Activision's push to get you to buy more WoW tokens is here

[Niwes]

Weird decision. Not many people have 5 million gold to buy it - and even when I had 5 millions (well...when I had 7 million) I just knew I rather buy subscription for it.

AH access anywhere or the looks are just not worth 5 million gold.

Still a weird decision. I mean..doesn't it translate to 20 Tokens= 400 dollars? WoW...who would do that????????

the sad truth is: many. and not all of them buy 5mio. some have 3-4 mio and buy rest with tokens. its just standard cash cow burst before end of financial year to boost incomes to call 2019 successful year in fromt of shareholders. its standard. its the same reason why they have the editions and why you can preorder SL now and why Blizzcon was dated on Nov in the first place, because also more than 10 years ago this is standard profits tactics.

or in short: makin max profit or greed on a high niveau.

[babyback]

I am a pretty cynical person but those who’ll buy tokens to buy the mount has probably already done it even before the news.

But I do agree that they could’ve come clean with a proper explanation to why they remove it. Are we getting even more gold in Shadowlands so this’ll be too easy to grind for example?

[SirCowdog]

If I were to hazard a guess as to why they're removing this mount, it's because it's meant to be exclusive and rare by virtue of it's pricetag, much like the Mammoth and Yak. But with the way inflation tends to work in the game, that gold cost could become entirely trivial in the future - just like it did with the Mammoth and then the Yak.

I would say that, given the way in which gold has been declining since the WoD exploitation of the garrison, that the ability to generate such insane amounts of gold like the 5 million required for the Tallboi would easily remain a barrier for quite some time. This is especially true if Blizzard continues to move away from gold as a currency in future expansions.

I don't really buy into the gold inflation idea as a reason for removing the Brutosaur, since it's something that Blizzard can very easily control for the most part. It just doesn't seem to fit. They have full ability to set vendor prices and gold drop rates. And I highly suspect they have very good tracking data on where the most gold is being generated, either by bots or dedicated players.

But as I said to MoanaLisa earlier, I don't think it's a short-term attempt to generate a spike in sales. What I DO think it is going to do is light a fire under a lot of players to step up their activity(and possibly token sales over time) over the following year. Many players will likely make the attempt to gain the 5m gold between now and Shadowlands, upping the overall activity by a small degree. A number of players will undoubtably get worn out on the effort, and maybe top off with a few tokens if they get close, but run out of time before reaching 5m.

It's a long game. And a smart one, considering that all it takes right now is a simple announcement. Literally costing Blizzard nothing, but generating activity in the game.

[therealbowser]

I'm sure they'll release a new auction mount next expansion for around the same price with a new Shadowlands theme. Why wouldn't they... I mean, this mount has probably made them thousands of dollars from people with more money than sense. Then you'll have people buying the new one as well just to show off (or pretend) that they are "rich". It's ridiculous.

The real gimmick here is that they are not disclosing that fact, hoping to cash in on the WoW token rush. TBH, it's a brilliant marketing move and it will make them thousands of dollars. But there are going to be so many pissed off people when the announce a new auction mount in Shadowlands, lol!

The real tragedy is that this is going to permanently retire brutosaurs. I wish they had added a brutosaur mount that wasn't stupidly expensive because of a gimmick, so that players could collect the mount because they, you know, like dinosaurs.

Personally, the only vendor mount I ever bought was the Yak, and I got it when Mists was current. I could have gotten the mammoth in WoTLK but "having a vendor/repair mount" just didn't appeal to me. Having a reforge mount seemed pretty cool though... and when it turned into a transmog mount, it literally became the most useful mount I've ever had. An auction mount has very obvious, and very dramatic advantages, but I don't sit around watching my auctions every few minutes. (Which may be why I can't afford this mount, lol!) I prefer to mail all my stuff to a single alt and auction there, instead, so this mount's gimmick never appealed to me.

[Ange]

the sad truth is: many. and not all of them buy 5mio. some have 3-4 mio and buy rest with tokens.

You could start BfA with sub 100.000k gold, never played but 1 main char, never boosted, never got a BoE to sell and you could still have right now 5mio+ gold for either the mount or sub-time. The casual farmers with a fleet for 120 just doing WQ/paragon chest are far beyond the 5mio gold anyways.

