Yeah, you can buy tokens from blizz for cash and sell them for gold, that's the pay to win part. Your BoE and consumable budget in game, is restricted only by your budget in real life. This is the aspect of tokens that can put off some old vanilla players.

Yeah, you can buy tokens from blizz for cash and sell them for gold, that's the pay to win part. Your BoE and consumable budget in game, is restricted only by your budget in real life. This is the aspect of tokens that can put off some old vanilla players.

I would say that it is pay to win(get better gear, not exactly win per say) either way. It is still changing real money to ingame money.

For me I would rather pay money to blizz than shady botters who break my immersion.

Not sure if someone has mentioned it yet, but just in case: The token being in the game files is/was a leftover from the 7.3.5 client. It holds 0 weight towards any "does blizz plan to implement tokens in classic?" discussion.

This is definitely a very intriguing subject & I wanted to chime in.

Somewhere on the way I kind of went overboard with this and it turned into an essay on wow economy, but hell, here it is, maybe someone enjoys the read:

Starting point for me: where does ingame currency come from and where does it go?

The basis of the entire community driven economy in WoW seems to come from Quest rewards and item drops. At the very start of the game we are presented with the means to make gold without spending any. We receive gold and items for as quest rewards and from slain enemies. These items can then be sold to NPC vendors. These vendors just happen to have the gold. (Going forward, non-player entities in the game that sell or buy items for gold will be labelled the “game bank”.)

Almost all of the gold comes from the core gameplay of killing respawning enemies in one way or the other & selling the resulting loot to the game bank.

Everybody who has experienced Classic WoW in some way is painfully aware that all of this gold goes right back to where it came from, for as long as we are leveling. That’s great news for us, since we can safely assume the gold-economy does not affect and is not affected significantly by players that have not hit level cap. We have to buy character skills, materials and skills for profession leveling and in many cases materials for class specific skills like poisons. All of the gold we hid away in the first two thirds of the leveling process will at some point be dumped into the first riding skill and mount. Some classes even depend on constantly spending money on gear (in the widest possible sense), as hunters need ammunition and certain spells require materials to be cast. Alts and twinks, of course, are another matter entirely, one that I would argue irrelevant at this point, since the gold comes from level 60s. Selling items crafted to level professions also figures into this. We spend gold learning the recipes and then earn it back by selling the commodities we make back to a vendor, as most of them are useless otherwise.

Until we hit level 60, most – if not all – of the gold that the game bank provides us with, is given back to it by means of spending it on character progression.

Are we ever done with the game bank? Economy-wise, we are still at the same position as we were at level 1. The game presents us with the means to make gold without spending any. Players now have the chance to amass a collective wealth, for lack of a better term (I’m not going to look up terms of economy here, these are my words entirely). Since we have a game bank that never ever runs out of money, there is no limit to this collective wealth. (Technically there might be; since in Classic WoW there was a gold cap, which was apparently at ridiculous amounts close to 215k gold.)
Here we are now, minding our business, running some dungeons or raids, killing enemies and doing quests. But we are still not done with the game bank; we have to spend gold on: flights, repairs, spell mats and such – these expenses will from now on be labelled character maintenance. However something has changed now, if we keep playing, we will always make some small amount gold. The game seems to be designed in a way that – and this is an assumption – activities in endgame core gameplay (excluding PvP) tend to be just a little profitable, based on certain circumstances and not including inter-player trade.

When we reach level cap, the collective wealth of the community will always grow, because the game bank generally gives more than what it takes.

If we go by the very basic economic theory “income minus character maintenance equals profit”, we can quickly find out that our maintenance cost for certain activities are higher than for others. We would – for example – never come to the conclusion that raiding is a profitable activity based only on gold income. Only when we attempt to maximize gold income and minimize character maintenance can we profit in a cost-efficient way. This is what gold farming is and what drives personal and collective wealth in the game economy. While the economy of the community or server is still young, it is also the only way to quickly gain personal wealth.

Engaging in profitable and cost-efficient activities of core gameplay – gold farming – quickly grows personal wealth and further drives collective wealth.

