-Get people to buy tradeable MT items
-Get people to pay for server transfers
-Pathetic effort to equalize server populations without consolidating servers, as if 500k players can adequately populate 120 servers
-Squeeze more mileage out of existing models etc and try to appeal to munchkins who want to be cool (but won't be able to compete against botters anyway)
Contrary to what many people believe, I don't buy or bot for gold, so I don't see myself being able to compete against those who do and doubt I'll be buying much if anything off the BMAH or even playing to any substantial extent.
Also, yet more borrowing from SNES titles:

Yuratuhl wrote:
It's probably a way to make people drop gold. Everyone's got more than they know what to do with.
The Blue post said that the items listed would be randomly selected and unique per server. The devs don't see gold being worthless as a problem any more than they do any other balance issue they refuse to deal with until the immediate prospect of cash enters the picture.
Also, it's kind of funny and ironic that they begin a second expansion in a row by waving the OMG ASHES OF ALAR around. Go figure.
Someone with common sense might say it says something about Vanilla/TBC that T3 and Ashes are seen as cooler than anything from WotLK and Cata.
I guess it also figures that so few people have actually farmed them out. They're still fairly rare. I don't ride mine much anymore.
I bet there's still at least a few people at Blizzard saying, in the flesh, "thank god Aestu can't make us look stupid THIS time".
Actually I know there are. Some guy got on vent for yesterday's ICC talking entirely in Blizzard memes, talking loudly and trying to agree with everything I said, and did a sort of interview with me about my take on MoP issues. As if there were any doubt, he seemed about as mechanically knowledgable and totally out of touch with anything other than the company line and shallow memes as you'd expect a Blizzard rep to be. Was anyone here there for that?