WoW Petopia Community

Blizzard has finally announced the arrival of the new tokens, a means of legitimately buying gold in game (or buying game time with in-game gold).

WoW Tokens

Of course, reading the comments section is a laugh riot! because you get those who obviously suffer from serious reading deficiencies ranting about "pay 2 win" and "blizz rip-off".

Anyways, $20 per token, but still no idea just how much gold this will bring you on the AH.

quick run down:

Buy token with real money.

Sell it on AH (special section of AH, where the price is actually dictated by Blizz and not by the seller)

You get told immediately how much gold you will receive from your sale.

When you token sell, you get said amount of gold.

Person who buys token gets a soulbound item that they can use to purchase one month of game time. Period, nothing else.


So those of you out there with tons of gold can play WoW without paying any real life money for it! kind of nice.

And those of us with lots of real life money, but difficulty making gold in game, well, we can help finance your addiction with our money, and you help us get gold in teh game.

Win/win!

I dont got alot of money in RL and i suck at making money in wow

well that aside im curios to see how this will work...

they did that today!? Ah dang it. I Just went out and bought a two month time card last night. >.< i thought it was going to be another month or so before they did this.

I certainly like the idea. I think its pretty nice and depending on what they go for i may just buy my time with gold from now on since i make a pretty decent amount each week. I am usually sitting on a comfortable 300k in game while i am often broke or near roke in the real world so if the prices are not too crippling i look forward to using this. I am actually really curious to see how the market plays out. It was a pretty cunning choice to make the token. I imagine they will keep a lot more subs if players have the option of playing for "free."

Don't worry about it Sylvia, it's actually not live yet.
The only thing in-game is that there is now the interface at the AH.

I think it goes live for real the week after the next patch. (in 1-2 weeks)

When I first heard about it from here-say, I feared it would be pay-to-win. But then I read the patch notes, and saw that it's strictly for game time. I have absolutely no issue with this. Other MMOs have used this system, and I think it's great!

I like that people who may not have much cash to spare can use their game time to pay for more game time

Don't worry about it Sylvia, it's actually not live yet.
The only thing in-game is that there is now the interface at the AH.

I think it goes live for real the week after the next patch. (in 1-2 weeks)

ah ok that's good. perhaps i will start setting aside a little game time fund for when it hits.

i'm actually pretty excited about it. My dad has been playing EVE for about as long as I have been playing wow and after the first two or three months of paying real money he switched over to paying his sub with Isk and I was always kind of jealous of him. I would probably be invested in way more mmos if more games adopted a similar method.

The part I personally have issue with is the fact that they're pricing the token at $20 instead of $14.99 for 1 month of game time, which is a 25% increase in cash cost which will most likely get passed off to the person buying it with gold as well.

A month of gifted game time goes for 15k right now. That's what I am willing to pay. I'm not willing to pay a premium (20k plus) to get the same month of game time in a different format.

it's actually 33% more.

but that is neither here nor there.

the person buying the game time is getting it for in-game currency: in other words, for free.

the person buying game time doesn't have to know how much the token cost initially. all that matters to them is that they can buy game time using in-game currency rather than real-life money.

whether the token is $15 or $20 is entirely irrelevant to the discussion.

if the token were $15, and in the game it cost 100k gold to buy a month of game time, how would that be different from the token costing $20 and getting one month of playtime for 100k gold?

Blizzard isn't going to change the gold cost for game time based on the actual real-life currency cost of the token. They are two different types of transactions, unrelated to each other. One is for a person wanting to legitimately purchase gold, the other is for a person wanting to avoid using real-life money to buy game time.

the person selling the token is using real-life money to buy gold in the game.
So for $20, someone can get x-amount of gold.

In the game, for x-amount of gold, someone can get 1 month of play time.

There is absolutely no connection between how much a cash transaction for 1 month of game time is, and the in-game currency transaction for that same game time is.

Sukurachi wrote:it's actually 33% more.

You're right... as soon as I posted I wondered if I'd calculated that wrong.

Sukurachi wrote:There is absolutely no connection between how much a cash transaction for 1 month of game time is, and the in-game currency transaction for that same game time is.