One of the largest gold sinks in Classic WoW is the Epic Mount. Technically this is gold thrown into the game bank, but it is a very large amount, so I think it deserves mention. Farming the 1000 gold (900 for most, 800 for some – reputation/pvp rank required) required for the riding skill and mount can take a very long time, depending on your class, professions and the amount of time you can afford to put into farming. (I remember mages aoe farming in the Western Plaguelands for roughly 20g/h in 2005. There are numerous methods that can be researched these days that supposedly reward a lot more, but many people claim a lot of these are only possible on private servers due differences to game mechanics in official Classic.)

Large amounts of gold farmed will magically disappear and be replaced by Epic Mounts.

We have already established by now that we give much of the gold back to the game as character maintenance. The other way – of course – is inter-player trade. To trade something, there must be something to trade for. We come by commodities in much the same way we come by gold: by engaging in core gameplay, which in this case includes gathering professions as well as killing enemies. Farming for commodities is generally more of a higher-risk-higher-reward kind of thing.

In the private server community, many important commodities were controlled by monopolies, such as the <Un’Goro Mafia> guild(s) that owned the farming of Devilsaur Leather by tracking the spawns of Devilsaurs, as well as killing “trespassers” of the opposite faction. It’s all fun and games until you realize they dictate insane prices because they are the only supplier & their sole redeeming quality (securing Devilsaur Leather for their faction) is no longer valid, as at some point they simply became politicians and gankers. They should have been called <Un’Goro Fatcats> :biggrin: I digress.

While collective wealth accumulates, a market of trade emerges.

The simplest of trades is trading gold for commodities at the auction house. The faction specific auction houses take a cut of 5% off the transaction; the neutral auction houses take 15%. The game bank will have its due. A trade made without the auction house does not cost this kind of fee. On what basis do we use the auction house if there is a clear economic disadvantage – not only for personal wealth, but also for collective wealth? We are missing an important – perhaps the most important – factor; we trade in gold and commodities, but acquiring either takes time. Time spent actively looking for a buyer and conducting business is time not spent farming or adding value.

Trading at the auction house as a buyer, we exchange gold for commodities. As a seller, we exchange commodities for gold and gold for time.

What do we need a commodity for anyway? Sometimes we resell it, sometimes we add value by crafting before we resell it and sometimes we buy it to use it ourselves. What effect do any of these have on the economy? Reselling an item only makes sense if it is profitable. Selling the item to us has shrunk the collective wealth by 5% of the price we paid if we bought it on the AH. Selling it again, we want to make sure that we receive more than we invested. That means we will again shrink the collective wealth by 5% of the selling price, which will this time be even more significant. AH reselling as a means to make gold is a very capitalistic action in WoW. But the same goes for adding value. We want more out of it than we put into it; it’s as simple as that.

Selling at the auction house in WoW – while profitable for the seller – significantly shrinks the collective wealth.

Two of the most obvious spending points in WoW are consumables and gear. Many players sell lucky finds on the auction house. There are quite a few prebis (“pre-raid best in slot”) items that are not soulbound on pickup, meaning you can trade them away. These are what many players farm for early in the game, either by killing enemies known to drop the item, or by gold farming and simply buying the item from the auction house. What happens to our collective wealth when that item is no longer a commodity? Its value all but disappears the moment it becomes soulbound. The same goes for commodities like consumables. Guilds spend a lot of gold on raid consumables during progression. The value of that wealth disappears when the item is consumed. What does that mean for our economy? There are now fewer commodities available, but still roughly the same collective wealth in gold. Economic theory teaches us that supply and demand influence prices. There is less supply, but the same demand and the same collective wealth.

Buying commodities intended for use leads to loss of personal wealth, but stable collective wealth, possibly resulting in prices rising.

None of the above really helps me decide whether or not I am pro Token or not. I need to figure out a couple more things in order to come to a conclusion. One of those is time invested.

