I'm a little late to this discussion, but here's my $.02 anyway. I'm not going to compare WGT game play to real world golfing because they simply aren't the same, but I am talking about relative costs within each game.
Ball prices are quite high when compared to the cost of the equipment. You can buy a very nice full set of clubs for around 3500 credits (driver, 3WD, irons, wedges, putter). With the better balls going for 300-450 for 3, we're looking at roughly 10% of the cost of the clubs. In the real world, $2000 will get you an excellent setup, but NOBODY would pay 10% of that ($200) for 3 golf balls. You can get near top of the line golf balls for roughly $45 per dozen, or a little over $11 for a sleeve of 3, which is about 0.5% of the cost of the clubs, or 1/20th the cost of these virtual balls. And those real balls will last considerably longer than anything in WGT.
Now I'm not saying that WGT balls should be 25 credits for 3, or anything like that, but lets not kid ourselves about their cost.
I'd also like to point out that their other big game, WGT Baseball, does not require any financial investment for players to advance pretty much as far as they want. If you want to put in the time and effort, your team will improve. They do that with very annoying ads on the side of your browser, but you can play without paying for it.
With WGT Golf, there's simply no way to advance beyond a certain point in the game without upgrading your equipment because the game gets more difficult as you go up in tiers. At some point, you just aren't hitting the ball far enough to reach every fairway or every par 4 green. I got to Tour Pro before I bought anything (2 wedges, and a G20 driver after tonight's round), but I doubt I could get beyond this tier without something. I don't see why they couldn't do something similar with ads in this game. I'm surprised there aren't more in-game ads. Signs in the distance, or banners at each tee box.
And yes, I know, the game is free, but the discussion is how to make it better, not whether we should be complaining or not.
I do have a few suggestions for them.
1. Let balls degrade rather than simply removing them from the game. Drop their individual ratings a notch or two after the normal wear period until they're essentially the same as the free ones.
2. Unexpected free balls. Nothing crazy, but maybe a ball now and then for finishing a certain number of rounds, or playing 18 at some course, or getting a birdie or better on some random hole on a particular date, and don't tell anyone about it. Get a bird, get a ball (1 max per golfer). I think this could get people playing more often, knowing they might win something just for playing.
3. More promotional balls. I've got a Halloween ball, and some stars and stripes ball, and 3 HEX Chromes from making Tour Pro. Maybe a free ball if you play on your birthday. I'm tempted to buy more of those HEX Chromes because I like how they play. If I got a single version of some other ball, I might be willing to buy those too. But without knowing how they play, it's a crap shoot on whether I'll like them. Yeah, most of the promotional balls aren't the best ones out there, but they're better than any of the really cheap ones.
4. And of course, lower the price a little bit. I know it's a big revenue stream, but slightly lower prices for balls that last a little longer may entice more people to spend money on them instead of using the 10CR per sleeve cheap ones. I can't believe I'm considering paying 300 credits for a 3-pack when I could upgrade my 3WD for slightly more than that.
Anyhoo, I love the game, and can't wait for my new driver. Hit 'em straight everyone.