WoW's economy is beyond redemption at this point

[Raelbo]

P2W it's when it is possible to purchase something that can make your in-game character stronger in combat

That's a very poor definition.

P2W is when you are required to pay in order to win. It's that simple.

Tokens are not P2W because gold is sufficiently easy to obtain in-game that you can get enough of it to do whatever it is you need to do with it to help you win, without having to spend money.

[Deleted]

£500 for a longboy, sure why not

[Raelbo]

was that a surprise ? when u spent at least 8 years in ur loading tips saying that buying gold for real money is wrong and u should never do that, only to eat those words when u become the gold seller

If you stop to think about though, Blizzard isn't actually a gold seller. They have simply set up a mechanism to facilitate the exchange of gold for real money in a safe way.

[HuxNeva]

£500 for a longboy, sure why not

That was my reaction at first as well. Ever since you can buy tokens for gold, and sell tokens for bnet cash, there is a sort of real world money price put on things you can buy with gold (buy longboy or not buy it and put 500€ towards bnet/game time tokens).

But then I realized there is a big difference. I can easily make that 500€ outside the game with a lot less time and effort than making 5.000.000G in game (I know this is not true universally, so just taking a personal pov here). Making 5M in game is an achievement, a goal, something to strive for and work towards. I can celebrate that achievement with getting the longboy mount. Making 500€ is non of the above.

As for those that say 'well the just make the 500€, and buy tokens and buy the longboy? Easiest rout etc'. That is only true if you focus just on having the mount as the only thing. For me, the journey, solving how to make the gold, is a huge part of the fun.

I don't think I will ever buy gold with money. I'm not judging it. I know people that only like to raid in WoW, and they just buy a token once in a while to cover their in-game expenses. I have bought bnet balance with in game gold in the past. Now I'm just separating it out. I pay for a sub, and any gold I make stays in game. I will only buy more bnet balance for gold if i need a service (realm/faction transfer etc.). I'm wiling to pay for a WoW sub, but I'm not going to spend extra on the game.

[Necromantic]

I was buying gold for many years and only once was it ever taken away from me but I wasn't banned. I think you're giving blizzard way too much credit if you believe they were out they taking gold and banning people for buying gold.

Either you got really lucky or you're not being very honest. I'm sure they wouldn't make threads about banning gold buyers for kicks.

[HuxNeva]

If you stop to think about though, Blizzard isn't actually a gold seller. They have simply set up a mechanism to facilitate the exchange of gold for real money in a safe way.

Only if you take their word for it. They are the exclusive arbitrator in an exclusive nontransparent market for a (limitless) virtual good. And their word is demonstrably only partly true.

They most certainly sold gold to start the system. Tokens had to be created out of thin air before they could be introduced in the game, just like the tradable store pet before. A token only gets into the system when it is first purchased with real money. Only after that it could be bought in game with gold, and used for game-time or bnet balance.

The token serves 3 main purposes for Blizzard:

(1) Extra revenue: Each time they crate or rotate a token, they make the difference between the buy and the sell (Sell token for 20€ , buy it back for 12€).

(2) Extra safety: by being competitive in pricing, and offering a far better service than anyone can (legit gold through an already trusted first party), they eliminate to a very large extend the 3rd party goldsellers market and all that goes with it (account/cc theft etc.)

(3) Extra economic leverage: Bizzard has always had full control over the in game economy, as they create all the gold sources (rewards, mats, loot) and all the gold sinks (repairs, vendor item, transaction fees). The token however gives them an additional way to control the in game gold supply, just create more tokens and increase gold going round, or take them out of roulation and decrease the gold amount. The big advantages is that unlike lowering traditional gold sources and sinks, they have a single nob to turn, and it is not transparant to the playerbase (changing drop rates or fees is very obvious in today's data mined world)

Still not convinced? Don't tell me i'm wrong, tell me where I'm wrong.

[Raelbo]

Only if you take their word for it. They are the exclusive arbitrator in an exclusive nontransparent market for a (limitless) virtual good. And their word is demonstrably only partly true.

