World of Warcraft Gold Can Now Be Used To Buy Other Blizzard Games (arstechnica.com) 69
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It has been almost two years now since Blizzard began letting World of Warcraft players pay for their monthly game-time subscriptions using in-game gold rather than real money. Now, Blizzard is expanding that effort by letting players indirectly trade WoW gold for in-game items in other Blizzard games like Hearthstone and Overwatch. The new feature is really just a slight tweak to the WoW Token, a specialized item that can be purchased for $20 (£15/€20) in real money or for a free-floating, in-game gold price at World of Warcraft auction houses. Those Tokens can still be exchanged for 30 days of World of Warcraft subscription time, but as of this week, they can also be redeemed for $15 in balance on your Battle.net account. (European figures TBC.) That balance can then be spent on packs of Hearthstone cards, Overwatch Loot Boxes, Heroes of the Storm skins, or even downloadable copies of games like StarCraft II and Diablo III. That means that a dedicated WoW player can now fund a multigame Blizzard habit simply by earning enough in-game gold. You'd better be prepared to farm a lot of gold, though. The purchase price for a WoW Token at the auction house can fluctuate wildly -- as of this writing, the tokens have gone for anywhere from 59,833 gold to 108,924 gold in the last 24 hours, according to tracking site WowToken.info. That gives each in-game gold piece a rough value between 1/100th and 2/100th of a cent, when converted to Blizzard.net balance.
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I disagree. This gets at a very nerd-worthy discussion of real-world value of virtual game currencies; and how for-profit game companies can or even should try to create real-world revenue from them. It's more valid when you consider that World of Warcraft is one of the largest, oldest, and most significant games with a virtual currency.
Re: To reduce gold abundances. (Score:2)
It gets currency out of the local game's economy helping ease the high amount of inflation from a game that's ran for over a decade.
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No, it doesnt.
If I buy a token for real money and sell it to you for WoW gold, before the transaction you and me combined had 1 token + 100k gold, and after the transaction you and me combined had 1 token + 100k gold.
Re: To reduce gold abundances. (Score:3)
That's what I get for not reading the story. I thought the gold was disappearing into blizzards black hole, and you got an item that had no other link back to WoW.
Gold not removed for Token sales (Score:1)
So it's more like PLEX in EVE (Score:2)
The summary reminded me of an item in EVE Online called "pilot license extension" (PLEX), which represents one month of play time but can be traded for "interstellar kredits" (ISK), the in-game currency.
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These things have been in WoW for the better part of 2 years. They are far too expensive to really affect much, simply put to farm enough gold to buy the token takes a very long time. It's a way to spend when you got loads built up over years, but actually playing by buying tokens with gold would mean never doing anything but gold farming... boring as hell.
I stopped playing WoW a long time ago, but I don't see it as much of a gamechanger, certainly not enough to have lured me back. Giving it another use won
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At most it can be thought of as a loyalty reward for people who have been playing for years and are gold-capped - hey now you can turn some of that gold into other blizzard games.
Exactly. WoW is slowly but steadily losing players and Blizzard knows this ride will end someday, but would prefer players leaving WoW switch to another Blizzard game. Someone leaving WoW could auction all their gear and transfer some of the years of playing WoW into a new Blizzard game.
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>WoW is slowly but steadily losing players and Blizzard knows this ride will end someda
It has to really - you can only get so far with gradual improvement of a base that is now 13 years old. In the meantime the tech has advanced. A lot of the assumptions about MMO's that were true then aren't anymore. Look at what ESO is doing now. No realms, everybody who plays share the same gamespace - no prevention of cross-faction play. You can group, quest and trade with anybody - even if their faction is at war wi
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I played for maybe 6-8 months when Warcraft was first released (never got into high-level stuff), then when the first expansion came out I played for about another year. It felt like the expansion just catered to twinks with completely over-powered drops and quest exp in expansion areas compared to similar level areas in the original, so the original areas became worthless ghost-towns. I never had an interest in going back.
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In a sense. The process is player A buys a token with cash, puts it on the in-game auction house. Player B buys the token from the AH with gold, and uses it for game time or whatever. At this point the gold is still in the economy, it's just moved from B to A. But presumably A has a purpose in mind, and that purpose most likely involves running gold into/through one of the processes that do take it out of the economy - buying stuff from in-game vendors, buying stuff from other players (aside from tokens, wh
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Never played WoW, but if 5000 could get you this [ytmnd.com] and 100k is $15 now, the inflation is worse than even dollar within a Dem or Rep government.
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aside from a brief spike over the last day or so the ratio has been more in the 50-60k gold / $15 area. But yeah, inflation has definitely been a thing. The expansion before the current one was noted for making it easier to earn gold, and the current one has accelerated it further (one of the updates was to increase the maximum gold a character or guild could hold by a factor of 10, and there's already folks who have capped that limit).
MMO Economies (Score:4, Informative)
MMO Economies - How to Manage Inflation in Virtual Economies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
MMO Economies - Hyperinflation, Reserve Currencies & You! - Extra Credits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Overwatch Loot Boxes? (Score:2, Interesting)
The days of having a high skill duel on Quake ere long behind us.
