So we have seen the doomsayers claim AH prices will skyrocket because of the introduction of the WoW game-time for gold tokens. How about points or thoughts about how it may drop the prices?
Here is a thought. Prices are going up because a pretend currency in a make believe game has no real value. You do not feel that bad dropping 25k gold for an item you will have for a month or so because it is not really costing you anything. You are buying pixels, with other pixels.
Now this token will attach a real world value to in game gold. Just to pick numbers, since we do not know what they will be. Let's say a token sells for $15 on the Blizzard store and sells for 15k gold on the AH. Like gold is the value behind paper currency in real life to give it a value, WoW gold now has a value of a dollar per thousand (just pick numbers for easy math, the idea stands whenever actual prices hit live)
So now someone sees an item on the AH that is selling for 30k gold. That same 30k could buy two months of game time, which is $30 real world dollars and the buyer now has a choice of something with value in real life versus something that has imaginary virtual value in game. Is that 30k now worth more being spent on the token, or do they decide they will buy that shoulder BoE?
Could this result in that BoE (or equivalent itmes)that used to be 30k now being sold for 15k because the buyer now spends 15k on a token and will only spend 15k on the item? As more people buy tokens because of their having a real value and less people throwing their "extra" gold on the AH because there is nothing better to spend it on going to drive the prices down? Will the person that bought tokens for real money to end up with the gold from the sale, turn around and spend foolishly, or will they make their gold work better because they had to actually spend money to get it?
Or maybe each side will cancel each other out and prices will stay relatively the same?
Or will the real world rich people, just go and spend their gold foolishly and drive prices up?