Update: Added some additional information from an interview

Introducing the WoW Token
GamesBeat has an interview with Ion Hazzikostas that has some additional details:

  • The tokens are coming in Patch 6.1.2, coming to the PTR soon.
  • You can buy the token without logging in to your character if your account has lapsed. (Watcher)
  • Some BoE raid loot and Black Market Auction House changes may come as a result of all this.
  • The price isn't set yet, but it won't be less than the regular subscription price.
  • Blizzard will set the initial price and then let supply and demand take over.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Coming soon to an Azeroth near you: the WoW Token, a new in-game item that allows players to simply and securely exchange gold and game time between each other.

Players will be able to purchase a WoW Token through the in-game Shop for real money, and then sell it on the Auction House for gold at the current market price. When a player buys a WoW Token from the Auction House for gold, the Token becomes Soulbound, and the player can then redeem it for 30 days of game time.


Want to buy a WoW Token for gold? Head to the new Game Time tab in the Auction House, and purchase one immediately for the current gold buyout price—there’s no bidding involved.

When you put a WoW Token up for sale, you’ll be quoted the amount of gold you’ll receive once someone buys it—you’re guaranteed to get that amount no matter how the market moves.

The WoW Token was created to give players with lots of extra gold the option to use it to help cover their subscription cost, and give those who want to purchase gold a way to do so from fellow players through a secure, easy-to-use system. The Token will be making its debut in an upcoming patch—in the meantime, check out the FAQ below for details on how it works.

The Basics
Q: How do I buy a WoW Token for real money?
A: WoW Tokens will be available for purchase for real money through the World of Warcraft in-game Shop. You can access the Shop through the row of feature buttons next to your character’s bags.

Q: I need gold! How do I sell a WoW Token to another player?
A: You’ll be able to sell WoW Tokens through a dedicated Token exchange in the Auction House, located in a new Game Time section. WoW Tokens cannot be traded or sold any other way.

Q: How much gold will I receive when I sell a WoW Token?
A: The gold value of a Token will be determined dynamically based on supply and demand. When you put a Token up for sale, you’ll be quoted the amount of gold you’ll receive upon a successful sale. If you then decide to place the Token up for sale, that amount is locked in, and the gold will be sent to your mailbox after another player purchases your Token.

Q: I need game time! How do I buy a WoW Token from the Auction House?
A: When you visit the Auction House, you’ll be presented with the current market price for a WoW Token in your game region—there’s no bidding involved, and all Tokens in a game region are priced the same at any given moment. If you decide to purchase one, you’ll receive it in your mailbox, and can then immediately redeem it for game time.

Q: How much game time do I get by redeeming a WoW Token?
A: You’ll receive 30 days of game time when you redeem a WoW Token.

Q: Can I resell a WoW Token after I’ve purchased it for gold?
A: No, each WoW Token can only be sold once. After you purchase a Token for gold, it becomes Soulbound. At that point, it can only be redeemed for game time.

The Details
Q: How much will a WoW Token cost on the Shop?
A: Pricing details will be announced at a later date.

Q: Why are you introducing the WoW Token feature?
A: We’ve heard feedback from players that they’d be interested in a secure, legitimate way to acquire gold that doesn’t involve the use of unauthorized third-party gold-selling services—one of the primary sources of account compromises. We also know players who’ve amassed large amounts of gold through regular play would be interested in the ability to trade some to other players in exchange for game time, helping cover their subscription costs.

The WoW Token feature gives players on both sides of the equation a secure and straightforward way to make that exchange. It opens up a new kind of payment option for World of Warcraft players, and we hope that it will also help lead to fewer account compromises and a better game experience overall.

Q: How is acquiring gold by selling a WoW Token different from buying gold from third-party services?
A: Buying gold from third-party services negatively impacts the game experience for everyone. The overwhelming majority of the gold these services provide comes from stolen player accounts, halting the victims’ ability to play the game and contribute to their guilds. On top of this, gold selling companies often farm resources using hack programs, sell fake product codes as a scam, and spam entire realms with ads to buy gold, disrupting the game in very real ways.

The WoW Token allows players to exchange real money for gold in a secure and sanctioned way—together with the ongoing efforts of our developers, support staff, and anti-hack teams to stop the exploits these companies use and help players who have become victims of their operations, we hope the Token can help make World of Warcraft a safer and more enjoyable game for all of our players.

