WoW Tokens hit their highest price yet, and the numbers are scary

pcgamesn.com:

North America’s WoW Tokens have hit their highest price to date, with a Monday, October 9 spike seeing the cost of the highly coveted items soar. While thankfully they’ve come down a little over the past few hours, it’s a pretty scary sight.

For those who, like me, love World of Warcraft but aren’t as familiar with WoW Tokens, these are effectively items bought for real-life cash that are traded via the auction house. Purchasing WoW tokens will net you 30 days of game time for the MMORPG, meaning you can theoretically pay your subscription each month using in-game gold instead of real-life cash dollar.

At the moment, though, buying your monthly sub with in-game gold is looking like it’ll be quite the task. As spotted by players on the official World of Warcraft forums, WoW Tokens reached their highest price ever in North America, with prices coming in at well over 400,000 gold.

According to WoW Token tracking site WoWToken.com, the cost peaked at 402,169 gold at 2:46pm in North America – the highest it has ever been. While it has seen a steep dropoff to 325,596, it has stabled out again at 357,309, but either way, that spike is pretty scary.

There are a variety of factors that could be at play here: it’s a new month, so perhaps there’s been an uptick in people buying a new subscription as old ones expire, driving up the price of the Tokens as more people buy and less sell. Of course, there are also issues with bots and gold farmers, but you’d hope those were in the minority.

Earning your sub is rewarding, and having that option taken away by an unstable economy isn’t much fun. Hopefully, this was just a one-off blip, but either way, the sheer increase in price is still pretty troubling.

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