They mentioned allowing a game time token that can be sold on the auction house. If they do this won't people stop using the black market for gold?
D3 had an ingame AH yet there were multiple sites selling gold, as uupiits said the market will shrink but it will still be there. Also I believe we are going to see people who bot to make gold to get gametime for themselves
You do forget, the coins have usually 2 sides: The Wow market, is on first place - market, so the common rules work here too: tokens could inflate enough at some point, so the donors would see not enough profit for them to sell them ingame, but buying gold directly. From my humble goldselling experience, the most buyers need the gold instant, either because its impulse buying for them, or just because they really need them to buy something very soon, so the token+cashout on AH could not be fast enough for them. They already know, that gold buying would not lead them banned, so they do not care for the consequences for not using the "legit" way of obtaining gold. Then - the back side of the coin: Technically legalizing on the gold selling for Blizzard could harm their pockets more than they had expected, even in multiple ways, I can brainstorm two ways right away: There is a stable playerbase in WoW, which do play it, only because of the competitive environment, without the P2W factor! A lot of them could simply leave the scene without questions ... There will be definitely flood of scammers, selling tokens, obtained with CC fraud methods for gold, so this will lead to tons of problems not only to the Blizzard Customer Support (The Game Masters), but the forums will eXplode! Of course there are much more problems, this tokens could drag to the Wow scene, but only future will prove it! And one last point - the tokens will be sold for GOLD, and someone have to make this gold from nowhere, guess who will be faster with the goldfarming?
People will not stop using the black market, but we might see a gold standard for WoW. Games mentioned above, as well as EVE Online and Wildstar have these tokens in place already, so you could research those markets to learn more.
The only thing it does is put a cap on how much gold costs. If it costs $15 for the token and the tokens sell for 20k. No is going to buy gold from a third seller for more than the cost they can get it from blizz without the chance of them getting banned. One way to combat this is to have enough gold to buy all tokens at the lower price and hoard them for a little bit and then gouge the price, this will make you gold as well as raising the minimum price to sell gold at, thats if we can resell them after they have been bought. If not we are screwed.
Personally, I think you'd be a fool to try to profit off warcraft gold these days. In 2010, yea, botting could easily pay your rent with how much gold was worth. The market just isn't the same though these days. Even the people running like 20 bots are just barely scraping an income for how much work it still takes. If you're like 12 yrs old and have no other options, I guess botting for dollars isn't that bad. But I'm guessing most people selling gold could do much better for themselves with a real job or illegal activity that's actually worth the time.
You saying that just because you fail to profit enough off botting nowadays or? Its profitable, as usual, but its more dynamic than before, needs more and frequent changes than the past years/expansions, but its not worse! The 2012 is gone, so at least the gold is not $0.05-0.1 like the last 6 months of Cata
Yes gold prices will probably go down, but operating expenses for bots will also go to approximately zero. No longer $300 a month to pay for your 20 WoW accounts. Now it's FREE!
Well not really free since you can sell the gold for $ or use it to pay for game time tokens. Opportunity cost is a bitch.
Shrug run 3-4 bots in spare time while sleeping and earn an extra $1,000 or so a month. I had considered turning it into a full time gig a few years back but definitely not worth the hassle IMPO. This coming from a guy with a solid career and a company on the side though... Edit: I should add, I don't sell wholesale or to re-sellers, or even through a site, most of my purchasers are long time customers that have been playing with me for years. TL;DR: Sell gold to guildies for xtra fun money each month
Meh. Things come and go, botters always adapt. If prices go down to much some botters will give up or find other games so less supply. Prices will probably hover around 0.20 - 0.15 euro per k.