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, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @04:11AM
Fuck the Money Changers. Fuck them all to Hell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @04:15AM
Jesus! Chill out, Jesus! Just a few overturned tables would be enough. Maybe you could just drop a few.
http://www.cafepress.com/mf/92397470/social-justice-warrior_tshirt?utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=1362837064&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=sem-cpc-product-ads&utm_content=search-pla&productId=1362837064 [cafepress.com]
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by wantkitteh on Monday April 13 2015, @08:31AM
Pff, Jesus needs not your generic SJW shirt, proof [ibtimes.co.uk]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @08:35AM
Sorry, but I can't find anywhere in the bible that Jesus said you should have sex with money changers. Maybe somewhere in the apocryphal texts?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by wantkitteh on Monday April 13 2015, @08:58AM
I suppose you could read really deeply into the bits where he said you should love thine enemies...
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Geezer on Monday April 13 2015, @10:21AM
I dunno...since the Holy 3-in-One Oil Trinity has no problem with having adulterous sex with married virgins, bopping a banker isn't that big a stretch.
(Score: 2) by Jaruzel on Monday April 13 2015, @05:19AM
I'm on the EU region, and can't see this yet - how many tokens are actually up for sale on the US Auction House (it's region, not realm, wide) - does anyone know?
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(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
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @08:05AM
Oh, yeah, the dumbed-down clone of Everquest, designed for 12-year-olds, prominently ridiculed on South Park and the Simpsons? That Warcraft.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by wantkitteh on Monday April 13 2015, @08:35AM
Everquest? Oh yeah, the dumbed-down version of Ultima Online, designed for 11-y -- screw it, let's just say they're all rip-offs of MUD and go do some beer-runs instead ;)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by wantkitteh on Monday April 13 2015, @09:05AM
If anyone is interested, Cory Doctorow's novel "For The Win" covers the subject of MMO economics from an interesting angle. It's available under CC NC-SA 3.0 from here [craphound.com]. It's a young-adult title, the online downloadable version had a few annoying typos in it when I read it, but nothing that ruins it's readability. Official plain text, PDF and HTML available at the top of page, fan contributed versions of all kinds of formats (including epub and azw) available a little further down.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday April 13 2015, @01:53PM
Eve Online has had this for years. And that is the place where market games are king. Speculation will play with the market for a while.
But with a much bigger subscriber base to play with, it would be interesting to see how it goes. Either Blizzard gets greedy and tries to capitalize on this, or they just let the market play out.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Monday April 13 2015, @05:44PM
I don't know much about WoW markets, but EVE market is probably not really comparable to WoW. It's more comparable to spot price on RL markets.
In EVE, the PLEX (30-day game time) is not sold by CCP (eve developer) for ISK ingame. It is sold by CCP to a player for $$ and player chooses to make PLEX item in-game that they can sell, lose, trash, etc.. This item can be traded on market, or used in-place. The in-game price asked by players for PLEX is completely arbitrary. And I know. 8-years ago, 30-day-GTC (plex equivalent) used to be traded for about 120m ISK. Today, PLEX is traded at 800m ISK.
https://eve-central.com/home/quicklook.html?typeid=29668 [eve-central.com]
Bottom line is, CCP does NOT set price of PLEX in EVE. It never had. They can only affect it by policy, like taking out botting accounts and people illegally selling ISK/game items for $$ - that they have done quite well over the years.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday April 13 2015, @06:49PM
Yeah, I played the game for a long time, quit a couple years back. Never got into buying/selling PLEX though.
But, if Blizzard directly setting the price I am confused at how the price in game is fluctuating. I guess Blizzard is tweaking the gold value in game based on how many people buy? Sounds like a great way to scam their own players.
The big advantage of PLEX is that it lets people play for "free", by buying game time from other players. The problem with it is the still rampant inflaction and market speculation has driven prices up over the years.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @03:56PM
They're pegging the value of their limitless fiat currency to something that's effectively limited; could this be used to infer what the effects would be of fiat currency countries going back to the gold standard (pegging a limitless fiat to something limited)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @04:43PM
I'm confused... It's not the US government who is doing the pegging. So you can't say it's 'their' limitless fiat currency. And the wow gold definitely has limit, but I suppose Blizzard can also make infinitely more.
(Score: 2) by naubol on Monday April 13 2015, @05:22PM
An interesting question, but two properties mitigate the affects. The first is that WoW gold is in fact limited (perception, value in game, market saturation). The other thing is that USD is massive compared to WoW.
This interaction has also been in existence for a long time, it is just now codified in the game. It is also limited by the mechanic of game time. This exact mechanic itself has been in EVE for a really long time.