THE TOKEN POST

Recently it was discovered that Blizzard appears to be working on expanding the implementation of the WoW Token to be converted into Battle.net balance, which can then be used to buy games and services from the game store, since more than a handful have asked I thought I'd share my initial thoughts on the subject...

HOW DOES IT WORK?
Well, there's no concrete information as yet but I can give you my best estimate of how this is going to function.

Tokens cost $20 and are worth 30 days of gametime (currently) or they can be traded for gold via the auction house. Additionally, the token can be redeemed for battle.net balance.

My guess, it will deprecate to $15.

The reason: otherwise you could buy tokens and get a free month for every three tokens you get. ($20 token into balance, use $15 for subscription with $5 left over. Two more times you have $15 surplus which you can then use to purchase a fourth month. It would be "even" in terms of raw USD, but in terms of gold there would be no reason to redeem a single token for playtime anymore, you'd just shuffle tokens to balance and get extra time.

Each battle.net account is limited currently to 36 token purchases with gold every 24 months, this part is kinda important. Unless Blizzard raises that cap (which I don't see them doing), it means if you want to pay for your World of Warcraft account with gold, you're going to have twelve tokens every two years to spend on other things. That comes out to $180 of b.net balance assuming my earlier assertion is correct. So, that means we can reasonably assume $50-70 of that will be going to an expansion in a two year period, depending on if you go for the Collector's Edition or not. I'll assume worst case scenario.

That still leaves $120 for services, games, etc. If you don't have an army of alts to move around, or if you're not involved in cross realm arbitrage that should be a pleasant little surprise. And of course, waiting for holiday sales means a little extra bang for the buck of course, like getting the Overwatch: Origins edition for the price of the base game. The danger though is that these types of things add up pretty quickly, grab a collector's edition or two, add some Hearthstone packs and suddenly you're eating into your subscription time.

OTHER PROBLEMS
This is also likely to lead to a steep rise in the gold value of the tokens, currently the token value is already trending upward. The token hit 40k in late October, and stayed in that general area until this news broke. Now the token's up to 58k. From the time of Legion's launch to October, it was in the 30s. In the UK it's broken 100K, in China it's 180K. This has some potential to cause problems, but it's going to depend largely on Blizzard and how many token buyers there are on either side of the equation. For updated token values visit the link below.

https://wowtoken.info/

If you've got thoughts or questions about any of this feel free to ask below.

MY PLANS
This doesn't effect me terribly one way or the other, I'll likely maintain a Horde and an Alliance server. Though I'll be playing predominantly Horde. Alliance will be all about generating gold to feed my account. Since Blizzard almost certainly will be restricting the purchase of physical items in some way, I don't see myself getting too crazy with the Cheez Whiz. And I may cultivate a few Death Knights on other random servers, just to shop for rare pets, etc. But again, I was planning on doing that anyway...

K