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Ars Technica is reporting on Blizzard's decision to release tokens redeemable for game subscription time as in-game tokens, tradeable for Azeroth Gold in the Auction House. This has had the practical economic upshot of giving the in-game gold a legitimate real-world value for first time.
To start the market off, Blizzard set the price of a $20 token at 30,000 gold. That gold price increased incrementally for a few hours before plummeting precipitously starting yesterday evening in the US. As of this writing, just over 24 hours after the markets opened, that initial gold price of a token has fallen over 27 percent to 21,739 gold, according to an API-based tracking site.
This isn't that surprising when you look at the going rates for WoW gold from third-party sellers. According to wowgoldrates.com, $20 can get you anywhere from 10,000 to roughly 15,000 gold on the gray market, depending on which reseller you use (you can get slightly better rates if you buy in bulk).
The tokens are worth 30 days of game time, are currently only available on US servers and represent a hefty premium against regular account subscription rates. Their in-game price drop rebounded at 20,307g and rallied to 26,977g. At the time of submission, the $20 tokens were valued at 23,071g, making $1 worth 1,153.55g.
The grey market has responded with substantial rate changes since the quotations in the Ars article. One seller is now offering 24,000g for $20.43, their rates working out to between 1179.25 and 1263.80, depending on volume. So, while gold buyers, subscription dodgers and Blizzard are all celebrating, the gold sellers have seen their margins slashed and are investing heavily in aspirin.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @06:14AM
I can shed some light. While I do not play wow, a past time of mine is to be a spreadsheet-staring mmo trader. Every game has their own tools for the merchant class that they don't always like to tell others about (profit being so easily made with them).
This seems to be a good place to start: http://www.wowuction.com/ [wowuction.com]
Be mindful though. The early flux will make the delta huge and unpredictable. Many will loose big, others will win. After a few weeks things should settle down to a near long term mean price. Just as what happened in EVE with the PLEX system that inspired this, there will suddenly be far more market competition as more people over time realize they can play for free with minimum time investment if they play the market with a sizable amount of liquidity. It will speed up the "efficiency" of the market, if you believe in such things.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 13 2015, @10:16AM
It will speed up the "efficiency" of the market, if you believe in such things.
Or even if you don't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @11:28PM
The point is the speed of transactions will increase and the price will trend towards a point. Whether that is the market being efficient or merely converging doesn't matter.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 14 2015, @08:50AM