This reads like a classic conspiracy theory. Maybe I should just give up now because typically no amount of reason or logic will ever convince a conspiracy theorist. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are interested in having a rational discussion

They most certainly sold gold to start the system. Tokens had to be created out of thin air before they could be introduced in the game, just like the tradable store pet before. A token only gets into the system when it is first purchased with real money. Only after that it could be bought in game with gold, and used for game-time or bnet balance.

Tokens are created when someone buys it for $$. Once the token has been listed and sells the seller gets his gold. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that Blizzard ever gave a seller gold without a buyer paying gold.

While it is true that often there will be a small difference between what the seller gets and what the buyer pays, that doesn't amount to Blizzard selling gold.

The token serves 3 main purposes for Blizzard:

(1) Extra revenue: Each time they crate or rotate a token, they make the difference between the buy and the sell (Sell token for 20€ , buy it back for 12€).

Yes. Where is the problem? How does this contradict what I said? Blizzard are still only a facilitator. They take their cut, but they aren't selling gold.

(2) Extra safety: by being competitive in pricing, and offering a far better service than anyone can (legit gold through an already trusted first party), they eliminate to a very large extend the 3rd party goldsellers market and all that goes with it (account/cc theft etc.)

Mostly, yes. Blizzard don't set the prices, market forces do that. But it does do a lot to counter the problem of illegitimate gold sellers - specifically those who use bots and/or stolen/hacked accounts.

(3) Extra economic leverage: Bizzard has always had full control over the in game economy, as they create all the gold sources (rewards, mats, loot) and all the gold sinks (repairs, vendor item, transaction fees). The token however gives them an additional way to control the in game gold supply, just create more tokens and increase gold going round, or take them out of roulation and decrease the gold amount. The big advantages is that unlike lowering traditional gold sources and sinks, they have a single nob to turn, and it is not transparant to the playerbase (changing drop rates or fees is very obvious in today's data mined world)

This is where your argument stops making sense and sinks into the realm of conspiracy theory. Blizzard aren't increasing or decreasing gold supply with tokens. While the system results in a redistribution of gold which results in more in-game economic activity (a good thing for players) Blizzard do not actively control this at all. There is no "single nob"(sic) that they turn. The quantity of tokens sold is determined by player activity.

Still not convinced? Don't tell me i'm wrong, tell me where I'm wrong.

Like most good conspiracy theories, proving you wrong is nigh impossible because your argument is premised on assumptions that cannot be tested. But that cuts both ways. You cannot prove your theory either.

The best I can do is go with good old common sense, critical thinking, and of course Occam's Razor. Why would Blizzard lie about how their tokens work? What do they have to gain by doing so, and what are the risks associated with doing so?

Here's the simplest explanation: Blizzard wouldn't lie because they don't need to, and being caught out in a lie would result in reputational harm. If Blizzard wanted to shamelessly make money by selling an unlimited supply of gold, why even bother with the token system? I mean think about it, if Blizzard are making money off every token they sell, they are losing money off every token that a player redeems for game time/balance.

We can see that tokens can be bought and sold, and we can see how the price fluctuates predictably based on supply and demand (which is pretty much governed by in game gold). There is good reason to believe that tokens do actually represent genuine transactions of gold between players. It would be a really elaborate ruse for Blizzard to try to make the system look like it's working as they claim it is while actually turning secret knobs in the background. So elaborate, in fact, that it would just be simpler for them to make it work as claimed.

[Deleted]

Say hello to 20 herbs to make 1 potion. Say hello to 20 fish to make a food.

Thanks game.

And let's not forget 150 skill points in any profession, which is double the amount of the skill points in all expansions before WoD and 1,5 times the amount of WoD and Legion. Grind, grind, grind...

- - - Updated - - -

I guess my question is...

So?

So what? So the very top end mythic raid raiders (all, what? Thousand of them? Half that?) have to pay a premium for the premium they want? Those prices don't really stop 98% of the player base from anything.

It stops the playerbase to buy things in the AH. Or encourages them to buy gold by selling tokens.

[SkagenRora]

When someone is buying tokens with real money, the guy who buy it isnt paying the subscription.

And since no one is buying gear I cant see where this is p2w.

