WOW selling gametime for gold, your thoughts?

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. I can definitely see the benefit for the average players, but how much of an effect will it have on the gold sellers, or will they simply switch their focus to selling tokens? How will Blizzard keep track of that? It's one thing to sell virtual items; but now you're talking about a virtual item that is worth real money. That ups the ante a little bit.

 

I'm not so sure there is anything that will kill the gold sellers. If there is some way to spin a profit, someone will find something. In order for the tokens to work, there has to be a stable in-game economy. Gold farmers create gold, whereas the tokens will only recirculate gold that already exists. At some point, the economy will get stale.

People look for the best deal in most cases, not always the most 'legal'. Many people will rationalize that breaking a rule is okay to save $10. And the gold farmers will adjust their prices to make sure they have the better deal. In order to really kill the gold farmers, Blizzard would have to make the tokens incredibly cheap or set a base minimum for what the token can resell for. Which, again, would tank the economy since you are now putting a real dollar value on a digital item that anyone can purchase.

I just don't think this is a good idea and I don't think this will do anything to the gold sellers because Blizzard will force their value to be, at a minimum, equivalent to the monthly sub price. Blizzard is a business and they have investors to answer to.

 

If that's the case then I can come back to the game in the near future. Unsubbed at the moment since I had a new bill that cropped up that needs paying. I have a ton of gold in game from years of flipping on the market and crafting items for people. In fact I have so much gold it's stupidly unreal and the butt end of my old guildmates' jokes.

I agree that Blizzard is finally addressing the loss of revenue to gold buyers. With this business model players who pay money to the company will spend more in order to obtain gold in a manner that won't get them banned. I think they looked hard at GW2's gold to gem exchange and EVE Online's game time exchange and figured that it would work. Don't forget that games like these have economists to run through the hard numbers in order to see if it's feasible or not.

 

Runescape has been doing this and it seems to work fine. This is basically just a way to sell gold indirectly so people don't claim it's pay to win.

 

To each their own; I'm glad that Blizzard is giving players an option to trade gold/game time if that's what people want. I sincerely hope it works out better than it did in Diablo 3. It's not something I would spend my money on, but then again, neither is a subscription when there are so many free options available.

 

The way I see it is- for $15 a month it's a cheap hobby versus a night out for a movie and dinner. Players who have extra cash lying around and play the game can purchase the tokens for gold by players who pretty much make gold in droves like myself but don't usually have the money every month to keep up because money is tied up in other bills, ect. Also WoW is a pretty developed game to keep players entertained for a month and if they get bored they're only out of gold. The person who paid real life money isn't out on too much either because they got gold out of the exchange.

 

I think it's a great idea, but from the point of view of the buyer, not the seller of the token. Some younger/unemployed players will have an easier time farming up the gold for game time than getting their parents to pay for their game time or scrounging up the money themselves. I am not sure I would ever pay for my game time in gold, but it is a good option to have just in case, and would allow some players to keep their accounts from lapsing.

 

I see the benefits of the situation, but I doubt it's going to stop gold sellers. This could have some unintended consequences, too. We'll see sooner or later.

 

This was implemented before by other games, as stated above, and it's a great thing overall, but it will not stop gold sellers. If anything, they will just lower the prices so that the amount of gold needed for 60 days of game time will be cheaper than a pre-paid card. You can clearly see how gold sellers and illegal MMO services persist through games just by looking at Diablo 3 after they removed the auction house and made most of the items account bound. They will always find a way to profit from game currencies, don't worry.

 

I agree. It won't put a full stop but it'll greatly diminish the number of people out there who do make profits off of selling gold. Only the large institutions can keep up such as the prison farms in China because they're utilizing free slave (prison) labor to get gold and sell.

 

I suppose we will have to see. If I were running a gold farming business and all of a sudden I have the opportunity to sell ACTUAL play time, I would lower my gold prices because I would expect more business. As a customer, If I could buy enough gold from a farmer to buy a token for a month's play time for $8, I totally would.

Typically, the ones who would utilize a gold farmer's services are ones who are willing to bend the rules a bit to save some money/time. They are also the same type of people that would be willing to bend the rules a bit to buy some play time at a lower price.

I'm not saying this is a bad idea. I see what Blizzard is trying to do and I'm supportive of that. But will it kill the gold sellers? No, I don't think it will - it will simply change how they run their business.

 

I think its a good idea. And honestly it seems like WoW is going to go the F2P route soon. I sure hope so because I want to get back into it!

 

When I first heard about this I was not too happy about it. I guess maybe I don't like change, plus I didn't like the idea of being F2P in any capacity, even indirectly. But reading some of the comments on this thread I guess it won't be such a bad thing. If it stops gold sellers, that's great. And if it gets more people in the game to liven up the dead servers, that's great too.

I do disagree with the posters who say WoW is going F2P entirely, but that's another thread

 

That's definetely not an absolute F2P model. Blizzard are not gonna make their best money maker free to play. Unless the number of users drops twice, it's not happening. Millions of people paying monthly fee since what, 2004? Nope, that's a gold mine. But they sure needed some kind of a change. Not only the news of the update was featured in every gaming website in the world, which probably got the few people who hadn't heard of Wow hooked too, but it most likely brough old players too. Many people lost interest and left their char resting in a tavern with thousands of gold in the bank, why not come back and play for free for a month or two? I think it was a great move and the timing was perfect. I don't imagine that it's gonna hurt the game as much as some people believe.