Blizzard Reveals True Reason Behind WoW Tokens

On April 7, Blizzard Entertainment launched the first major change to the World of Warcraft subscription system in the form of WoW Tokens. Seeking to a land huge blow against illicit RMT, WoW tokens now give players a safe way to purchase gold without the fear of having their accounts banned. While these benefits have been lauded by many as a generous move to allow players to trade real money for gold, it is Blizzard itself that stands to benefit the most.

One week following the release of Blizzard's version of RMT, information has been released that uncovers the real reasons why WoW tokens were created. In a recent interview with GCD News, Game Director Tom Chilton explains how the new system came to be. "Since the game was released, we have been studying all types of metrics concerning WoW," says Chilton. "Many of the decisions we make regarding content and game balance stem from the data we collect. The token system was no different."

Fig. 1

With over ten years of player data collected and analyzed, dollar signs soon began to appear in the eyes of everyone in the office. "For a system like WoW tokens to work, there had to be some sort of equilibrium between those who buy them using real money and those who buy them using gold. We knew the token system had to work due to the ONE constant our data revealed over the years: World of Warcraft has a perfect 50/50 split between cheap and lazy players (Fig. 1). Lazy players will buy the tokens using real money and cheap players will buy tokens from lazy players using gold. Supply and demand, my friend, supply and demand."

The idea of this player type breakdown was first brought up following the release of the Celestial Steed in 2010. "For every forum post filled with hate, vitriol, and promises of bodily harm, there was exactly one Celestial Steed sale. That is no coincidence."

Chilton goes on to explain the different mindsets of each type, describing cheap players as "those people who fight a waiter over a fifty cent up-charge on a baked potato because he or she never asked for sour cream." Cheap players are those who wait to re-up their sub at the end of the month because they are going away for a weekend and don't want to pay for days they aren't going to use. They would rather have to grind gold for hours to purchase a Spectral Tiger off the auction house than buy one for a real-life nickel.  Lazy players, on the other hand, are much more simplistic in their profile since the primary way they interact with the game is with their credit cards.

Chilton admits that these numbers are subject to change and could greatly affect the token market. "We have already seen this in the system's first week," says Chilton. "We underestimated the number of lazy players that would return to the game now that they are able to safely buy gold. This .1% shift caused tokens to lose almost 20% of their value in the first week due to tokens flooding the market." (Fig. 2) Still, the higher-ups at Blizzard are confident the price will rise over the next three weeks. With subscription billing time looming for millions of players at the end of the month, their research shows cheap players will soon start buying up tokens by the fistful.

Fig. 2

"The most important thing to realize is," concludes Chilton, "at the end of the day this token system will benefit all types of players in World of Warcraft. But even more most importantly, our company now has thousands upon thousands of prepaid thirty day subscriptions just sitting there in our bank account. After all these years, it feels good to finally get ahead financially."