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

[Speedlance]

Maybe its because you will be able to buy it too easily in shadowlands so they remove it to keep the value for those that worked hard for it.

[Mendzia]

Honestly i am happy (non-sarcastic) about that.
Let the foolish people buy this shit so tokens will become cheaper for gold and i can spend my 700k (unused from like 4 years) on retial just to buy more Classic timeplay.

[Sangfoudre]

I still don't see how tokens enter the equation. Most people that have millions of gold don't get it by buying tokens.

Ofc, most people able to grind 5M (I'm not a part of these) already bought it imho. The other, making the noise, won't be able to buy it, except if they buy tokens.

[KaPe]

Because there are a LOT of documented cases of people in games across the industry who can and have paid more for less. They're called Super-Whales.

And yes, those people are idiots with more money than sense. But they absolutely exist.

And if they wanted the mount, they would have already bought it, because there's no way they're going to be collecting 5 millions gold on their own.

[SirCowdog]

And if they wanted the mount, they would have already bought it, because there's no way they're going to be collecting 5 millions gold on their own.

I don't know, honestly. With the release of Shadowlands upwards of a year away, there's plenty of time for people to gather gold or real world currency if they don't have it right now. It's also possible some whales or super-whales aren't currently subbed. Who knows? That's the nature of whale hunting.

In the meantime the announcement is still going to light a fire under the asses of people who want to farm the gold in-game. That's going to generate a long-term upward trend of activity, with a spike of token sales near the cutoff.

Either way it generates money for Blizzard without costing them ANYTHING. The only real cost is to the players who might have wanted to get this in the future. If no one else, then the players who won't even start until Shadowlands, possibly coming from Classic.

[mojusk]

if yall stop wasting time whining on forums and start grinding gold, you will get the mount soon enough.
but i guess you just like to bitch and whine whenever you find the opotunity to do so.

[Zeta333]

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...9-0-1/370236/8

Those bastards are getting greedier by the second.

I dont get why you people seem to try and blame activision for blizzard doing stupid shit. Blizzard fucks up all on its own all the time. Lets stop pretending like activision is forcing blizzard to fuck up or do stupid shit all the time.

[PedroloGeo]

In EU the gold price of the token has been stable since the anouncement. Or the token price is not ruled by offer and demand, or people is still buying the same tokens as before, so it had no real impact.

[Eosia]

We also know that WoW doesn't survive on it's sub anymore, it survives on it's microtransactions like mounts. Until Blizzard actually explain this rather weird change nobody asked for and I don't think anyone wants, you'd have to be both dump and stupid to not see the very obvious move Blizzard have made here to drive token sales.

You are right that Blizzard needs to give a real explanation and should have done so in the announcement. Bellular hit the nail on the head when he talked about it. He did not really think it was a drive to boost token sales. But he did specifically mention that in the absence of an explanation, people jumping to that conclusion was completely understandable.

But as for your point about WoW not being able to sustain itself on subscriptions, I am going to call that out as a bit of a straw man. First and foremost no one knows what WoW's subscription numbers are right now. No one has for over four years now since it was this time in 2015 they made the final announcement of them. And no, the Weak Auras tweet number is not correct either since Blizzard has publicly denied it andi f they lied the Securities Exchange Commission would have nailed them for it.

You also cannot look at each game to pay for itself in a vacuum. If you look at Blizzard historically, even back when Blizzard and Activision were both under Vivendi's thumb, WoW used to subsidize the other games. Diablo and StarCraft were one-and-done purchases with running costs to maintain servers and such as well as developing patches/expansions. WoW is what paid the bills and then some. But then that role came shifted as Hearthstone, HotS, and Overwatch took over with their cosmetic microtransactions. It is worth noting that Blizzard had an increase of $118,000,000 in income in 2018 vs 2017.

We also do not know how the flow of money works from the other divisions, namely King Games which had the top grossing game on iOS until recently when Candy Crush Saga was dethroned by Roblox for the #1 slot. For point of reference Fortnite is 9th on that list. On the Android side, Candy Crush is still #1.

[Beefhammer]

I still don't see how tokens enter the equation. Most people that have millions of gold don't get it by buying tokens.

Exactly. Just whiners whining since being negative is apparently easier than just shutting up and saying nothing. Pluse cancel/faux outrage culture where everyone has to be seen piling in the thing so they can say and point out that they did the thing.

- - - Updated - - -

You are right that Blizzard needs to give a real explanation and should have done so in the announcement. Bellular hit the nail on the head when he talked about it. He did not really think it was a drive to boost token sales. But he did specifically mention that in the absence of an explanation, people jumping to that conclusion was completely understandable.

