I have a question about the morality of banning gold farmers and wow tolkens.

[Kathranis]

This has been hashed out time and time again.

The WoW token is blizzard endorsement of making the game pay to win, except now they get a slice of the gold selling pie.

If the WoW token was soulbound it wouldn't be a problem.

The excuse of "oh we will have tons of more gold sellers if it wasn't there!" is a cop out for poor policing of ingame activities.

1.remove the wow token or make it soulbound

2. actually crack down on gold farmers

3. actually ban players that are buying gold with real money

this will never happen because blizzard will lose money AND players that pay a sub would get banned for buying gold

it is what it is, wow is pay to win now, with the exception of.... basically rank #1 in pvp? anyways I try and ignore it

What would be the point of WoW Tokens if they were soulbound?

[Queen of Hamsters]

There are no morals involved. Some peeps be worse than "Pro-lifers" when it comes to this token and projecting all their perceived wrongs about the game onto it. It's interesting in terms of psychology, but getting old.

If the dev team once more proved stupid enough to listen to x players and removed the token, things would just continue as is but with more illicit gold and RMT to make up for the token's disappearance. No ifs or buts about it, ya'll can fawn as much as you like over "better policing", reality stays the same. All its removal would manage to do is screw over anyone (myself included) using the token for what it's intended to be used for; Battle.net balance, or in-game gold, or game time.

You don't "win" by converting the token to gold and paying for a carry, you'll still suck, at best be a poser. There is no P2W in a game that doesn't have an objective form of winning. Anyone claiming that it has made the game "P2W" doesn't know the meaning of the word... They're likely the same people using the word "dead" for the game since 2006.

Players created the market, Blizzard found a way to simultaneously make money from said market and provide a service many wanted for various reasons (pay sub/games/services using gold/buying safe gold) and now a small but loud crowd is perpetually outraged at that which they do not fully understand... 21st century in a nutshell, perhaps...

[panda040]

What would be the point of WoW Tokens if they were soulbound?

The same point they have in other mmo's It is a a method for players to pay for their sub for free if they earn enough in game gold.

but its not used for that its used to pay for carries and boes and you name it

Edit: sorry to clarify they would buy the token from a vendor, NOT another player. This would also help serve as a gold sink to help stymie wow's rampant gold inflation

[Kaykay]

when it comes to blizzards solution, there's a huge difference between "having goldsellers" or "having the token". But we went from a "goldselling is a bannable offense" to "everyone can buy a token, quick and easy"

The impact on the game is astounding, but i'm sure actiblizz is counting their money.

[Raelbo]

Its called a smart cash grab system. Anything of the BS you wrote would be ever accurate (if even), when Blizzard not earns 7 Bugs for free, by doing nothing, for every Token every passing the AH. While completely controling the value and flow of gold in WoW. Thats why its a smart cash grab system. Beisdes that its just „giving more money to Blizz“ vs „giving a bit less money to gold sellers“. In the end its „giving money to someone for getting gold“. No clue what morality has to do with that.

Calling it a "smart cash grab system" is just a smug way of trying to attack Blizzard. I would call it a smart method of revenue generation - basically the same thing without the extremely biased negative connotations.

And no, the token doesn't enable Blizzard to control the value and flow of gold in WoW. This is achieved by how much gold they put in the game and how easy it is to obtain in-game. What the token does help with is to reduce the effect of goldsellers messing with the WoW economy.

As for the question of morality, giving money to organised goldsellers for gold is, IMO, in the same territory as paying money for pirated goods. Whether you choose to admit it or not, the fact is that goldseller activity harms the game and the game experience of legitimate customers for the financial gain of the goldseller. This is objectively immoral. And that is before you even get into issues like the scams associated with those activities.

There is no difference between gold sellers and Blizzard.

That is an utterly ridiculous statement. Even if taken purely in the context of token transactions vs goldselling, it is still utterly ridiculous. Yeah, we get it. You hate Blizzard, and that is clearly biasing your argument horribly.

The most obvious difference between Blizzard selling tokens to players and goldsellers doing so is that Blizzard aren't employing a horde of drones that interact with the game and negatively impact the game experience of their customers.

