and find another way to charge them. New mounts, extra monthly services, heck some of us might even create a premium service... you know one where you send a message to customer service and you actually get a reply back! That should certainly up the monthly charge from 15 to 25, 30 easy!

EQ2 is in no position, by the way, to try and milk their  playerbase. At least WoW has a substantial playerbase, EQ2 still need to get that.