I thought this was a joke but it seems like it’s actually legit. WoW, which has a subscription and paid expansions, just added a $90 item to their store. This is Korean MMO levels of absurdity. What do you think of this?
Imagine a parallel world where no one brought the horse armour
to me this is the wrong way of looking at it, it’s like saying “imagine a world where plutocrats just didn’t do pollution, imagine a world where plantation owners didn’t use slave labor, imagine a world where industrialists didn’t employ children”
it was always going to happen, just society has to force capitalists not to be cunts. Only way, always was, always will be, still is.
Imagine a parallel world where no one brought the horse armour
Redditors said the same thing
It’s actually more insidious. Blizzard facilitates gold buying by being a middle man. 30 days of wow subscription is $15. Blizzard sells a $20 wow token. Buyers of the token automatically sell it in game to players for gold. Players who sell their In game gold can redeem the token for game time or $15 Blizzard bucks, which can buy any virtual item in the Blizzard store. Games, expansions, and mounts such as this.
If you don’t want to spend $90 in real life, you can sell your gold for 6 tokens for $90 Blizzard bucks and get the mount.
The token has been hovering around $170k all month and now it spiked to almost $360k (token price tracker). So now cash buyers can get way more gold for their bucks, and the 6 tokens exchanged for gold (to buy the mount) will net Blizzard $120.
I’ve known about the gold tokens system, it has made sense as a way to invalidate black market gold sellers, equalizing WoW gold against the US Dollar. Still don’t quite understand why the token would now sell for 170k though…? Unless you didn’t mean to use the dollar symbol.
They probably meant 170k gold in-game
Also what they haven’t said is that the price is set by players of the game,. When someone buys a WoW token and exchanges it for gold, that’s because a player has paid them with gold they earned for the token. These tokens can be then used to pay for your monthly subscription.
You are correct. Token value is decided by players on the auction house, not Blizzard, though I’m sure someone will argue that they are capable of manipulating the AH and therefore they are driving it up
Those amounts aren’t USD yeah, probably habit when writing down money. The 170k and 360k figures are the WoW virtual currency aka “gold”.
There is a floor to WoW token’s gold value from what I recall (it’s been years since I interacted with Blizzard and WoW) but no ceiling.
Dunno how hard it curbed bots/unsanctioned gold sellers/fascist scum grassroots campaigns (no, really, look into Stephen Bannon and WoW gold it’s so fucking stupid) but!
Blizzard absolutely realized and then moved to take all the money that was being left on the table from 3rd party virtual currency sales, and they apply every measure and analytical tool to maximize that profit because of course.
This mount’s release is literally them inflating the price of the virtual currency ahead of real life earnings calls, because it absolutely will sell and give them the revenue infusion that the WoW token’s rise in value is meant to provide for as long as they want until it’s time to pump the numbers again with another mount/high sought store item.
A very similar variant in form and function to this mount was once available in-game and trade able with a rarity tuned that it ended up being sold for the WoW Token equivalent of ~$500 at the prices at the time, as there was no store version or similar option elsewhere.
It’s no accident that when the price of the WoW Token is at its lowest, here comes a slightly updated and dolled up version of that same highly sought mount version.
WoW is where real economics, car ownership culture, hoarding, and dopamine treadmills collide and Blizzard doesn’t just know this but have it charted on 5 year plans.
At least it’s not Star Citizen prices:
What the fuck? Do people actually pay that for virtual bullshit? That’s like the price of a used Honda!
There’s also a pack containing every ship they’ve sold which you can only see/purchase if you’ve spent one thousand dollars in their ship store. I’ll spoiler the price so you can try and guess how much it is first:
spoiler
$48,000, not counting the $1000 you have to spend to be able to see it.
Edit: I should include the source for that price since (as mentioned) you can’t even see the pack until you’ve dropped $1k
It’s intended for whales and for the 65 crew members to split. But I can’t imagine they sell many.
That’s still a little bit over $46 a player. So you’d have to have 65 whales agree to split it.
I’m so glad I got clean.
I saw people being mad not because they are selling a 90$ mount, but because now everyone can just have it instead of grinding 5 million gold lol.
Showing off is an important part of social MMOs. If anyone can have the really cool looking thing for some cash then what’s the point of grinding? For a hardcore player, what do they have to show off their prestige?
It’s pretty important for an MMO to respect its most active players. Not to mention, what do new players have to look up to? To think, what do I have to get that? If the answer is “oh I just have to fork out some dough”. That’s kinda disappointing
It’s pretty important for an MMO to respect its most active players
WoW chased them off years ago. They cater towards casual players now, and don’t want the lifers.
What a load of nonsense. Wows endgame raids and dungeons are the best and most active of any MMO available and those are exclusively for the active players
That is so untrue lol
End game content - the stuff that “makes” wow - is tuned for active players, not casuals. They are catering to casual players in a way that doesn’t significantly affect hardcore players…unless you think there should be huge barriers of entry to the most basic things?
