Was tying gold to real life currency a good step for you?

[Mad_Murdock]

Naval yes, but not Dwarf / goblins,

Shame! ding ding Shame! ding ding Shame! ding ding

[Deleted]

Ever since the tokens were introduced i have never touched them as I just run some stuff on AH and gold piles on easily. However, im thinking about "buying" some bnet balance this weekend to get more Overwatch boxes now if only Blizzard and Valve decide to make bnet balance and steam interchangeable....oh a boy can dream cant he

Bring on 1mil game time tokens.

[xanzul]

My problem is that now I do not see gold tags anymore but € tags.
E.g. The spider mount does not cost 2 Million Gold, it costs ((2.000.000 / 167.000)*14€) ~168€. 168 for a mount. I will never pay that. 2 Million gold on the other hand...
2 Hearthstone packs are 2,69€ (or 32080 gold). This means I need to DE ~76 epic items for 2 HS packs.
Again, those are just examples, but that are the price tags that I now see ingame.

Of course this also means that if someone asks me if he can have a piece of personal loot that dropped for me (e.g. in LFR or in m+ dungeons) I feel like he is begging me for money. You know, like the poor people on the street that beg you for spare change. The consequence is of course that I do not want to trade loot and that I feel really annoyed every time someone asks for an item.

Sounds like a personal problem to me. There has always been a real life monetary value for gold due to things like TCG mounts and the RMT industry. Or is this only an issue now because Blizzard is benefitting from it?

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I don't really care but I don't think blizz thought ahead with this move.. I assumed tokens were going to be exchanged directly for wow services when this was first announced but it actually converts to $ value which u can use in your battle.net account. So in theory you can gather that $ up to buy actually Blizz games, including future diablo/wow expansions with Wow Gold and possibly the micro transactions that have been making wow so much money and HS/overwatch etc..? People can find themselves a niche to play in WoW and supply themselves with enough Battlenet $$ to play whatever else they want free on top of it? So blizz cut its own revenue streams? I don't get it.

Oh for fucks sake...how do you people still not comprehend how the token system works?

[Deleted]

Gold always had exchange rate for real money. Before it was unofficial, using gold sellers. Now its official.

[xanzul]

It is still cheaper to order gold from gold sellers than from Blizz!

That's nice. What you don't seem to understand is that the price of gold has dropped from 0.10/1k to 0.05/1k or even as low as 0.03/1k as a result of Blizzard expanding what tokens can be used for. Also keep in mind a majority of gold sellers are selling gold obtained from compromised accounts so no matter how much they sell gold for they will always make a profit.

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Pay-to-skip is the logical conclusion of games designed around grinding. E.g. repetitive MMO endgames. Sucks, but true.

I'd been happy with how it worked out for WoW. For the longest time it was 'casuals subsidize raiding'. Gold-for-gametime upended that to an extent. Effectively enabled trading gametime for raid carries / consumables etc.

Now with gold-for-cash, within WoW it's more 'gold farmers / bots subsidize raiding' or rather 'Blizzard quadruple dipping'. Pay for game, pay for gametime, pay for cash shop, pay for gold (previously cancelled out by others trading gametime for it when obtaining enough gold for a monthly token was more feasible pre-b.net-cash).

Once again gold has always had real life monetary value and gold farmers/sellers were already in game long before the token was implemented.

Looks as though my original instincts were right and the real issue you people have is Blizzard making a profit from this instead of third party sellers.

[shonist]

My problem is that now I do not see gold tags anymore but € tags.
E.g. The spider mount does not cost 2 Million Gold, it costs ((2.000.000 / 167.000)*14€) ~168€. 168 for a mount. I will never pay that. 2 Million gold on the other hand...
2 Hearthstone packs are 2,69€ (or 32080 gold). This means I need to DE ~76 epic items for 2 HS packs.
Again, those are just examples, but that are the price tags that I now see ingame.

Of course this also means that if someone asks me if he can have a piece of personal loot that dropped for me (e.g. in LFR or in m+ dungeons) I feel like he is begging me for money. You know, like the poor people on the street that beg you for spare change. The consequence is of course that I do not want to trade loot and that I feel really annoyed every time someone asks for an item.

effort is always tied to currencies, now is safer.

