First time in history Blizzard is giving up on profit.

[Zyky]

Umm sure. Oo
It takes DEV time to create skins etc, that is the cost.
You're right on stuff like stim packs or loot boxes.

It takes dev time, there's nothing physical, it costs them nothing after they spend a half hour reskinning an 8th Tyrande skin.

[jackofwind]

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.

Every single token that anyone buys, no matter the gold cost, was paid for with $20 of real currency.

Every time someone pays for their sub with a WoW token Blizzard makes more money than if someone paid the regular sub fee.

[Eazy]

If they made the WoW tokens available from vendor for all players then they would give up on profit.
Now? Not really.

[Granyala]

It takes dev time, there's nothing physical, it costs them nothing after they spend a half hour reskinning an 8th Tyrande skin.

That's still half an hour of one or more employees working.

[Christonya]

What? Last I checked every token costed MORE money to buy off their site then the amount returned to the player. Meaning this nets them a full on gain in terms of profit, and to make matters worse its going to act as the biggest gold sink ever in wow WHICH IN TURN will make more people need gold, buying the token, spending more IRL money.

They arn't giving up on profit, they are literally sucking every penny they can get from their customers, both virtual and physical.

[thatmikeguy]

I'm glad some people get it, but many do not.

Blizzard "never" is at a loss with tokens, you never have tokens without someone buying one first at a higher cost than a one month sub or $15. The only way they can lose is with the perception of value, if people quit the game because they will not pay larger amounts of gold for time, or if they quit because their gold value goes down, then they are at a loss.

On top of this was timing. They waited until the people who had tons of gold, and who already bought the max amount of tokens were about to reset! This drives the price up, making it look better for people spending $20 for gold, and for those people that have so much gold they have no reason not to buy as many as they can.

Money is money.

So we have all these things happening at the same time...

Rich people with lots of gold and nothing to do with it that were at the cap can now buy more gold, it reset.
The gold is higher so more people will spend $20 to get more gold, while some others are buying in hopes it goes higher (no idea why, it's $20 down the line, so it's the same now or then).
Bliz gets more money from other sources/games sales and new selling options using bnet money.

That's a win-win-win for Blizzard.

[Marrilaife]

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

Weird, because I thought while autistic people have trouble with social small talk they often understand maths better than common folk. Which is not the case with the OP.

No. More people will sell tokens for gold, because it finally gives a decent amount.

I believe this is the case, people often have some specific mental breakpoints (if I get 50k/100k/200k/500k for my money I'm so gonna sell one!) when they deem their trade worth it, I saw it in the past with the token price, and even now on EU the breakpoint was around 200k, when it reached there, it started falling, means people started putting tokens on AH because 200k is a round sum.

That also the reason why Blizzard embraced the gold inflation rather than tried to curb it, people like seeing big sums, so even if it's easier to get 1 million now than 10k in vanilla (for example), people prefer to see they're getting 1 million to their name.

In practice, prices for luxuries are gonna rise so gold buyers will need more gold. Things like rare mounts, interesting BMAH items, TCG goods, boosts are only going for bigger sums since the goldcap increase.

[klogaroth]

That this thread even exists shows just how much cash Blizzard are going to make off this system from people who think they're getting one over on them. Indirectly of course through the demand for tokens driving sales from the people actually buying them for cash, but still.

[thatmikeguy]

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.

If there is "less traffic" the gold amount per $20 goes down. It's not a static thing, the only static thing is each sale is an additional $5 or more, because many people do not pay the full $15 a month for a sub. The amount of traffic will adjust itself in time, as will the value of gold in the game, along with the amount per token. Blizzard can also not allow a sale once someone buys gold for $20, and who would know this other than Blizzard?

Come out with new stuff...don't post tokens that were purchased at that time for $20, or were bnet money...drives the gold higher for that time...people get more gold from thin air that was never in the game in the first place (see USA)...$$$(Bank all the new $20 sales)...drop the gold value...repeat.

Time is Money friend, but timing is everything.

[hulkgor]

I don't think OP understands the system. Blizzard just increased their profits, massively.

