First off, I love WoW, and am a huge Blizzard fan, I have played since late vanilla on and off but I have seen every expansion launch and will likely continue to play BFA for the foreseeable future.
Like many other people I am excited for Classic, a chance to play the game with all of the things it is missing now, we all know what they are I don’t need to list them. The thing is however, I cannot seem to shake the worry I have about a massive pile of micro transactions within classic, the one I dread the most is the WoW token. I have been making some replies on Reddit voicing my opposition to the token being sold to be used on Classic servers. I seem to be getting mixed results and for the most part, the replies have been in favor of having the wow token in the game, which I find incredibly disturbing.
You see back in the day, Blizzard was against people buying and selling gold, banning people for both, which was great, the fear of loosing your account and the stigma attached to buying gold was enough for the majority, obviously not all, players to refrain from doing so.
The reasons behind blizzards stance on this are clear for the most part, It sacrificed account security, and ruined the economy either by causing gold sellers to stockpile massive amounts of gold keeping it out of the economy, or flooding an already cash staved economy with more gold than it could handle causing artificial price hikes of items pricing legitimate players out of the market.
These two reasons are fine examples of why I should be all for the WoW token in classic, it keeps peoples accounts safe, is legitimate, and doesn’t rely on massive gold stock piles to function well. However, I believe there is one other reason Blizzard was actively working against the purchase and sale of gold right up until they launched the wow token, which was 3 months before a new expansion, giving the market time to calm down after the launch of the token and an entire expansion development cycle to design the game around the token. This 3rd reason was the game up until the launch of WoD was not balanced with legitimate gold selling facilitated by blizzard, dropping it at the end of MoP was a good move, they were handing out epics at this point it wasn’t going to effect anything all too much in regards to gear balance, people likley used gold they bought for transmog, leveling professions and maybe some used it to stock up on bits and pieces for the launch of WoD.
I have digressed a little I know, so lets get back to the WoW token and Classic and apply the logic I just outlined above. In classic Professions are very powerful tools, you can craft BoE’s to sell, or use yourself to help you gear up, some of which are BIS for a long time, gold is scarce as hell, you have to really work hard for it, there wouldn’t have been many players in classic that weren’t penny pinching to get what they needed for raiding or whatever. Now toss in the WoW token, either at launch or shortly after. People can now buy gold in a game that was not designed for it. Top players dump large amounts of money into buying the max amount of tokens they can sell them for what they are worth and have enough gold to get way ahead of the curve.
This also causes other issues for those who cannot afford or just don’t want to buy a token, wow has a supply and demand economy, if crafted items are bought up by those who have bought gold using a wow token that item does not exist any longer and more must be farmed to keep up with demand.
Let me be very very clear, I understand that the WoW token does not generate gold leading to inflation, the point is it doesn’t matter, if there is only 5000 gold on a server, a crafted item sells for 10 gold and someone buys a wow token and sells it for 50 gold to buy 5 crafted items that still removes those items from the economy therefore increasing the price of that item, pricing those who do not buy the token out of the market in the short term or until they buy their own token.
This is a powerful motivator to get people to buy a token of their own, people will feel they need to buy one or risk falling behind and not enjoying the game. Tactics like this have been used in other games to extort money from the player base, we all know those titles and we all seen the backlash, Star Wars Battle Front 2 is a good game now, but no one plays it because you cannot remove the stink of pay to win from it.
This is why I worry, I don’t expect classic to be free, its bundled with retail, we get 2 games for the price of 1, giving blizzard the moral high ground to introduce micro transactions, including the WoW token, and lets face it, the wow token in the context of Classic WoW, is Pay to Win. People will pay to win if they can, especially if the game designed over a decade ago, is by todays standards the perfect environment to pray on players and turn them into payers.
In conclusion, I will remain to be excited for Classic and I will post no more negativity about it, but until I see a Q&A 100% ruling out the WoW token in Classic I will continue to worry my most beloved game, and my favorite developer is hying us up to be preyed upon by their overlords at Activision.
I am sorry for the essay, I don’t make sweeping statements and a strong context backed with evidence was required to convey my point adequately. With that said this is my opinion only, and I will gladly stand corrected and accept my comments as alarmist if I see evidence refuting my claims.
Thank you for those who read this, and if you’re unhappy with what I said light your torches I’ll gladly be flamed for a cause I believe to be for the betterment of the game.