But as for your point about WoW not being able to sustain itself on subscriptions, I am going to call that out as a bit of a straw man. First and foremost no one knows what WoW's subscription numbers are right now. No one has for over four years now since it was this time in 2015 they made the final announcement of them. And no, the Weak Auras tweet number is not correct either since Blizzard has publicly denied it andi f they lied the Securities Exchange Commission would have nailed them for it.

You also cannot look at each game to pay for itself in a vacuum. If you look at Blizzard historically, even back when Blizzard and Activision were both under Vivendi's thumb, WoW used to subsidize the other games. Diablo and StarCraft were one-and-done purchases with running costs to maintain servers and such as well as developing patches/expansions. WoW is what paid the bills and then some. But then that role came shifted as Hearthstone, HotS, and Overwatch took over with their cosmetic microtransactions. It is worth noting that Blizzard had an increase of $118,000,000 in income in 2018 vs 2017.

We also do not know how the flow of money works from the other divisions, namely King Games which had the top grossing game on iOS until recently when Candy Crush Saga was dethroned by Roblox for the #1 slot. For point of reference Fortnite is 9th on that list. On the Android side, Candy Crush is still #1.

Except games are expected to be self funded now. The big reason support for a second and possibly more expansions for D3 stopped was due to the lack of revenues brought in from the RMAH. WoW though, since launch, has always been self funded. Even if you have 1m full paying subs that means $15m a month. WoW doesn't have microtransactions, more microtransactions. Also, if they were greedy as fuck, mounts and pets from the shop would not be shareable across your account. You only need to but them once. Doesn't seem like a consistent source of revenue like card packs in HS let's say.

[sam86]

Bobby Kotick being imbecile =/= blizzard being corrupt and dirty... as CEO of activision he have a lot of power but he is not allmighty...
and if you pay a bit attention to other gaming companies you know what acti/blizz does is a fart in a hurricane, and lets not even go outside of gaming industry...

as for firing employees, i can understand people who have no clue about economics can be pissed about that, but WTF should they do with 800 employee they dont need?! keep them around just bcs they can afford it? even though they would just sit there do nothing? bcs they didnt fire game developers, who they could assign to different projects, but community managers and similar... keeping around people that have nothing to do is sure way to run your company to the ground

how exactly already earning title of most overpayed ceo - which was before increasing it even 15% - a fart in compare to other companies ? how many ceo in world exactly have title of most overpayed beside him? Do u even understand that to earn the title of most overpayed, it has to be only 1 guy?

[Aliven]

Hey nice of you to come with tips and ideas how to farm gold, I did just what you mentioned and I gained 181g after one run, so not really 5k/10-15min.

you get 120+ just from looting money, not including any grey items, motes etc. and you can complete it in like 1 min so yeah...

[Eosia]

Except games are expected to be self funded now. The big reason support for a second and possibly more expansions for D3 stopped was due to the lack of revenues brought in from the RMAH. WoW though, since launch, has always been self funded. Even if you have 1m full paying subs that means $15m a month. WoW doesn't have microtransactions, more microtransactions. Also, if they were greedy as fuck, mounts and pets from the shop would not be shareable across your account. You only need to but them once. Doesn't seem like a consistent source of revenue like card packs in HS let's say.

Actually they cancelled the expansion because someone up above was stupid. Diablo III was not well received and Reaper of Souls saved it. Problem was without even seeing how people would react to Reaper of Souls they simply cancelled the expansion when they could have delayed it. As for the RMAH, besides the "pay to win" aspect of it, there were rumors of money laundering. The real killer though was the fact that an auction house will not work in Diablo III like it does in an MMO. D3's AH let me farm anything and everything and put it up there. But in WoW the best items are cannot be traded outside the group if not outright bound to the character. So the auction house is limited in its scope.

And some games do not have to be self-sufficient. That is what kills off good games before they even have a chance. They can just apply the retail concept of "loss leaders" where a product is sold at a loss in order to attract customers. Amazon does this with the Kindle. They sell it with razor thin profit margin, if any margin at all, and recoup that with the cut they take from book/media purchases. If WoW was done at a loss but yet a good chunk of WoW players spent money in Hearthstone, Overwatch, or the WoW shop, then it justifies it.

[Ange]

I doubt we will ever come to a point in-game where anybody will be able to buy a 5 million gold mount "easily".
Its still a mount for the 1%, be it auctionhouse stockbrokers, boosters, dupers or "whales".

Why dont you at least play the game before you post stuff like that?

4500 RAW gold every day from WQ (20min/char)
1000 RAW gold + 2-4 runes (600 gold each) from satchel for 10-15mins top
+ every few days the passive paragon 4000 gold and the passive emissary chest

Thats passive 5.000.000 gold from just alts doing daily quick WQ only every 3+ months.
You dont even have to do any old Raids/LFR (3000-6000 gold only), nor do you have to do any AH transmog scam. The raw gold alone gets you to the mount.

