Modern-day Runescape has the same problem. Partyhats and other rares, which are regulated by a minority of the community, dictate the perceived wealth at the highest level of players. Whether or not the items are actually worth the value they’re being exchanged at, the perception of wealth that these items exhibit raise the ceiling of the required gold amount needed to own them. This leads to inflation in every other aspect because a very small number of items are being traded at an insurmountable amount of gold for the average player. All of Runescape’s top end gear is in the hundreds of millions, with the best in game Staff being 6 billion gold. Their version of the wow token is a 14 day game pass that can also be used for other purchases like keys for their gambling system, event token skips, and name changes for their characters. This game pass is usually 30-60m depending on the event that month, so it’s not an easy amount for a new player to make if they don’t know about the game systems available to them.
I think Wow and Runescape are both reaching a point where none of their gold sinks are having an effect on the players who know how to rake in gold. The lower half of the population of wow will continue to do raw gold farms, use all of their alts to either farm world quests or table missions, or farm resources while the other part of the players use their real world skills to create advantages for themselves through either programming, boosting sales, and/or multiboxing.
The solution would be to add back the removed items, including transmogs removed between Vanilla and the Cataclysm, TCGs, and to limit the frequencies of carry services and ultimately outlaw them. As long as there are items at the top of the food chain that 99.9% of players will never obtain, inflation will always be out of control.
I agree with you on the reintroduction of removed and unobtainable items like transmogs 9and crafting recipes), and I definitely think TCG mounts and pets should be moved to the cash shop. However, how would a ban on gold-traded boosting work? People do genuinely gift each other large sums of money in this game, and people do sometimes take pity on a new or underperforming player and boost them for altruistic reasons.
Let’s say currently I buy a boost from player x. We meet up, I give them the gold, they provide the service I’ve paid for. Later that same day, I send my girlfriend 3 million gold so she can buy a TCG pet. I also chuck a few thousand at a random lowbie reroll I’ve never met panhandling at the Stormwind bank for money to buy epic flying. My friends and I also take pity on a new member of our guild who would like to raid with us but lacks gear, and run them through some 10s.
How would any programme designed to catch boosting be able to differentiate which of those activities is prohibited? Or are you suggesting Blizzard manually monitor and investigate every transaction over a certain value in real time?
What you said was acurate, garrisons was meant to be the answer to player housing, and it took almost all of the expansions resources to do so, I think a death was involved too (not by blizzards doing obviously)
On that note, I think it would be honorable to the person that passed to either continue the garrison model or not do player housing at all.
Blizzard has failed in every level of multigame integrations. The smartest thing to do to reintroduce TCGs without completely flipping the market on its head by making them cash shop items is to add TCG cards into Hearthstone that you can earn through gameplay. How many hundreds of hours do you think the average wow player would spend if they had a system in HS that would let them play to unlock TCG mounts or pets? I know for a fact I would spend millions of my gold buying card packs in HS just so I could unlock uniques from another game. I’d do the same for any Blizzard game if it meant giving me a reward without having to buy a cash shop item. MAUs would skyrocket for both Wow and HS if Blizzard would just take the time to develop systems that reward those willing to grind.
As for the boosters, I think rewards should be less exclusive so people don’t feel forced to buy a boost. While the token sales may be what Blizzard is looking to cash out on, I believe a healthier gaming environment leads to more people paying a sub fee. People on the /r/wow subreddit hate M+ and how toxic is because of the time restrictions and perceived pressure placed on players pushing higher keys for rewards. The system is boring and is going to lead to burnout among the average player as Blizzard pushes more requirements for their seasonal rewards. Even last season they decided that they weren’t pleased with players skipping over an affix, so they designed a system around M+ rating that required you to either spend twice as much time completing dungeons you’ve already finished or choose to do a week of an affix you originally had the choice to skip. Instead of making fun systems, they’re hard focused in on making players waste as much time as they possibly can which is why the boosting market is out of control. Stress and fomo are the new flavours of ice cream that players are forced to eat. If they don’t want to play, boosters are ready to take hundreds of dollars from them just so they can unlock this season recolor.
Also, they already keep a transaction of everything that goes on between players. This was the highlight of Blizzard’s customer service before they automated everything and fired most of their GMs. Them choosing to act on those transactions is another story. Runescape had already demonstrated that restricting and straight up removing trade between players does nothing for backchannels and I don’t think this is a problem that any one person can solve. The only solution I see is to make items more available and to make challenges easier like Final Fantasy Online does. There’s no way to really curb any of this without Blizzard’s direct intervention on the services, which is something FF Online does splendidly. I personally don’t play that game but I do respect the hell out of the moderation system they have in place to protect the integrity of their players. I’d be more than happy if Blizzard were to hire a few thousand GMs to monitor all ingame activities between high financial transactions, but Bobby needs a new helicopter and this is system’s only a pipedream.
It’s a game. The market shouldn’t be controlled by a loser who sits at his computer 18 hours a day. What you learn from this is to never be someone like him. Investing that much time into something that pays so little while your body deteriorates, your mind rots, and your life shrinks with nothing to show for it other than some items in a video game.