Edit: I pose this question with no bias toward either.
How do we feel about these?
Does using “real world” currency to purchase “in game” currency have any effect on the community? If so, what?
Pro’s?
Con’s?
Anyone neutral?
Ambivalent to be honest. I’ve bought them for game time in the past. I’ve bought a few to rebuild my gold coffers when they were worth a lot more.
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Sometimes when I roll on a server, I like the idea of starting with nothing and working up bank roll. Then, sometimes I feel since I have done time-after-time, its not world-breaking to buy one to get me on my feet.
I feel you in the ambivalence.
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Token promotes afk game play.
It’s how I pay to play the game. I don’t care either way however, I believe that tokens are bad for the long term health of the game with too many reasons to list here.
Madseason has done a very good job listing pros and cons of this.
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Leggo templates are expensive. I bought one so far in SL. My game time is limited, so it helps out. It will never put me ahead of those with time to play. Its not a big deal.
Mostly.
Pro’s: People can buy gametime/services for gold if they are low on cash.
I don’t buy into the cons because money is not being created, it’s just being moved from player to player.
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As someone who works 65 hours and has a family they make it easier for me to raid.
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Well. Outside of WoW -that’s amazing and deserves my respect. But in WoW, I see that. If your content just involves that aspect of the game. Its obvious you do not have time to farm. I don’t see any possible issue for your case.
Without WoW token, there will be less people playing the game.
Personally, I’m a big fan.
Since they were introduced, I have never paid a penny for my sub for my two accounts. And since they added the ability to use them to add to my battle.net balance, I haven’t spent a penny on WoW expansions, pets, mounts, or any other Blizzard game you can spend battle.net balance on.
That has literally saved me hundreds of dollars over the years, and since I live on a tight, fixed budget, that is really nice and allows me to redirect that money I would have spent on WoW to other things, like a better gaming machine.
I also like the idea that people can use them to buy gold legally/legitimately instead of using gold sellers, which have lots of negative impacts on the game. While those folks are still around, they are much less common. (I’d admit that I do wonder how Susan is doing every so often and if she is still expressing herself.)
And it seems like there is a fair balance of people like me with gold to spend on the one hoof and the people with extra real world money to spend to get gold on the other hoof, so that the gold price of a token isn’t totally ridiculous (most of the time).
/moo 
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Oh, baloney. Wow tokens means I don’t have to spend a lot of time doing boring crap for gold.
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I don’t have a lot of time to play so I buy one once in a while to rebuild my gold reserves.
If it helps keep the sub cost from going up, I’m all for it.
They did it foul by keeping it low for the brutosaur and now its magically up like 40k from that time. 30 something percent higher now but still not worth it.
I like tokens, however I use in game currency as a substitute for real world currency. Nice to get games for free.
More people were buying tokens for cash to get gold, that saturates the market and lowers the gold cost. People trying to pay cash for the bruto did it to themselves.
None, u can make that gold pretty quick anyway.
I’m just glad not to have Trade chat flooded with gold sellers, to be honest.
… Sure, now it’s flooded with carries, but it’s at least a slight improvement. And a lot less illegal. :v
WoW Tokens have allowed me to play this game essentially for free since the day they came online. I buy the new xpacs with gold, the game time, and really anything else I might want. Tbh, I think if I actually had to shell out $15 for this game I would have left already…
All I have to say is, I hope there will forever be people willing to shell out $20 for the measly 150k a token gets you.
WoW tokens should have remained as nothing more than a means of people with extra spending money having a means of making more gold, and people who didn’t have the disposable income to be able to justify 15 a month having a means of in-game farming for WoW time.
Making it so WoW time, or battle net balance could be purchased with tokens made WoW a proverbial cash cow among Blizzard games because it’s the only game in which you can do things totally in game, and then make enough gold to be able to buy real world products such as other Blizzard titles, time, balance, etc. This makes it so gold has much more value than anything else in any other game, and that people who can find high ways of milking it for what it’s worth (IE boosting) much more worth it.
To that end, I think that it’s a mistake to make it so WoW tokens can purchase battle net balance, or can be used to do other things like buy other titles. It should have remained limited to WoW time.