First time in history Blizzard is giving up on profit.

[MiLLeR]

Is there a statistic on how many people with autism play WoW? Seems high.

[Raelbo]

By making demand for token higher without providing more supply token price will skyrocket i guess 3-4 times. That means that people that bought tokens for real money so far will need to by less tokens for their ingame needs. This will further reduce supply and you can expect further increase in token price, somewhere between 5-8 times more than before this change. Also token trafic will be 4-5 times less than it used to be. If we take that Blizzard makes 5$ per token transaction you can see how they lose money.

Hmm, that's an interesting theory but one which I suspect is critically flawed. A rising token price makes it more appealing to sell them because people get more gold for their $$. I expect Blizzard will end up selling more tokens because more will be used. If less tokens were actually being used then the price should drop.

[darklogrus]

IT wont really effect their profit because they make $ on each one, what it will hurt in the long run as the player base loses those who were only staying because they were able to scrape bye with enough money to continue to play while others wont see Legion worth a $17 Sub or 110K+ for a token.

[Raelbo]

How are they losing profit by selling 15 dollar for 20 dollar?

His theory was a bit hard to follow but the logic is as follows:

IF people get more gold for a token, they will need less tokens to meet their gold needs. Therefore, he concludes, people buying tokens for money will end up buying less tokens.

He is probably correct that this phenomenon will have some effect, but I expect that a far bigger driver of sales will be the fact that tokens have just become a lot more lucrative to spend money on because you get more gold now than before, and this will encourage more people to buy them to sell.

[Floopa]

eu token price is 160k.

anyone to buy a token for real money is a fool right now.

[Nevcairiel]

Then the bubble will burst, the Blizzard ramping limit will then give some of a change to buy some game time for 35k gold or so.

The limit in change over time is what will stop it from dropping too far.

Right now the tokens are sold out, the prices are going up at their maximum of 3%, it'll take a long time to come back down, and its very doubtful it'll go down lower then it used to be, even.

The higher gold value will also mean people will buy less tokens as they need less to get the gold they want, so the market being flooded with more tokens then people are willing to buy doesn't seem like a likely outcome.

[Temp name]

eu token price is 160k.

anyone to buy a token for real money is a fool right now.

Or they have millions upon millions of gold.

The price will continue to rise for a while, probably getting another spike when you can actually add it to your battle.net balance in the EU

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The limit in change over time is what will stop it from dropping too far.

Right now the tokens are sold out, the prices are going up at their maximum of 3%, it'll take a long time to come back down, and its very doubtful it'll go down lower then it used to be, even.

The higher gold value will also mean people will buy less tokens as they need less to get the gold they want, so the market being flooded with more tokens then people are willing to buy doesn't seem like a likely outcome.

But there's also more people willing to buy the tokens for gold now, since you can get battle.net balance out of it

[kamuimac]

How are they losing profit by selling 15 dollar for 20 dollar?

its called "alternative facts" also "bordeline economic retardness of nowadays people"

[Hotmail]

Is there a statistic on how many people with autism play WoW? Seems high.

It is high, and when the subs drop they come to make threads on MMOC. :P


Topic: Blizzard has given up on trying to compete without going full socialist free-to-play. Everything nowadays is about accessibility and convenience... get it NOW NOW NOW and pay later. As long as you or someone else somewhere along the line pays, they couldn't care less.

[Battlebeard]

I love this I buy tokens on a regular basis and if they go up to over 200k I can finally start affording things I want ingame

[Vzz]

OP has no clue how the economy works.

[Dracullus]

OP has no clue how the economy works.

To be fair, it seems like about 80% of our society have no clue either and I'm think I'm generous here.

[Notshauna]

Blizzard gave up their biggest cash cow for D3 with the real money AH simply because players didn't like it.

It likely wasn't making much money at all, so they believed that removing it would result in more income. Which I can anecdotally attest to the fact that removing the real money auction house lead to me buying the game and it's expansion when I previously was opposed to doing so.

[Hottage]

Guy A buys WowToken from Blizzard for $20 real money.
Guy B buys WowToken from Guy A for X gold.
Blizzard buys WowToken from Guy B for $15 of store credit.

Blizzard just sold a $15 of store credit for $20.

How is that giving up on profit?

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Is there a statistic on how many people with autism play WoW? Seems high.

I play WoW and have autism, correlation confirmed.

[Deleted]

More possibilities with the tokens= higher demand = more will buy the token for money= more profit for blizzard.
Tbh I also think this will help out players in many ways. Those with lots of gold can do it "free" only using ingame currency.
People who are gold starved can get a better profit by paying real money.
Wow has expensive stuff like the spider mount- and I bet we will see more players with it in the future.
My concern however is the ingame economy (mats for crafting etc) and how it will be affected

[Deleted]

When I saw that they are testing this "wow token for battlenet balance" thing on ptr I thought that there is no way they will push it to live because it would hurt them. Here we are now and they just shot themselves in the foot by throwing out of balance wow token market.

By making demand for token higher without providing more supply token price will skyrocket i guess 3-4 times. That means that people that bought tokens for real money so far will need to by less tokens for their ingame needs. This will further reduce supply and you can expect further increase in token price, somewhere between 5-8 times more than before this change. Also token trafic will be 4-5 times less than it used to be. If we take that Blizzard makes 5$ per token transaction you can see how they lose money.

They still make a profit though.. They sell the token at some point, these don't appear from thin air. If nobody has purchased a token, they can't be on the auction house to purchase with gold. The fundamental concept of the system is the token was purchased with real money. Blizzard still makes profit

[Soeroah]

As the gold price of the tokens go up, the most people will feel like buying one for $20 and selling it for gold is a benefit.

30,000g for $20 is laughable, but if that $20 will get 150,000 gold it's a lot more tempting to buy a token.

Markets wind up in equilibrium, that's the whole point. All Blizzard has really done is made the tokens more valuable.

[muto]

Yeah I think you should leave the math to the professionals in the Blizzard Marketing department.

[Rorixis]

When I saw that they are testing this "wow token for battlenet balance" thing on ptr I thought that there is no way they will push it to live because it would hurt them. Here we are now and they just shot themselves in the foot by throwing out of balance wow token market.

By making demand for token higher without providing more supply token price will skyrocket i guess 3-4 times. That means that people that bought tokens for real money so far will need to by less tokens for their ingame needs. This will further reduce supply and you can expect further increase in token price, somewhere between 5-8 times more than before this change. Also token trafic will be 4-5 times less than it used to be. If we take that Blizzard makes 5$ per token transaction you can see how they lose money.

Since Legion start I have been paying my subscription with ingame gold but now that the price is heading towards the 200kgs I'm gonna start using real life money again.
So from my perspective they are making more money from this.

I'm not gonna pretend I know what Blizzard gains or looses from this and neither should you - lets try to base our knowledge in facts instead of guesswork for a change.

[Nevcairiel]

But there's also more people willing to buy the tokens for gold now, since you can get battle.net balance out of it

Exactly why the prices will stay up, and not go down as much as some people seem to hope "after the bubble bursts".