[Queen of Hamsters]

That is an utterly ridiculous statement. Even if taken purely in the context of token transactions vs goldselling, it is still utterly ridiculous. Yeah, we get it. You hate Blizzard, and that is clearly biasing your argument horribly.

The most obvious difference between Blizzard selling tokens to players and goldsellers doing so is that Blizzard aren't employing a horde of drones that interact with the game and negatively impact the game experience of their customers.

*Thumbs up*, although certain posters aren't known for arguments consisting of anything but emotional outbursts and buzzphrases as far as Blizzard is concerned... So your eloquence and insight is probably wasted.

Might also add that Blizzard doesn't take over accounts, strip them and send the gold to be sold to unwitting players, unlike goldfarmers/RMT companies.

- - - Updated - - -

when it comes to blizzards solution, there's a huge difference between "having goldsellers" or "having the token". But we went from a "goldselling is a bannable offense" to "everyone can buy a token, quick and easy"

The impact on the game is astounding, but i'm sure actiblizz is counting their money.

Selling gold as a 3rd party is still very much bannable. Same as buying illicit gold. Same as RMT. All of which would immediately increase should the token disappear. 3rd party sellers would be cheering as they'd once again be able to set the price themselves, and get more customers.

AcTiBlIZZ... Nah, just Blizzard.

I'm counting money too, all the money I've saved on games/game time/services since the token was introduced.

[Video Games]

Its a video game, there is no morality. I have no problem with the token, boosting, rmts, gold buyers and sellers except in the case of hacked accounts. And while it feels better to earn the gold youself in game, i dont have time to farm for hours every day

[dontknowdoya]

I think they waste too much time pursuing the third parties and that morality really does not come into play; with the exception of account theft.

Ban them if they spam or advertise in game and undercut them on pricing. Truly, by selling goods and services, they are promoting the game.

The problem with Blizzard is they are not happy with the lions share of the profits; they want ALL of the profit generated by the market they created. While there is nothing wrong with that endeavor, I think they would make more money leaving the market open.

[Niwes]

Calling it a "smart cash grab system" is just a smug way of trying to attack Blizzard. I would call it a smart method of revenue generation - basically the same thing without the extremely biased negative connotations.

And no, the token doesn't enable Blizzard to control the value and flow of gold in WoW. This is achieved by how much gold they put in the game and how easy it is to obtain in-game. What the token does help with is to reduce the effect of goldsellers messing with the WoW economy.

As for the question of morality, giving money to organised goldsellers for gold is, IMO, in the same territory as paying money for pirated goods. Whether you choose to admit it or not, the fact is that goldseller activity harms the game and the game experience of legitimate customers for the financial gain of the goldseller. This is objectively immoral. And that is before you even get into issues like the scams associated with those activities.



That is an utterly ridiculous statement. Even if taken purely in the context of token transactions vs goldselling, it is still utterly ridiculous. Yeah, we get it. You hate Blizzard, and that is clearly biasing your argument horribly.

The most obvious difference between Blizzard selling tokens to players and goldsellers doing so is that Blizzard aren't employing a horde of drones that interact with the game and negatively impact the game experience of their customers.

Thoughts:

Interesstingly i totally have to agree to your first point. its not my descission or definition, but in my/Blizzards industry the default term is „smart cash grab system“. but: your argument has a lot of rational sense and i fully agree, since its main purpose is definitely a smart way to stretch revenues and boost figure numbers. which is „normal“ business.

your second part seems definitely to come up as a result of my bad english. you are ofc totally right, that the cash flow per se is controlled by the gold that they install in game. what i really wanna say is, that the ability to control token attractiveness is completely controlled by blizz. and i just said that, because thats a difference to gold sellers. blizz has control over the whole market, putted in gold, gold costs of stuff and gold outcome. goldsellers have not. means: when you control the complete market and the currency, you can adapt/adjust things. goldsellers just have to adapt their prices to the existing market. hopefully i better transported here, what i mean.

