Dell poised to gouge World of Warcraft fans
Dell’s new WoW-themed Laptop takes a playbook from the Ironforge Auction house: sell something at a stupidly high price, and someone’s gonna buy it!
What better gift for a World of Warcraft fan than a World of Warcraft themed laptop from Dell? Dell and Blizzard have teamed up to put together a tantalizing offer for fans, including a unique laptop case, preloaded WoW graphics and theme, and bonus coupons for Collector’s Edition pets. You even get a golden ticket for a printed figurine of your own “unique” character. (at least as unique as you can get in WoW, given that everyone else out there has the same gear you do)
But the package comes with a very hefty price tag: $4,499 USD. The sad thing is, you can get the exact same M1730 laptop from Dell for under $3000. Or mostly identical. Dell’s an odd-ball company: you can’t order the 160G hard drive in their US store, but you can in their Canadian store. Here’s the exact breakdown:
WoW M1730: $4,499
US M1730 (120G instead of 160G): $2,849
CAN M1730 (Vista Home Premium instead of Ultimate): $2,699
Note that the price upgrade for Ultimate in the US store is $150, and the price upgrade for the hard drive in the Canadian store is $100, so you’re looking at about $2,950 USD or $2,850 CAN…
Anyways, aside from their weirdness in configuration options, Dell’s asking WoW fans to shell out a whopping $1500 just to get a fancy looking case, a custom figurine, and a few bonuses that may as well be freebies. (they sure didn’t cost Dell or Blizzard anything to throw in!) I suppose the figurine might be a valuable bonus, considering that they’re expected to be in short supply when available and a lottery system will be used to determine who actually gets to buy them. Still, it’s $1500 to butt in line…
I always knew that WoW attracted tons of scammers, but I used to think they would just shout silly things in Ironforge. Now Blizzard and Dell have teamed up for the ultimate scam; Good luck petitioning a GM about this one!
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