Sudenly in this game every scrub is an economist, a story teller and a game dev.

There's plenty of gear on the marketplace, Just buy the tokenb gold and then buy all the decks & BoE's

[Soikona]

What gold sellers? You are trading your gold for battlenet balance or gametime. And the price being lower than the past few months means that more people are buying it. And seeing how a lot less gold is rewarded and items are quite expensive, people are willing to pay the 20 euros for the 170-200k to get some new shiny. It is not pay to win in any way...

You can buy 390 ilvl with gold. Good can be bought with real money. If this was a Korean MMO, it would be called P2W, why not now?

[Ausr]

Honestly, OP, if you don't know about a subject like WoW tokens or the economy, don't make a topic.

[ToxicFlame]

Are you stupid or you just act like it ? How come buying gold with real money and afterwards buying 350-355 BOEs from AH when ppl looting 340 from normal mythics at start of BFA isnt P2W ?

nope, you can get all of those without paying. you can actually get both the currency and the goods by playing the game. Not even close to pay to win. it's only pay to win if you can buy stuff only obtainable through real money

[nocturnus]

There's plenty of gear on the marketplace, Just buy the tokenb gold and then buy all the decks & BoE's

and then? To what purpose?

[Deleted]

I already had the Spider mount and now also purchased the Dino mount, yet still have about a million left.

It's kinda funny to remember the days where you had to farm for months just to buy the epic riding skill.

[Gratlim]

One possible fix against hyperinflation in game would be to make raid / rpvp boost for gold against the user chart thing on the same line as real-money boosting.

Then we could report and ban boosting players spamming carries in tradechat 24/7.

It is only a wet dream though, as blizz is currently enjoying that . Mostly because of players buying gold to purchase those boost / carry for gear, rating or mounts.

[HuxNeva]

This reads like a classic conspiracy theory. Maybe I should just give up now because typically no amount of reason or logic will ever convince a conspiracy theorist. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are interested in having a rational discussion



Tokens are created when someone buys it for $$. Once the token has been listed and sells the seller gets his gold. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that Blizzard ever gave a seller gold without a buyer paying gold.

While it is true that often there will be a small difference between what the seller gets and what the buyer pays, that doesn't amount to Blizzard selling gold.





Yes. Where is the problem? How does this contradict what I said? Blizzard are still only a facilitator. They take their cut, but they aren't selling gold.



Mostly, yes. Blizzard don't set the prices, market forces do that. But it does do a lot to counter the problem of illegitimate gold sellers - specifically those who use bots and/or stolen/hacked accounts.



This is where your argument stops making sense and sinks into the realm of conspiracy theory. Blizzard aren't increasing or decreasing gold supply with tokens. While the system results in a redistribution of gold which results in more in-game economic activity (a good thing for players) Blizzard do not actively control this at all. There is no "single nob"(sic) that they turn. The quantity of tokens sold is determined by player activity.



Like most good conspiracy theories, proving you wrong is nigh impossible because your argument is premised on assumptions that cannot be tested. But that cuts both ways. You cannot prove your theory either.

The best I can do is go with good old common sense, critical thinking, and of course Occam's Razor. Why would Blizzard lie about how their tokens work? What do they have to gain by doing so, and what are the risks associated with doing so?

Here's the simplest explanation: Blizzard wouldn't lie because they don't need to, and being caught out in a lie would result in reputational harm. If Blizzard wanted to shamelessly make money by selling an unlimited supply of gold, why even bother with the token system? I mean think about it, if Blizzard are making money off every token they sell, they are losing money off every token that a player redeems for game time/balance.

We can see that tokens can be bought and sold, and we can see how the price fluctuates predictably based on supply and demand (which is pretty much governed by in game gold). There is good reason to believe that tokens do actually represent genuine transactions of gold between players. It would be a really elaborate ruse for Blizzard to try to make the system look like it's working as they claim it is while actually turning secret knobs in the background. So elaborate, in fact, that it would just be simpler for them to make it work as claimed.

The 'conspiracy theory' is a bit of a low ad homonym, but I'll let it pass as you make some good remarks.

