Tobold's Blog
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
 
What do the gold buyers spend their gold on?

When the WoW Token was announced, I speculated that it would lead to gold flowing from people who didn't use it to players who had some need for it, who would go on a shopping spree and cause AH inflation. For me it appeared perfectly reasonable that somebody who was short on gold and bought 20k of it would spend it on let's say some Hexweave Leggings (follower missions for some reason don't give leg slot items) and maybe even a Hexweave Essence to further upgrade the iLevel of those leggings. But as far as I can make out from websites that track US server AH prices, the US prices for those items haven't changed since the WoW token was introduced and are roughly the same as the prices on the European servers, which don't have the WoW tokens yet.

So I am wondering what is happening. Are there not enough WoW tokens being traded to make a difference to AH prices? Or are the people buying gold spending it not on the AH, but for example to upgrade their garrison or buy NPC vendor mounts? Or am I just looking at the wrong kind of items and there is an inflation, but for items I haven't looked at?

If you are "playing the market" on the US servers, I would be quite interested to hear your observations. Did you notice any effect of the WoW token being introduced? What items do the gold buyers spend their gold on?

Comments:
If I were new to wow, and the only smart reason to buy a token is if you are new, I would be buying heirlooms.

however there are loads of morons. I saw one guy sell a token then buy 150 arena 2s wins for 250g each. hmm just did math he must have sold two tokens. also I reckon a lot of bought gold will go into gold sinks like the 100k alliance version of the chopper.
 
Mounts on stormrage went up about 20% the day after the token came out. I haven't looked since then. I happened to have had some liquid gold the day before and was looking at mounts, so was curious and looked again after it was released. Definitely left me wishing I'd kept the mount and resold it instead of learning.
 
You can buy arena wins? What?

I would expect a lot of the money to go to mounts and such, but I don't think demand for items will go up much from the wow token. What people are really buying is not having to work, not the item they actually spend their money on. Since it seems like there's any number of ways to get money that don't require participation in the AH, so the effect of that labor not happening will probably be muted as far as prices go. And it won't be demand going up as much as it is supply going down.
 
You can buy arena wins? What?

I would expect a lot of the money to go to mounts and such, but I don't think demand for items will go up much from the wow token. What people are really buying is not having to work, not the item they actually spend their money on. Since it seems like there's any number of ways to get money that don't require participation in the AH, so the effect of that labor not happening will probably be muted as far as prices go. And it won't be demand going up as much as it is supply going down.
 
When people want to upgrade their characters I expect people to spend the gold on boosts, which allows them to get the highest quality items (either mystic boosts or arena boosts).
 
I wonder if some of the tokens being sold aren't actually from other players, but were injected into the market by Blizzard.
 
Neo, that's possible, and almost impossible to track.

Go from $5 profit to a $20 profit, since gold costs them nothing. The temptation will be there and perhaps is the reason for the fairly heavily controlled middleman position they have taken. I'd think if they did it a lot people would start noticing bad effects on the economy, but then again the whole they could figure something out I'm sure to counteract the effects.
 
Go from $5 profit to a $20 profit, since gold costs them nothing.

That is the wrong way around from what Neo wondered. Neo wondered whether "some of the tokens being sold aren't actually from other players, but were injected into the market by Blizzard". I don't think Blizzard would create tokens and hand them out for gold, as gold is worthless to them. The profitable way would be the other way around, if there are more token sellers than buyers Blizzard could profitably take their tokens and give them freshly created gold for it.
 
My guess is the supply of crafted items and essences has gone up significantly, because this is the primary method for making that kind of gold for most players. I am guessing there are a good amount of players who previously didn't bother with crafting (what did you really need gold for 2 months ago?) who now suddenly need 25k gold per month.

I think the price impact is in vanity items. The game already gives you more than enough gold for anything you might need. All that's left is the expensive stuff you could live without.

Derrill is right, basically all the mounts are trending up in price. So are most of the pets, although that is a far more volatile market (harder to track patterns). I would also guess transmog gear, but that varies by server and it never sold on my server.
 
Epic flying skill, 30 slot bags for all characters, Mounts, pets, transmog gear.

This is what I would buy, cause these are relevant forever..buying an epic gear will only last you for a very short time, either by getting a loot from raid or by the new patch..

I am now sitting at 400k gold in my wow account and I am waiting for wow token to come to EU servers too :) I am going to buy around 10 months of sub if it goes to around 25k..
 
Epic flying skill, 30 slot bags for all characters, Mounts, pets, transmog gear.

This is what I would buy, cause these are relevant forever..buying an epic gear will only last you for a very short time, either by getting a loot from raid or by the new patch..

I am now sitting at 400k gold in my wow account and I am waiting for wow token to come to EU servers too :) I am going to buy around 10 months of sub if it goes to around 25k..
 
Who is selling and who is buying with this system is a little confusing, since you buy gold by selling tokens, and buy tokens by selling gold.

I mean they pocket $20, hand them some fictional gold, and then still get to charge someone for a sub. But yeah that doesn't sound as good as it did in my head.
 
Giannis, 30-slot bags are better than epic gear, but they won't be relevant "forever". Next expansion will surely bring new Tailoring recipes for even larger bags - although that's not as soon as epic gear will be replaced, that will be outclassed by the next patch not the next expansion.
 
If I had infinite gold, my first purchases would be all the heirlooms, the biggest bags, all the mounts, and savage blood for crafting. Anything left-over would probably go to battle pets.
 
Tobold,

I think the short answer is that there just aren't all that many RMT tokens being bought. As such, the impact on the economy has been negligible.

I think the problem is the constraints imposed, you have to sell the token on the AH before you can get your gold. The illegal guys don't make you do that.

As to why the price is so low, I have a theory. I'll post it in a few days.
 
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