Game Time Tokens Are The Future

by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

In what I feel was a carefully-targeted bombshell out of Bashiok’s recent forum post, there’s a serious discussion going on right now across the WoW community and beyond about the prospect of Blizzard empowering players to exchange purchased game time with in-game currency. Here’s everything official we know about it:

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.

There’s something that needs to be strongly emphasized here, and it’s critical to understanding how this process is going to play out:

• Blizzard will offer players the ability to take existing game-time tokens (like your 60-day game cards) and turn them into an in-game item.
• Players can then exchange those items using the normal methods of trade in-game: sell them on the Auction House, advertise in Trade channels, put them in guild banks for other players to use, et cetera.
• Blizzard is NOT setting a price to exchange real currency for in-game currency. Blizzard is selling TIME for real currency, and enabling players to trade that time for in-game currency. The amount of gold players are willing to pay EACH OTHER for game time is going to determine what that exchange rate will be, but that’s 100% in the hands of players and not Blizzard.
• There’s no indication that you’ll be able to exchange game-time BACK into real currency.

Now, there’s no confirmation from Blizzard that this is exactly how they’re going to do it, but that’s effectively how the system works for EVE Online, WildStar, and EverQuest II.

Does this enable players to effectively and legally “buy gold?” Ultimately, yes, but that feels like a by-product of the system and not really its full intent. Taking Blizzard at face value, they want to enable players with more gold than money to be able to continue subscribing to the game, while ensuring that Blizzard doesn’t lose the economic value of those players (read: the revenue that each player brings in via their subscription). By empowering players with more money than gold (as in players who have limited play time because of real-world responsibilities like employment) to turn their game time into gold, it’s helping both parties equally: players with money get gold, and players with gold get time, and Blizzard nets the same economic value in money. Everyone wins.

This, by contrast, is not a game where everyone wins, and it’s what goldsellers are doing.

But What About The Grey Market?

Because everyone seems to get confused about where “gold-buying is bad” and “Blizz is selling gold now wtf” seem at cross-purposes, let’s keep in mind that Blizzard is selling time and not gold. They can set a price on time because that’s their business model; everything on the servers, from characters to equipment to raid progression to crafting materials to gold to non-gold in-game currencies are all Property of Blizzard Entertainment, and your subscription dollars give you the right to access those things for a discrete amount of time. Blizzard doesn’t sell lifetime memberships for a fixed price: everyone pays their $15 a month (unless you’re in Asia and you’re paying by the hour but that’s a whole different kettle of fish) and has for over ten years now, because Blizzard is selling you a license to access their goods and services in-game.

Goldsellers, by hook and/or crook, are selling Blizzard’s property without Blizzard’s authorization. They’re violating Blizzard’s Terms of Service in how they acquire that property in-game, and they’re violating it further by turning around and selling that back to other players to profit themselves. All things considered, they’re going to continue doing that even when this system gets implemented, but the trick is that Blizzard is empowering players to take care of their gold problems on their own, without having to resort to shady third party sites. And it might not kill goldsellers completely, but if you deprive them of customers, maybe that chokes at least some of them out of business.

Because it will very much be players in the game who are going to drive the gold cost of the tokens, instead of profiteers outside the game who want to line their pockets with real currency.

If it’s not clear by now, I’m fully in support of this process. I won’t speak for the rest of my colleagues at BlizzPro, but having a legitimate option to pay money for something that will give me more purchasing power in-game is something I’ve wanted for a long, long time, so long as those funds are going to support Blizzard and not someone else. And that’s not even scratching the surface of what this system could do: you know EVE players can pay for character services like transfers and re-customization using PLEX?

Can you imagine a world where you can use gold to move your WoW characters across realms? Or switch factions? Or pay for a second account?

Meditate on this.