I agree. The fun part of the "original concept" was that Disney Villains were teaming up with (at the time) Square/Final Fantasy Villains where going with Organization XIII is just a bunch of guys with X in their name. I would love for them to go back and embrace those characters where what is the point of spending the money and using the IP if they just crank out a bunch of new characters?!
As for new Disney characters, Frozen and Big Hero 6 are easy adds.
"Swapping" is allowed in the case where like "restore from catastrophic failure" where the old machine died in a completely unrecoverable way so you get a new machine. This shows up at Microsoft when you activate it where as long as you haven't activated your license fifteen times it should be fine.
As a practical matter, you should get the OS as cheaply as possible. If your OEM version doesn't work any more then going for beta or other discount programs is the way to go.
So the problem is that celebrities have fans? Why do you care what some fan does? If some company wants to make a buck off of catering that kind of fandom, why should that bother you?
It is a very cool skin and if we look at what you get for that $25 price it's not that bad since there are Dota 2 item sets that cost like $35, and do those items let you play music for your teammates? I think not.
But still it's kind of crazy that a skin costs more than some full games.
At least the recent trend for Dota 2 is that these "arcana skins" are tied into something more than just "the fancy new look". Often they are used for a major patch or introduction of a new hero or some other special event. For better or worse, the last one was Phantom Assassin "Manifold Paradox Arcana", which was voted on by Compendium for The International, and was tied into "The Nemesis Assassin Event" that temporarily and dramatically altered the strategy and tactics for a match. The setup for the event was a lot of fun and it was tied into release of Oracle but it made playing matches annoying.
Was it worth $35? I can say it was for me but I see why others think it is crazy. It always seems the controversy with "Manifold Paradox" was that it radically altered the meta-game and in an unfun way due to dramatically changing the stakes than the "Visual Item That Can Be Purchased For $35" thing. I can definitely see myself buying the Winter Wyvern Arcana if Valve decides to do a special event and Arcana for that release. And it is also important to remember that these Arcana can and do appear in some chest series and "watch prizes" as the "very rare item" so there are definitely players out there that own it by winning it.
The market clearly can support "premium skins". I personally don't care if a player owns one let alone uses one in an match where I have bigger things to worry about. The only real quibble I have is that the Dota 2 client should have a way to go into a "Disable All Decorations Mode" as a fallback in case some Arcana are too wild and crazy in appearance.
I felt the same thing about "WoW Insider" where they too had a light and fun touch. They acknowledge controversy but never railed for or against it.
But I wonder if that "light touch" was also a thing that lead to lower views and ultimately closure. I would see something on "Joystiq" or "WoW Insider" and go elsewhere and spend much more time at those sites instead where people dissecting the issue.
For the sake of "ease of use", you really should agree that the dice are used at "face value" instead of "added". The only quibble thing is "what does '00' mean?" where you need to agree that it is either 0 or 100.
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