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That's nice. What you don't seem to understand is that the price of gold has dropped from 0.10/1k to 0.05/1k or even as low as 0.03/1k as a result of Blizzard expanding what tokens can be used for. Also keep in mind a majority of gold sellers are selling gold obtained from compromised accounts so no matter how much they sell gold for they will always make a profit.

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Once again gold has always had real life monetary value and gold farmers/sellers were already in game long before the token was implemented.

Looks as though my original instincts were right and the real issue you people have is Blizzard making a profit from this instead of third party sellers.

wich is better for everyone.

Better for me because now is can buy gold (and safely) (assuming i dont buy from gold sellers), better for me because blizzard have more money to invest, better for them because now they won more money.

i dont see anything bad about buying gold, I have a job, i dont have the time to earn gold. Buying gold is "buyer" paying with money (Earned from efforts) to a seller for gold (earned from efforts).

[Banquetto]

granted, but i guarantee you that 99% of the shit you'll buy for gold in the blizzard store you wouldnt buy if you couldnt for gold

otherwise you wouldve bought it for money already

Well there's future stuff as well that you would have bought for money.

e.g. I bought Overwatch. You're completely right that I wouldn't have bought it if I couldn't have done so for gold. I looked at the game in beta and on the free weekend, and I thought it seemed well done but I'm not a big shooter guy and simply would never have dropped real cash on it.

But on the other hand.. D3 has its Necromancer addon coming out Soon(tm). I would absolutely 100% buy that for cash the instant it dropped - except now, I don't have to. I'll get it with my stack of spare b.net balance.

[Accendor]

you forgot the most important part there. I fixed it. yw ;D

I mean come on, of course that is MY opinion, the whole post was about MY opinion, why would I even try to say that everybody thinks this way?

[dacoolist]

I really never thought about using my gold to buy hearthstone packs! BRB <3

[ping-pong]

You are completely right about that one and that is part of my problem: As for many people money is something that is always on my mind. Not because I want MORE MORE MORE but simply because I have to pay bills, rent, food etc. I am not even talking about luxury items.
Thats why, when I played WoW in the past everything was fine for me. Someone needed gear? No problem bro, here, you can have it. When playing wow, real money was never an issue to me, because yes ofc, I could sell the gold I earned, but that was against the TOS and it was simply of the table for me.
But today that is different. It feels different.
1 hour of farming herbs can get me some HS packs. That feels like work, with the difference that if I had actually worked, I would have gotten way more money out of that time.

Thinking like that didn't make any sense before, since gold was for ingame stuff only, but the problem already started when the subscription system was introduced. TBH I would buy most blizzard products either way, so for me every gold I spend on something that I could theoretically buy with RL money is wasted gold. And that just feels wrong.

It's all in your head, it's not the system's fault. Just remember why do you play the game. When you wanna/need to make money, go do some work. Then go back to wow/whatever to relax. That's what it's role in life is. Figure out the priorities. If the game feels like a job, change your aproach.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Hasn't effected me in the slightest.

[ping-pong]

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem giving away gear in general.
But this is basically the experience I had (And in the following I am of course not talking about tier sets, stuff that is ridiculous titanforged or something like that but for all that other stuff that drops.

I played A LOT of m+ in the last 5 weeks (~400 and yes, I know there are people who did a lot more) and also did every raid in every difficulty except mythic. My raid group only does Nighthold atm, so for every other raid I used PUGs.
I am running the other raids for a chance on legendarys, transmog stuff and items that I can DE to get some gold (with which I can now buy battle.net balance).
And for every item that drops at least three people are whispering me. Some are very friendly, some are demanding, some are just assholes. But they all want the same "GIVE ME THAT ITEM YOU DONT NEED IT" Saying "no" only leads most of them to complain in group chat until they or I get kicked (depending on what side the rest of the raid takes). If they are not using group chat they start flaming in /w. Yes, I can put them to ignore, but it will just repeat itself on the next drop.
Worst case: One guy whispers you, you just give him the item so he shuts up and 30 seconds later two other people ask you if they can have the item. You tell them that you don't have it anymore and they complain that you should have let them /roll for it. Damn it, I do not want to be some sort of loot master. I do not want to get involved in that loot drama. I just want to have my PERSONAL loot, but people do not see to get this concept. This is something different for guild groups of course, I will happily share my loot with them and I surely are not declining someone that +30 itemlevel titanforged piece, but for everything else I just don't want to be involved. At least in M+ it only starts after the dungeon is done, but it is still annoying to handle it every time.

