Overall is the wow token a benefit to wow? If you think of any downsides\upsides post em
Downsides:
Anybody that earns more money in real life than the time it takes to farm out the cost of a wow token will just buy a wow token instead of farming which removes one type of content from the game (gold farming)
Legalizes pay to win. (People buying gold was against TOS and you could get banned for buying gold to buy items\carries)
Trade chats, Group finder advertisement spam for carries far worse than before wow token
Up sides:
Blizzard gets more money from wow which might mean wow gets more developers?
People that dont work or earn little money can grind for wow tokens
Players that play a ton can earn a ton of money from people wanting carries
I dont know if it was a positive or not. Playing Classic wow it was interesting as it was the first time I farmed dailies and other things for gold for flying\professions and it was the first time I did so since the wow token was released. Time\cost wise it makes no sense for me to grind wow gold so it hasnt been a thing for me for years now. It was actually kinda cool as it felt like a separate progression to my characters power and also extends through patches unlike power progression.
Is it so you dont have to play as much? I brought mplus boosts back in BFA when PVPers had to do mplus for gear and i didnt have the time to grind out pve gear\experience to get into good groups quick.
Yeah, my time is money. The boost costs $60 bucks right? How many hours of my life would I have to spend on average to achieve the same end results (level 60) if I leveled normally?
Let’s say it takes me a total of 24 played hours, split into 4 hour sessions. That’s about 6 days. So if I were instead to split those 24 hours into 8 hour sessions, that would be 3 days right?
So 3, 8-hour days, I could either spend it leveling OR spending it generating money (work). Less than 1 day’s worth of work, I already generate $60 bucks. A full 8 hour day I surpass it.
So the question becomes: What is a better use of my time? 24 RL hours to level? Or 1 or 2 RL hours to generate $60 bucks? Let’s say an hour of my time is worth $30 an hour, 24 of those hours would be $720 bucks.
So it comes down to this: I either spend $60, or I lose out on potentially earning $720 bucks. Spending $60 bucks seem like the better value of time spend to me.
Unprovable but what I believe to be hidden benefits:
*Helps to keep the sub prices down even during inflation.
*Helps keep the game afloat during subscription ebbs.
*When not abused give someone with little time but enthusiastic about the world some kind of leg up thats not going to affect most players in any meaningful way
Yea that is my problem, like even if i farm gold i can just do like 1 hour of contract data engineering work and buy 3 wow tokens… It would take me a full day to farm that much gold. Its just a pain because i use to like farming gold but now its like what is the point you do basic time\cost analysis and i would just feel stupid to farm gold in retail.
That is actually a really good point. Its just a shame its directly tied to gold, it just completely removes it as a progression system and makes professions kinda pointless for most players as everything is just pay to win for most of us boomers/people that are not kids playing wow.
The amount of people buying these with real money is not… That huge. Yes it affects the economy I won’t deny it… But I don’t think that many people are buying them regularly.
And if you add it to its own currency system you’d better make the rewards near irresistible because I wouldn’t purchase them.
And how would one buy tokens in the 1st place?
Personally, I think the WoW token was a horrible addition to the game.
Its presence damages the economy. It drives prices up for many BOEs to levels that are unaffordable for much of the player base who do not buy WoW tokens.
The real money cash shop itself has also been a negative influence on WoW.
Before the cash shop:
owning a great looking mount was a mark of status. It showed that through luck, skill, or time, you accomplished something in the game. You were admired and envied.
After the cash shop:
Owning a great looking mount is now the mark of a sucker. It’s the mark of someone who spent real dollars on a video game item. It is a mark of shame. Nothing to admire at all.
It’s also lame how much extra developer effort goes into designing the real money cash shop mounts. They look much, MUCH better than the mounts you can earn by playing the game. It’s obvious Blizzard spent much more time on them and it reflects where Blizzard’s priorities are… in a negative way.
That is not much to be honest. I understand wanting to spoil yourself sometimes but you certainly don’t have the most luxurious life with only that as income.
Carries are the community solution for bringing two groups together who do not want to play with each other.
The gold from the token is being sourced from players who want to trade. It is no longer a grey market where the gold may have been sourced from hacked accounts and botting,
Effectively made WoW p2w for whales who can’t make gold.
That being good or bad depends on who you talk to.
For me, it’s useless now because it cost too much for me. At first when it was affordable (20-30k gold) I could play WoW for free easily. Now I don’t even pay attention to it because I can’t make gold in this game, despite how “easy” everyone says it is - without actually providing full on examples and help. So once it started reliably being over 75k, I couldn’t afford it, my old raid runs were no longer enough gold to pay for it and it just kinda became a thing I knew I’d never use.
I know the whales can easily drop money on tokens for gear and mounts, but to me it’s not something I see the value in personally so I don’t use it like that, but I can see how other people would want to.
TLDR: It’s just another thing I don’t pay attention to and can’t use because it requires too much gold that I can’t make.