Personal circumstances and willingness aside: one of the two key drivers of our collective wealth in WoW is time investment. Time invested in core gameplay activities is what leads to growth of collective wealth and a market. The market is of significant importance to pretty much everything else WoW is about. If there is no collective wealth and no market, PVE progression will be significantly slower. You can raid without consumables, of course, but it takes longer and guilds will on average kill fewer bosses per week, gaining less loot per week. This is also the reason a server without a market will never happen. The hardcore players and guilds are driven by ambition & the quickest way to greatness, be it your Epic Mount, Rank 14 or Server Firsts all go through the market in some way. On a smaller basis, personal progression for casual players and PvP’ers becomes all the more RNG based or grindy, if not impossible without a market to make use of.

There is no market without time investment. The absence of a market significantly slows down progress both personal and server wide.

Let’s say we invest the time farming for something, we want to help our economy grow. Whatever it is we do, as we found earlier, it has to do with either killing or gathering. Both of these are tied closely to two things with respect to time: the time it takes to do it & the time it takes to respawn.
As soon as we pick an herb, mine a node, kill or skin an enemy, we create value in the economic system we are part of, because we quite literally put something in our inventory that previously did not exist. That item can either be a commodity or gold (greys count as gold here). We talked earlier about cost efficient farming; in this case, the cost is time and we want to have a little “downtime” as possible. So we memorize the positions of herbs we pick and the time we pick them (if we are a true genius, we make notes or use addons ), we track the respawn timers of the enemies we kill and we waste as little time as possible, right? We create value at great efficiency. Every enemy not killed, every herb not picked, every node not mined – is unused potential for the growth of personal & collective wealth.

Every core gameplay action creates value for the community out of your time spent.

But there is a fact still here: there is a limit to our growth. I said earlier that collective wealth has no limit, which (not technically, but come on) is correct. But growth does. Have you ever camped a single spawn point of Black Lotus? Tried tagging and killing a Devilsaur before mentioned Mafia got to you? You don’t see many Mining Nodes in high level zones. In these cases, on full servers like Nostalrius or Northdale, collective wealth grows pretty much at its limit.

Growth of collective wealth is mostly limited by respawn timers of resources.

These servers had a different issue though. The official spawn timers for all resources in the game (beasts, mining nodes, herbs) were based on server sizes of roughly 3000 players, if I remember correctly. If you have server that is very overpopulated, that creates a much higher demand than can be supplied, since availability is limited. Nostalrius proceeded to change the respawn timers dynamically, if my information is correct, which in turn resulted in insane amounts of supply. So what size will Classic Servers be?

Server Population can greatly influence prices of specific commodities at static spawn timers.

Ok, this has been quite a ride already so how about a small recap; we have an economic system that has – at its basis – a collective wealth, made up of each individuals wealth, that keeps growing as long as we engage in core gameplay activities. We mainly trade in gold and commodities, both of which require time to acquire, which we do by farming. While farming for Epic Mounts creates dents in the overall growth of the economy, transactions made via the Auction House – in the long term – take a much larger bite out of it. In addition to the game bank taking back gold whenever plausible, growth is limited by respawn timers on almost every resource. Growing server population in combination with static spawn timers can also have a negative impact on commodity prices. There is one exception to all of this; you can always find more fish.

So what happens if I throw a Gold Seller into my pond?

Let’s assume we have a strong collective economy & high server population, that’s generally where gold is the most expensive to buy. Why is that? Simple, because most probably the community is already farming all of the available resources quite efficiently. The seller has to either compete with legitimate participants of the server economy, or quite literally go fishing, which in Classic WoW can actually be quite profitable if you sell Stonescale Eels, Raw Nightfin Snappers.

If the gold seller does not fish for whatever reason, he creates value & drives the collective wealth of the community, because he keeps nothing for himself. On low-population servers this wouldn’t be an issue, since he would farm what others possibly would not. Personally, in such a case, I couldn’t care less; it would actually be good for that servers market.

But we were talking high population servers. So say the dude fishes the hell out of every pond and sea in Azeroth with fishing bots because the server community is already at growth limits. This is literally the only thing he can do that could in theory disrupt the economic system in a way that can cause it any serious harm, because if enough farmers do this, the limit on collective wealth growth could exceeded by too much and cause inflation to set in. If there is too much gold in the system, it loses its value and players that didn’t have much to begin with are now fucked.