In this 400 m+ runs I got around 500 items. I gave roughly 100 of them away which means a loss of 40k. But the thing is that I was asked for over 90% or the items. That would have meant a loss of 180000 gold. Converted in RL money that is around ~15-16€ (or one month wow subscription fee and two HS packs).

So where do you draw the line? Where do you stop? I don't know and I don't want to think about it and I feel like I should not think about it, but the way the world works this new system forces me to think about it. That's why I do not like it.

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I don't feel annoyed over a few cent, I feel annoyed about being asked 15 times a day and getting insulted if I decline just once. And because it are cents now (and not gold anymore) its basically the same as being harassed on the street all the time. I am living currently in Vienna and the begging is a real problem here where you basically can not go in the inner city or a train station without being begged all the time.

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Thats not true at all. Being able to buy new games with it makes a huge difference. This is not only about mounts and pets.

Ignore the rude ones, explain if needed in group chat: he was being rude and offensive and that's it. If it get's you kicked, so what, there are other groups, life goes on. Point is, unless provoked, just be a friendly, helpful guy. Makes you feel good generally, even better then having gold capped char.

[Sylv_]

I think it was sort of stupid. I could justify playing for 30-40k per token, but an average of double + 10k or so is just stupid.
I liked being able to fund my game time by enjoying the game and amassing wealth. Casulol gold making was around 100K+ a month. Only coming out with a minor profit per month isn't fun.

If the token stabilizes around the 50k mark, I'd be happy with it.
I'm not poor irl, I just don't care to give my money to blizzard anymore.

[chazus]

For me, both ways.

I stopped spending $ on WoW long ago, when tokens came out. I don't even think about my subscription anymore, because I have enough gold (even with the higher prices) to last another 6-7 years... And in that time, I'll have earned that over again several times. WoW costs me nothing, now. It's become an intangible currency. Literal 'virtual money'.

On the flip side, I used to play EVE ages ago. Before even PLEX came out, I sold a huge chunk of game resources for cash, specifically raw ore/materials. The problem with it came with the fact that it put a price tag. This ship uses X ore, which can be sold for Y dollars. That battleship I could take out for a spin... if it gets blown up, literally just cost me $100 (or rather, I now no longer have an item I could sell for $100. They're the same, except not).

I ended up stopping playing the game entirely after that, particularly after I lost a $500 item (Raven BPO ME50). It just killed me to think that playing the game was literally costing me hundreds, if not thousands of dollars (Of course, by not losing items, id also not be playing the game).

[Teevo]

I paid my account up until October of next year with gold. So I'm perfectly happy with it. I paid up my account that far *last year*.

Also, there's a WoW cookbook on the Bnet store that I would otherwise never buy, now I can drop a sum of gold and get it. So, yeah, I'm all for it.

Edit: Also, I'm not one of those people who just has a huge supply of gold sitting around. I missed out on most of the garrison exploiting.

[Super Kami Dende]

Yes, it is great since I can turn pixels into products I enjoy. literally no drawback to the system for me.

[Splenda]

I don't care. I have never bought or sold a token.

[Thage]

I don't really care. If I had to pick one, I'd err toward approval. People are gonna buy gold no matter what you do to try to curtail it; that's been a fact since Ultima Online. At least this way you can give people a safe way to do so that won't get them banned. It's generally a three-way win: you win because you can just buy gold for whatever you need. They win because their gold buys them Battle.net balance (which can be used on game time, games, ingame purchases, or whatever the hell else you wanna use it on). Blizz wins because it's another $20 in their coffers.

[Squigglyo]

Of course this also means that if someone asks me if he can have a piece of personal loot that dropped for me (e.g. in LFR or in m+ dungeons) I feel like he is begging me for money. You know, like the poor people on the street that beg you for spare change. The consequence is of course that I do not want to trade loot and that I feel really annoyed every time someone asks for an item.

Its more like your walking around fully clothed, and a pair of shoes falls out of the sky and you catch them. Your shoes are better, the bum next to you, his shows are falling apart and he asks if he could have the one you are clearly not going to use but instead you keep them and sell them for 30 cents.

[PenguinChan]

Devalues the currency even further and continues to blow up the amount needed to buy things. Was it a good idea? A universal currency was never a good idea and will continue to be a very bad idea. It is doubtful another one will be put into place to even battle what gold is used for.