People say its like doing 10+ hours a day the grind, but its the opposite. Just getting each day the low hanging fruits is more than enough. The whole WQ+paragon system works best if you play only a few minutes daily.

Just people crying for nothing. We have again close to WoD garrison gold generation with casuals playing alt-fleets for the easy gold and people are still crying about the hard gold making situation in BfA.

Btw this was also the case in WoD. While the majority was earning millions for nothing, a few special cases were crying in the forums how hard the game is for gold making.

[Ange]

You assume a lot, Im not saying its impossible to obtain gold in the game but not everyone sits on an alt army and plays 8+ hours a day.

Its more like 1.5-2hours daily if you really want to get it done in 3months. But regulars had allready 12 months time to prepare for the mount so it took even less time daily.

You understand that "people with alt-armys playing 8+ hours" allready have multiple gold caps? Its clearly not needed for the mount nor it is enjoyable for most players.

People argued the same way in WoD. "I dont have time for alts playing 24/7", while in reality all you had to do was playing 30-60mins tops each day to max out gold farming. Same old, same old.

[Aoyi]

It's a shitty move, but I don't like that every time there is a decision like this that people blame Activision and not Blizzard. This was Blizzard's move. They have said time and time again that Activision has no influence on their game decisions. Just accept that Blizzard is a giant company with shareholders and they are capable of making the same shady moves as any other company. Give them credit for the good stuff and blame for the bad too.

[Ange]

Assuming I have all classes and all professions and am completely self-sufficient with consumables etc, and only invested my playing-time doing these farms on all my alts, of course there is a possibility to maybe reach that goal in 3 months time.

It was just an example to get the gold with the MOST CASUAL GAME PLAY POSSIBLE.

You can clearly make it much quicker with professions at the right time in the expansion or with herbs or simply boosting. But the fact remains that you can even do it in a few months of easy casual game play without any variance since you get RAW GOLD.

I did not say with even one word that this is the fastes way, but every regular casual player can do it, thats the thing you shoud understand before you complain.

You can identify many non-players in this thread who are here just to complain about a game they dont play. They cant boost for gold, they cant play casually and they cant buy tokens, because they dont even play the game.

[Beefhammer]

Actually they cancelled the expansion because someone up above was stupid. Diablo III was not well received and Reaper of Souls saved it. Problem was without even seeing how people would react to Reaper of Souls they simply cancelled the expansion when they could have delayed it. As for the RMAH, besides the "pay to win" aspect of it, there were rumors of money laundering. The real killer though was the fact that an auction house will not work in Diablo III like it does in an MMO. D3's AH let me farm anything and everything and put it up there. But in WoW the best items are cannot be traded outside the group if not outright bound to the character. So the auction house is limited in its scope.

And some games do not have to be self-sufficient. That is what kills off good games before they even have a chance. They can just apply the retail concept of "loss leaders" where a product is sold at a loss in order to attract customers. Amazon does this with the Kindle. They sell it with razor thin profit margin, if any margin at all, and recoup that with the cut they take from book/media purchases. If WoW was done at a loss but yet a good chunk of WoW players spent money in Hearthstone, Overwatch, or the WoW shop, then it justifies it.

They cancelled because they were not making enough money off it. Period. The decision to shift focus to a new game happened before launch of RoS. That is why devs were shocked that they didn't wait to see the reception and success of RoA first.

I get what you are saying but that was in the days before monetization through MTX became huge. Since then every Blizzard game has had them with D3 forward. The expectation is that it will fund further and future development. If a game doesn't hit whatever internal revenues from them, the game will more than likely be abandoned or have it's monetization methods altered, rather just pull revenues from other games to support it.

As fortunate or unfortunate as that may be, that us the reality of Blizzard today.

[rhorle]

how exactly already earning title of most overpayed ceo - which was before increasing it even 15% - a fart in compare to other companies ? how many ceo in world exactly have title of most overpayed beside him? Do u even understand that to earn the title of most overpayed, it has to be only 1 guy?

https://fortune.com/2019/02/25/most-overpaid-ceos/

Because you don't know what you are talking about. He is not the most over paid CEO not even close. Any list that has had him has never said he is number 1.

[baskev]

Because there are a LOT of documented cases of people in games across the industry who can and have paid more for less. They're called Super-Whales.

And yes, those people are idiots with more money than sense. But they absolutely exist.

Yes they excist but the are not the rule. They are the exeption to the rule.
And hey if i have x million bucks i would buy enough tokens to buy everything i want on the AH.

But i still think people are being stupid/seeing bad bad blizzard in someting that is not bad.