Fun fact: even fish from bodies of water that require high fishing skill vendors for coppers & flooding the market with fish, even the much needed ones, will quickly lead to low prices, too. This would hurt people that want to make money fishing, true, but its unlikely gold sellers will be able to create inflation selling stacks of fish worth a couple of silvers. They could try Winter Squids and pearls, but seasonal work and RNG are not very efficient.

What happens if I throw Tokens into my pond?

Personally I feel like Tokens are fair and even beneficial to the community. People who buy tokens are likely to spend more time ingame than they would otherwise. People spending time taking part in core gameplay activities create value and grow the collective wealth. One thing is true, people who didn’t farm for their gold surely tend to spend it less carefully, but that’s hardly a terrible thing for people criticizing them. I dare say there’s not enough to create a lasting shift in prices. (I could be wrong.) I look at it this way: you invest time in farming to make gold, then literally sell it to someone who is willing to throw it right back at you. No change in collective wealth involved. They probably don’t buy the gold to hoard it.

In either case:

There is always the argument that people didn’t earn what they bought. Well, what can they buy with said gold? An Epic Mount and some prebis gear maybe, in addition to enabling them to buy mats to craft or level a profession. While it might be frustrating to see others on an Epic Mount while you are still farming for yours, players buying gold will never be a threat the goals of more dedicated players. You don’t buy PvP ranks and you don’t buy raid experience or gear (except if hardcore guilds start selling it again).

In conclusion I have to say it was a pleasure spending my time thinking on this. I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff I’ve missed, but at least from a macro-economic perspective, I don’t see why Tokens shouldn’t be fine. Gold Sellers on the other hand I feel are a problem, especially if they compete with and disrupt actions of legitimate contributors to their servers’ community and market.

Sry for wall of text. :cool:

it would probably kill of some of the fun of gearing.
That does make sense. The question then becomes does having someone buy their gear, that's not offered in a premium currency in-game store but that everyone has potential to get if they work hard enough, break the game?

Sry for wall of text.

That was quite a long ride to read, but I agree with your points.
If the gold seller does not fish for whatever reason, he creates value & drives the collective wealth of the community, because he keeps nothing for himself.

Could you go into detail on this bit? If the seller chooses to sell another resource, it doesn't fuck up the economy too bad? What do you mean, keeps nothing for himself?

Sry for wall of text.

That was quite a long ride to read, but I agree with your points.
If the gold seller does not fish for whatever reason, he creates value & drives the collective wealth of the community, because he keeps nothing for himself.

Could you go into detail on this bit? If the seller chooses to sell another resource, it doesn't fuck up the economy too bad? What do you mean, keeps nothing for himself?

Sure thing; an example:

I'm a gold seller, and I wan't to make money quickly. For the sake of stereotypes I live in China but I sell gold on european servers, too. So I go online when it's 3am in europe. There are lots of Black Lotus herbs not being farmed at this time of night, but they are available, so I pick them. The moment I pick them, I create value. That value is now automatically part of the economy of the server, since it cannot leave the server (except if I delete it).

I sell this Black Lotus to a legitimate contributor of said server and receive his gold. I then sell that gold to someone else, in exchange for currency that is not part of the server economy. I created value for the collective of the server, but I do not take it with me when I "leave". When my transactions are concluded, both my gold and my Black Lotus have gone to to the community.

If I played on a low-population server, the Lotus is there and I make it cheaper by taking what is available and turning it into supply, growing the collective wealth. But if the server has such a low population that I can just go online and farm Black Lotus in masses whenever I want, who is going to buy it from me and who am I going to sell the gold to? If resources are so easy to come by, there is no need for anyone to buy gold. :)

If the server resources were farmed at 100% efficiency (100% of all spawns are gathered immediately after spawn, 24/7), I would have to compete for the resources, which is a shitty situation for the legitimate players. But there is a limit to the resources (spawn timer), which means I can't cause price shifts by flooding the market.

