Would removing the wow token be better for the health of the game?

[Monster Hunter]

Before it was "illegal" and could easily lead to losing your entire 15 year old account.

Now it's totally legitimate. In-game automated shop for buying gold.

The game is pay2win LEGITIMATELY now.

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Exactly. BoE Corruption gear just sealed the deal.

The way WoW is currently designed is that bad players can absolutely do good DPS with 70%+ of their damage coming from random sources.

You would be suprised how many people bought gold befor the token and how endemic it was. The sellers were always many steps ahead of blizz hence why the token was made.

[tikcol]

How else would noobs buy boost? They would have to pay chinese farmer for illegal gold ofc.

[Accendor]

Bollocks, those things allready had real money price tags befor the token, all the token did was bring regulation to it under blizzards umbrella instead of being dictated by the Chinese gold Market.

People will and always will be willing to pay real money for gold, that won't change, the question is do you want that exchange rate set by blizz or a black market, and how OK are you with huge botting problems.

Maybe solve the botting problem instead.

[Azerate]

No.

Just move the boosting to a special channel and make it the only place where you can advertise it. Problem solved

Token is a great QoL feature

[Witchblade77]

speaking of gold farmers and gold selling and all that jazz. this old classic

[Monster Hunter]

Maybe solve the botting problem instead.

How?

Botting isn't a problem that has a solution yet, just Band aid ban waves.

Every action blizz can take is circumnavigated by vpn's, new accounts a new scripts.

You do know some code right to at least grasp the futility of what your asking blizz to do.

Writing a basic bot is script kiddy level programming.

[Lefrog]

How?

Botting isn't a problem that has a solution yet, just Band aid ban waves.

Every action blizz can take is circumnavigated by vpn's, new accounts a new scripts.

You do know some code right to at least grasp the futility of what your asking blizz to do.

Writing a basic bot is script kiddy level programming.

Could be done through game design. Sitting in a single spot chain killing mobs for decent gray/green gold drops as well as massive amounts of cloth shouldn't be a thing. Not sure who it would hurt to have all gray and green drops vendor for 1c.

Only way they'll minimize botting is by increasing rewards from complicated botting-unfriendly tasks and removing rewards from botting-friendly ones.

[Witchblade77]

Could be done through game design. Sitting in a single spot chain killing mobs for decent gray/green gold drops as well as massive amounts of cloth shouldn't be a thing. Not sure who it would hurt to have all gray and green drops vendor for 1c.

Only way they'll minimize botting is by increasing rewards from complicated botting-unfriendly tasks and removing rewards from botting-friendly ones.

it would hurt regular players, especially newer players just trying to level and buy their first mounts, etc.

[Kralljin]

1) Even in retail, they just bought the gold from someone else who did do the time to create it.

I think it's save to say that the economy past WoD is pretty much fucked because of how much Gold you were able to generate out of nowhere.
Even now, the amount of passive gold income on Retail is pretty insane.

2) This has more to do with the fact that enchants can't be bought/sold and rare recipes are so expensive that some people are willing to buy/farm the mats and pay for the craft. That happens a lot less in retail.

Also has to do that actual rare recipes actually exist.

Like, go up to someone who has enchanting on their main, they probably know every recipe of BfA because they are locked behind Reputations that anyone has unlocked anyway.

Go up to some enchanter and ask them for the Timberhold, Argent Dawn or MC enchants, they probably go "Don't have that".

Same goes for shit like Lionheart Helmet, people who have that recipe won't press that "craft" button for free.

WoD launched in 2014, so yes, just like you described WoD was what changed professions. WoD took away the alchemy super metal arcanite/truegold/living steel. In BC/WotLK it was more or less driven by elemental drops.

Professions have become pretty much an optional thing in the post TBC era, before that, they were far more relevant.

It sounds more and more like you dislike the shift in design philosophy that WoW has gone under for professions.

You mean those things that made everyone care about professions? Who would have thought of that.

If you didn't compare it to 8.3, then you know the following: If you stocked up on Zin'Anthid before 8.2 and sold pots after 8.3 launched, you printed money. This has been the case since the WoW Economy streamlined more.

Because Alchemy as the primary creator of consumables has been the only exception from the rule.
Again, comparing it to Classic, i can still make money with Arcane Crystals / Arcanite Bars, because people still care about it, not relying on snapshotting a certain patchday.

Blizzard doesn't like BiS gear being crafted by professions - I don't think that will change.

And i believe then Professions, especially the ones about crafting armor, will continue to be rather useless.
Professions should be more than just a source of consumables.

However, Blizzard is going to make more gear need enchants/gems/various other things in Shadowlands, so you will like that.

I'm going to withhold my judgement on that until i see the actual result.

[Monster Hunter]

Could be done through game design. Sitting in a single spot chain killing mobs for decent gray/green gold drops as well as massive amounts of cloth shouldn't be a thing. Not sure who it would hurt to have all gray and green drops vendor for 1c.

Only way they'll minimize botting is by increasing rewards from complicated botting-unfriendly tasks and removing rewards from botting-friendly ones.

I think you under estimate how capable bots are nowadays. A computer is more likely to Handel complexity far better than a player.