Player buys token for 20€, sells for gold, someone consumes it. That means 1 month of gametime for 20€ instead of 13€. PROFIT.
Player buys token for gold, turns into B.net balance, 15€ value. They just sold 15€ for 20€. PROFIT.

Blizzard just created more ways on how to profit.

[Zyky]

That's still half an hour of one or more employees working.

It's still 99.99% repeating profit.

[Tojara]

It dumbfounds me that people don't understand that somebody physically has to pay 20 dollars in order for somebody to actually pay gold to buy a token. Subscription, at the most cost 15 dollars a month (less if you do longer subscription models). For those of you who play the math game, 20 > 15. At the very least Blizzard is making 33% more for each token sold.

As a company it's smart and they will NEVER ever lose money with this system, it's just impossible.

The cost of the token doesn't really matter. People are buying tokens and listing them (paying 20 dollars to buy one), because they want WoW gold and when they see that the prices are over 100k, it's no wonder the price keeps rising. So you have a system where a lot of people are buying tokens, but also there is huge demand for them now, presumably because people can cash out some of their WoW gold in order to buy stuff in OW or HoTS.

Eventually the prices will settle.

Honestly it's good for me because I just pay for a subscription with real money anyways, because less than an hour of work for me is a months subscription. I don't really feel like paying like 115k gold for a months subscription. RL money can be used on pretty much everything, where WoW gold can only be used on Blizzard products. As such I just use my excess WoW gold to buy things I otherwise probably wouldn't buy (like boxes in OW).

[Slicer299]

Matters to those people wanting to pay gold for game time.

That's not the argument you were trying to make. You were trying to claim that Blizzard's "ramping limit", which isn't a thing, would cause the gold price of tokens to stall and then fall to 35k. Which, according to you, would lead to people not buying the tokens any more to sell for gold. None of which, again, is true. Yes prices will likely stabilize at some point once the demand drops a bit, but that demand will never go away. People will always need gold, people will always need game time, people will always need money for their b.net balance.

The facts are 100% against you. Token gold prices where at their lowest shortly after their release. Mostly due to the combination of people rushing to buy them to sell for gold combined with extremely low player numbers during WoD. But they've been steadily increasing in price ever since the launch of Legion. The ability to redeem them for b.net balance will just add to that.

[schwarzkopf]

That's not the argument you were trying to make.

It was indeed. Let us try again:

The gold in the middle matters only to the player and not at all to Blizzard. The value of the token in gold just determines which group of players are happy.

Has no impact on Blizzard.

[Leodok]

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

The higher value makes buying the token more attractive, though, so more people will do it. It might not compensate the decreased amount of tokens per person, but I don't think the supply will decrease too much.

[Nfinitii]

U think they r losing money, I'm sitting here like blizzard is just printing money.

[laughtrey]

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.

You're missing the part of the system where it goes down in price if no one is buying tokens with gold. It spiked up because everyone is buying them with gold, and if it dies down then the price will go down as well.

[Slicer299]

It was indeed. Let us try again:

The gold in the middle matters only to the player and not at all to Blizzard. The value of the token in gold just determines which group of players are happy.

Has no impact on Blizzard.

Again, NOT the argument you were trying to make.

[schwarzkopf]

Again, NOT the argument you were trying to make.

Correct - it was the argument was ACTUALLY making.

[Triptych]

You're missing the part of the system where it goes down in price if no one is buying tokens with gold. It spiked up because everyone is buying them with gold, and if it dies down then the price will go down as well.

This is the part of the whole system/process that I don't fully understand.

I purchased a token for $20 this morning, and listed it on the Auction House. The interface told me that the current price was about 109,000 gold. I then went and did a few WQs in Azsuna, and killed the world boss while eating my breakfast. Half an hour later, I logged off and went to work. At that point, my token still hadn't sold (I am assuming that you get an in-game notification, just like with regular AH sales).

Now, I can see that the regional price for Tokens has been dropping steadily throughout the day, and is currently at approx 87k.

If I was promised 109k for my token when I listed it, but it didn't sell until two hours later when the price was 102k ... where does the extra 7k gold come from? Does Blizzard simply generate extra gold to make up the difference when prices are going down, and likewise "skim off" the extra gold when prices are going up?