Q: Why can’t players set their own prices for the WoW Token?
A: The WoW Token feature is designed to facilitate the exchange of gold and game time between players in as secure, convenient, and fair a way as possible, and without making players feel like they’re playing a game with their hard-earned money. Having a set current market price and a straightforward exchange system is the best way to achieve that—you don’t need to worry about whether your Token will sell or not due to being undercut or the market shifting, and everyone receives exactly the amount of gold they were quoted.

Q: What happens if the price quoted to me is different from what the Token actually sells for?
A: You will always receive the gold amount quoted to you at the time you place a Token up for sale, regardless of what the current price is when the item actually sells.

Q: How long should I expect to receive my gold after putting a Token up for sale? How does the game determine whose Token to sell?
A: The amount of time it takes to receive your gold after putting a Token up for sale depends on a variety of factors, including the current supply and demand. When you list a Token, you’ll be quoted an estimated time based on the current Token supply and the rate of recent transactions, but the actual amount of time it takes to sell is likely to vary (note that Tokens do not expire). In most cases, Tokens are sold in the order in which they were put up for sale; however, there are some exceptions to this, such as when a Token purchase is undergoing verification.

Q: If I buy a WoW Token from the Auction House, how long does it take to receive the Token?
A: Just like a standard Auction House purchase, it will normally arrive in your mailbox nearly instantaneously.

Q: If I’m buying a WoW Token for real money from the in-game Shop, how long does it take to receive it?
A: Once you successfully complete a purchase, your Token should arrive in your inventory (or mailbox, if your inventory is full) almost immediately.

Q: Do Tokens expire? What happens if I accidentally delete one?
A: No, Tokens do not expire. They also can’t be deleted, so no need to fear accidentally trashing them.

Q: Can I stop my auction or receive a refund after it was purchased (for gold or real money)?
A: All transactions are considered final and auctions cannot be cancelled, so make sure you’re certain you want to proceed before listing or buying a Token. To help prevent unintentional transactions, you will be prompted to confirm your purchase or sale before it’s finalized.

Q: Is there a deposit? Does the Auction House take a cut of the Token seller’s gold?
A: There’s no deposit, and the Auction House does not take a cut of the gold for WoW Token sales. The standard deposit is designed to dissuade players from spamming the auction house with items that aren’t selling, and the standard cut is designed to dissuade players from buying and reselling items for minuscule markups. These issues don’t apply to the WoW Token, so there’s no need for a deposit or cut.

Q: Will each game region have its own WoW Token exchange? Will everyone in a game region have access to it?
A: Each game region—Americas (including ANZ realms), Europe, Taiwan, Korea, and China—will have its own shared WoW Token exchange. We’ll share additional details at a later date.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Introducing the WoW Token started by chaud View original post
Comments 465 Comments
  1. mmoc4359933d3d's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by provaporous View Post
    If its like Guild Wars 2 you get gold right away as soon as you post the token, all the selling is done on blizzards side - ultimately just a giant spreadsheet.
    In GW2 all prices are set by the players. There are two different sale systems at work; instantly fulfilling an order, or putting it up for sale until somebody buys it; Someone posts an order for X amount of an item, game takes their gold and holds it until a buyer is found or the order is cancelled. As a seller, if you fill the order you then get the gold that was being held. Or, you post an item at or above/below the current sale price and wait until somebody buys it.

    That's different to what's happening here where someone posts an item against a quoted exchange rate. At this point, no gold has been taken or given. Then somebody buys the token and pays the new current exchange rate in gold, which may be lower or may be higher, and the poster gets the original amount of gold quoted. It's no different to regular selling, except that the gold doesn't actually swap hands since it may be differing amounts.

    The main problem is that it can generate gold that didn't exist, or take gold out of the game. If somebody pays less for a token than was quoted to the poster, then the poster has made extra gold that didn't exist (because they are guaranteed the quote price, regardless of sale value). The buyer paid 27K and the seller made 30K, 3K gold just popped into existence. Same thing for if the buyer pays more and the seller gets less.

    It just seems a very weird way to do things, and I don't particularly like that an algorithm will decide what they are worth.
  1. Barnabas's Avatar
    I wonder what the exchange rate is gonna be when this goes live.
  1. mmoc19ea095b35's Avatar
    If I understood correctly... this is a giant hoax from Blizzard. They show a picture of you trading token<->gold with another player but that is just for show as you never directly interact with anyone other than Blizzard's shop.

