WoW Tokens are ruining the game

Community General Discussion
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Yes, I know people use the WoW Token to pay for their subscription when they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. I know you exist, and while I have no problem with how you play the game, I loathe that it has to be in part of a system that is slowly killing the game we play.

As for everyone else, let’s go over the several ways that the WoW Token damaged WoW. Simply by being able to dump 20 bucks into the game for a gold boost, and vice versa, players now have to deal with…

…boost and carry spam. The boosters know that large amounts of gold are available on-demand, which incentivizes boosting. I saw somewhere that good-good carries are going for around, what, 100k? Just enough to be paid for by a WoW Token. This shouldn’t be a problem, but it is reinforced by the next point.

…Blizzard turning a blind eye to rulebreakers. You know how, when you right click on a listing in the LFG window, there’s an option to report for advertisement? If it’s against the rules to advertise, then why are there so many people advertising? I swear, if you log during peak intending to do some M+, you’ll be lucky to find anything above M10 that isn’t charging gold per spot. Blizzard doesn’t care. Tons of boosters means people incentivized to buy the token. I wonder, are there other places that this is causing them to turn a blind eye toward…?

…a multiboxing epidemic. Fundamentally, there isn’t anything wrong with multiboxing as it originally existed in the game since very few people were willing to dump hundreds of dollars into this game every month. Now that it is possible to fund several accounts’ worth of subscriptions just by farming gold, it has become an activity that’s almost expected for one to partake in in order to be competitive in many parts of the economy. (inb4 this thread gets report-spammed into the ground because i said a bad thing about preciousssss multiboxing)

…extreme gold inflation. This partially has to do with the point directly above this one. Gold has become so fluid that it has practically lost its meaning. I would barely be able to do anything with the… 142,031 gold I would get by buying a token, and yet it’s an amount just out of reach enough of some players to be appealing. So much gold is being put into the economy to buy WoW Tokens that it is legitimately losing its value to the point where we need huge crazy gold sinks every expansion in order to keep up with it… gold sinks that the majority of the playerbase will never come close to touching unless they want to shell out the $1760 needed (estimate off of the wow token price), or devote themselves to the downward spiral of a system we have.

I hate to say it, but this part of the game that has become almost fundamental for many people’s continued playtime, has in recent years slowly been killing the game. I used to love playing the AH, but these days, what’s the point? What is the point of trying to make a meager pittance of gold by farming herbs, doing professions, or flipping auctions, when I could be out DoorDashing and make a WoW Token’s amount of money in an hour? Shouldn’t Blizzard be incentivizing people to play the game instead of doing something else in order to be able to play the game?

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I personally like the Token. I can much more easily pay $20 for a monthly token for 140-160K gold to use in game, then i have time with work to farm it on my own.

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That’s the problem!

Shouldn’t we be playing the game to play the game? What meaning does gold have if I can just magic some up using my credit card? What meaning does anything have if I can then use that gold to buy boosts, gear, carries, etc.?

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I don’t think it’s a problem - you might have more TIME than MONEY, and can afford the hours to grind gold - I do NOT - i work 60 hours a week on a slow week - so i have more MONEY than TIME - so we can help each other :wink:

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It’s not really a matter of time vs. money, its a matter of wanting the scant time I do have to play the game to matter, without having to exploit the system in some way. The fact that I can go deliver pizza for an hour to get 140k means any avenue of making gold that takes more time than that is moot. That’s not good game design.

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Valid points, my guy. I honestly don’t see Actiblizz doing much to rectify these issues though as it gives short term positive gains to their bottom line.
Tying into your second point, I think it’s going to lead to progression funneling where few guild ascertain achievement through intended means and then go to start selling runs. More people buying runs means less people actually running content which puts players who want to obtain progression meaningfully at a disadvantage.

I’m just waiting for New World though. While only a very small drop in the bucket, Blizz has already lost my funding of two accounts regardless.

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if theres no wow tokens then multiboxing farmers effectively kills the game

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Multiboxers don’t make way more gold than a comparable number of solo players doing the same activities. They earn in proportion to how much they play. A 5 boxer who makes 5 times as much gold has 5 times as many expenses. And you can’t multibox the most lucrative profession, alchemy.

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It isn’t it is only your feeling that is it. All of your points are assumptions and opinions you couldn’t prove anyone of them to be accurate.

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I agree- your feelings & interpretations - which you’re allowed to have and i respect - don’t necessarily mean they’re accurate; wow tokens are not “killing” wow not at all

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Observations, actually.

The first point, boosts only became an epidemic after the introduction of the token.

The second point, can be observed by opening LFG at any time during peak.

The third point, go walk around Naz for a while, or even do some arenas. Literally the first Arena match I had yesterday was against a MBing DK, and I dealt with MBing Assassination Rogues in another today. Would never see stuff like this in the pre-token game.

The fourth point, you have to be blind not to see. Go level a character 1 to 60 in classic, and then level a character 1 to 60 in BfA, and see how much gold you get. Gold means nothing.

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I watched several interviews with the Galliwix group back when they all got banned. One of the most prevalent questions they got asked was, do you think that the WoW Token can exist without RMT? And the answer was a resounding no.

And they are right. Where there is a way, there is a will.

It comes a point where there is nothing else to buy in the game. And then temptation ensues , and if the system is there to passively enable you, eventually people will do it.

This is my biggest gripe with the token, the sell carries, and everything in between. Directly, indirectly or both, it leads eventually into RMT and other questionable decisions. And that leads to devaluating the entirety of the game.

How much less respect you’d have if I told you they also revealed that BfA alone, more than 50% of Glads, have at one point or another RMT’d for the title? Is it really skill then, at that point?

I think the token is good to buy time with gold, and shop items.
I don’t think the token needs to be there for the opposite. To inject gold into the game. There are better ways to create wealth for players. But then again, it’s not about the wealth or essence of the game. It’s about selling a digital service to generate revenue…

frankly I’d rather pay a higher monthly sub. But that’s just me.

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Exactly!! This is what I’m trying to say! What is the point of anything in this game if you can just dump cash into it to get it?

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You could do this before tokens with gold selling sites. At least now there’s an alternative for the people that do buy gold that doesn’t involve getting hacked and losing your account.

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I think it’s true that subtle changes to dungeon scaling and raids have made it harder for marginal players to get into pugs, which has increased the demand for paid carries. With shadowlands, we will see fewer pug groups and more guild groups, because of changes that will make it harder to put together a successful group and easier to make mistakes building your character, especially if you’re a marginal player/casual. At the same time raiding and mythic+ are going to be required for gearing for PvP, gold sources have been nerfed, which, again, will lead to an increase demand for carries and thus an increase in token sales.

Coincidence? Maybe not.

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Your opinions based what you see.

There are more things for people to sell now a days then ever before as boosts, IE: Freehold runs, M+ runs, Mask runs, Raid runs. So, there are way more factors then you have considered.

I don’t experience a MBing problem in game.

It still means something to me and yes I did make 30 million gold on the AH this year just from flipping.

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So you made a lot of gold from flipping. /clap?

Most players don’t play the auction house. If everybody did, there’d be no one to buy that stuff you flip.

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Thanks!

I don’t care what anyone else does to make gold. I also did carries in M+ and Mask runs for even more gold.

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The situation on Classic is pretty bad, if not worse, and they don’t have the token. I don’t think removing it would magically fix everything.

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So what? Are you looking for some sort of validation? Your experiences are entirely irrelevant. The game should not be designed around your playstyle to the disadvantage of the overwhelming majority.