The in-game value of WoW Tokens jumped to a record high this past week after Activision announced that Destiny 2 would be available on PC exclusively through Blizzard’s game client.
The news meant a lot of things. PC players would be able to chat with Destiny 2 players while in a Hearthstone or Heroes of the Storm match by using Battle.net’s (recently re-branded Blizzard Launcher) messaging system.
In addition, Activision would be able to avoid giving Steam a cut of of the sales by distributing it through its own storefront (since it and Blizzard are both part of Activision Blizzard, Inc.) But it also meant that the exchange rates between WoW Tokens and in-game WoW currency would be thrown into chaos as players realised they could now use their gold from the MMO to eventually buy Destiny 2.
In the World of Warcraft economy, players can buy WoW Tokens priced at $US20 ($27) each and then trade them in auction houses for in-game currency. If you were someone who had more money than time and didn’t want to grind for gold, WoW Tokens offered a way to tap into the game’s marketplace directly with a credit card number rather than by mashing cool-downs for hours at a time.
Those tokens could originally only be redeemed by the people who traded in-game gold for them for another month’s subscription to the MMO, a value of $US15 ($20), but in February of this year Blizzard changed how the tokens function, allowing players to redeem them for $US15 ($20) in Blizzard Launcher (aka Battle.net) credit as well.
All of the sudden, WoW Tokens became a whole lot more valuable, leading to a spike in the amount of gold they could buy via the auction house as dedicated players looked to unload some of their excess gold for other Blizzard products, ranging from Hearthstone card packs to Overwatch loot boxes.
Data via WoW Token Info.
After the announcement in early February, WoW Tokens shot up to 111,269 gold each before levelling back out at a new floor of around 80k. The price had been slowly rising over the past few months until the Destiny 2 reveal this week, when WoW players rushed to start collecting tokens with the knowledge they could eventually be used to spend on Bungie’s new shooter.
From a value of 110,596 gold as of May 15, the tokens spiked on the day of the announcement to 140,171 gold. Market activity remained abnormal during peak hours on the following few days before finally levelling out this weekend at a seemingly new normal approaching 120k.
Data via WoW Token Info.
This run on the market for tokens amounted to a 26% increase in the value of them, contributing a lot to the monetary device’s ongoing inflation.
As the Blizzard Launcher expands its offerings though, and depending on the monetisation scheme Destiny 2 employs, the tokens will no doubt continue to go up in value.
Comments
8 responses to “Price Of WoW Tokens Jumps To All Time High Following Destiny 2 Reveal”
Oh is that why they’re so ridiculously high? I remember paying 20 – 30k for them 🙁
I had no idea you could trade them for Blizzard money.
I miss those days. Even the 50k price point seems fair. Now it’s turned the Token market into a “only for the rich” market. At 110k+ gold a token, it’s cheaper just to buy a single month for $16.50 instead of a $27 Token.
Initially at release they hovered around 30-40k on US Realms. When blizzard announced you would be able to redeem tokens for Battle.net balance they jumped up in priced to around 80-100k. And now since the Destiny 2 announcement for PC they have jumped even more. I fully expect them to go up even more once the destiny 2 release gets closer. Great time for people who want to buy WoW gold.
Was 116k last night when I looked….compare that to a month ago when I last bought a token and they were 96k though.
Definitely climbing…which isn’t great for me considering I make my gold selling crafted gear on the AH and that gear is worth considerably less these days since the Broken Shore came out.
maybe it’s me but that just seems the price of the token has finally hit a high value relative to the WoW economy.
Unless something drastically changed in 7.2 (I’ve let my lapse before that patch came out), you could fairly easily “farm” 10K gold between a mix of world quests, garrison missions and (if you’re a healer / tank) dungeon runs in one week.
80 to 120K is high but you kind of should need to work for not paying real money to maintain a service
Nah, the main reason it has climbed so high is gold is so easy to come by in Legion. 120k is still doing bare basics each month to have the gold. I was making 200-300k per month by just doing WQs, mining nodes as I was going from place to place and crafting gear to sell.
No specific farming trips. There are plenty of others who make way more than me by putting some effort into it.
yeah, i went into the expansion with 80kg on my demon hunter, i now have 250k, but ive also brought the transmog yak (120k) the Alliance Chopper (100k) as well stupidly high priced auction house mats back round legion launch (so another 100k). thats 570k all up and that has been made through only world quests and order hall missions. no auction house selling and no selling in trade chat. only vendoring
Thats the thing with WoW. If you put in the effort you can make loads of gold. The problem is most people dont put in that effort, And just want easy gold. Hence why they sit at 10k gold.
I love all those put down comments from the rich blizzard friends that come here to complain not about how bad the game is but for other people commenting. I don’t miss playing with that toxic community anymore.