Edit: What i can do is hoard large amounts of resources to fuck with the prices of specific commodities. But I dont have to be a gold seller to be a douchebag, as was made clear by the <Un'Goro Fatcats> :)

If the server resources were farmed at 100% efficiency (100% of all spawns are gathered immediately after spawn, 24/7), I would have to compete for the resources, which is a shitty situation for the legitimate players. But there is a limit to the resources (spawn timer), which means I can't cause Inflation by flooding the market.

I think you are confusing the effects of inflation with the effects of scarcity. These are two different economic factors, and both will have a presence in the server economy.

I've read your massive wall post and the follow-up and I think you thoughtfully lay out most of the variables in play. However, I think your conclusions about scarcity and inflation are incorrect. You've discussed how the population on a server will determine the rate at which resources are harvested from the world, and how gold farmers can fit in. I think your conclusion that unless you reach 100% resource harvesting the farmers provide a valuable service doesn't line up with how it actually functions. Further, I think your conclusion about inflation is also way off.

Inflation is simply the principle that an increase in the supply of money (in our case, gold) will drive up the price of goods. This is a firmly established fact. The more money in the system, the higher the price of goods.

Scarcity / Shortage is the principle that if the demand for a good exceeds its supply, that the price of that good will rise to meet demand. In our case, we are examining the inverse: if additional supply will sufficiently drive down prices to counteract the inflation generated in the system via gold farmer's presence.

See: https://www.managementstudyguide.com/myth-inflation-and-scarcity.htm

Your model breaks down for a few reasons:

First, resources harvested by farmers directly deny their initial use by players. Players now must acquire those harvested goods via the secondary market, which drains their gold resources. This will initially decrease the price of goods, as the players now have less resources with which to purchase other goods. Blizzard takes a cut, as well, yes, but this cut is effectively passed on to the player in the form of slightly increased prices. However, the effect is profoundly reversed when players in the market begin purchasing gold. This wealth transfer back to the player from the farmer (for a resource, real dollars, that is effectively not a factor in the economy) means that the player's available gold is much higher than it would be otherwise, which has an immediate inflation effect. If the player uses that money on gold sinks (repairs, mounts, etc) then the inflation effect is mitigated. However, I've never known players to purchase only enough gold to buy their mounts. They almost always have some gold left over which re-enters the market and has a profound effect on the economy.

Secondly, increased supply in this situation doesn't necessarily create the conditions for decreased prices, because the market is sufficiently small that sellers can collude to artificially inflate the market, or often hoard goods (devilsaur mafia) to keep prices high. Even in the case of resource nodes, if 50% of the nodes are gathered by farmers, then they can set the effective price of goods at the market artificially high. Because there is no initial pressure to sell (their operating costs are inelastic relative to the amount of goods produced) there is no eventual return to baseline prices on goods harvested by farmers. They are literally better off vendoring those herbs rather than sell them for a lower price, because they would impact their future profits if they acquiesced to the pressure of the market. Indeed, there are a number of gold-making AH schemes designed around this principle. Again, which this gold re-enters the economy as a result of an external transfer (RMT for ingame goods) then there is a further inflation effect.

What you should be looking at is the rate of wealth generation from 'expected' play from typical players. That is, how much gold do you earn an hour from running 5 mans, PvPing, or Raiding? I'd expect that you might make a small profit from 5 mans, a minuscule amount of profit from PvPing, and take a significant loss while raiding, all due to the consumables used / generated during those activities.

Compare this to the rate of gold generated per hour by various farming activities (herbing vs. grinding vs. fishing, for example) and you'll expose a differential in gold gain that creates a disparity in the market - the price in hours of playtime to purchase goods vs the price in hours of playtime to generate that good. When real money is used to transfer that wealth, you set the differential to be more lopsided, and inflation occurs.

Example with made up numbers: If you spend 2 hours to farm 100 gold worth of goods (profit, not revenue) and the buyer buys that 100 gold worth of goods after farming for 5 hours, then you have a disparity of time invested in the seller's favor. Over time, the gold generated by sellers in this situation (if left purely in the seller's account) would result in steady deflation, due to decreased demand.

