Coming Changes In 6.1

[MiRai]

Interesting heirloom changes:

I'd like to take this opportunity to provide some information about heirlooms:



We plan to them available again with patch 6.1. They are currently being redesigned to fit the new stat system.
The heirlooms will be sold for gold and base level will go up to level 60. Once you buy a heirloom, it will be available for all characters on your account, as toys and pet are now.
The base heirlooms can be upgraded to Tier 2 (usable up to level 90) and Tier 3 (usable up to level 100) in exchange for emblems that will be obtained as a reward for some tasks completed within the game.


It's a rough translation from the EU forum (http://eu.battle.net/wow/it/forum/topic/12989621265?page=1#8) on MMO-C (http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/4590).

[Fat Tire]

Interesting changes:

I'd like to take this opportunity to provide some information about heirlooms:



We plan to them available again with patch 6.1. They are currently being redesigned to fit the new stat system.
The heirlooms will be sold for gold and base level will go up to level 60. Once you buy a heirloom, it will be available for all characters on your account, as toys and pet are now.
The base heirlooms can be upgraded to Tier 2 (usable up to level 90) and Tier 3 (usable up to level 100) in exchange for emblems that will be obtained as a reward for some tasks completed within the game.


It's a rough translation from the EU forum (http://eu.battle.net/wow/it/forum/topic/12989621265?page=1#8) on MMO-C (http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/4590).


and the biggest change was the ability to purchase game time with gold.... Basically blizzard is selling gold now. I am personally all for this change as I am sitting on caps of gold. Also it basically kills off the 3rd party gold selling or at least the outside transfer of it.

New Ways to Play
We’re exploring the possibility of giving players a way to buy tradable game-time tokens for the purpose of exchanging them in-game with other players for gold. Our current thought on this is that it would give players a way to use their surplus gold to cover some of their subscription cost, while giving players who might have less play time an option for acquiring gold from other players through a legit and secure system. A few other online games offer a similar option, and players have suggested that they’d be interested in seeing something along those lines in WoW. We agree it could be a good fit for the game, and we look forward to any feedback you have as we continue to look into this feature.

edit: no idea why I put my post here

[Slayde]

Interesting changes:

I'd like to take this opportunity to provide some information about heirlooms:



We plan to them available again with patch 6.1. They are currently being redesigned to fit the new stat system.
The heirlooms will be sold for gold and base level will go up to level 60. Once you buy a heirloom, it will be available for all characters on your account, as toys and pet are now.
The base heirlooms can be upgraded to Tier 2 (usable up to level 90) and Tier 3 (usable up to level 100) in exchange for emblems that will be obtained as a reward for some tasks completed within the game.


It's a rough translation from the EU forum (http://eu.battle.net/wow/it/forum/topic/12989621265?page=1#8) on MMO-C (http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/4590).

I really like the sound of this change. I just started a new 5 RAF accounts for 5-boxing using keys I bought from the Black Friday Sale and miss the heirlooms I have on my main accounts. This would let us buy at least the base heirloom items for gold which would be great for new accounts.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

So WoW is possibly getting PLEX?

[MiRai]

edit: no idea why I put my post here
I updated the thread title.


I really like the sound of this change. I just started a new 5 RAF accounts for 5-boxing using keys I bought from the Black Friday Sale and miss the heirlooms I have on my main accounts. This would let us buy at least the base heirloom items for gold which would be great for new accounts.
I think it's great that the upgrades are going to be actually useful and affect the current (and prior) expansion.


So WoW is possibly getting PLEX?
I'm kinda surprised it didn't happen sooner given how much gold players have stockpiled at this point in the game and how inflated currency has become. I like to keep my gold on me so that I can buy expensive things if/when I want, so I don't foresee me spending gold on game time, but who knows. /shrug

[Lyonheart]

EQ2 has the gold buying exchange system as well.. when i started playing it last time i was broke in game.. so i bought some and sold it for starting plat. I like it!

[multiboxduck]

gold sellers would still be buying tokens with gold (maybe even hoarding them, manipulating the price) and then selling them in real currency transactions? Then buying gold from bot farmers and people who need more than just game time, to repeat the cycle?

[Andreauk]

Even more reason for goldsellers to hack accounts and use stolen credit cards to buy currency and sell it on again through different accounts - they will solve nothing.

[Mosg2]

@Andreauk
Actually, because it'll be much easier for them to track the item than gold movement, so I think it'll be a lot easier for them to police illegal and ToS-violating activity. CCP has done a wonderful job at it with a staff orders of magnitude smaller than Blizzard's.

[EaTCarbS]

Even more reason for goldsellers to hack accounts and use stolen credit cards to buy currency and sell it on again through different accounts - they will solve nothing.

Not really. Players will be less inclined to buy gold from third parties if they are provided with a legit means to do so. EVE online and PLEX are a perfect example of this. If WoW let me pay my sub with gold I would reconsider multiboxing again.

[Andreauk]

Not really. Players will be less inclined to buy gold from third parties if they are provided with a legit means to do so. EVE online and PLEX are a perfect example of this. If WoW let me pay my sub with gold I would reconsider multiboxing again.

