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World of Warcraft Gold Can Now Be Used To Buy Other Blizzard Games (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the time-to-quit-your-day-job dept.

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.

40 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Re: To reduce gold abundances. by Atomic+Fro · · Score: 1

    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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    Hippie Logger Jock
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  2. Overwatch Loot Boxes? by Anonymous Coward · · 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 gaming was all about having fun instead of levelling up and buying horse armour? Remember the fun and thrill of dueling on Quake where your only "level" was you skill level and the best man won? Where did it all go wrong?

    The best hope of a good game is Id's Quake Champions, which is just an attempt at an Overwatch clone and is being headed up by the twin morons of Tim Willits and SyncError (so pretty much no hope there). Or there's Romero's game, which we've heard nothing about since he cancelled his Kickstarter, but I do keep getting emails from him about Gunman Taco Truck.

    I think I'll try to cheer myself up with a duel on dm4 against a bot. The bots are stupid but it's still 100x more fun than any any game from the last ten years.

    1. Re:Overwatch Loot Boxes? by Calydor · · Score: 4, 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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      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    2. Re: Overwatch Loot Boxes? by Jason1729 · · Score: 1

      You understand I was complaining about the dumbing down of games for modern snowflakes and QDM was better than anything released the past 5 years, right?

      You idiot.

    3. Re:Overwatch Loot Boxes? by Hylandr · · Score: 1

      You should see what they did to butcher TeamFortress2. It was so bad I removed it from my system entirely.

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      ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
    4. Re:Overwatch Loot Boxes? by Ranbot · · Score: 1

      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... 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 spare time to practice the elite DM skills as when they were younger, but they still want to enjoy the time they spend gaming. I am 30-something gamer who has played a ton of Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Rise of the Triad, Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament, etc. so I get the point to some degree, but blame your peers not "kids these days."

  3. Re:What a deal! by Calydor · · Score: 1

    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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    -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
  4. MMO Economies by Daetrin · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'll just leave these two Extra Credits videos on game economics here:

    MMO Economies - How to Manage Inflation in Virtual Economies
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    MMO Economies - Hyperinflation, Reserve Currencies & You! - Extra Credits
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

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    This Space Intentionally Left Blank
  5. Dedicated player you say? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "That means that a dedicated WoW player can now fund [...]"

    When you say dedicated WoW player you mean Chinese gold farmer?

    1. Re:Dedicated player you say? by Arkham · · Score: 1

      "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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      - Vincit qui patitur.
    2. Re:Dedicated player you say? by suutar · · Score: 1

      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.

  6. Re: To reduce gold abundances. by Ian+Whitchurch · · Score: 1

    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.

  7. How long does it take to farm gold? by Michael+Woodhams · · Score: 2

    From the summary, a token is 60k-110k gold. How much game time is that?

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    Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
    1. Re:How long does it take to farm gold? by Falos · · Score: 1

      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.

    2. Re:How long does it take to farm gold? by elvesrus · · Score: 1

      I'd feel better about myself with only 3 max level characters. About to hit 8...

    3. Re:How long does it take to farm gold? by The-Ixian · · Score: 2

      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 gotta have a goal!).

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
  8. Re: To reduce gold abundances. by Atomic+Fro · · Score: 2

    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.

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    Hippie Logger Jock
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  9. Time-money tradeoff varies by country by tepples · · Score: 1

    $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.

    1. Re: Time-money tradeoff varies by country by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Those places wouldn't have internet. Or if they did it would cost a days pay!

    2. Re: Time-money tradeoff varies by country by tepples · · Score: 1

      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.

  10. So it's more like PLEX in EVE by tepples · · Score: 1

    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.

    1. Re:So it's more like PLEX in EVE by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      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't impact it that much either. 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.

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      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    2. Re:So it's more like PLEX in EVE by Ranbot · · Score: 1

      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.

    3. Re:So it's more like PLEX in EVE by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      >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 with yours. So many restrictions that are common in MMOs that they got rid of ... because they aren't needed anymore. ESO's Megaservers weren't possible to build in 2014 and you probably can't modify WoW's code to be able to make use of them without rewriting almost all of it.
      Blizzard has been trying to get close that, for example by merging low-population zones from multiple realms - but it's a haphazard process and it introduced it's own issues because it's really a hack, the better solution is to not have realms at all. But that's not an option for them.