I haven't played Overwatch because it looks terrible, so I wasn't sure what these loot boxes were. It turns out that they contain "alternate skins, highlight intros, emotes, voice lines, sprays, and more" so you can dress up like a princess while you play! But wait there's more -"One Loot Box is earned every time a player levels up." Yes, Overwatch has levels! I just love grinding to level up!
I'm suddenly very depressed. Remember when gam
Re:Overwatch Loot Boxes? (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, Overwatch is exactly how you describe Quake: Whether a player is level 1 or 100 doesn't matter, the (same) characters are exactly equally strong - the level is just an indicator of how much a player must have played, thus a rough indication of potential skill level. The level 1 going up against the level 100 is very likely to get creamed just for that reason, but maybe the 100 is some guy who just plays now and then to pass the time, while the level 1 is a pro on a new account.
The loot boxes are extra fun. Of course Blizzard tries to recoup server costs on an otherwise buy-to-play game, but they literally contain NOTHING that makes you stronger than anyone else, and the ones gained for free are ... well. They're the "First shot is free!" version to give players a taste.
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The sense of entitlement kids and snowflakes are learning these days is everyone is equal, you put in your time (grinding) and you get your gold star (level up). I hate the current 5v5 model because it hides your skill completely. Whether you win or lose is up to the random generator that made the teams and there's almost nothing you can do about it.
Just try to find a game where it's everyone
Re:Games and skills (Score:2)
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You idiot.
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Kids today don't want a skill based game. It's not fair that the better player should win most of the time... Of course bringing your own team of 5 is being a social little snowflake and that will be rewarded with plenty of wins.
This argument falls apart at "kids today..." because the average age of gamers is 31. http://venturebeat.com/2014/04... [venturebeat.com] The 25-35 age demographic also has more disposable income to spend on games than kids, so games are going to reflect their preferences. Gamers also tend to enjoy playing games with their friends and social groups, so it makes sense that team-based games would have appeal. The 25-35 year olds also usually have other responsibilities and interests in their life than games and don't have the
Twitch Based eSports... (Score:1)
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You should see what they did to butcher TeamFortress2. It was so bad I removed it from my system entirely.
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No, player A pays the 20 dollars, sells the token in WoW for gold to player B, then player B cashes it in and gets 15 dollars on their balance. Still a bad deal, but not for any one specific person.
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If you buy a token with gold, you bought it on the auction house and you can't sell it again, you can only turn it into blizzard credit.
If you buy a token with cash, you can only list it on the auction house; you can't sell it (or give it away) directly. This lets them ensure the price is stable.
Dedicated player you say? (Score:1)
"That means that a dedicated WoW player can now fund [...]"
When you say dedicated WoW player you mean Chinese gold farmer?
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"That means that a dedicated WoW player can now fund [...]"
When you say dedicated WoW player you mean Chinese gold farmer?
Not necessarily. I have a WoW account (not active) with over 600k gold in it that I accumulated playing it for 10+ years. I could definitely use that gold to get some Overwatch skins if the account was active. I suspect I'd need to activate the account to transfer the credits though, which is a deal breaker.
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As I understand it, you could use some of the gold to activate for a month (I've heard there's an option on the character select screen for that), use the rest to turn into credit, then let it shut back down at the end of the month.
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Nah, it's real simple. You could always get in-game gold by spending your time playing. You could always get money in the real world by spending your time working. Some people have more money than time. Some people have more time than money. This make the economics more flexible, to boost total subscription rates, and reinforce them somewhat against subscription headcount losses that occur as a direct result of economic turmoil.
Time-money tradeoff varies by country (Score:2)
$15 might be 24 hours' pay in countries where wages are much lower than they are in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, and Republic of Korea.
Re: Time-money tradeoff varies by country (Score:1)
Those places wouldn't have internet. Or if they did it would cost a days pay!
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China has Internet (or at least a subset thereof) and low wages. It and the surrounding area used to be the stereotype for gold farming [wikipedia.org].
How long does it take to farm gold? (Score:3)
From the summary, a token is 60k-110k gold. How much game time is that?
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I'd feel better about myself with only 3 max level characters. About to hit 8...
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Seconds, if you ask the auction flippers.
In practice, within an order of 10 hours.
No, that doesn't really mean "precisely between 1 and 100".
On the whole, gold isn't worth spending hours after if you're a member of the paycheck club in a developed country. Same as when they did the RMAH in Diablo III.
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I play a couple of hours a day. More on the weekends.
I don't have any alts (just play 1 character).
I can make about 100k gold over the course of a month just doing the normal world quests and missions.
I have bought game time with gold before. There really is no other use for gold in WoW if you farm all your own stuff (like I do).
Recently though, I have been using the gold to buy heirloom items for when I do actually play different characters. That is very expensive and has had me busy for months now (you go
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They're the party of less taxes
Yeah, they just call taxes "fees". Problem solved. No new taxes...
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How has the IRS never taken an interest?
And why do you think they need to? The tokens are bought with real money -- company revenues which are recorded for tax filing. The tokens in auction house are in-game trade and could be exchanged over games. There is NO NEW revenue generated (for real money) during this type of transaction... Unless you are being sarcastic???
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They have. https://www.irs.gov/businesses... [irs.gov]
This is (Score:1)
This is MADNESS!
Madness? THIS IS WoW!
WoW lost me. Battleground Europe is still fun tho (Score:1)