WoW token done right

[Echocho]

Consider the following scenarios.

* Gold farmer on your server farms 1000g
* You pay gold farmer 15 dollars for that gold

* Random guy on your server farms 1000g
* You buy a WoW token for 15 dollars
* You trade the random guy the WoW token in exchange for the gold

In both these cases no gold has magically been created on the server, it has been farmed by someone. Can this ruin the economy, if so how?

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Just to clarify I'm not saying 3rd party gold farmers are good in any way, the WoW token along with botting countermeasures effectively killed off the whole "industry". In the case of the WoW token an actual human being has to farm the gold, illegal farmers won't do it since game time added to their account isn't profit.

So my question is really, how does the WoW token ruin the economy if instead of farming the gold myself the guy next to me does it for me?

[Nutri]

So you want to get into the gold farming business.

[Echocho]

So you want to get into the gold farming business.

That's pretty much how the WoW token works. Instead of having the chinese do it the players do it. The difference is that on retail it's cross server, meaning you could farm gold on one server and that gold would then be transferred to another server, that's obviously bad for Classic.

[digichi]

Many people stray away from buying gold just for the fact that it is illegal, risks a ban. Much more people buy WoW tokens because it is a service introduced and ran by blizzard, purchasable right in game.

WoW tokens will entice players even moreso in the classic version of WoW, where in many instances, NOT having gold was a very formative experience of the game (forcing you to hold out on buying spells, or spending more time in the game running on foot, or earning gear in different ways, or farming gold yourself.) Such is lazy decision making.

Gold farmers existed in vanilla WoW, but players were deterred by not wanting to get hacked, sketchy sites, risk of ban, feeding a shady business. If you don't think that is a big difference then gg lols.

[Echocho]

Many people stray away from buying gold just for the fact that it is illegal, risks a ban. Much more people buy WoW tokens because it is a service introduced and ran by blizzard, purchasable right in game.

WoW tokens will entice players even moreso in the classic version of WoW, where in many instances, NOT having gold was a very formative experience of the game (forcing you to hold out on buying spells, or spending more time in the game running on foot, or earning gear in different ways, or farming gold yourself.) Such is lazy decision making.

Gold farmers existed in vanilla WoW, but players were deterred by not wanting to get hacked, sketchy sites, risk of ban, feeding a shady business. If you don't think that is a big difference then gg lols.

So if I farm the gold myself it's okay but if I let someone else do it for me it's not? The end result is the same, I will end up with 1000g.
Let's say one of my friends gives me 1000g in game and I give him a bottle of whisky (or a game card) IRL, would that also be wrong?

[betaplayer100000]

No gold tokens should not be in Classic WoW, its just as easy to make gold in Vanilla as it is Retail.

With the whole "no changes" shit going around it will be even easier to farm gold on Classic than a Private server meaning introducing tokens will ruin the economy further by doubling and tripling prices on items like lionsheart and devilsaur.

[Deleted]

Illegal gold will always be significantly less than legal gold. By a long shot.
Sourcing isn't allowed but you can get massive, MASSIVE amounts of gold for much, much less than you would spend to get that much on tokens.

People who were willing to do illegal activity to get gold probably wouldn't be phased by overpriced wow tokens. And most people who buy wow tokens aren't the same people as the ones who were willing to buy gold illegally.

[Vineri]

It is Blizzard's job to prevent P2W gold buying, or at least make it inconvenient, not to fully endorse it. Gold means power in Vanilla. From PVP to PVE.

Selling tokens might be acceptable for a lower grade F2P game, but not one with a subscription cost. It's not fair to everyone else who spends lots of time farming materials, affording potions, buying recipes, gear, bags, etc. Vanilla needs to have a fair playing field, or it's not Vanilla.

I think Blizzard should just perma ban any account that receives gold from know gold sellers. My enthusiasm will fade rapidly if tokens go into Vanilla.

Besides, if someone wants game time, they can farm gold in BFA and buy tokens there.

[huth]

Consider the following scenarios.

* Gold farmer on your server farms 1000g
* You pay gold farmer 15 dollars for that gold

* Random guy on your server farms 1000g
* You buy a WoW token for 15 dollars
* You trade the random guy the WoW token in exchange for the gold

In both these cases no gold has magically been created on the server, it has been farmed by someone. Can this ruin the economy, if so how?

Gold Farmers tend to use illegal/ToS-violating and player-detrimental methods to attain the gold. The point of tokens isn't to prevent the gold selling(which is likely impossible), but to prevent the issues arising from the Gold Farmers and provide a safe avenue to do it.

[zyx]

• Gold farmer on your server farms 1000g
• You pay gold farmer 15 dollars for that gold
• You may or may not actually get the gold

• Random guy on your server farms 1000g
• You buy a WoW token for 15 dollars
• You trade the random guy the WoW token in exchange for the gold
• You will 100% get the gold

I added one very important missing point in your lists.

[phealin]

I believe the rule is something like "you are not allowed to trade ingame gold, items or services for real world currency, items or services."
The exception to the rule is Blizzards own gold (tokens) items (the ingame shop) and services (boosts, transfers etc)

The thing is also if you buy gold from gold farmers for real money you get gold but Blizzard don't get a cut of the money.
If you buy a token and sell it for gold Blizzard gets money.

