Blizzard needs to F**K right off with Cashshop Transmogs

[Dhrizzle]

We can make a relative conclusion about the movement of the trend though.

More gold was being infused into the virtual economy of WoW at the end of WoD than it is now. If players were making more gold in WoD, when the token was giving 35k gold, then there is absolutely no way that the token naturally remains at a near to 200k gold exchange rate in an expansion in which it is much more difficult to make gold. This isn't natural movement.

After the end of WoD Blizz allowed you to convert gold to battle.net balance so it became much more valuable, driving up demand and prices.

[mst3kfan]

Truely empanthy and tolerance are the last virtues of a dying society even a virtual one it seems.

Why should I have empathy for a person who is so weak willed they can't control themselves from buying something they don't need? The presence of an in-game shop in no-way impacts it's playability. There are enough weak willed simps in the world as it is. People need to grow a spine and take ownership for your own actions instead of crying about something that doesn't matter. At this point they are just whining and complaining for the sake of it.

[Magnagarde]

After the end of WoD Blizz allowed you to convert gold to battle.net balance so it became much more valuable, driving up demand and prices.

There's no doubt about that, but given that players have increasingly been exposed to spending and have been given systems that allow them to earn less gold in the game, it would be natural for the WoW token to start giving less and less gold.

The amount of gold earned by players in WoD/Legion by the millions is slowly drying up(unless players kept hoarding, in which case they aren't part of the supply and demand to begin with) and returning players have had no way of making the same obscene amounts of gold, massive goldsinks were introduced(the conversion to Battle.net balance is a massive goldsink of its own, not just the Brutosaur). Gold should be becoming more valuable over time, which would result in players getting less gold for a token.

The conversion of gold to WoW tokens in order to get Battle.net balance should be driving the value of gold up, as it only results in players having less and less gold. As a result, the longer this option is available, the steadier the decline of gold Blizzard gives you for a token should be.

You're absolutely correct that it drove the gold-for-token rate up, but that can realistically have a massive impact in the short term, after which it - if its a natural trend - would have to even out to a certain value that relates to the amount of gold players can make in the game because not everyone played the WoD/Legion mission tables and not everyone saved millions and millions of gold(that amount would be steadily declining aswell). On top of that, you have to consider the following: 1. Some players who had something to spend their Battle.net balance on and converted gold have spent everything they had; 2. Some players who had something to spend their gold on have already bought most of the stuff that they wanted off the Battle.net shop, with further purchases happening depending on various releases on the shop; 3. Players are no longer able to earn obscene amounts of gold, as opposed to when this feature first launched; 4. We would be seeing massive spikes in gold-for-token conversion depending on what Battle.net balance can be spent on; 5. The more gold is converted into Battle.net balance, the more the value of the remaining gold in the game because there is less of it, resulting in WoW tokens realistically giving less of it in the process. There's much more to this, but it is just too much to talk about.

[Dhrizzle]

I'm not saying it isn't "easy" to make gold now, which also largely depends on the personal playstyle of choice; I'm just saying it was much easier in WoD and in Legion than it is now, provided you were willing to pursue a playstyle that maximizes gold income.

Yeah but in other expansions there was a lot of setup, like in WoD you needed to level 10 alts, level their garrisons and inns, collect treasure hunters and do the table each day. That's a lot of involvement with WoW's subsystems.

In SL though you can make decent gold through the Covenant dailies which is a main activity and feels more like a "passive" system, though admittedly it's best playing on a few characters to get tokens.

[Lolites]

Why should I have empathy for a person who is so weak willed they can't control themselves from buying something they don't need? The presence of an in-game shop in no-way impacts it's playability. There are enough weak willed simps in the world as it is. People need to grow a spine and take ownership for your own actions instead of crying about something that doesn't matter. At this point they are just whining and complaining for the sake of it.

hear hear, its not blizzards fault people lack selfcontrol...

[Dhrizzle]

I'm not saying it isn't "easy" to make gold now, which also largely depends on the personal playstyle of choice; I'm just saying it was much easier in WoD and in Legion than it is now, provided you were willing to pursue a playstyle that maximizes gold income.

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It isn't a conspiracy theory because you have observable trends of WoW token-to-gold conversion rates since WoD.

You can pretend that you don't know how much gold is being spawned into the virtual economy through player activity, but you're only lying to yourself if you refuse to admit to yourself that players were spawning obscene amounts of gold into the game throughout WoD and Legion. You'd also only lie to yourself if you refused to see that much less is being infused into the game right now.




The only arguement that backs your line of thinking up is that it depends on supply and demand, which is the one trend which we can't confirm. The only thing we have available, which are historic conversion rates, speak against it.

