Wtf happened to NA WoW tokens?

[Forogil]

Biggest spike since the beginning, that is. Early token prices were a lot spikier when more people were buying and selling in bulk.

The difference with the first month or so was that Blizz had capped the max change at +- 1%, now it can go up to 3%, which leads to larger spikes.

You also have to remember that fluctuations and cost are normalized to mat prices in the AH, so inflation causes a general creep in the price.

I doubt that was the explanation - it was spiky until May 10th; and then it stopped in all regions within a week.

My simply explanation is that Blizzard originally messed up how they adjusted the price (by aiming for a fixed amount of tokens in stock) - and then they fixed that.

But I cannot see how Blizzard could be causing the new spikes unless something is completely broken.

[SodiumChloride]

Since the system has no transparency, and Blizzard refuses to specify exactly how the price is calculated and whether or not they manipulate the system for the purposes of managing their player base, I think it's honestly not worth worrying about the details and any attempt to predict the market price is likely to be unsuccessful.

Running out of tokens on a Sunday evening could simply mean that someone in marketing forgot to refill the stock of tokens and it ran out when nobody was around with the authority to add more.

If Blizzard can do whatever they want with the token price and availability, then it would be a very powerful tool. They could set the price to retain players who might otherwise quit, even if that means giving away subscription time without receiving any real-money income for it. After all, they'd probably rather you be playing for free than not playing at all. As real subs go up, or as they get too many "freeloaders" then they can raise the price to sink gold out of the economy and/or try to motivate people to start paying real money again once they think they're hooked on the game.

Unhappy customers? Drop the token price. New patch? Expansion looking good? People resubscribing at an increasing rate? Boost the token price!

Do they do anything like that? I have no idea and I doubt we're going to find out. If I were going to guess though I think it's quite possible that the AH is selling purely fictitious tokens and someone at Blizzard is playing at managing the economy and player subscriptions by continuously manipulating the number of tokens available and at what price.

But I have no evidence of that other than the extremely odd behavior of token prices over time (i.e. the LACK of behavior mostly), along with various surveys that show hardly anyone generating tokens by buying them with real money compared with the number of people paying their subs by purchasing tokens from the AH with gold.

Again, it's probably not worth worrying too much about.

This.

Although it could mean Blizzard is "selling gold" - effectively inflating the gold supply. No big deal though. Gold isn't that useful and most games can survive a little P2W.

[Black Rider]

It rose quickly, unlike EU.
several months ago I paid 32k for token. Yesterday I paid 63k for EU token -_-

[Vasti]

Can you buy wow Tokens to resell them later?

Prices on my server are around 55k, maybe I should buy them now and hope for the surge to come to me :P

[SodiumChloride]

Can you buy wow Tokens to resell them later?

Prices on my server are around 55k, maybe I should buy them now and hope for the surge to come to me :P

Tokens bought with gold are bind to account and are not resalable.

[Deleted]

Can you buy wow Tokens to resell them later?

Prices on my server are around 55k, maybe I should buy them now and hope for the surge to come to me :P

No, you can't resell them. By resell I mean buy one and then sell one.

You can however, buy one for real money when it's at the top price and buy another one for gold when it's at the bottom price. Putting in some US numbers here, let's assume this:

-You buy a token for $20, you get 58k gold
-You wait few hrs, you spend 27k gold for a token and use it yourself.

This way you have 31k gold and 1 month of game time for $20.
Not bad. Considering ~30k was the standard for US token for the past months, you pretty much get that 1 month gametime for free.
You can even buy 2 tokens 27k each for that gold, this way you get 2 months of sub + 4k for $20. Which actually beats regular credit card sub price.

Massive surges like that aren't common and are resultant from faulty scripts that set maximum price increase then there are no tokens up. This shouldn't happen as this creates loads of gold out of thin air and produces shenanigans like this, where a player paying attention to the trends can abuse the system.

[Jaese]

The % rate change is interesting on wowtoken.info if brought out to a week. Constant variance to hard-lining; looks like market dynamics to me, but I'm not an economist.

[schwarzkopf]

The % rate change is interesting on wowtoken.info if brought out to a week. Constant variance to hard-lining; looks like market dynamics to me, but I'm not an economist.

The hard-lining is a sign that market dynamics is being cut short by market regulation (i.e. the Blizzard formula).

- - - Updated - - -

Massive surges like that aren't common and are resultant from faulty scripts

Not faulty, but working as required. The price has to go up to encourage people to buy tokens from the store. If it stayed at 20kgold - then that's when it would be faulty.

[Deficineiron]

This.

Although it could mean Blizzard is "selling gold" - effectively inflating the gold supply. No big deal though. Gold isn't that useful and most games can survive a little P2W.

that is my main theory - they would be buying back tokens for gold in after-market under this approach, perhaps under the guise of 'market stabilization.' money-wise, it is the one that most makes sense.

[Cooper]

oops, you are correct of course on US perceptions of what is NA, we tend to forget about the other countries.

Speak for yourself.

[JonnyBeoulve]

The hard-lining is a sign that market dynamics is being cut short by market regulation (i.e. the Blizzard formula).

Thanks, Obama.

[ciggy]

I'd really like to see some real economists do a paper on this, it's so damn interesting to me. I wonder where they will land and if they will hit a happy medium of some point.

I bought a few for 20-25k back when it was first available (4 tokens for roughly 100k gold) and I dropped 60 bucks to get get three tokens to sell for 50k gold (3 tokens netted me about 150k gold) I netted 50k gold and paid the same 60 I would have for two game cards.

[Mickie]

Hmm those prices seem a lot higher to me. I must have sold them at the wrong time. -.-