First time in history Blizzard is giving up on profit.

[alexkeren]

Sifting through the thread, i feel like some people have problems with reading comprehension.
What OP is saying is that to get 60k gold back before legion, you needed just one token.
Now for the same token, you can get almost 200k gold or 2 times more gold than it was in the first legion's months.
It means, to get the same amount of gold, people need to sell less tokens.
And less tokens there are, the more gold people will get through one token, which will further decrease the need to sell tokens.
So on and so on.

Except because of the higher gold per money spent people who weren't buying tokens from the shop will now.

It's like if Alfa Romeos were cheaper than more people would buy them instead of cars they can currently afford.

[setsuna f seiei]

Although a company's primary goal is profit, not all activites directly fuel that. Blizzcon is more strategic, it gives them exposure, builds community and allows them to host tournaments etc that all indirectly provide value to the games that generate the profit.

Maybe so, OP stated "First time in history blizzard giving up on profit" but blizcon and other wings prove OP wrong.

[alexkeren]

I can ask you the same question if you're reading what i'm writing.
Gold in the middle has consequence in a sense of amount of tokens you need to buy to get certain sum of gold.
Where you spent 60 bucks to get 200k gold, now you can spend just 20 bucks.
That's the lost money for blizzard.

And you're clearly STUCK thinking there won't be new purchasers of tokens with money.

- - - Updated - - -

They're going to make a fuckton of money on this. Somebody is paying them 20 bucks, which ends up only being worth 15 bucks. They might aswell be printing money.

- - - Updated - - -



You're right, but you got it the wrong way around, they're selling you 15$ for 20$, and it's selling fast.

Actually it's not, demand murdered supply currently. The truth is out there.

[Delaios]

I dont think it will skyrocket, it will rise for a time, then people will get their mounts and pets from shop for 200k and the price will drop again, most of the increase in price will be due to speculants anyway

It's gonna rise steadily for a few weeks most likely. The price updates are capped (3% per 24 hours is what I read in another thread) for now. There are currently far more players willing to buy tokens with gold than there are people willing to sell them. Tokens are sold out constantly right now. Because they are going up it makes sense for players interested in buying tokens with cash to wait (since prices are only going to rise at the moment).

However, I don't see the prices every coming back down a whole lot. Previously there was limited use in buying tokens with gold. Now you can use them on other Blizzard games and more importantly, character services. Those will always be in demand. Blizzard will add new pets/mounts to the store over time. If you're expecting token prices to drop back down to values you're used to, you're going to be very disappointed.

[Valium104]

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 lower inflation in WoW with this. They don't lose money, because people with tons of gold will now buy things like mounts from game store instead.

[HordeFanboy]

LUL F2P in next expansion Confirmed

[Quibble]

This will further reduce supply and you can expect further increase in token price, somewhere between 5-8 times more than before this change.

Well, pretty sure this would make more people willing to spend irl money, if it's actually worth something.

[Tydan]

Its a way of making more profit.

Nerds love having Gold to buy that big shiny sword so will buy tokens like candy to get the gold to buy said shiny sword.

[ceall]

Well on EU tokens are at about 200k now (up from roughly 110k before the change).

I like it. I'd rather spend 2 minutes for purchasing a token and bringing it to the AH than to farm 20+ hours for the same or lower amount of gold.

[rarhyx]

well, looks like the next 2 weeks will be my last for a while.
still pissed I didn't do the garrison stuff earlier. (did it after the blingtron mission nerf -.-)
if the token stays above 150k in eu (which it will most likely) I won't be playing as long as I am a student.
13€ is almost my mobile phone bill

Blizz just increased income by 25% from WoW tokens.

Example:
Random people bought 4 tokens for 80$. (20$ each) and sold them for gold.
You want to buy 60$ game from Blizz store. Have to buy 4 tokens (15$ each).
You spend like 800K of gold but you have your 60$ and new game and you are happy.

U think that blizz just lost 60$ because u bought game for ingame gold but actually blizzs profit is 80$ and not 60$ as you think.


This whole change is totaly brilliant by blizzard and i wonder why that take them so long to do.

So much this.

[Vetis]

They make more money this way. Buy 2 tokens, get say $40 battle.net credit, use it in a service that costs $25. The rest sits there collecting interest for free. Want another service? Another token or cash on top.

Digital wallets you can only topup whole numbers is a scam.

[Wickedevil]

Wow...this thread just proved this video.

https://www.ted.com/talks/alan_smith..._at_statistics

...

[Ealyssa]

Selling 15$ for 20$ is "giving up on profit" ?

I'm always baffled at the lack of basic economic understanding most people show... Life must really be hard for them.

[Deleted]

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

Sorry with token reaching 200k and more the number of people who are so STUPID to buy them for gold will decrease RAPIDLY.

but hell good way for blizzard to increase the income ENORMOUS. With tokens 200+k gold many people will buy them and everyone who played by paying with gold has to go back to money or stop playin.

[Usernameforforums]

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 take in $20 per token not $5. Subscription is a digital service so they wont be losing money but gaining profit.

[Chaelexi]

What the increased gold cost of a token will do is promote more people to buy them over using gold farming services as gold farmers will now have to beat to 20USD to 110K or more gold prices that blizzard is setting which in turn makes it less profitable to sell farmed gold due to the time sink it takes to make that much gold. It is a method of cutting the "illegal" gold farming business, therefor making their game more profitable.

[drbatman]

Yes Blizzard is no longer interested in making money. Its a new business model that works on happy feelings.....

[Puri]

I can ask you the same question if you're reading what i'm writing.
Gold in the middle has consequence in a sense of amount of tokens you need to buy to get certain sum of gold.
Where you spent 60 bucks to get 200k gold, now you can spend just 20 bucks.
That's the lost money for blizzard.

And you still ignore that when you get more gold also more people are willing to sell tokens for gold. When player A wanted to gain 200k gold, he had to sell two tokens when they gave 100k. So he brought Blizzard 2x€5=€10. Now the tokens give 200k, and he will only buy one, so Blizzard only makes 1x€5=€5 euro profit. So far I agree with you.

But you ignore the fact that with supply and demand, player 2 now sees a token gives 200k instead of 100k, and now he also sells one. So the profit remains the same for Blizzard. And with increasing gold revenues, even more players are willing to sell tokens.

[Darkstrike]

lol blizzard makes tons of money from tokens , they charge 20$/euro they give you back less on their wallet (battlenet balance), you can only use it to buy stuff from them, they have insane amount of profit from doing this.

[fangless]

lol blizzard makes tons of money from tokens , they charge 20$/euro they give you back less on their wallet (battlenet balance), you can only use it to buy stuff from them, they have insane amount of profit from doing this.

Maybe I am confused, but is anyone actually buying tokens with cash and using that to add less than that value to their bnet account?

Pretty sure no one is that stupid.