Post by Myrroddin
I pay for my game via the
WoW Token, and have no really significant issues with the system. That said, I have to wonder how Blizzard prices its value. Okay, I get they assess the player base's average gold per account because they have that data. That isn't what I am trying to discuss.
As of this writing, on US realms the
WoW Token is about 166K gold to buy and gain 30 days of time. I can make that much or more in a month. Here's the rub: in order to make that much gold, players need to either gather resources or craft items and sell them in the auction house. It might be possible to grind that much gold through quests, gold drops, and selling unwanted items to vendors, but even if it was possible, you'd be playing the game almost every waking hour to do so.
Auctioning items has become interesting since Legion's launch. As examples on my realm, a stack of
Starlight Rose went for 15-20K a year ago,
Obliterum was 5000 for each one, and crafted epics went for 80-90K. Today, the rose goes for about a third of its prior value, Obliterum goes for about 620 gold, and epics are cheap while crafted legendary gear sells for about 60-85K gold. Conversely, the token has dramatically increased in its purchased gold cost.
I would argue that because there are way more characters at max level and max skill ranks crafting and gathering, it is logical that the player economy drives the value of those items down. Simple supply and demand. So here are my questions: is it harder now to earn enough gold to purchase the token, and is the token overpriced because of the values of other items due to supply and demand?
One note, although some people will totally miss this: I am not interested in whining about not being able to farm gold, or being told to grind this or that, or how creating alts and running gold mission in class halls helps, or any other "helpful" advice about how to earn gold. I am doing fine with all that, thank you. The topic is whether the token is correctly valued. Please stay on topic.
Thanks! And happy discussion.
Post by Erorus
I pay for my game via the
WoW Token, and have no really significant issues with the system. That said, I have to wonder how Blizzard prices its value. Okay, I get they assess the player base's average gold per account because they have that data. That isn't what I am trying to discuss.
I don't think Blizzard cares about the average gold per account or any other metric like that. I think their token pricing algorithm is probably something very simple directly related to the supply/demand of tokens on the market.
When you put a token for sale on the auction house, it'll sit there in a first-in-first-out queue until someone buys a token. When you put it on sale, the UI says you'll receive 166,000g, for example. So you do that, and over a brief time, the buy/sell price drops to 150,000g and someone buys your token. You still receive the 166,000 you were promised at the start. Similarly, if you put one for sale and the price goes up, you still only get your original price.
Since the gold the seller receives is not connected to the gold the buyer spends, the price is free to move by any algorithm without putting the buyer or seller at a disadvantage. In order to find a stable price and ensure that, most of the time, buyers have a token available to them, let's assume that Blizzard chooses a target number of tokens to sit for sale on the AH. Let's pretend it's 100 tokens. (I have no idea what the actual value is, but 100 is a round number that'll work for us.) Blizzard's goal is for 100 tokens to be waiting for sale at all times.
If there's a steady amount of sellers posting tokens, and the same steady amount of buyers getting tokens, the number of tokens stays around 100 and the price does not move.
If there's a lot of sellers posting tokens but few buyers (because the price is too high for buyers), the queue starts going significantly over 100 tokens for sale. To encourage players to buy tokens (and reduce the number of tokens in the queue), the price is lowered in steps (up to -1% per 20 minutes) until fewer sellers are posting and more buyers are buying. As the queue approaches its target depth again, the price stabilizes.
Similarly, if there are many buyers of tokens but few sellers (because the price is too low for sellers), the queue starts to empty and there are fewer than 100 tokens for sale. To encourage sellers and discourage buyers (and increase the number of tokens in the queue), the price is raised in steps (up to +1% per 20 minutes) until the queue fills out again and we have a steady amount of buyers and sellers.
So here are my questions: is it harder now to earn enough gold to purchase the token, and is the token overpriced because of the values of other items due to supply and demand?
I can't speak to the ease of earning gold nowadays, but as far as whether the token is overpriced, the above algorithm makes sure that it isn't. If we didn't have enough buyers at the high buying price, the price would decrease until there's a steady, matching amount of buyers and sellers.