I agree, and I think that the reason that the opinion appears to be so unanimous on Reddit is that the "average joe" who spends a bunch of time on forums and has strong opinions on video games does not have a full-time career.

I'm not trying to slam anyone here. I am just getting on track finding a career instead of a random job, and I'm well below the average income for my age. I will not be buying these portraits.

But the last time I played WoW, my guildies were all 30-40+ year olds, most of them with careers in technology. They were blowing what would be to me ridiculous amounts of money on fancy mounts and costumes. They were dropping $50 on server transfers and instantly leveling characters when they felt like it. They frequently bought a game on Steam and then bought all the DLC for it just on a lark because why not? When you don't have kids, you're sharing the rent with your spouse, and you spend at least a couple nights a week gaming, that's not a big expenditure at all. Take a plane to go to Blizzcon once a year? Sure, no biggee.

Hell, my mom is in her 50s, she's a nurse, and she spent $50 on some Peggle or Plinko or whatever bullshit because that's the only game she plays.

Maybe Blizzard would make more money if they priced it cheaper, but who knows? Armchair economists on Reddit don't have access to the reams of data that Blizzard economists do. All we know is that they crunched the numbers and figured that even if they lose some volume of sales and they lose some good will, they'll still make more money (or more consistent money) that way. Maybe they're wrong, but all we have to go on is gut, and the pricing schemes of other companies that have different brands (Valve's entire corporate identity right now is cheap/F2P games, Blizz's is decidedly not).