Transactions are from two parties, if the product didn’t sell they wouldn’t keep doing it. The product wouldn’t exist if it failed to sell in the first place.
Plenty of shitty products in the world that never get sold, and then stop being produced.
It’s actually more insidious. Blizzard facilitates gold buying by being a middle man. 30 days of wow subscription is $15. Blizzard sells a $20 wow token. Buyers of the token automatically sell it in game to players for gold. Players who sell their In game gold can redeem the token for game time or $15 Blizzard bucks, which can buy any virtual item in the Blizzard store. Games, expansions, and mounts such as this.
If you don’t want to spend $90 in real life, you can sell your gold for 6 tokens for $90 Blizzard bucks and get the mount.
The token has been hovering around $170k all month and now it spiked to almost $360k (token price tracker). So now cash buyers can get way more gold for their bucks, and the 6 tokens exchanged for gold (to buy the mount) will net Blizzard $120.
I’ve known about the gold tokens system, it has made sense as a way to invalidate black market gold sellers, equalizing WoW gold against the US Dollar. Still don’t quite understand why the token would now sell for 170k though…? Unless you didn’t mean to use the dollar symbol.
Also what they haven’t said is that the price is set by players of the game,. When someone buys a WoW token and exchanges it for gold, that’s because a player has paid them with gold they earned for the token. These tokens can be then used to pay for your monthly subscription.
You are correct. Token value is decided by players on the auction house, not Blizzard, though I’m sure someone will argue that they are capable of manipulating the AH and therefore they are driving it up
They are capable of it, but I don’t really see why they would. Making the tokens cost more gold would mean less people willing to buy them on the AH and therefore less people selling tokens. I think the prices have just exploded because of the mount releasing. As someone else mentioned on here, I believe Blizzard just sets a minimum price for tokens.
Those amounts aren’t USD yeah, probably habit when writing down money. The 170k and 360k figures are the WoW virtual currency aka “gold”.
There is a floor to WoW token’s gold value from what I recall (it’s been years since I interacted with Blizzard and WoW) but no ceiling.
Dunno how hard it curbed bots/unsanctioned gold sellers/fascist scum grassroots campaigns (no, really, look into Stephen Bannon and WoW gold it’s so fucking stupid) but!
Blizzard absolutely realized and then moved to take all the money that was being left on the table from 3rd party virtual currency sales, and they apply every measure and analytical tool to maximize that profit because of course.
This mount’s release is literally them inflating the price of the virtual currency ahead of real life earnings calls, because it absolutely will sell and give them the revenue infusion that the WoW token’s rise in value is meant to provide for as long as they want until it’s time to pump the numbers again with another mount/high sought store item.
A very similar variant in form and function to this mount was once available in-game and trade able with a rarity tuned that it ended up being sold for the WoW Token equivalent of ~$500 at the prices at the time, as there was no store version or similar option elsewhere.
It’s no accident that when the price of the WoW Token is at its lowest, here comes a slightly updated and dolled up version of that same highly sought mount version.
WoW is where real economics, car ownership culture, hoarding, and dopamine treadmills collide and Blizzard doesn’t just know this but have it charted on 5 year plans.
5 million gold costs about 220 bucks right now. If I’m not mistaken that was the price of the AH mount back in BFA, no?
90 bucks for this mount is actually at a massive bargain, we’re talking 40% of what it’s actually worth. Like I get it, you think it’s scummy but… idk, if I still played WoW I would probably buy it - and I doubt I would regret it. That being said, I do not play anymore and will not come back for the mount lol.
Like, technically speaking they could charge double what they’re asking and it would still be cheaper than the BFA AH mount.
I remember when this privilege was reserved for free games since it was how they made their money, but like Sterling says: they can’t just make money, they can’t make enough money, they gotta make all of the money.
There’s also the fact that people will pay for it. Would you take a million dollars to let your favorite game put a skin of you in it holding a sign saying “I care more about the money I made from this skin than the quality of this game”?
I hate the practice, but I despise the fact that it always turns out to be so damn profitable.
it’s selling well too though it’s actually 78$. They put Mailbox and Auction House on it which AFAIK the only mount that has both which is incredibly valuable.
If not the fuction I wouldn’t mind but because the function is so valuable it’s really poor form by Blizzard. I even love the mount and buy it as cosmetic but I’m not supporting this at the state it is currently.
There was a green mount similar to this one they added in BFA for a large sum of gold. But they claimed to dislike how it encouraged so many people to play the market and removed it.
They did not remove it, people still use them all the time and it’s available on the “black market” (an NPC that sells normally unavailable things) every so often. The mount was just an enormous gold sink for people with a ton of money.
What did you expect to happen after Diablo 4 immortal?
After Diablo Immortal I knew not to purchase Diablo 4 in the first month. After how profitable Diablo Immortal was of course this was going to be the way Blizzard continued to go.
This is why I’m more and more playing Indie games. The game has to be made by someone who wanted to make a fun game, as anyone with a profit incentive is just going to make Candy Crush and for some reason people will pay for it.
It’s going to sell like crazy. It’s not just that it’s a Mount, but it also has an auction house and mailbox that you can use anywhere at any time. The only other mount that has the AH is no longer attainable regularly, only on rare occasions for gold cap.
I am going to get it, but I’m going to use my gold in game to convert to bnet balance.
I was going to say who cares if they’re selling a mount skin, but if on-the-go access to the auction house and mailbox isn’t normally accessible, this seems shitty.
It’s one of the most overhyped things in the game. I can more than afford it (both through $$ and in-game currency) but I just do not care. There’s easy to get mailboxes and the auction house is in every main city now.
Not to mention the amount of people who have the original auction house mount and the influx of people with this one - it is barely a convenience.
I think it’s a terrible decision because of this. The whole point of hubs is to get players together and interacting. Putting AH and mail around hubs requires many players together. Giving folks a mount means the hubs stop being hubs and contributes to the continued decay of the multiplayer aspect.
Take this with a grain of salt. When I last played hubs still mattered. If that isn’t currently the case this is just old fart complaints.
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