the morality thing i have a bit different opinion. or better said: i have the same opinion, but for a different reason. in my opinion, since goldsellers have also to pay a sub, they do nothing wrong per se. but i consider them also pirates, but just solely for the fact, that they act against the TOS. that makes it „criminal“. i would solely agree to your argument, when goldsellers would completely work on stolen accounts (what happens often). but at least before token existed there were china farmers too, farming and selling gold. since they pay a sub, the only reason i would call them pirates, is for acting against the TOS. not for your given reasons. when we talk about stolen/hacked accounts, ofc i 100% agree to you.

in the last part i can not agree. both make money out of selling gold. i see not much difference here. and tbh, i find a company controlling all of that goldselling by game design even more horrible (at least 5%) than goldsellers. i dont like both, tbh. because both are bad for the game, in terms of game quality. this is something you only said about the goldsellers. whats with Blizz, doing shitty game design for selling more tokens? but for both the same argument is true: if i dont like it, i dont have to play wow. its a free country.

[MrFawlty]

The token is, from what I see, better than having swarms of gold sellers. It makes safe transactions, doesn't strip someone else's character, nor get you banned.

As well, this thread will most likely be closed due to the topic of gold sellers.

How is allowing someone to cheat the game without the possibility of getting banned a good thing?

[Prothall]

Oh, good. It's another token thread.

What does it really matter? What has it ever really mattered. If you don't want to buy the freaking token, don't buy the freaking token. According to all of you, the game is dead anyway, so what does it matter if somebody spends their hard-earned money the way they want to? All of you, going on, and on, and on, and on, and on, like it changes anything or matters to anyone.

I'm just so, SO tired of it.

[muto]

Don't care either way. If people want to spend their real money on pixel money in a game that dwindles downward ever year, all the power to them.

[Nzx]

First:
Its Token, not Tolken.

Second:
Blizzard not earns 7 Bugs for free, by doing nothing, for ever

Third:
ensure that they earn 7 bugs for it

Fifth:
To me, your english is bad as fuck and your text is hard to read

Irony, thy name is MMOC forums. They'll be hotfixing forever with all these bugs!

edited to add, OT:

There's a reason we don't see constant complaints about accounts being hacked and guild banks being emptied any more. If the token takes away even 10% of the demand for external gold selling, it's worth it. There are potential life-changing consequences (as lame as that sounds) to those transactions like identity theft and card fraud. It's decriminalization rather than prohibition, a pretty broadly accepted way to reduce negative outcomes that come with black markets for potentially illicit products that have general demand.

[Niwes]

Irony, thy name is MMOC forums. They'll be hotfixing forever with all these bugs!

edited to add, OT:

There's a reason we don't see constant complaints about accounts being hacked and guild banks being emptied any more. If the token takes away even 10% of the demand for external gold selling, it's worth it. There are potential life-changing consequences (as lame as that sounds) to those transactions like identity theft and card fraud. It's decriminalization rather than prohibition, a pretty broadly accepted way to reduce negative outcomes that come with black markets for potentially illicit products that have general demand.

yeah, but you forget just one tiny thing:

if a smart cash grab system, like token, works out, you have a different monetizing path. in regards to wow this means:

if a token supporting game design makes Blizz more profit, by „1 mio players pay 7 bugs for free (net gain of 1 token)“ than it makes them profit by „400.000 players pay a sub“, the game design will further change towards supporting the selling of tokens. this type of game design doesnt make wow better for you or me.

in short: if you teach Blizz they can ignore many many unsubbing ppl, and can ignore game quality, bc they can make more profit with way less investment and less ppls, the game quality will sink. something none of us wants. this effect is not existing with goldsellers.

you act like the ONLY thing that makes the game worse, are stressy goldsellers. but you dont talk about, what blizz does to the game.

if you are a manager at Blizz and compare:
- 1 mio ppl paying 7 bugs = 7 mio profit, no content or game investment and higher quarter figures, game quality sinks.
- 400.000 ppls pay 13 bugs = 5,2 mio profit, investment in game and content, lower quarter numbers, game quality inc.

what do you think what happens?

just for the sake of completeness.