First of all, I never said Blizzard lies. They just don't make it easy to puzzle things together.

About tokens being created out of thin air, that is not my word, that is Blizzard themselves 'Because the Token exchange has to start somewhere, we will be setting the initial gold value of the WoW Token ourselves.'[1]. So they created an initial "pool" of tokens (or guaranteed offer for tokens), nobody knows how many went onto the market before the buy side kicked in. It's like an IPO in a sense (but not completely, don't over analyze this analogy). You create the shares and set an initial price. You hope there are takers, and afterwards the shares are floating on the market.

About Blizzard not setting the prices. They do actually, and freely admit that, but they do of course take into account the offer/demand. You see, Blizzard doesn't just operate the exchange, they are also a mandatory intermediate, living of a very hefty 40% commission, and also fulfill the role of designated market maker [2]. The market maker makes money (gold in this case) by setting the spread, the difference between the buy and the sell price for the tokens. The spread is indirectly dictated by the offer demand, as the market maker insures liquidity to the market. If they would make the spread to wide, transactions and the profits associated with them would dry up. Blizzard has explicitly said in presentations that it is not just the players demand and supply that sets the price. Specifically they said 'The gold price for these tokens on the AH is not set by players--it is set via an internal algorithm. It will automatically increase and decrease based on supply and demand. [3] This is exactly what a market maker does. Control the spread to increase or decrease liquidity.
The market maker that fully controls the market (this is where the gold/silver token separation comes in, it ensures there can be no other market maker evolving over time) can also move the spread by just moving one of the sides. This sacrifices liquidity for other purposes. Increasing the spread by only moving the supply side (you get more gold for the token you are trying to sell to blizzard) increases the gold in circulation, moving only the demand side (you can buy a token from Blizzard for less gold) deflates the amount of gold circulating in game. It is the control of the 'spread' that is the 'knob'.

I hope this more detailed explanation is a more satisfactory answer to 'If Blizzard wanted to shamelessly make money by selling an unlimited supply of gold, why even bother with the token system?'. The token system is actually very decent and serves the checks and balances needed to stabilize an in game economy very well. Just dumping in gold would be a disaster.


[1] https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/news/18390557
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_maker
[3] https://www.wowhead.com/wow-token-ba...-balance-guide

[Deleted]

I could buy this mount right away with the amount of gold I have on my main, and would still have more gold left than in Cata, but at the moment, I see no specific value in this mount beyound counting towards my 400 mounts achievement and its being really cool. So, I will buy it at some later point, but for now, I focus on farming other things and keep the gold. Who knows what other things will come along?

- - - Updated - - -



Exactly this. It's not the direct way as with games which are obviously P2W, but it is one. I guess, you could even get yourself a permanent raid spot in a guild if you pay the sub of one guild officer or whatever. It's not like this had not happened before.

- - - Updated - - -



Except that P2W is not exactly about being in the top 1%, but being better than most people who work their asses off in the game. And in this regard, tokens are pay to win.

You get it. Many people just don’t want to and stay within their echo chambers.

- - - Updated - - -

One possible fix against hyperinflation in game would be to make raid / rpvp boost for gold against the user chart thing on the same line as real-money boosting.

Then we could report and ban boosting players spamming carries in tradechat 24/7.

It is only a wet dream though, as blizz is currently enjoying that . Mostly because of players buying gold to purchase those boost / carry for gear, rating or mounts.

You just wrote about the WDM model, which WoW is now in. Cater to whales and dolphins, even with player supplied services (like boosts).

[Nefastus]

Long time since I played wow but it feels like a sub game with a F2P system for some reason.

[Mafic]

Long time since I played wow but it feels like a sub game with a F2P system for some reason.

It became a hybrid freemium back in WoD with the token system. Now it is even more apparent as the economy is heavily influenced by the tokens moving gold around.

[sam86]

If you stop to think about though, Blizzard isn't actually a gold seller. They have simply set up a mechanism to facilitate the exchange of gold for real money in a safe way.

they are selling gold for real money, something that literally they were against for long time, they were only opposing it when they weren't making profit, make it not an immoral problem as they tried to convince us for ages, just a greed problem