What you are saying is definitely the way the WoW token should work, but there is absolutely no way that is the case given the trend of the conversion rate. There would be massive spikes in the token-to-gold conversion rate. The WoW token is showing stability at an unnaturaly high level that otherwise simply isn't possible given the oscillation in player numbers and ways to spawn gold into the game, let alone everything else that I've mentioned.

I am not trying to make Blizzard look like a boogeyman out of a conspiracy theory; this is sound business.

What's the sound business exactly? It sounds like you are saying Blizz are just selling gold and not facilitating an exchange between players, wouldn't that be easily provable fraud that somebody would have blown the whistle on given the fraught relationship between Acti-Blizz and their employees?

[arkanon]

You don't get to define words

P2W is whatever someone says it is for them.

So I don't get to define words, but everyone else does. How ironic.

[mst3kfan]

There's no doubt about that, but given that players have increasingly been exposed to spending and have been given systems that allow them to earn less gold in the game, it would be natural for the WoW token to start giving less and less gold. The boosting has run rampart aswell, introducing M+ and the related rewards,

The amount of gold earned by players in WoD/Legion by the millions is slowly drying up(unless players kept hoarding, in which case they aren't part of the supply and demand to begin with) and returning players have had no way of making the same obscene amounts of money, massive goldsinks were introduced(the conversion to Battle.net balance is a massive goldsink of its own, not just the Brutosaur). Gold should be becoming more valuable over time, which would result in players getting less gold for a token.

You clearly do not understand basic economics. If you did, you would understand that the value of a currency goes down over time. One dollar today is worth more than it is tomorrow, or next week, or even next year. It is one of the fundamental concepts of a market economy. This concept translates directly in-game as well. Where 5K gold in TBC was worth MUCH more than 5K gold is today. It comes down to scarcity, and inflation. Gold creation has not been scarce so the value of gold has declined as inflation has increased.

[Dhrizzle]

There's no doubt about that, but given that players have increasingly been exposed to spending and have been given systems that allow them to earn less gold in the game, it would be natural for the WoW token to start giving less and less gold.

The amount of gold earned by players in WoD/Legion by the millions is slowly drying up(unless players kept hoarding, in which case they aren't part of the supply and demand to begin with) and returning players have had no way of making the same obscene amounts of gold, massive goldsinks were introduced(the conversion to Battle.net balance is a massive goldsink of its own, not just the Brutosaur). Gold should be becoming more valuable over time, which would result in players getting less gold for a token.

The conversion of gold to WoW tokens in order to get Battle.net balance should be driving the value of gold up, as it only results in players having less and less gold. As a result, the longer this option is available, the steadier the decline of gold Blizzard gives you for a token should be.

You're absolutely correct that it drove the gold-for-token rate up, but that can realistically have a massive impact in the short term, after which it - if its a natural trend - would have to even out to a certain value that relates to the amount of gold players can make in the game. On top of that, you have to consider the following: 1. Players who had something to spend their gold on have spent everything they had; 2. Players who had something to spend their gold on have already bought most of the stuff that they wanted off the Battle.net shop, with further purchases happening depending on various releases on the shop; 3. Players are no longer able to earn obscene amounts of gold, as opposed to when this feature first launched; 4. We would be seeing massive spikes in gold-for-token conversion depending on what Battle.net balance can be spent on.

You're missing the point - when they made it exchangeable for BNet balance they massively increased its value. I couldn't be arsed grinding gold to cover a barely noticeable monthly expense but I'll happily do so to get a dragon. Token price went up because it became objectively a more valuable commodity, that's about it. And as I've explained the cost is easily covered through normal gameplay.

[Sinaa]

They have not released very many okay looking armor sets since they Legion, if they put that beauty into the cash shop I'm done.

[Magnagarde]

You clearly do not understand basic economics. If you did, you would understand that the value of a currency goes down over time. One dollar today is worth more than it is tomorrow, or next week, or even next year. It is one of the fundamental concepts of a market economy. This concept translates directly in-game as well. Where 5K gold in TBC was worth MUCH more than 5K gold is today. It comes down to scarcity, and inflation. Gold creation has not been scarce so the value of gold has declined as inflation has increased.

WoW's economy is not a real life market economy. You can't draw comparisons between gold in WoW and money in real life when gold in WoW is subject to trends that do not exist in real life and the other way around. The comparison can be drawn in examples pertaining to the auction house and then some, but not across the board.

Gold in WoW is not necessarily worth less tomorrow than it is today because gold in WoW is being wiped out of the economy too, it isn't just added. In real life value is constantly added; in WoW, value is constantly destroyed and added, through means that don't exist in a real market economy. In real life you earn money by providing goods and services others depend on; in WoW you earn and lose gold doing things that require neither; substantial amounts of gold, more often than not, don't exchange hands and end up being wiped.

