I must be a true addict to World of WarCraft to even begin agreeing with that. I don't know if I want to dish out the $400 dollars to buy it, or how I'll even come up with it, but there is a slight possibility I might get it.
But you can't find a way to conjure $3 for a book? ...
Personally, I think there definitely have been a few cases of this. I honestly don't think it's much for the average "pirate" to worry about; Microsoft is probably using this as a tactic to keep people from pirating their software.