However, now examine the situation between two players. Both play for 5 hours and earn 100 gold during that time. Then, one player purchases a further 100 gold. Now, his effective gold / hour is twice the other players. He can purchase twice as many consumables, equipment, etc. In doing so, he increases the cost of those goods for the other players.

In short, deliberate farming or gold gathering activities is always going to increase inflation. Allowing that gold to be sold for resources external to the system (real dollars) is even worse and further worsens inflation. Tokens help keep transactions within the system (in a way) but don't lessen farming activities.

Hey there, thanks for your response :)
Inflation is simply the principle that an increase in the supply of money (in our case, gold) will drive up the price of goods. This is a firmly established fact. The more money in the system, the higher the price of goods.

Scarcity / Shortage is the principle that if the demand for a good exceeds its supply, that the price of that good will rise to meet demand. In our case, we are examining the inverse: if additional supply will sufficiently drive down prices to counteract the inflation generated in the system via gold farmer's presence.

I think we might have a simple misunderstanding (maybe language related, english is not my native language):
I meant exactly what you said, just not in regard to money (gold) but in regard to the commodity.

A higher supply in gold can lead to lower value for gold, which results in a higher price for commodities.
A higher supply in resources can lead to lower value for those resources, which results in a higher price for gold.

We mean the same thing, I may go back and rephrase to avoid confusion.

On the rest of your reply I am confused as to why you think our opinions differ.

The economy in WoW is the perfect playground for capitalists, of course people can and will be assholes, but that doesn't just apply to gold sellers :)
I had a guildie on Nostalrius who could have single handedly fucked up the entire Horde Economy if he wanted to. I don't think he ever did tell any of us just how much gold he had, easily enough to buy out every single Nature Res Pot before AQ launch ^^

But if you take away the fact that the system can and will be abused both by gold sellers and hardcore players, they both do the same amount of damage. That's why I would prefer the Token if it had to be one of the two :)

Edit: I think I wanna start a Horde Communist Government! :D Devilsaur Leather for everyone, provided by the state of Kalimdor. Skinned and defended by enslaved ex-Mafia members for the Progress of the Horde.

I think we might have a simple misunderstanding (maybe language related, english is not my native language):

Honestly your posts are very well thought out and show great cause-and-effect for the factors in the server economy. The comprehension failure is most likely on my part, as I was juggling work tasks while writing my reply. Posts like yours are rare and to be treasured, to be honest.

Much appreciated & back at you!

Not sure if someone has mentioned it yet, but just in case: The token being in the game files is/was a leftover from the 7.3.5 client. It holds 0 weight towards any "does blizz plan to implement tokens in classic?" discussion.

Yeah, that was mentioned in the original post.
" Admittedly this video is made by Alexensual and based on what we know this is a gigantic leap, but I think it stimulates conversation." - Me

Wow Rinkusan , incredible post. Excellent job expanding on the discussion! I really hope that people who are opposed to the token take the time to read your post.

Great post on economics Rinkusan, I feel like I am in highschool all over again!

you don’t buy raid experience or gear (except if hardcore guilds start selling it again).

I think this will definitely happen, and this is when you will see shit kickers buying tokens to sell for gold, or buying gold from sketchy websites to get Tier gear. This will be a shame, and I hope the Token doesn't further legitimise this process, as I feel it invalidates the core of the game community somewhat. Buying from sketchy websites has a very obvious and apparent risk. Buying a Token has zero risk. That's a personal viewpoint though, and would likely differ from person to person.

I think this will definitely happen, and this is when you will see shit kickers buying tokens to sell for gold, or buying gold from sketchy websites to get Tier gear. This will be a shame, and I hope the Token doesn't further legitimise this process, as I feel it invalidates the core of the game community somewhat. Buying from sketchy websites has a very obvious and apparent risk. Buying a Token has zero risk. That's a personal viewpoint though, and would likely differ from person to person.