You dont need a profession, you dont need anything to do but casual questing at most. Spending gold on other stuff with your limited time is not really smart if you expected to buy the mount at some point into the expansion.

If people dont even play the game as regular casuals or they choose to spend gold on other stuff, its on them. This is not some 0.001% drop nor it is a real prestige mount for something difficult.

[therealbowser]

I am a pretty cynical person but those who’ll buy tokens to buy the mount has probably already done it even before the news.

But I do agree that they could’ve come clean with a proper explanation to why they remove it. Are we getting even more gold in Shadowlands so this’ll be too easy to grind for example?

Don't be deceived, there are people on the edge with very poor sense and this will push them over. It will also get people who have the gold but don't want to spend it, to spend it immediately and then need gold next expansion.

Like I almost have enough gold for this mount myself. If I was obsessed with having an auction mount and didn't see through Blizzard's game here, I might panic and buy a couple WoW tokens and buy the mount thinking I may never get to have one again. But, I don't even want an auction mount. Farming gold by playing the auction house isn't my game; I just spend my gold efficiently and intelligently.

A very major perk to selling this mount, even outside of WoW tokens, is that it's rapidly deflating the economy to make WoW tokens worth less gold, and causing players to need to buy more to get what they want.

[laura105]

Fuck you in the neck, Blizzard.

+1 , why Blizzard

[Ange]

Ehm...

You talk as if people dont need to spend gold on repairs/consumables/bonusroll-coins, of course I would be a millionaire irl if I never spend any money with that logic.

The only big gold sinks are either buying BoE (stupid) or spending most of your gold for consumables (raiding/m+). If you dont raid and just do the easy casual stuff you are allready beyond the 5mio gold even if you started at 0 this expansion.

I wanted the mount at some point in this expansion and just cut back progression raiding and used m+ for gearing. My main char is not "BiS" geared, just at 451 ilvl and nothing else but at least making gold on the side without any profession was pretty easy.

[Yarathir]

What benifit is there from this change AND already owning the mount. There is prestige. OK. There is one. What other benifits? 15 to economics students would know the bmah price would I intially be lower than vendor initially. What re the benifits?

I'm just saying that even among the one group of people that might benefit from this change, reactions are split, and (anecdotally) seem to lean more towards calling it ridiculous than praising it.

[Yarathir]

Learn the meaning of literally. It doesn't mean "in my opinion".

Here's a couple.
Cheaper ah mount in bmah
Lower cost to buy tokens
The mount is more prestigious

There you go. Three real pros to blizzards decision.

That post didn't have a single 'literally' in it. Did you confuse 'likely' with 'literally'?

And 1 is pure conjecture and contradicts point 3.

Point 2 is ridiculous.

3 is contradicted by 1, and they haven't removed any of the other goldsink mounts, so it's a little inconsistent.

"Three real pros" in this case can be translated to "three flimsy justifications in order to do damage control for Blizzard."

- - - Updated - - -

And now they know probably 18 months out. There are rumours that SL is already in trouble meeting it's 2020 deadline and could be out early 2021. Plenty of time.

And some might not make that.
Some might have made it halfway through Shadowlands, or maybe even the expansion after that.

That's why these kinds of things are good: it's something that gives people that don't have gold trees a long-term goal.

[Raelbo]

I would say that, given the way in which gold has been declining since the WoD exploitation of the garrison, that the ability to generate such insane amounts of gold like the 5 million required for the Tallboi would easily remain a barrier for quite some time. This is especially true if Blizzard continues to move away from gold as a currency in future expansions.

There has only been one time in the history of WoW where gold inflation suddenly reversed, and that was the end of Legion. Prior to that gold inflation had been going exactly one way for years, and it got right back that trend as soon as things settled. This is very clearly illustrated by a graph of the token price on a site like wowtoken.info.

Now whether Blizzard will, once again, do a massive gold nerf is a matter of speculation. Obviously if they do then that would largely invalidate my hypothesis.

I don't really buy into the gold inflation idea as a reason for removing the Brutosaur, since it's something that Blizzard can very easily control for the most part. It just doesn't seem to fit. They have full ability to set vendor prices and gold drop rates. And I highly suspect they have very good tracking data on where the most gold is being generated, either by bots or dedicated players.