    You buy a token via the store but you can't really do anything with it other than using it yourself. If you decide to sell it you don't even see it, and you cant even decide for how much you want to sell it.

    Basically you pay $$$ to Blizzard and at some point later in time you get some gold when your token sells, when that will be no one knows. The fact that they admit that you will get the amount quoted to you regardless of how much it sells for clearly shows that you are not trading with a real person.

    I'm not sure how I feel about this system being manipulated by Blizzard. And I am pretty sure the tokens will end up being far more expensive than they would be in a free market.
  1. Sturmbringe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Barnabas View Post
    I wonder what the exchange rate is gonna be when this goes live.
    30,000-50,000 gold.
  1. Raeln's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xar226 View Post
    Why? No gold is created, it is only transferred from buyer to seller. Killing a mob and looting some coins does more to add to in-game inflation than this does.
    Not true.

    Blizzard has already stated that if the token is listed for 25k by the seller and the market goes down to only 5k after it is listed - the seller will still receive 25k. The system, in that scenario, is creating gold out of thin air. Obviously, the number of times that something like this can happen is limited - but, it is still possible.

    It's very possible that on opening day, people will buy thousands of tokens. List thousand of tokens for Blizzard's intro set price in gold (which may be high). No one buys them until they drop to far less, then Blizzard is creating a mountain of gold out of thin air because of their "seller is guaranteed the sell price" rule.

    To claim that this will have no effect on gold farming is naive. There will be some players that spend more time farming gold, which creates more gold in the game - just so they can buy the token and not spend real money on their subscription. While this type of farming is certainly legitimate, it is still more gold that was created and injected into the economy than was otherwise available.
  1. Yakshamash's Avatar
    Anything above 25k is just way expensive. You can get 60 days gametime card for 40000-55000 golds.
  1. Merpish's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Raeln View Post
    Not true.

    Blizzard has already stated that if the token is listed for 25k by the seller and the market goes down to only 5k after it is listed - the seller will still receive 25k. The system, in that scenario, is creating gold out of thin air...
    Doesn't that mean when a person buys a token for 25k their gold is taken out of the economy?
  1. Raeln's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Aelric70 View Post
    The price to them is Arbitrary... It isnt for a gold farmer. Farmers can easily be undercut. Its even in Blizz best interest to undercut as much as possible
    If Blizzard intentionally undercuts gold farmers, then they will need to artificially boost the list guaranteed prices. People aren't going to spend real money at $15 to $20 a pop just for a paltry 5k gold. If what you say really happens, then I suspect Blizzard would need to "create" at least 20k gold out of thin air for each token sold - which is arguably worse for the game than just letting the gold sellers have their market.
  1. middling's Avatar
    After reading 22 pages of this thread, it seems the consensus is this.

    those without gold hate it
    those with gold love it

    that pretty much sums it up

    Seems like real life...
  1. Kon01's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tazdarg View Post
    I don't quite get it. Let's say person A used real money to buy this token thing and then sell it on AH to get gold. That's fine, but gold for what? What the hell is there in game that would make you spend real cash on? Unless they set up leveling boosters for gold or something similar, I don't see why would you even need gold in huge quantities.

    But perhaps it goes like this - you use real cash to buy token then sell token for gold then use gold to buy another token then... wait. Wait. Hm.
    Depending on the token prices and how much gold you can get from it maybe you could buy in-game difficult or costly mounts like the spectral tiger for instance.
  1. Raeln's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by TheJewishMerp View Post
    Doesn't that mean when a person buys a token for 25k their gold is taken out of the economy?
    If the token was listed for less money than the token sells for, then the difference in gold is taken out of the game. The gold just goes "poof".
  1. FroggyChaos's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by middling View Post
    After reading 22 pages of this thread, it seems the consensus is this.

    those without gold hate it
    those with gold love it

    that pretty much sums it up

    Seems like real life...
    I don't have much gold and I love it. Can't wait for this system. I plan on utilizing this to occasionally boost my gold.
  1. Conscious's Avatar
    Free to play, here we come!
  1. Puntar's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Blitzo View Post
    Um, so a few of those QA peices:

    Q: What happens if the price quoted to me is different from what the Token actually sells for?
    A: You will always receive the gold amount quoted to you at the time you place a Token up for sale, regardless of what the current price is when the item actually sells.

    So... is the game creating gold out of thin air? Sorry if I don't quite get it. It works on a first come, first serve basis, so the price dynamically changes; but the price can go down to the buyer and you'll still receive more gold then what the buyer might buy it for?
    To be more precise, game is creating gold out of nothing!!!