Complicated is not botting unfriendly at all.

Computers surpassed even the most skilled players a long, long time ago now. Even the most basic bots on the market can do more than just sit in one area killing.

And its not even that difficult anymore to make advanced bots, you don't need to Write your own image recognition lib, or your own intercept for the renderer, or your own ai, there's hundreds of those library's out for every language, all you need to do is stitch them together.

[Itori]

The small amount of gold given from a token might get you started, but is it a problem? No imo its a welcome change, its hard for gold sellers to compete. The added benefit of paying for my sub through gold, or just using excess to get cash added to my blizzard wallet for optional services is great too. Id be sad if it was removed

[Depakote]

The small amount of gold given from a token might get you started, but is it a problem? No imo its a welcome change, its hard for gold sellers to compete. The added benefit of paying for my sub through gold, or just using excess to get cash added to my blizzard wallet for optional services is great too. Id be sad if it was removed

Ya it's not like there's content in game to do that will earn gold.

[justandulas]

You’d probably lose 10% of the player base by doing that

[Lefrog]

The small amount of gold given from a token might get you started, but is it a problem? No imo its a welcome change, its hard for gold sellers to compete. The added benefit of paying for my sub through gold, or just using excess to get cash added to my blizzard wallet for optional services is great too. Id be sad if it was removed

Forgot about paying subs through gold. I wonder how many subs they would lose that are currently being paid for by other players buying tokens for irl money. I know a few friends that are too poor/stingy to pay $15/month for WoW especially a month or two after a new content patch.

[Katchii]

WoW is almost entirely p2p but since its not blizzard doing it but the players, then its not p2p. 21st century ethics.

What does pay to play (P2P) have to do with this? Do you mean Pay to Win (P2W)?

[vincink]

Solely because it sticks it to the nefarious third-party gold sellers, I approve of it.

[Speedlance]

Need them to buy longboy. Im doing sidejobs irl to pay for it. I do 1 hour of work for my neighbour and that pays for 3 tokens. Thats like 450k gold in 1 hour.

[Kralljin]

It's only due to Classic's poor itemization that BiS gear was crafted instead of coming from raids (unless it was a x.0 patch where people were preparing pre-raid).

TBC is seen as the pinnacle of crafting, not Classic however.

And blaming it solely down to "poor itemization", also ignores the aspect of time / gold investment.

Lionheart Helmet is presumably one of the rarest crafting recipes in all of Classic while also being one of the most expensive ones.
So i strongly doubt that the power of that Item was unintended.

Same goes for a lot of other powerful craftable items, their materials were nothing to scoff at in terms of actual cost.

Seriously though, Timberhold/AD is not that much different than how the current enchants are gated. How you got rep for those factions has changed and the longer Classic is out the less and less those professions will hold value outside of Naxx resistance gear.

TB / AD are pretty much optional rep, not everybody grind those factions.
Like, unless you deliberately ignore Emissaries (which award AP / Normal Ilvl), you get your Rep pretty quickly with those factions.

less those professions will hold value outside of Naxx resistance gear.

I'm repeating myself by telling you that T3 requires Materials as well, such as Hides, Arcanite Bars & Mooncloth.

And it also ignores how much power you've been able to via Professions before the final tier.

BfA has been a deflationary economy. You haven't really been able to generate that much passive gold unless I'm missing something.

Emissaries & Mission Table still brings a lot of gold by comparison [to Classic / TBC].

Like, Gold Emissaries award like 2K Gold, compare that to how many dailies you have to complete in something like MoP to gain that much gold.
If there's any reason why it's deflating, then because Blizzard went all out with the Goldsinks, because the economy is still inflated as fuck.

[Relapses]

Like, Gold Emissaries award like 2K Gold, compare that to how many dailies you have to complete in something like MoP to gain that much gold.
If there's any reason why it's deflating, then because Blizzard went all out with the Goldsinks, because the economy is still inflated as fuck.

The WoW token is actually great at showing the impacts of inflation the economy, as seen here:



It was relatively inexpensive in WoD when it was first introduced. Then once Legion began to get into swing the full effects of inflation began to be felt and the price skyrocketed. Towards the end of Legion, it was almost twice what it is today. Naturally, the beginning of BfA cut through a lot of that inflation and it's been generally stagnant since (with brief upticks for content patches).

[Kralljin]

Naturally, the beginning of BfA cut through a lot of that inflation and it's been generally stagnant since (with brief upticks for content patches).

While not entirely wrong, i'm not sure if you can draw a conclusion to Inflation entirely from there.

At the end of the day, WoW Token price is also regulated by demand and supply, if there's less demand, the price will also drop, if there's too much supply (too many people selling WoW tokens on the AH), the price also drops.

I think it's a difficult thing to clearly read the rate of Inflation from the WoW Token prices.

It's not like Legion was without Goldsink, you also had your Mad Merchant in there where you could drop Millions of Gold - yet there you saw a relatively steady increase of the WoW Token value (starting around mid 2016, Legion was released mid 2016).

The only thing that strikes me as odd how straight away the WoW Token dropped with BfA release (August 2018), rather than a steady decrease, which seems to me that an alternative reason is at play here.