LOL what? The token is raising because of WoW Classic Hardcore.
Must be due to Dragonflight being ^&*!.
"Unfortunately with the shutdown of the Chinese WoW servers earlier this year, we can only really look at KR and TW token prices."No you silly wowhead writers. Why do you think you're writing this article? They bought tokens on EVERY server and region. NA is full of China-based buyers, sellers and spammers. Why are you trying to cover up for this? You think they only affect KR and TW? Have you BEEN to an OCE server? Guess who's spamming you with boosting trade chats, mails, calendar invites and every other way they can worm their way onto your screen? why is wowhead afraid to say what's really going on?Writer is either way detached from the reality or oddly attached to protecting the giant blob of chinese players who have the same "colonization" attitude towards every server as they previously showed for the TW servers. If you don't know about or acknowledge this, I'm not sure you should be writing about token prices because you're ignoring the most important factor: The chinese playerbase is EXTREMELY P2W and they will swipe the token to death, Both to advance themselves and to make things more difficult for YOU, the local player. It is intentional. We know this because they said/did the same thing about the TW servers and look at the TW price now. The term "Hostile Takeover" comes to mind.That's why Blizzard quarantined them in the first place, it's a completely different culture and I'd argue not compatible with the way the rest of us want to play.It sucks but it's what's happening. Sorry Wowhead couldn't be more honest about it. You almost got it right when you noted the TW prices spiked to a million at the same time the rest of the prices are spiking but you totally missed out on why.
Less players = More expensive WoW tokensGlad I cashed in while it was around 160k and per-ordered D4 for half price. The price the game is really worth to start with.Is WoW any fun these days? I stopped playing after cashing out some gold.
I miss the Draenor days when the price was below 30k. I used to pay for my sub with my gold and now I can no longer do that, thanks to Blizzard allowing Diablo players to use said token or whatever. It sucks but is what it is...
The real reason for the rise of token price has nothing to do with player activity in the game, people who think like this can't make any kind of serious analysis of what is happening.It's a mix between Region Wide Auction House, the Crafting Rework, the ability of converting WoW Tokens into Blizzard Balance and of course bots.With the release of region-wide Auction House, prices are the lowest as ever because before you had to compete in a market within your own server, there were many niches you could explore to make gold and of course that meant prices were higher, this coupled with bots tanking prices of materials. Now you have to compete with every single player in the region for sales and also every single bot in the region. End result? Lowest prices for everything. Meaning players don't need to BUY tokens as much to get consumables, gear etcThen you have the work order system where people both haggle prices to less than World Quest rewards for a mythic piece of gear, with 15k you can walk away with many pieces of gear at raid level, lowering the incentive to BUY tokens. Plus you have stats like Finesse and Multicraft for Gathering/Crafting and Resourcefulness, creating even more of a material bloat to the AHThen you have releases like Diablo IV which is a live service, so any updates to their store or any expansions that come out will impact WoW token prices unlike Wrath tokens which can only be redeemed for gold.Then you also have Hardcore WoW that just released people are buying years worth of sub just to play Hardcore.So in short, tl,dr, there are a lot less incentives to buy gold unlike previous expansions while at the same time there are MORE incentives to buy tokens WITH gold with the increased number of services Blizzard has put under the Blizzard Balance umbrella.So if Blizzard wants to control the price of token to a more balanced price (which I believe they don't even care) they would have to limit what you can buy with tokens to only WoW related services
It's important for people to understand that there is no "supply" of WoW tokens. The supply is infinite, because it's just pixels provided by Blizzard.There is also not a direct 1:1 exchange going on, where Player A can only buy a token from the AH if Player B first buys one from Blizz for IRL money and lists it on the AH. That is simply not true. If only 100 people bought WoW tokens for IRL $ from Blizz, but 1,000 people wanted to buy them off the AH for gold, the "supply" would be there, and vice versa.If you buy a WoW token for real money, and list it on the AH, your sale price is locked in and guaranteed at time of listing. So if you list a token for 300,000g, and someone buys a token 12h later and pays 280,000g, or 320,000g, you, the seller, still get exactly 300,000g. They aren't buying your token. You are both just participating in two sides of a microtransaction.WoW tokens are, essentially, an MTX, and therefore a revenue engine for Blizz. And while Blizz claims it's a "supply and demand" scenario, (1) the supply of tokens is unlimited, (2) they set the in-game gold value of the token based upon a variety of non-transparent factors, which means they can artificially influence demand on either the in-game side or the IRL $ side. This makes the WoW token economy more like a cartel rather than a free market. Now, as long as all parties go into the process with eyes open, it's a mutually-beneficial arrangement. But I hear a lot of people talk about the WoW token like it's a commodity on the AH like herbs or ore, and it's not. It is a way for Blizz to combat gold sellers and help keep the overall gold economy stable, while simultaneously offering a benefit to players.
Who wants to play and gear up when things like aug and power infusion exist? Making power gains bull$%^& when you aint getting any external buffs.... killed the game for me. Also who tf gonna play alts when you're paying out a ridiculous amount of gold on crafted gear? This is worst expansion to date.
game should be F2P at this point.