As I said at the outset, I don't actually know what their motivation is. This was simply my best shot in dark in the absence of any kind of explanation from Blizzard. That being said, I am not sure that I agree that screwing with the gold economy is something that Blizzard is keen to do whimsically. Just like in a real economy, inflation is actually important, and deflation is very disruptive.

But as I said to MoanaLisa earlier, I don't think it's a short-term attempt to generate a spike in sales. What I DO think it is going to do is light a fire under a lot of players to step up their activity(and possibly token sales over time) over the following year. Many players will likely make the attempt to gain the 5m gold between now and Shadowlands, upping the overall activity by a small degree. A number of players will undoubtably get worn out on the effort, and maybe top off with a few tokens if they get close, but run out of time before reaching 5m.

I am going to disagree with you. I don't think much is going to change for a lot of players at all. There was a recent thread here about how much gold people have in WoW, and clearly only a tiny fraction of the playerbase actually has that kind of gold. At best this is going to push those who are in the ballpark to go for it, but for most players nothing really changes. The brutosaur is something out of reach. Why would any established player suddenly change their entire approach to WoW simply to obtain a single mount designed specifically with a feature dedicated to the type of player who would already likely has the mount?

It's a long game. And a smart one, considering that all it takes right now is a simple announcement. Literally costing Blizzard nothing, but generating activity in the game.

For one, they didn't make the announcement. They responded to a question posted on the forums. To me the far more likely explanation is that they have some underlying reason why they are keen to retire the mount at the end of BfA and in usual fashion didn't even think it necessary to announce it. Until, of course someone happened to notice it.

The idea of there being some kind of grandiose master plan behind this is classic conspiracy theory level stuff. And due to the fact that we have so little information to go on, this is the perfect environment for conspiracy theories to thrive.

[Yarathir]

It's still amusing to me that there are people playing devil's advocate for Blizzard when they themselves didn't even bother to try and offer any rationale for this change and instead tried to soften a blow with a joke about dinosaur extinction.

About that..

(also, I hope this thread's title can be changed soon. A few threads got merged into one, and this title was the one that was kept)

[Raelbo]

It's still amusing to me that there are people playing devil's advocate for Blizzard when they themselves didn't even bother to try and offer any rationale for this change and instead tried to soften a blow with a joke about dinosaur extinction.

So because some people think that this conspiracy theory is ridiculous we must be playing devil's advocate for Blizzard? Yeah, I guess that line of thinking is on par with expectation for conspiracy theorists....

[Rendark]

I've heard this before from the countless butthurt addicts that the decision doesn't affect anyway. If you're just going to be so toxic why dont you just go back to Classic?

I don't play classic. This decision is to create a sense of urgency so people will give in to their fear of missing out.

[Shadowsgrace]

Never had a need for it, still don't. Don't care about the FoS either.

[kaminaris]

I don't play classic. This decision is to create a sense of urgency so people will give in to their fear of missing out.

For once, you are speaking something sensible. This is how I got my 36 mage towers done in 11 days, the only difference is it didn't cost me 5M gold and it was actually fun.

I couldn't care less about "blizzard wants some cash" thing. But removing things from game for no REAL reason is really low. Hope they will choke a bag of dicks.

[GreenJesus]

Get your facts straight before trying to fearmonger. It'll be available on the BMAH so it's not completely unobtainable and confirmed by a blue.

The BMAH is unobtainable. It will rarely if ever be there out of the pool of items that can be on it. And then some whale will just put 9.9 million gold and buy it out. You dont have control over being able to purchase it. Dont at me with "well technically it could he obtainable by 1 person every 9 months".

[Ange]

Never had a need for it, still don't. Don't care about the FoS either.

Thats the point with every vanity item in WoW.

You DONT NEED them but it gives a very high value for the things that are no longer obtainable.

Old mounts, challenge mode gear or this expansion exclusive mount are things you dont NEED and still gives them more value for people who want them anyways.

[Phuongvi]

Shit, I dont know what to buy, that 700$ Aorus 27inches monitor or 700$ of token for that mount

[Blackmist]

Jokes on them. I only care about having just enough gold to raid.