Diablo 4's pricey horse armor makes Oblivion's infamous Horse Armor seem like quite a great deal.

Let me whisk you to a different amount of time in gaming—a time whenever we, within our innocence, would mock the concept that making people real-world money to unlock some gaudy-looking horse armor is really a business practice that will catch on.

It was the entire year of Akatosh, 433 (aka April 2006), once the now-infamous Horse Armor Pack for The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion was launched upon the planet. Oh, the way we laughed. $2.50 for any pair of crappy horse armors (which gold one looked really crappy—like a young child had just swallowed a yellow highlighter pen then vomited up over the horse’s back)? Who did Bethesda take us for?

Of course, the joke would grow to be on us, because the Horse Armor Pack has become widely thought to be Ground Zero for in-game microtransactions. And while we’ve been living each one of these years inside a kind of daze where we’ve arrived at accepting the thought of paying real-world money for virtual clothing like a norm, it feels as though the pricing of Diablo 4’s horse armor really punctuates that, for the scorn it suffered, Oblivion’s Horse Armor Pack was right all along: individuals will pay increasingly silly levels of money for silly things.

In this example, Diablo 4’s various horse armors are split up into three or four items which come inside a bundle, therefore the armor itself, along with a couple of trophies usually, using the price amounting to Blizzard’s premium currency same as between $8 and $15.

Sure, you're technically obtaining a few components of each bundle, but a) you do not have the option to purchase the bits individually and b) they are all just horse armor divided into different pieces, and clearly made to go together like a set, why don't we kid ourselves here. If one day Blizzard starts wearing down horse armor into horse helmets, saddles, butt armor, flank armor, and individual hoof boots, then don't allow them to fool you into thinking you're somehow improving value here simply because they're providing you with 10 things.

For perspective, Oblivion’s Horse Armor Pack (comprising two armors) comes down to $3.76 when adjusted for today’s inflation, so that’s just $1.88 per armor. Bargain! It’s wild to consider that at that time this was viewed as such bad value that Todd Howard arrived on the scene to address the horse armor fiasco years later, and also pinned the culprit for its pricing on Microsoft, claiming he wanted to price it less than $2.50 but Microsoft insisted otherwise.

It’s ironic that with the lens of 2007 (as well as for years next considering the Horse Armor Pack basically converted into a meme mocking the absurdity of microtransactions), the Horse Armor Pack appears like a ridiculous waste of cash, but from the 2023 perspective, it’s actually excellent value for in-game cosmetics (you are able to still purchase the Horse Armor Pack today funnily enough, what exactly are you awaiting?).

All this is really a nice counterpoint to my recent take look at game prices within the 90s when I suggested the recent price hikes of triple-A games to $70 still don’t rival what games accustomed to cost back in the day. Back then, however, we didn’t have microtransactions to deal with, which don’t really affect single-player games but could realistically bring the buying price of a game like Diablo 4 as much as hundreds of dollars.

Then again, it’s all optional content, as Diablo 4 doesn’t lock any content or features off behind paywalls, if you want to splash the money on some horse armor, then who am I of looking after or judge? As someone who rarely spends cash on cosmetics—other than occasionally purchasing a Hunt: Showdown skin to exhibit my support for any game that requires me to pay $20 and I’ve spent countless hours in)---I should apt to be thanking those cosmetic big-spenders who ultimately help finance the sport to run within the long run.

Whatever way you take a look at it, the tables have turned since 2007, because the legacy of Oblivion’s Horse Armor Pack comes full circle and we arrive at a period where people through the thousands are going to be paying for horse armor in Diablo 4 which costs several times in addition to that. On the other hand, I’m yet to locate a horse armor in Diablo 4 that appears so impressively awful because of the sickly-swishy Elven horse armor of Oblivion.