Submitted 11 months ago by Ashtear@lemm.ee to games@lemmy.world
https://www.pcgamesn.com/world-of-warcraft/wow-tokens-subscription
I guess gold farming bots were too self-sustaining? Blizzard really wanted to make sure they were getting their pound of flesh out of the exchange?
I just can’t imagine this mattering in any other instance. It’s not like you were realistically farming the gold with the free trial, this is a weird change solely to prevent theoretical abuse.
No, Blizzard makes an extra $5 a month on any subscription bought with gold.
This seems intended to create an extra hurdle for people managing a large number of accounts in the hopes of making that kind of operation less profitable.
I’m gonna be really cynical here and say they’re hoping people sign up to auto sub which they forgot to cancel.
Was a long time wow played and back before tokens were a thing it was pretty straightforward to just pay for 1 month only of game time. I stopped playing midway through baf and at that point I mostly bought game time with gold but on the few occasions I did pay for 1 month it wasn’t that easy to find the 1 month game time, like the nonauto sub. Then I fired up the game like right before the last xpac, can’t remember the name now and it was near fucking impossible to find game time in the store, it kept trying to get me to buy an auto sub.
Free trials can’t farm gold anyway because they’re capped to 1k gold, so this really does only impact bot accounts for the most part. There’s likely a small number of people who use tokens because they otherwise couldn’t afford to play, but I expect that’s not terribly common.
From the article, it indicates you’ll just need to have bought something since 2017 to avoid this wave. I can’t imagine someone has been playing exclusively free since WoD while buying the expansions, but it sounds like just paying for the next xpac with money will be enough.
alianne@lemmy.world 11 months ago
As someone who uses gold to buy WoW tokens for both game time and shop credit to make other Blizzard purchases, I have a hard time getting upset over this. I’ve been playing the game without spending money for years, and tokens are also how I buy both WoW expansions and other Blizzard games. Asking me to pay money for a month of sub time every few years seems reasonable, especially if this change makes it even the slightest bit annoying/harder for bot accounts.
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Damn, I never knew you could do that in wow. Played for a bit 15 years ago and liked the game but was not in a position to pay the monthly fee.
Ashtear@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Some players doing this are still coasting on a big windfall the game provided around 2015-2016. Especially if they invested that gold.
Casual players can still pay for their monthly by playing the game, but they have to limit their spending and know what they are doing.
alianne@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The WoW token wasn’t introduced until WoD, so if you played that long ago it wouldn’t have been an option. If you’re ever looking to jump in again though, it’s definitely a useful system if you like to make gold in game.
tryptaminev@feddit.de 11 months ago
But somebody else has spent the real money to buy a token. The only justification for the concept is, that it allows people with less time and more money to balance things with people with more time and less money, in an effort to curb the expansive illicit gold trading that happens otherwise (and still does).
Without the motivation of the people with less money and more time, to afford playing for free, the whole concept is weakened and the token sellers are more inclined to go back to illicit gold farmers.
Ashtear@lemm.ee 11 months ago
As long as it’s a one-time thing I can’t get too annoyed by it.
I just hope it doesn’t turn into a frequent thing, and it’s hard not to be skeptical when the token/battle.net credit system has only become more restricted over the years.
alianne@lemmy.world 11 months ago
True, if it turned into a situation where you had to sub with money for a month every time you wanted to redeem a token or something, that would definitely lessen the value for me. I’d still say it was worth it because I could use the tokens for expansions and other games, but not everyone may have the same opinion.
criticalthreshold@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yep. I fully paid for Diablo4 w/ the early access with wow tokens.