As to your question if your friend gives you 1000 gold for a bottle of whiskey then yes technically that is against the rules and you can in theory get banned for that, of course it's harder to prove that you traded in game currency for real world items between a friend than a company selling gold as you'd be given gold by someone who have existed in the game for a while not some random lvl 1 char with a random name who probably had it traded to them by a sequence of other lvl 1s just so Blizzard can't find the main gold seller account.

Not to mention a lot of the time the gold that they aquire are aquired by theft as well because they hack their way into other peoples accounts, both people who have never touched a gold farming / boosting company before and people who have paid them to boost their character.
Then they sell their stuff and send the gold over to their vault for selling to other players.

[digichi]

So if I farm the gold myself it's okay but if I let someone else do it for me it's not? The end result is the same, I will end up with 1000g.
Let's say one of my friends gives me 1000g in game and I give him a bottle of whisky (or a game card) IRL, would that also be wrong?

It's a business thing. The gold farmers are profiting off of the players without being related to the company at all. It also has introduced other issues into WoW that players farming for themselves or friends do not.

Botting is usually associated with gold farmers, as after all, which allows them to do much more farming than players are willing to by using scripts. Using multiple characters all at once. It's that type of stuff that a regular player has no access to. This interferes with player experience (overrunning quest areas and the mobs. Players may do similar things, but you can reason with a player and not a bot.) Usually other game harming behaviours are used by 3rd party gold sellers, such as duping, which interferes with the market and is more harmful than a player farming. It becomes a slippery slope.

The stuff i mentioned is why 3rd party gold selling is frowned upon. If your friend did nothing illegal within the game boundries to attain his 1000g and give it to you, there is no problem.

[Deleted]

• Gold farmer on your server farms 1000g
• You pay gold farmer 15 dollars for that gold
• You may or may not actually get the cold

Only if you were inexperienced in illegally buying gold. Anyone who actually knows a thing or two about illegal gold purchase knew which vendors were reliable and which weren't.

[Segus1992]

So if I farm the gold myself it's okay but if I let someone else do it for me it's not? The end result is the same, I will end up with 1000g.
Let's say one of my friends gives me 1000g in game and I give him a bottle of whisky (or a game card) IRL, would that also be wrong?

Except that'd turn WoW into a much bigger gold farming business than it already is. People are less prone to buy from gold sellers because it'll get you banned. If gold sellers suddenly can do it with no risk, the business will boom. Do you want to see 10 times as many chinese farmers in WoW, unbanned because they're not doing anything against the rules?

[zyx]

Only if you were inexperienced in illegally buying gold. Anyone who actually knows a thing or two about illegal gold purchase knew which vendors were reliable and which weren't.

So it's okay that many peoples first purchases will get them scammed? Oh okay, cool.

[Segus1992]

So it's okay that many peoples first purchases will get them scammed? Oh okay, cool.

Oh what an argument. "Child rape gets children pregnant" "actually children under the age of X, and boys of any age can't get pregnant" "Oh so it's okay that they get raped? Oh okay, cool."

Great stuff.

[Deleted]

So it's okay that many peoples first purchases will get them scammed? Oh okay, cool.

It's not very intelligent to go blind into the illegal gold trade in the first place. You have to know a friend who is knowledgeable in the illegal gold trade to minimize your chances of getting scammed. There used to be an active forum on a site dedicated to discussing illegal gold vendors (which ones were reliable, which ones were sketchy)

[zyx]

Oh what an argument. "Child rape gets children pregnant" "actually children under the age of X, and boys of any age can't get pregnant" "Oh so it's okay that they get raped? Oh okay, cool."

Great stuff.

I have honestly no clue what you are trying to argue here, or what child rape has to do with getting scammed for not knowing which places is good or bad for buying gold?

It's not very intelligent to go blind into the illegal gold trade in the first place. You have to know a friend who is knowledgeable in the illegal gold trade to minimize your chances of getting scammed. There used to be an active forum on a site dedicated to discussing illegal gold vendors (which ones were reliable, which ones were sketchy)

Minimize being the key word here. There is still the chance.
And in both cases dude A farms gold while dude b farms money.
The only reason to go with the old and illegal method, is that dude A can get cash in the real world. And I'm sure that will cause a whole bunch of problems at Blizzard if they would allow it.

[cuafpr]

buying gold isn't hard and cheaper than wow token, a couple of "friends" did it via splitting the cost of a new account, bought gold on that account.. used that account to buy random shit off the AH the main accounts would put up to help laundry the money so to speak. or for smaller amounts the gold buying sites would ask for the name of item and ask to set the buy out price on the AH to the amount of gold desired. They would then buy out the item via the AH with enough to cover the AH fee's. this was all pre-wow token days. now its just easier / safer to buy wow token. If tokens go live in classic though it would severely alter the dynamics of the economy esp at the start.

[Segus1992]

I have honestly no clue what you are trying to argue here, or what child rape has to do with getting scammed for not knowing which places is good or bad for buying gold?

He said "that's not really true if you're not stupid" and you equated that to "oh, so it's okay that people get scammed?"

Minimize being the key word here. There is still the chance.
And in both cases dude A farms gold while dude b farms money.
The only reason to go with the old and illegal method, is that dude A can get cash in the real world. And I'm sure that will cause a whole bunch of problems at Blizzard if they would allow it.

It'd only be beneficial to people who'd turn it into Diablo 3 RMAH 2.0. Everyone else would definitely hate it, whether you realise it or not.