Is it like legally buying gold? Or is it a way to dump gold and reduce supply?
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It’s legally buying gold. The cons are… people can buy gold (pay to win). The pros are that it virtually destroys the gold selling market that already exists and all the negative behavior that is associated with it.
edit: It doesn’t change the amount of gold already in the economy, it just moves it around.
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In essence, yes. It’s legally buying gold. Except not really.
One person has to buy a token with 20 real dollars from the blizzard store. This is an item that can then be sold on the AH (the price obeys supply and demand, but cannot be altered by the player directly). Another player must buy the token with off the AH with their in game gold. Then they can use the token to add 15 dollars to their bnet account.
No gold is created or destroyed in this process. It’s a redistribution of wealth, and blizzard gets to skim a profit off the top.
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Buying gold basically.
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Its buying game-time at a mark-up that you can then sell to other players for gold.
Same as 1 person trading gold to another person for $20…
Apparently you get the gold automatically–it doesn’t require someone to purchase the token like a regular auction.
Some people are concerned that you can list a token for 300gold, but the next person who purchases a token pays 250g for instance because demand is down. This essentially creates 50g in the economy.
I’m guessing this is offset by the opposite though–I may list a token when the price is 300g, but the next person pays 350g, removing 50g from the game?
The numbers are exaggerated for example purposes, but I am wondering how they calculate the value, how often it updates, etc. and whether this is a valid concern?
it says you get the price for the token and doesnt state its adding gold into the game. as there are also times where people are buying tokens with gold when there are none in the game…Is this game time added from thin air? Its like a credit card in that sense where it would equal out. Id wait for a Blizz post explaining that aspect over assuming it works either of those ways.
I can’t answer every question you have here, but I can tell you that the price fluctuation is capped at 3.03% per hour. You’ll only see extreme fluctuations like this when a hot new game or store item goes on sale.
Tokens are in retail WoW, and are 2 different features combined:
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Players with a lot of game-gold can convert game-gold into Battle new balance, then use the balance to pay for (2017) subscriptions and (2019) games, realm transfers or other things (but not real money).
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Players can convert real money (US dollars) into game gold.
Some players object to feature 2. But it is unlikely that it changed anything – this activity (buying game gold for dollars) was already very popular and common, since 2005.
The ONLY difference was that (before 2017) it was done using llegal gold-sellers (not Blizzard). But it was already a million-dollar industry.
Untrue, at least according to this blue post:
https://it.wowhead.com/bluetracker?topic=20764106396?poster=Chosen
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So, I am a bit confused here. Are they actually adding tokens or this all just speculation?
They added them to the chinese classic client, it’s speculation that it’s coming to any other region. You know how people are: give them even a hint of a reason to riot and they’ll set the streets on fire.
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Say I am running out of game time and I don’t have the real money to continue my sub. I do however have enough gold to pay for a token on the auction house (which i don’t, but just making an example.) I could buy the token and then apply it to my next month’s subscription so I could continue to play without spending real money. The gold I spent is then sent to the character who put the token up for auction.
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I’m curious as to how true this is. There certainly continue to be gold sellers outside of WoW, even with Tokens. I’m not trying to get into a pedantic argument for argument’s sake, but I’d like to know how I would be able to verify this claim.
This also. There is another thread that claims that if you buy a token, and put it on the AH, you will always receive your gold payment, regardless of whether anyone purchases the token.
Do we have any way to verify whether the number of tokens being sold and the number of tokens being purchased are equal, and that they are purchased for as much or more than they are sold for, i.e. no gold is being generated, causing inflation?
This is not a link to a post, and does not support the claim being made.
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Should be fixed now.
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Yep. That’s a pretty solid link now 
“The gold you get for the token is taken from someone who paid that amount for the Game Time. Its Supply and Demand. There’s actually been a few times (specifically around big things where people exchange gold for balance) where players aren’t buying enough of them to sell and the market literally runs out of Tokens making the price increase.”
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Before tokens were launched in retail the forums were constantly flooded with people complaining about their accounts being hacked (this was done by gold sellers), people warning about the latest fishing attempts (again gold sellers trying to gain control of accounts), and in game there was constant flood of gold spam through say, mail, random group invites, corpse piles shaped like web addresses… and then they were gone. Virtually overnight all those things disappeared.
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It is like legally (by Blizzard law) buying gold from another player, but one that is completely anonymous to you.
It does not reduce gold in the system. It moves it from one player to another.
It can move gold from one realm to another, but not in a directed way - just depending on which character buys and which character sells.
Basically, it is a process with two completely separate sides. (The system will not allow a player to have both types of token. One can only be exchanged for gold, the other can only be exchanged for game time/Blizzard balance.)
Player B (gold-buyer) goes to the in-game Blizzard SHOP.
Player B buys a token for cash (such as US$20).
Player B receives a token to post on the AH.
Player B goes to the AH and posts the token.
When the token sells, Player B receives the gold price.
**Independently, with no knowledge of each other**
Player A (gold-seller) goes to the AH to buy a token.
(There is only ever one token shown, and no seller is shown.)
Player A receives the token on that character.
Player A exchanges it via an in-game process for game time.
(Or, added to Retail later, exchanges it for Blizzard Balance.)
(The exchange does not have to happen immediately.)
There are a lot more than two players involved. The gold price fluctuates based on supply and demand. More people posting tokens for gold (demand) will drive the price down. More people buying tokens for time (supply) will drive the price up.
No verifiable information, no. But remember that the fluctuation of the gold price goes both ways. Blizzard may ‘front’ the difference sometimes, but other times it walks away with the difference. Players have no control over who bought which token at what price.
And, yes, one of the Blues mentioned one time that players who buy a lot of tokens for in-game gold have seen situations where no tokens were available because there were not cash buyers of tokens. The price shifts (more gold per token) and buyers show up.
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Well, I’ll take the link posted above, by Gleenda as verification. If a Blue has posted that there is indeed no gold being generated in such a way as to cause inflation, then that’s verified, as far as I’m concerned.
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