It's going to happen either way. We have nothing to suggest that the token increases gold being sold. In fact when 3rd party sites are selling gold, you can typically buy gold for A LOT cheaper. There is typically more competition without a baseline market price for gold (ie. the token). I agree that buying from a 3rd party site is a deterrent that will prevent some users from buying gold. Buying from 3rd party sites who offer VERY cheap gold, will also encourage users to buy, that may not have been willing to purchase a token as they wouldn't get the same value for their dollar. This goes both ways. 3rd party sites are also very negotiable on payment options, Blizzard is not. Most 3rd party sites are willing to trade items or accounts for gold as well, and their willingness to trade can encourage sales that wouldn't be possible for a user to negotiate with Blizzard. I am not advocating that 3rd party sites will result in MORE gold being traded than with the token, I am just offering a counter to the deterrent opinion that seems to be one of the final bastions of the "no token" argument. 3rd party sites are less of a concern for the modern generation of games who are accustomed to micro transactions.

In summary:
- Bots exist. They will exist. Blizzards anti hack software is redundant as I linked a working bot.
- Using the token doesn't guarantee that more gold will be traded.
- The token is less impactful on the economy than bots/gold sellers.
- Using the token acknowledges that the game is pay to win. While you can buy gold either way and the game will inevitably have a pay to win element, adopting the token accepts moral defeat and sacrifices our principals for the health and quality of the game.

This debate honestly reminds me of prohibition. We all know how that goes...

This debate honestly reminds me of prohibition. We all know how that goes...

You could apply that to a lot retail features I guess. LFG next? LFR? Where do we stop? Haha. I agree that it will happen, but that doesn't mean everyone will agree with it.

You could apply that to a lot retail features I guess. LFG next? LFR? Where do we stop? Haha. I agree that it will happen, but that doesn't mean everyone will agree with it.

Naw, those aren't even remotely similar. Gold will be sold. The token or bots/gold sellers. Choose one. Sharding wont happen unless Blizzard implements it. LFG doesn't happen without Blizzard allowing it to happen. Completely different... Honestly a weak attempt at a counter argument.

Stfuppercut PvP Ranking Bots will happen, map exploit bots will happen - Will Blizzard provide tokens for those too? Because they will sure as shit exist in the black market.

You don't get to decide what kind of counter argument someone can make on a public forum dude, it is what it is. If you don't think it's worthy don't respond?

Naw, those aren't even remotely similar. Gold will be sold. The token or bots/gold sellers. Choose one.

I'm a bit late to this awesome thread but just wanted to opine on this. I just don't like legitimising the purchase of gold with real money.

Whilst all the arguments for out-competing bots and destroying the black market etc. stand strong and make a lot of sense, you're still making it easy, encouraging even, people to purchase gold that doesn't already exist inside the game. Click the big old wow token logo, hand over your credit card and you're done - pay 2 win.

For people to get gold like that through a bot or farmer, sure it'd still be possible but there's also the fear of being banned from the game, or scammed out of your money which stopped a lot of players from getting involved in stuff like that in the first place, bringing the number of participants down significantly.

Most people here on this forum anyway seem to fall into the 26-30 age category - tell me honestly if you're in this demographic and you are really willing to spend insane hours on the game to be able to play enough to afford a token rather than forking out just 15 bucks at the end of the month to play?

...you're still making it easy, encouraging even, people to purchase gold that doesn't already exist inside the game. Click the big old wow token logo, hand over your credit card and you're done - pay 2 win.

The gold does exist in the game. That is the difference. A bot creates black gold. New gold that wouldn't exist. A token takes gold that was LEGITIMATELY earned by a player and already existed, and allows him to trade it to another player in exchange for game time. No new gold is created and thus the token is better for the economy. Much. MUCH better for the economy.
Most people here on this forum anyway seem to fall into the 26-30 age category - tell me honestly if you're in this demographic and you are really willing to spend insane hours on the game to be able to play enough to afford a token rather than forking out just 15 bucks at the end of the month to play?

I am in this demographic and to be clear I don't want the token... I believe the economy will need the token. The token is less disruptive than the alternative. In an ideal world, we woudlnt need either but this isn't an ideal world. I also would not use the token, as I have not on retail. However, the positive impacts of the token in retail are indisputable.

edit: incomplete sentence