In order to fully understand what I meant; my original point was that the WoW token-to-gold conversion rate is determined by Blizzard, not "supply and demand" and as evidence I'm using the relative stability of the gold-for-token rate over the course of the several past years.

[arkanon]

Anyway this thread will always be full to the brim with
1) salty poor people
2) people with less than a basic understanding of the english language
3) people with addiction problems
4) jilted lovers

Which one are you?

[Kehego]

Which one are you?

I'm addicted to jilted lovers with a less than basic understanding of the english language and addiction problems with not enough money to fuel them.

[mst3kfan]

WoW's economy is not a real life market economy. You can't draw comparisons between gold in WoW and money in real life when gold in WoW is subject to trends that do not exist in real life and the other way around. The comparison can be drawn in examples pertaining to the auction house and then some, but not across the board.

Gold in WoW is not necessarily worth less tomorrow than it is today because gold in WoW is being wiped out of the economy too, it isn't just added. In real life value is constantly added; in WoW, value is constantly destroyed and added, through means that don't exist in a real market economy.

In order to fully understand what I meant; my original point was that the WoW token-to-gold conversion rate is determined by Blizzard, not "supply and demand" and as evidence I'm using the relative stability of the gold-for-token rate over the course of the several past years.

Wow is a market economy albeit a simple version. You can argue all you want, but this is not theory nor supposition. It is fact.

"A market economy is an economic system in which economic decisions and the pricing of goods and services are guided by the interactions of individual citizens and businesses."

The WoW economy is based solely on buying and selling commodities, and goods. The value of said goods are set based on supply and demand of the goods in game by the players. We don't have "businesses", but you can argue that there are players who fit this role. Your argument that it isn't because gold is "deleted" is false as well. Gold may be "deleted" when you buy something from an in-game vendor, but the exact same thing happens when the Fed buys back currency and removes it from circulation. The only difference in a national economy this also results in an increase of interest rates which doesn't happen in game because their is no system or need for interest because you can't invest gold in game and get a return like you can from a bank.

[Magnagarde]

You're missing the point - when they made it exchangeable for BNet balance they massively increased its value. I couldn't be arsed grinding gold to cover a barely noticeable monthly expense but I'll happily do so to get a dragon. Token price went up because it became objectively a more valuable commodity, that's about it. And as I've explained the cost is easily covered through normal gameplay.

The value of the WoW token went up in terms of the gold that it gives because of the Battle.net balance that you can convert it to, yes. Making gold however is not as easy as it used to be; Legion, for example, had everything Shadowlands provides when it comes to making gold through normal gameplay(ie emissaries, world quests, gathering), plus the mission tables which would rake in absurd amounts of gold over a long period of time and would require very little investment in terms of gameplay, especially after resources became transferable. This means that players can make less gold now than in Legion, which would mean that a natural trend of token-to-gold conversion should follow suit. It doesn't matter how much more the token is valuable to you, me or anyone else if you can't provide the gold in order to acquire one or as many as you used to. With the decreasing number of active players, with the fact that there is only so much you can buy off the Battle.net Shop and the continously smaller number of players that partake in Blizzard games, with the amount of gold that players can earn in the game being reduced significantly, the value of the WoW token as a means of providing Battle.net balance would drop off too because players simply can't buy as many tokens with gold. You could earn one or two, I could earn five or ten, but there is no doubt that less gold can be earned and that less tokens can be bought.

Either way, I don't disagree with you because what you said is absolutely a fact. But, the stability of the amount of gold that is given for a token simply doesn't match what would be a realistic historic trend if "supply and demand" were truly the thing that determines this. This kind of stability can only come through Blizzard's intereference, keeping the WoW token attractive and as you have said, obtainable, if you play enough.

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Wow is a market economy albeit a simple version. You can argue all you want, but this is not theory nor supposition. It is fact.

"A market economy is an economic system in which economic decisions and the pricing of goods and services are guided by the interactions of individual citizens and businesses."

The WoW economy is based solely on buying and selling commodities, and goods. The value of said goods are set based on supply and demand of the goods in game by the players. We don't have "businesses", but you can argue that there are players who fit this role. Your argument that it isn't because gold is "deleted" is false as well. Gold may be "deleted" when you buy something from an in-game vendor, but the exact same thing happens when the Fed buys back currency and removes it from circulation. The only difference in a national economy this also results in an increase of interest rates which doesn't happen in game because their is no system or need for interest because you can't invest gold in game and get a return like you can from a bank.

It isn't based solely on the market economy's model of buying and selling commodities, because very often there is no interaction between players themselves; it is individuals and the government, in this case Blizzard. That is not a market economy. One of the few things the market economy model applies to WoW inherently in is the auction house and personal trade. Appart from this, the only other thing that can be viewed from the standpoint of a market economy are player services. Everything else definitely isn't even relatable to a market economy.

