I like to look at all sides during a debate.  Rarely is someone ever 100% correct.

WoW Tokens.  The interesting mechanic that Blizz put in place a long while ago so that people in need of gold could buy it with real money.  Sure, it helped get rid of a lot of the black market gold (not all, but most) but it also served as an interesting measuring stick for the game.

On US servers tokens were around 215,000g in the early summer.  It has been at that level for most of Legion.  Good enough.

When BfA launched, it took a massive nosedive.  Down to  a low of 100,000g.  That lasted exactly one month to the patch cycle.  It is now moving back up, currently at 140,000g.

Which is interesting on many fronts.

I have a passion for numbers, and even more so for the context behind those numbers.

BfA Launch

Prices on items dip for one sole reason – supply outstrips demand.  There were more people fishing for gold than there were people who wanted to buy tokens for time.  Which makes sense, since expansions typically have a spike in players and they are not necessarily buying tokens to get time.

I sold a staff for just 800,000g within a few days of launch.  Money was flying all over the place.  It was relatively easy for people to swap their gold stores for a month token at launch.  There’s a pile of analytics to be seen on this.

Interestingly, the price has started to spike on the 1 month anniversary of BfA.  Why?  Quite a few reasons I’m sure. My bet is that people have stopped buying tokens for cash, meaning that the supply is drying up, in addition to less people actually buying tokens.  I’d wager that people are figuring that with LFG/Warfronts out, they really don’t have any need for gold now.

It’s still quite early to see what this actually entails, we’ll need to see at the 2 month date.

Fishing for Cash

Blizzard is offering the Dreadwake mount for free for anyone that buys 180 days (6 months) of game time.  Offered the day after the livestream of 8.1, and at the 1 month mark.  It does look neat, and it’s not a horse.

Cynicism active. This reminds me a lot of the 1 year sub offer in Cataclysm that offered guaranteed access to MoP beta and Diablo 3.  That is not a good mental link.