Blizzard Pet Store

So I was surfing MMO-Champion and up on the front page pops a message about a Blizzard Pet Store.  My first thought was that the current in-game pet store run by Breanni, the NPC avatar dedicated to the creator and administrator of WarcraftPets.com, would be expanded to include new purchasable pets, perhaps with a new token system.

Instead what I found was the most blatant and pitiable attempt to wrest more money from their customers that I've ever seen.  It's bad enough that they are effectively charging us (and charging us exorbitantly!) for services like name, faction, server, or race changes, but now they want us to dump the equivalent of 2/3rds of a month's subscription fee for some of the more desirable pet models they've ever implemented, after taunting us with them for a month via MMO-C's data mining.

Honestly, this is a whole new level of disrespect to customers.  I can see charging minor amounts for certain services to cover the expense of performing them, but charging for an in-game item, especially one with a purely aesthetic purpose?  This seems remarkably hypocritical after their efforts to eradicate gold-selling.  Is purchasing in-game items with real-world currency somehow suddenly acceptable so long as it's Blizz that gets to sleep on the bed stuffed with bills?