The WoW Token Price

[Firefall]

also.

people complaining about US token prices when tw prices are 10x as much

1st world problems

Their economy has much more inflation. Also I don't see how anyone is complaining.

[Feali]

I know many people who wouldn't be playing the game if it wasn't for the token. So 3 is definitely a factor. I know I wouldn't be playing. And it's getting really hard to justify 60k gold.

[mmouser]

I love how everyone seems to think supply and demand are whats affecting the current prices. The math model is actually much more complicated than that.

Now I don't know the full model for sure, but I do know that if I can buy a token at any time during the day and get one instantly without any delay, and yet the prices still rise, then its not purely supply and demand.

Most likely there are breakpoints. Supply needs to hit X tokens to cause price to drop otherwise price continues to climb.

[Feali]

I love how everyone seems to think supply and demand are whats affecting the current prices. The math model is actually much more complicated than that.

Now I don't know the full model for sure, but I do know that if I can buy a token at any time during the day and get one instantly without any delay, and yet the prices still rise, then its not purely supply and demand.

Most likely there are breakpoints. Supply needs to hit X tokens to cause price to drop otherwise price continues to climb.

We also don't know if people need to actually buy the token for it to be come available for gold.

[Deja Thoris]

Keep believing that. You probably also think Taiwanese and South Koreans only make like $5 per month or so, since their tokens are 200k+. In reality they're more wealthy than anyone in the West.

But they also have a more embedded culture of farming so they are richer gold wise.

Broad generalization
US: High disposable income / low free time means cheap gold
EU: Opposite of US
Asia: Farming culture means people generally have a lot of gold so don't see value in purchasing gold for RL cash.

Like I say, its generalizations but its broadly true.

[Iflash]

I love how everyone seems to think supply and demand are whats affecting the current prices. The math model is actually much more complicated than that.

Now I don't know the full model for sure, but I do know that if I can buy a token at any time during the day and get one instantly without any delay, and yet the prices still rise, then its not purely supply and demand.

Most likely there are breakpoints. Supply needs to hit X tokens to cause price to drop otherwise price continues to climb.

Then it's still supply and demand what's affecting the prices. Just not as straight-forward. I'd guess if that's true, there's one for demand as well. The overall effect should still be the same. Unless there's a third variable involved, it's just supply and demand.

[Daethz]

I purposely dident buy more when they where cheap, i don't want a sub during the great content drought.
I just hope people spend all their gold now so tokens get cheaper with legions release.

[Tinykong]

I regret not buying a shit ton when they were 17kg, I wasn't rich back then though

I regret using them when I bought them at this price. Now I am subscribed to a game I really don't even play anymore. Wish I had left them unused...

[Deleted]

But they also have a more embedded culture of farming so they are richer gold wise.

Broad generalization
US: High disposable income / low free time means cheap gold
EU: Opposite of US
Asia: Farming culture means people generally have a lot of gold so don't see value in purchasing gold for RL cash.

Like I say, its generalizations but its broadly true.

You made the same mistake others made, ignoring South America. The South American playerbase is far larger than the Eastern European one, Brasil alone has a HUGE amount of players. And Western/Northern EU also has far higher income than US too. France, Germany, UK, Netherlands and Scandinavia are all ultrarich, so they can balance out the East far easier than US can balance out the South.

[Arthas242]

I regret using them when I bought them at this price. Now I am subscribed to a game I really don't even play anymore. Wish I had left them unused...

<--been subcribed since 04

i got the wolf rider statue and i hope maybe they will even do a 20 year gift *don;t plan on it, but god i was excited when i saw that in the mail*

[zagoskin]

Honestly i believe the reason why wow token exists is to give gold some value again. We already know how wow is in constant inflation due to gold generated from drops or even garrison missions. So i think the price is more related to how much gold people has overall rather than how many buy them

[guardian_titan]

There's also another factor: there's a cap to the number of tokens you can buy in a year (believe it's 24), and I believe it effects both those tokens bought with real money and those bought with gold. So many of those with real money to burn likely bought their token cap already meaning fewer players willing to sell tokens now. And then those who had gold to burn early on stocked up when the prices were lower. The remaining players that sell tokens are those that might only be able to afford to sell a token every few months or are those that are waiting for them to hit a certain point (such as 50-75k in the US). Meanwhile, many of those who can buy tokens with gold are on the poorer end of the spectrum so might take them months to save enough gold to buy a single token.

Funny thing? Try reading the customer support forums. I've been seeing threads about people who have had tokens up for sale for over 24 hours (some were as long as 3-5 day) when the estimated sell time is under 12 hours and yet prices continue to go up. That's highly suspicious since there are clearly tokens available. They're just being held up for some reason which makes it appear there are none at times. So there's something clogging the system and keeping tokens from being sold which is artificially inflating the price of tokens. I'm honestly not believing that there's really low supply and high demand at the moment. I don't believe Blizzard's intentionally doing it, either, but there's certainly a bug in the system that's causing the price of tokens to be higher than they should be.

I also find it highly suspicious that the prices smoothed out and started to go up after that ban wave back in May. Before that point in the US, they fluctuated as much as 4-6k (or more) a day. After the ban, 1-3k fluctuations were more likely. The botters who were banned then will potentially be back next month or by December (if they aren't back with a new account already) so guess we'll see if prices drop again or do something else strange.

Something's definitely screwy and manipulating prices. Question is if it's a bug, Blizzard, and/or hackers/botters.

[SL1200]

Nobody needs to buy anything with the gold atm. When the next expansion launches the trend will reverse. I also think that if there was another tier coming the trend would be slowed or reversed.

[thebelltolleth]

also.

people complaining about US token prices when tw prices are 10x as much

1st world problems

Anyone can make that comment about stuff. It's tiresome.

[Lumineus]

also.

people complaining about US token prices when tw prices are 10x as much

1st world problems

Taiwan, huh? If I were you, I'd be more concerned about the fact that Obama has no balls for foreign conflict and will passive-aggressively whine but do nothing if China decides to annex you before the Republicans retake the White House. Then you'll have all the "first world problems" you can deal with.

[Deleted]

I don't believe the price is based only on supply and demand, since it can be set in a black box by Blizzard, psychological tricks might come into play here. Notice their wording is very open to interpretation. They never said it's strictly based on supply and demand, they just mentioned somewhere that it's affected by it.

It's obviously controlled by an algorithm at least to some extend since the price never fluctuates truly freely, it keeps stable for more than hour at times or it stays stable for days while it goes only up and down by 2-3k every few hours.

Everyone that can "breathe" the economy of this game from years on the auction house knows it's nonsense that the price is truly free floating. The real free floating products in the auction house do huge swings at first or at times.

[Lolsteak]

I don't believe the price is based only on supply and demand, since it can be set in a black box by Blizzard, psychological tricks might come into play here. Notice their wording is very open to interpretation. They never said it's strictly based on supply and demand, they just mentioned somewhere that it's affected by it.

It's obviously controlled by an algorithm at least to some extend since the price never fluctuates truly freely, it keeps stable for more than hour at times or it stays stable for days while it goes only up and down by 2-3k every few hours.

Everyone that can "breathe" the economy of this game from years on the auction house knows it's nonsense that the price is truly free floating. The real free floating products in the auction house do huge swings at first or at times.

http://wowtokenprices.com/

Has some interesting information regarding the token prices