Not if the goldsellers sell the gold for a lot less than the WoW currency costs.

Games that already have this system in place still have farmers selling gold on websites.. so plenty still buying via that route for them to be in business.

[Lyonheart]

Not if the goldsellers sell the gold for a lot less than the WoW currency costs.

Games that already have this system in place still have farmers selling gold on websites.. so plenty still buying via that route for them to be in business.

It drastically reduces that volume of gold being bought through gold farm sites. Yes.. they will try and compete, but most players tend to go the "safe" route to get gold in games where that is an option. Even if it costs a tad more to buy it the legit way. So it helps a lot. I'm pretty sure Bliz has investigated this option thoroughly.

[fightcow]

It drastically reduces that volume of gold being bought through gold farm sites. Yes.. they will try and compete, but most players tend to go the "safe" route to get gold in games where that is an option. Even if it costs a tad more to buy it the legit way. So it helps a lot. I'm pretty sure Bliz has investigated this option thoroughly.

/agree.


This is definitely good news for boxers, as we tend to accumulate lots of gold :)

Ive levelled 2 teams from 90-100 and each time end up with about 10-12k gold per char from the quests and loot.

[daanji]

I have a nice stock pile of gold from my farming/auction house days in MoP - about 2M gold worth :)

Wonder how much game time that will be.

[Fat Tire]

I have a nice stock pile of gold from my farming/auction house days in MoP - about 2M gold worth :)

Wonder how much game time that will be.

Right now on certain "sites" 20k goes for ~$15 bucks. I would imagine it will be in the 10K-20k range per token if each token is worth 30 days game time. This is all speculation though based on current prices for 3rd party gold and I expect the prices will rise and fall with how many tokens are up on the AH at any given time.

If the gold sellers make their gold sell for less than tokens there will still be buyers for them. If they cant they will be pushed out of the market by the playerbase.

Given this price range range for tokens, I should never have to pay for wow again with my current inventory of gold. Which is only a little more than you.

edit: Blizzard of course could manipulate the market themselves by having "fake" sellers selling tokens at a constant price. "what the hell this gnome named gimpy is selling tokens at 10k all the time!!"

[Ughmahedhurtz]

As long as gold sellers can basically farm gold for nearly free (bots), they will be able to undercut the in-game sales and still be a viable option. With obvious risk, of course. If Blizzard start selling gold, it will definitely give a lot of people a legitimate purchase option that lots will prefer over the more shady folks. Will it make much of a dent? Who knows. Depends on what the goal is for Blizz.

[JohnGabriel]

Rift still has gold sellers and botters, I don't see WoW bots stopping over this. I don't think Blizzard would even implement it as a way to stop bots, a money making decision only.

[daanji]

Right now on certain "sites" 20k goes for ~$15 bucks. I would imagine it will be in the 10K-20k range per token if each token is worth 30 days game time. This is all speculation though based on current prices for 3rd party gold and I expect the prices will rise and fall with how many tokens are up on the AH at any given time.

If this is even close to being accurate then that would make me extremely happy. With my current stockpile, I could sustain my 5-boxing habit with 0 cost.

Might even push me to 10-box again :)

[Shodokan]

Right now on certain "sites" 20k goes for ~$15 bucks. I would imagine it will be in the 10K-20k range per token if each token is worth 30 days game time. This is all speculation though based on current prices for 3rd party gold and I expect the prices will rise and fall with how many tokens are up on the AH at any given time.

If the gold sellers make their gold sell for less than tokens there will still be buyers for them. If they cant they will be pushed out of the market by the playerbase.

Given this price range range for tokens, I should never have to pay for wow again with my current inventory of gold. Which is only a little more than you.

edit: Blizzard of course could manipulate the market themselves by having "fake" sellers selling tokens at a constant price. "what the hell this gnome named gimpy is selling tokens at 10k all the time!!"

There are plenty of places by which gold has plummeted even below their old wholesale buying costs. Some places are selling it for .3$ per thousand. The gold market in general seems to be tanking as some of those sites have even been peddling their wares on places that use 3rd party currency (not $) which were never really there before a week or so ago but now 3-4 websites are selling their stock on "any server."

There is no question it will be cheaper to go Your $ > Black Market Gold > In game token.

But lets be honest here... why would blizzard care? The only way they would care is if even more people started to exploit the currency ratio exchange rates for things like BR and RU currencies which allow you to pay less than half the store value already (though they all require some fennagling to make work like needing russian client/account etc). They don't give a shit about the gold real market value as long as they are getting the money to have people continue to play. Someone is buying the time at full price and to them that is likely all that matters. 10k or 100k for game time makes no difference to them.

[multiboxduck]

Blizzard would never directly sell game-time tokens for gold would they? I would think that they would sell game-time tokens in real-currency transactions, and only after those tokens enter the game could they help set a gold-price in-game. After all, blizzard has no use for in-game gold, and whether or not a realm has a token market with sufficient liquidity would depend on whether there are enough "gold buyers" willing to go through the real-currency transaction -> token -> gold route (versus direct real -currency transaction -> gold with the gold sellers).