The only way you can talk about WoW as a market economy in its whole is if you talk about Blizzard being an extremely interfering government, which is where the WoW token comes in and the bogus "supply and demand"; to assume that the supply and demand for tokens is this stable naturally is just unfounded, considering the volatility of all the factors that affect it. To call it a "simple version" already defies the whole point of calling it a market economy.

[Empower]

Why should I have empathy for a person who is so weak willed they can't control themselves from buying something they don't need? The presence of an in-game shop in no-way impacts it's playability. There are enough weak willed simps in the world as it is. People need to grow a spine and take ownership for your own actions instead of crying about something that doesn't matter. At this point they are just whining and complaining for the sake of it.

I fear the point has soared so far above you that I doubt you are able to see it anymore with the naked eye.

[Kehego]

The value of the WoW token went up in terms of the gold that it gives because of the Battle.net balance that you can convert it to, yes. Making gold however is not as easy as it used to be; Legion, for example, had everything Shadowlands provides when it comes to making gold through normal gameplay(ie emissaries, world quests, gathering), plus the mission tables which would rake in absurd amounts of gold over a long period of time and would require very little investment in terms of gameplay, especially after resources became transferable. This means that players can make less gold now than in Legion, which would mean that a natural trend of token-to-gold conversion should follow suit. It doesn't matter how much more the token is valuable to you, me or anyone else if you can't provide the gold in order to acquire one or as many as you used to. With the decreasing number of active players, with the fact that there is only so much you can buy off the Battle.net Shop and the continously smaller number of players that partake in Blizzard games, with the amount of gold that players can earn in the game being reduced significantly, the value of the WoW token as a means of providing Battle.net balance would drop off too because players simply can't buy as many tokens with gold. You could earn one or two, I could earn five or ten, but there is no doubt that less gold can be earned and that less tokens can be bought.

Either way, I don't disagree with you because what you said is absolutely a fact. But, the stability of the amount of gold that is given for a token simply doesn't match what would be a realistic historic trend if "supply and demand" were truly the thing that determines this. This kind of stability can only come through Blizzard's intereference, keeping the WoW token attractive and as you have said, obtainable, if you play enough.

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It isn't based solely on the market economy's model of buying and selling commodities, because very often there is no interaction between players themselves; it is individuals and the government, in this case Blizzard. That is not a market economy. One of the few things the market economy model applies to WoW inherently in is the auction house and personal trade. Appart from this, the only other thing that can be viewed from the standpoint of a market economy are player services. Everything else definitely isn't even relatable to a market economy.

The only way you can talk about WoW as a market economy in its whole is if you talk about Blizzard being an extremely interfering government, which is where the WoW token comes in and the bogus "supply and demand". To call it a "simple version" already defies the whole point of calling it a market economy.

I just want you to know that you're literally confirmation biasing your own headcanon

WoW economy is as free as one can be, there's literally no intervention by blizzard. Prices are determined by players, be it natural supply/demand or player manipulation.

Blizzard doesn't set the price of anything outside vendor items, lol

[Magnagarde]

I just want you to know that you're literally confirmation biasing your own headcanon

WoW economy is as free as one can be, there's literally no intervention by blizzard. Prices are determined by players, be it natural supply/demand or player manipulation.

Blizzard doesn't set the price of anything outside vendor items, lol

Natural supply and demand, especially in the hands of a gaming community, would be extremely volatile and we'd witness dips and hikes in the form you'd have previously thought unimaginable, if Blizzard didn't interfere with it. To claim there's no interference on Blizzard's part, while simultaneously looking at how stable it has been, is irrational.

If Blizzard allowed me to directly buy a token from you for gold or the other way around, while also taking their due out of our transaction and not being the one that provides the token in the first place, then we could talk about supply and demand in the proper sense of a market. This way Blizzard is providing gold whenever someone wants to turn a token in and is also providing a token whenever someone wants to provide gold for it. You're not giving me a token and I'm not giving you gold; Blizzard is doing both to either of us.

[Relapses]

Natural supply and demand, especially in the hands of a gaming community, would be extremely volatile and we'd witness dips and hikes in the form you'd have previously thought unimaginable, if Blizzard didn't interfere with it.

If Blizzard allowed me to directly buy a token from you for gold or the other way around, then we could talk about supply and demand.

Blizzard did place a 3% hourly maximum differential on the token to prevent the dips and highs you're referring to.

[Kehego]

Blizzard did place a 3% hourly maximum differential on the token to prevent the dips and highs you're referring to.

its like they just scream and have no idea what they are talking about