Sure there is. The current going rate for gold is 1k = $1. A $14.99 month of game time costs 15k gold. But a token for game time, at $20, should then cost 20k gold (and everyone knows it's $20 since the price has already been announced). For those that already buy/sell gold, it's not worth the extra $5/5k to get game time via token when they can get it for cheaper through other means.

When the token was first announced, before we knew any details whatsoever, I told guildmates that I would be happy to buy tokens at a slightly better than 1k:$1 ratio (I had thought it worked like the Guardian Cub, that you could just hand the token to someone like an item). However with a $20 token price, it would benefit us both to bypass the token and do a direct transaction.

I can see both sides. I guess the only thing I can think of from Blizz's point of view, is that buying from them is legitimate, and therefore safer than buying from a third party.

You cannot use the illegal price from gold sellers as your price point for game time.
That's like saying heroin costs X per hit on the street so aspirin should only cost X in pharmacies.

We don't know how much gold the tokens will give when sold on the AH, yet.

But I can assure you, MANY people will prefer to buy game time using in-game gold rather than risk their accounts using illegal gold-sellers.

Buying game cards at the store, then selling the activation numbers to guildies is all fine and good IF you are in a guild with people you absolutely trust.

The tokens are for all of those people who aren't in that situation, and they are probably far more numerous than you think.

Even with the people in my guild that I absolutely trust... all of them pay their subs in 6-month increments, so what good would trying to buy them game time be?

I think it's an awesome addition. I love it <:

Sukurachi wrote:We don't know how much gold the tokens will give when sold on the AH, yet.

Yes, very true, and so any concerns I have that it'll be "too expensive" gold-wise for a token is only based off my best guess as to what Blizzard will set the initial price at. After that it's supposed to fluctuate based on supply and demand, which should be even more interesting.

Sukurachi wrote: Buying game cards at the store, then selling the activation numbers to guildies is all fine and good IF you are in a guild with people you absolutely trust.

The tokens are for all of those people who aren't in that situation, and they are probably far more numerous than you think.

I do trust them, but yes, if I get burned in any sort of deal whether it be for game time or in-game items or whatever, I know it's all on me (and so far I've only been shorted once by someone not paying for the BoP mats for crafted gear, but that was long ago). I'm currently paid up on game time through July though.

I don't doubt that the tokens will be popular. I just think it's not going to kill off back alley gold selling which I had thought was the point of it. Yes most people would prefer legitimate, protected transactions, but the ones that already buy or sell gold might continue to see that as a better option even with tokens in place. Despite my complaints, I would rather buy tokens due to the safety factor, but that's only if the price matches what I'm willing to pay.

To me it's a win-win-win scenario for everyone concerned. Blizzard gets an extra $5 for a month of game time, the cash buyer of the token gets gold they need, and the for gold buyer gets a month of playtime for free.

I can see it being used like this. A person wants a certain item like a mount but is unwilling to spend a high amount of hard earned gold for it. So they buy a token for $20, sell it for the gold they need for the mount and everybody's happy. I have bought store mounts and buying something like the Ruby Jeweled Panther which I have always wanted but was never willing to pay the gold cost for would be essentially the same thing as buying it from the Store. I actually might do that very thing.

I also feel that the cost in gold on the AH will be regulated by the prices the illegal sellers are charging. Blizzard's whole motivation for this program is forcing the gold sellers out of business and therefore also reducing the number of hacked and stolen accounts.

hrm.. at the moment i see $25 for 20k on the ah, it was 30.8k in gold on day 1 release, but after that 1 day, its down to 20k.
Blizz should lower the irl money if its going this low, 25 bucks for 19-20k is kinda *stretching* it i think..

if it gets about 13-15k, its over pricing but thats normal for them to do it i guess..

my bf said the gold can go up to 80-90k - e.g kinda like petrol, it went from 150.9 and few weeks it dropped down to 76.5 - i see a pattern with this in wow itl drop, and least expect itl shoot up.

imo im going to wait till it shoots up before buying one tbh.

I would use them... but making the gold to actually buy them would prolly kill me in more ways than one ><