World of Warcraft Introduces WoW Token Into Wrath Classic, Sends Community Into Chaos
Blizzard has just made a major change to how World of Warcraft Classic: Wrath of the Lich King's economy works, and the community is completely furious. Yesterday, it introduced WoW Tokens into Wrath Classic.
On its face, the announcement looks relatively innocuous:
"The WoW Token is now available in Wrath of the Lich King Classic," it reads. "This in-game item is a great way to exchange gold for game time in a convenient and secure way."
Blizzard first introduced the WoW Token to World of Warcraft retail back in 2015, during the Warlords of Draenor expansion. Here's how it works: players can buy a WoW Token with real money, and then sell the WoW Token in World of Warcraft to other players for in-game gold, effectively allowing them to "buy gold" in a legitimate and authorized way. Players who purchase WoW Tokens with their in-game gold can then exchange a token for a month of game time, effectively letting them spend in-game gold to avoid paying a regular subscription fee with real money.
The idea at the time was to curb illegal gold farming operations by offering a legitimate way for players to sell in-game gold, while also letting those who had time to play but were low on real-world funds continue spending time in WoW. While the move was somewhat controversial within the community at the time, and it was never fully able to stop the illegal gold selling economy. Plus, there was a significant upheaval of the system again in 2017 when Blizzard started letting players exchange WoW Tokens for Battle.net balance, temporarily throwing the in-game economy into chaos.
WoW Tokens did eventually become a normal and accepted part of World of Warcraft's economy and community, and the economy stabilized around them. But now, with
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