[EntertainmentNihilist]

WoW token > gold sellers. Gold sellers are dodgey, hack accounts, and get people banned. WoW token gives a safe way of buying gold, and allows for the possibility of farming gold in-game to pay for store mounts, game-time, etc.

Ideally, neither would exist. But we don't live in an ideal world.

[ablib]

What a dumb thread. I don't think the OP understands that the WoW "token" is obtained from legitimately farmed gold (theoretically). And gold sellers sell stolen gold (gold spun out of thin air, which causes inflation).

They are not equal...at all.

[Niwes]

WoW token > gold sellers. Gold sellers are dodgey, hack accounts, and get people banned. WoW token gives a safe way of buying gold, and allows for the possibility of farming gold in-game to pay for store mounts, game-time, etc.

Ideally, neither would exist. But we don't live in an ideal world.

on paper, i agree.

when i look at what Blizz did to WoW since introduction of Token, i quickly wanna get back into the WotlK+Goldsellers‘n‘Chinafarmers time.

to be honest: i trade modern Blizz company monetizing and modern WoW game design against Goldsellers and all that srum EVERY DAY. I would even pay 10 bugs more to get the goldsellers back, if the Token and the EA-like company monetizing (and therefore their token supporting cost effective cheap shit game design) fades away.

EVERY FUKIN DAY

[Gratz]

Just posting that I really don't care that people really don't care.
I do care about it being part of the survey.

Why would you make that one of the options? You are asking for ppl to be lazy and click it. Change that question to anything about wow since its release and the "i don't care" crowd is always the loudest, uncaring voice. I thought we realized this is how we got to where we are with the game?...............

[EntertainmentNihilist]

on paper, i agree.

when i look at what Blizz did to WoW since introduction of Token, i quickly wanna get back into the WotlK+Goldsellers‘n‘Chinafarmers time.

to be honest: i trade modern Blizz company monetizing and modern WoW game design against Goldsellers and all that srum EVERY DAY. I would even pay 10 bugs more to get the goldsellers back, if the Token and the EA-like company monetizing (and therefore their token supporting cost effective cheap shit game design) fades away.

EVERY FUKIN DAY

?? What exactly bad has blizzard done because of the token?

Store mounts? That would have happened anyways.
Big Gold Sinks (Brutosaur, Spider Mount)? Good for the health of the economy.
Nerfing ridiculously OP ways to get gold (garrisons and such) and getting rid of inflation? Also good for the economy.

I can't think of any way they've made things worse *because of* the WoW token.

[Nzx]

in short: if you teach Blizz they can ignore many many unsubbing ppl, and can ignore game quality, bc they can make more profit with way less investment and less ppls, the game quality will sink. something none of us wants. this effect is not existing with goldsellers.

This is you postulating something and then declaring it as true. Not every company designs the same way your apparent "race to the bottom" employer does.

The simple response to this is "why would Blizzard not want to maximise subscribers and token sales". Even if you take the complete cynic viewpoint of "they only care about their shareholders", they report monthly active users as part of their investor disclosures, it's a key performance metric for them, and if you unsub but I buy two tokens that is objectively worse for them from that perspective. People keep acting like monetizing a product is some kind of inherently evil endeavour, and it's legitimately fucking tiring. There are a bunch of games with robust cash shops where you absolutely would not complain about a lack of content, and where the quality of the game has not suffered as a result.

As I have said elsewhere, the only reason people complain about MTX is because they want top-end quality without paying for it. They want the content schedule and output of a game like Fortnite or PoE, depth of gameplay and difficulty like Dark Souls, storyline like The Witcher, graphics like a Marvel movie, customization like the Sims, and perfectly balanced difficulty that ranges from a children's spelling game through to an expert-level rhythm game, and they want it all for the one-off cost of an indie game on Steam. Oh, and of course, they want all the developers to be driving around in Lamborghinis and eating seven-course meals three times a day with all this non-existent money no one is paying them with.

Also, I wasn't really interested in arguing with you. I was more interested in calling you out for correcting "token" vs "tolken" and then immediately launching into a multi-paragraph response where you constantly misused the term "bugs" and butchered general grammar conventions, and then closed your post by insulting the poster's use of English again. Glass houses, stones, etc.