I'm a paladin on my mount/pet collector, so I'm glad I have even any access to this, but really, I'm mostly sad the mounts I did hard work for are now less awesome, the rep I ground out for pets is now less awesome, and that I will have to pray for it to be healer or make a tank set because the two pets I don't want to pay AH price for will be in there.

Plus I feel bad for the mage main I live with :c

@ Tribunal

I hate statements like this. How does it make your things less awesome? Just because more people have something it doesn't diminish how it looks. Yes it becomes less rare, but if it seemed awesome before it should be the same.

@Lionheart

The rarity of the item contributes to the value of the item. If you had something which is very common then it won't be worth much to a lot of people. If on the other hand you had something which only 200 people in the world had then you (and everyone else) would value that item a lot more. If you've ever collected anything that is rare or has gone out of print and you found out they were making more of those items, I'm sure you would be pissed too. Every collector will tell you that the thing that adds the most value to an item is its rarity. I don't know why it should be different for collecting mounts/pets.

@DJ

Take for example Sporereggar rep... useful mostly for achievement/pet purposes.

Why have the rep at all if you've going to give the pet away? It sounds like it's not even that rare a chance for the pet.

So yeah, I farmed that pain in the bum rep for a pet. Now anyone who runs a dungeon can have it.

It's a little annoying. Is it the end of the world? No. Is the pet shitty now? No, it's still adorable. It's just a little less awesome, which is exactly why I put it that way.

@Sky

Except with digital goods there is no such thing as real rarity. A 2007 phoenix mount is the same as a 2011 phoenix mount, while this is not true of physical goods. The limit on the number of rare mounts/pets etc is the number of people who can be bothered to grind for them, not the fact they stopped making them in 1961.

And also you are wrong. The thing that adds the most value to an item is the demand for that item in relation to its rarity. As most of these items are easy to grind out anyway the demand is simply not that high (ie if you cared that much you would already have been grinding for it).

The fact that other people can get your pet easier than you did doesn't make it less awesome, it just sucks for you that you spent a bunch of time grinding it out. It's like you spent agesworking, and eventually after a great deal of effort, you saved up enough money to buy a lexus. a couple of years later, someone else won a competition, and the prize was a lexus. your lexus' are both still lexus', and just as awesome as eachother; it's just that you had to work hard for yours, and the other person didn't.

Actually digital items can increase or decrease in rarity according to the wishes of the people producing the game. Items which are no longer (such as the spectral tiger afaik) can rapidly become rarer than real world collector's items as they can't trade hands and once a player quits or is banned, the item effectively becomes scarcer (though the available stock hasn't changed).

For items still in the game the rarity gradually decreases depending on whether the drop rate (or whatever method is used to acquire it) is higher than the rate at which those obtaining the item disappear. However this figure isn't necessarily static: Blizzard nerfed the drop rate for the Battered Hilt for example, meaning it effectively became rarer after day 1 of it dropping. Likewise when they ban players for things like Arch automators, the relative scarcity of archaeology rares increases.

If the only value you get from your "stuff" is whether or not someone else also has it; then you are in for endless disappointments in life.

I have to agree that commonality makes something "less awesome". When they first showed pictures of the Spectral Steed, everyone and their brother thought it was just about the coolest thing they'd ever seen. Now what's the public opinion of them? "Laaaaame." So what happened? Did it spontaneously look different? Everyone thought they were so great, then it was released and all of those people got it. Suddenly, you saw it everywhere and it wasn't so cool anymore. I think maybe the same can be said of the Raven Lord to a small degree. I remember riding mine around Dalaran constantly and people would always pst me "Your mount is cool! where'd you get it?" Once I found TWO other people with it at the same time and I just thought it was amazing that there three in the same place. We had a little parade. Now I see them alot more all over and, to me at least, it feels a little less cool. A little less exclusive. Granted, I also got a cooler ground mount to ride on, so that may temper my feelings a little. (Not to brag, but I lucked out and the Landro's Loot Box card that came with my Collector's Edition gave me a Spectral Tiger.) Although think about this: The Spectral Tiger is a cool mount, right? If tomorrow Blizzard gave one to every toon and everyone was riding them around, would it seem "less awesome"?

People seems to think that the drops rates are going to great. Blizzard isn't that dumb. They'll likely still be 1% drop rate or whatever they are in their home dungeon. These are also things you had to grind a dungeon for. Now tanks will just be grinding heroics for them instead of soloing old content.

Hah. Like hell I will.

I'd still rather run Strat thirty zillion times over than tank a random.

@Drakhen et al;

The trouble with that reasoning is that there are ALREADY people who got the same mount as you for amazingly little work.

Take the Deathcharger, for example: I ran Strat over 100 times to get it. My friend got it in 10 times. Blizzard "gave" it to him for almost no effort, while I spent days grinding for it. Meanwhile, another friend who got it back when he was running strat at the appropriate level, and when it was a much rarer drop thinks both of us got off easy.

If something is a random drop, then getting it is somewhat akin to gambling; you can't ever claim to have "earned" something through gambling; it all comes down to luck. Now, if someone has an alternate ability to get that same thing because they're a tank, well, that's just another kind of luck, isn't it?

I think a common misconception about this argument is that there is only one valid point of view.

I collect; I place the value of the item on the amount of work I invest to get said item. If i see someone else get it the same way, there is a kindred feeling in that we both worked very hard. If said item becomes easier to get, I lose a sense of investment and the item does feel different; it loses a certain something, that the french call... yeah. I think it's hard to argue that people don't understand why I would feel this way.

But at the same time, those who do not feel that the item is worth, say 17+ weeks in Molten Core, still value the pet for it's "awesomeness". But, it is a different type. Many people may have the item before them, but it doesn't affect them in the same way. If they did not feel the need to grind to get the item as soon as possible, they probably don't mind that there are more out there. And to avoid misunderstanding, I don't think they are lazy or anything of the sort. They just value the pet's "awesomeness" in a different way. Their idea of whether a pet becomes less neatos mosquitoes is inherently seen from a different perspective.

There is no right or wrong answer. And more importantly, it is not selfish or strange to feel a pet has lost a value that is truly only assigned by the owner. :D If value is assigned by an individual, leave it to the individual to decide how that value changes.

Oh and read ZAMM, by Robert Pirsig... It's a good one! :)