WoW Token can now be turned into battle.net balance!

WoW token prices are now going to go through the roof. Blizzard announced today that the new system where you can turn WoW Tokens into battle.net balance is live on the US servers. I expect that EU servers will follow shortly. In the US you can now buy a token and get 15 dollars worth of battle.net credit. This is obviously massive news. As soon as it was announced both EU and US literally sold out of tokens. This post will contain a lot of speculation and predictions that could be wildly wrong. That being said I don’t think any of my predictions carry any real risk if you act based on them so feel free to do what you feel is right.

This will obviously make Tokens way more desirable than they are currently. You can use them to buy games, Hearthstone packs, WoW services etc. The effect on token prices wil obviously be an increase. I expect the immediate supply shock to at least double if not triple the price of tokens. I would not be surprised to see EU prices above 300k and US prices above 150k. I’m not sure if I think prices will stay that high though. People are currently scrambling to buy tokens before the true price change kicks in, but it is virtually sold out and people need to spam the buyout button every minute. I was personally only able to buy one.

Wow token can be turned into battle.net balance

Economic impact

The price change will likely impact the WoW economy in some way. Generally the change will mean that more gold is moved from goblins and hardcore players into  the hands of more casual players. I think the average player buying a wow token for cash is not particularily economically savvy in game. In general this means that my customers will have more gold available to them. I expect prices of luxury goods like mounts and transmog to increase. More people will finally be able to afford that Vial of the Sands and they will drive prices up.

For gear enhancements I think the impact will be negligible. You might see a slight increase across the board of materials as more gold is diffused downwards, but I think the main factor in determining these prices is the amount of gold being created by looting mobs and vendoring items. Crafted goods might likewise increase a bit, but I don’t really think the average raider will be richer or poorer, so in general the market should stay roughly the same.

As more gold will be in the hands of less AH-savvy players profit opportunities should most likely increase. I don’t know which market inefficiencies will be most exploitable yet, but I suggest you stay vigilant. My readers are obviously of the more economically savvy players, or you wouldn’t be reading about gold-making, so be on the lookout for price changes that can be opportunities.

New opportunities

The gold into battle.net balance introduces a very exciting new opportunity for gold-making. Cross-server Arbitrage. You can use gold to buy character transfer and use this to take advantage of price differences. Essentially buy a transfer for gold for a character with a ton of goods that are more expensive on the server you transfer too. Then sell them all, use the gold you can’t transfer with for tokens and items that are cheaper on the new server than on your home one before transfering back using tokens. How viable this will be is sort of up in the air. Executed correctly the gains could be in the millions. One of the most active gold makers on the EU-servers Aada (check out his twitter for his results, literally MILLIONS a week), is planning to take advantage of this and I will certainly consider it.

Taking maximum advantage of this sort of mandates having a presence on multiple servers. With the increase in token prices coming this is looking like the time to get established on server #2. Diversifying to two realms will roughly double your potential gold making. Considering the value of tokens and that you can buy them from any realm this is THE way to go.  I plan on doing this as soon as possible. Shackling yourself to one server with the new price point for tokens is a bad idea.

Closing remarks

I think this change is great for the game. It will equalise the economy somewhat as us hardcore goblins can now gain much more value from tokens and thus from transferring money to players who are poorer in-game. This allows them to buy more of what they want and enjoy the game more. I also think the price change will be more than compensated in sales and new opportunities. The change also allows me to get way more real life value out of my gold, which is great. At the moment it’s just a digital score counter i keep versus myself.

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