“In order to preserve the integrity of the game and provide a better token market to players.”
Smells like corporate greed speak for “we know you’ve been using this system correctly, and how it was designed, but give us your money.”
Is this really hurting the game? I haven’t noticed any issues at all.
If it’s to counter bots then I take it all back, and I’m fine with it.
I just saw…
So this seems to apply for those that haven’t bought and used the 30 day game time with RL money since 2017. Or I’m really confused.
“After November 21, 2023, any player who cannot purchase a WoW Token for gold in-game will need to first purchase and consume at least 30 days of game time for real money. This can be done on any World of Warcraft account across the player’s Battle.net account to qualify.” after it gets me a tad confused.
Seems to me like this change is mostly targeted at bots.
its to counter bots probs
good point, hadn’t even thought about that, my bad. Tis a good reason then.
Ya that is my guess… The way they gain gold en masse, to then fund their accounts etc, rinse and repeat. This may deter it potentially or bring it closer into liine but I feel like most botters will fork out the $$ anyhow lol then can buy wow tokens freely no?
But it raises the cost of doing business to a minimum of $15 from $0.
its greed masked at combating x, y , z.
Unlikely. Bots help Blizzard sell more tokens by causing inflation.
Yup, since they were a bit vague about future restrictions, it just sounds like anyone that has been playing for free since 2017 will just have to fork out $15… and then go back to free play.
This shouldn’t affect most real players
Mostly a good change against botting accounts i assume
Ahh, they are referencing to the monthly subscription system. The tokens themselves do not count towards the time window, not anymore it seems as they are now closing this loophole soon.
As in ‘must have an active monthly subscription’ enabled to buy a token.
You’re going to have to explain that leap.
Yeah, Blizzards wording gets me confused some… a lot of times 
It has to be bots, because in a non-bot equation they make 20 bucks from the token seller so they make more money that way than if you just bought game time. It has to be bots.
So bots can farm more than a solo player and can farm 24/7. This means that a player can no longer make a decent amount of gold from solo farming, where at one point you could make living farming gold solo.
So it makes much more sense to work for an hour and buy a token than it does to spend 20+ hours farming gold by yourself.
So Blizzard allows bots to remain profitable because it increases their revenue, from bots buying accounts after every ban wave(effectively a tax and the cost of doing business) plus it increases the incentive for players to buy a Token because it has a much higher RoI.
Honestly, it was probably both.
Hitting two birds with one stone. 
But wouldn’t that nullify the function of the 30 day gametime buffing from the token; since they are now closing this loophole?
so from quick reading, it seems to be saying that players need to have used irl money at some recent point to keep buying game time via tokens going forward. Which means bots will prolly have issues because it makes it more expensive to operate bots on a real money perspective.