    It is the exactly the same thing as with real money, the only difference is that real money is not even money by itself but "privatized debt" sold to masses as legal tender!


    WAKE UP "IDIOTS!
  1. thetraveler12's Avatar
    D3 AH..World of Warcraft edition.

    - - - Updated - - -

    And what , exactly, does this mean?

    'Some BoE raid loot and Black Market Auction House changes may come as a result of all this.'
  1. furydeath's Avatar
    Only 23 pages darn I thought I have more to read
  1. Vermicious's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MrExcelion View Post
    Question: will someone with an elapsed account be able to login into the game as Veteran Status [basically Starter Edition updated a small bit] and buy a token? Or will they need to bum a trial off a GM if one isn't in their account management? [They've been known to provide 24 hour trials]

    Ok...looked it up:

    https://us.battle.net/support/en/art...tarter-edition

    So I guess you need to open a ticket for a free trial or something. GMs might provide them normally or something I'd think now for short periods of time.
    From the added interview link http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/02/wo...-cow/view-all/ :

    One nice feature: If you have a lapsed WoW account that has enough gold in it to purchase a token, you can do that right from the character select screen. Right now, lapsed accounts are restricted – players are subject to the same constraints as trial accounts, able to only play lower-level characters and barred from the auction house and trade.

    On a lapsed account, if your higher level character with enough gold, you’ll see a “Reactivate with gold” button, even though you can’t log into that character.
  1. Kathranis's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by thetraveler12 View Post
    And what , exactly, does this mean?

    'Some BoE raid loot and Black Market Auction House changes may come as a result of all this.'
    Logically, I think it means that they don't want token resellers to have an unfair advantage when it comes to purchasing BoE raid loot and Black Market items, which means they may implement a lower maximum bid/buyout price for those items. There's also the possibility that they may implement other ways for players to obtain BoE raid loot pieces without spending gold, to reduce the demand, but that's more speculative.

    As for thow the token system works, put as simply as possible: Blizzard is allowing players to act as middle-men for people who don't want to spend real money on the game. Player A buys a token for $15, sells it to player B for X amount of gold, player B gets 30 days game time. Blizzard still gets its $15 and can count the player as an active subscriber, Player B gets to play, Player A makes a nominal amount of gold.


    It seems that Blizzard will most likely have an algorithm that determines the bid/buyout price for tokens on the auction house based on how many are for sale and how many are being purchased. Effectively, this means there will be a variable conversion rate which fluctuates based on supply and demand, though I'm curious if the price is fixed when a player puts a token up for auction, or if the price can vary after the fact. Most likely the former, as it will allow token sellers to undercut other token sellers by effectively playing the market and waiting for demand to increase and supply to dwindle.


    All in all it should be good for the game, I think. Gold is not such a valuable commodity in WoW, frankly. I often find myself sitting on tens of thousands of gold, with nothing interesting I want to spend it on, in part because I'm frugal and in part because I already have most of the mounts and pets I want and I don't think it's worth buying gear most of the time.


    The difficult part is going to be underselling gold sellers. If gold sellers start selling the amount of gold needed to buy tokens for less than the subscription price of the game, it's going to be problematic.
  1. Gadzooks's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Niwes View Post
    here is one on the right way... when you think a little bit deeper you come to the conclusion, that blizz CAN not let the price go under a specific line. example: you buy a token for 15 dollars. you sell the token for 100k gold. next week you buy 2 tokens for 25k per token. you pay blizz now 2 months no 15 dollars. but blizz has 2 x 15 dollars from the 2 tokens, you buyed. but you have 50k left to buy something else. its called inflation.

    oh, and btw, if blizz set the base price high enough, they earn money. what is the real reason they do it
    The odds of the price going from 100k to 25k in one week is so ridiculously high, it's not even worth contemplating. If you used the brain cells you have left, you could read the actual article and see that they're employing some math to make sure your doomsday scenario never happens. I doubt if the price EVER fluctuates more than 500 gold in a week.

    But you keep ranting like some lunatic on a street corner, it's funny as hell!
  1. Total Crica's Avatar
    Not one person would blink an eye if I gave my buddy some of my gold and they went and bought everything they wanted with it in WoW, yet if I TRADED my buddy some of my gold for some of his game time, and he went and bought everything they wanted with it in WoW, everyone would LOSE THEIR MINDS!!! /boggle

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