      Blizzard was planning a new MMO long ago, since back during the Wrath days (Arguably WoW's peak time - it had over 12-million active players, and was the best and most advanced MMO game available) but, I think for fear of alienating their lucrative subscriber base (why invest more time in this game if everybody will be playing the new one in a year ? Even if it's still up... you'd be all alone) ... it kept getting postponed and apparently got forgotten.

      It is also, now, a world where PC's are no longer the dominant platform - other MMOs widely support consoles, a few even have mobile versions - WoW remains limited to PC and Mac (at least it works well in wine).
      I think WoW is dying a slow death, not least because they ran out of warcraft stories to tell and the lore they came up with post-cataclysm was frankly... horrible. A lot of WoW's appeal was it's deep and very well written lore, and your character participating in that history. But since the pandas, it felt like a different world, your character didn't feel like it was the same one who had wept over Pamela Redpath and swore to avenge her killing Arthas and years later finally succeeded. I guess I can't blame blizzard for trying to keep the death as slow as possible though. It's still a cash-cow after all.

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      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    4. Re:So it's more like PLEX in EVE by Ranbot · · Score: 1

      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.

  11. Re:Games and skills by hackwrench · · Score: 2

    Or, you know, how about a game that clearly identifies skills and how to work on improving them, as opposed to games that rewards people based on already being good at a given skill or just playing possessing no skill.

  12. This is by b783719 · · Score: 1

    This is MADNESS!

    Madness? THIS IS WoW!

  13. Re: To reduce gold abundances. by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Yes, but does this process facilitate other activities that eventually do reduce the in-game currency?

  14. Re:EQ by Narcocide · · Score: 1

    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.

  15. Re: To reduce gold abundances. by KiloByte · · Score: 2

    Never played WoW, but if 5000 could get you this and 100k is $15 now, the inflation is worse than even dollar within a Dem or Rep government.

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    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  16. Gold not removed for Token sales by mchall · · Score: 1

    That is not entirely accurate. The internal algorithm for the purchase price is adjusted based on supply and demand. If the token doesn't sell the purchase price will drop which in turn lowers the amount of gold farming required to purchase it. No gold is removed from the game, but less is being produced. Token sales also do not require a deposit of 5~15% like all other auction house sales (http://www.wowhead.com/wow-token-battlenet-balance-guide), so that mechanism of removing gold from the game is bypassed.

  17. Twitch Based eSports... by mchall · · Score: 1

    are proof that competition is still alive and well among (some of) the younger generation. As an OG (Atari generation) my high twitch rate is long gone, so I can appreciate the skill that goes into something like a pro SC II tournament, and the bragging rights that go along with winning it. I moved on to story-driven solo RPG's, simulators, and turn-based strategy games a long time ago for the entertainment value. Pwnage is not always where it's at.

  18. Re:All that and... by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

    They're the party of less taxes

    Yeah, they just call taxes "fees". Problem solved. No new taxes...

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    My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
  19. Re:All that and... by parkinglot777 · · Score: 1

    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???

  20. Re: To reduce gold abundances. by suutar · · Score: 1

    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, when something is bought on the AH part of the purchase price is skimmed off as the auction house's cut), buying repairs to gear, buying appearance changes to gear or character...

    So yeah, the token system does seem like it would tend to move gold from hoarders to spenders and thence to gold-sinks. Whether it does so fast enough I don't know, but Blizzard seems fairly content for the most part...

  21. Re: To reduce gold abundances. by suutar · · Score: 1

    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).

  22. Re:What a deal! by suutar · · Score: 1

    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.

  23. Re:All that and... by suutar · · Score: 1

    They have. https://www.irs.gov/businesses...

  24. WoW lost me. Battleground Europe is still fun tho by MrSavage · · Score: 1

    I haven't played WoW (released November 2004) in years. I still play (and pay for) Battleground Europe (World War II Online; released June 2001) and I still have fun even though the game doesn't live up to today's visual standards quite so much, but the game is a hell of a lot better than the game of WoW.

  25. Re:who cares by Ranbot · · Score: 1

    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.