Surprising results from the wow economy.

[Aion]

I don't see anything here that can't be explained with some note taking and time to examine the data. That the prices fluctuate less dramatically right now makes sense. The Supply and demand has stabilized rather than be artificially impacted by us botters.

Something nobody ever brings up, but the token wasn't just to combat gold sellers/buyers. It is also a way of enticing back the large population of people who play on private servers. I could never speculate accurately, but its probably more people than ever used HB at its peak. (total guess here just speaking from a general knowledge and experience)

I think blizzard is not artificially managing token prices. I think the process at blizzard is much as they put forward that it is. I think Blizzards biggest misdirections come in the form of shifting blame for botting/gold selling/bg farming and anything else bad on to account scammers and hackers. They have most people thinking botting for casual players is small potatoes. At least they did before they banned so many casual people and showed everyone how saturated the game really is...

just some of my opinions, but I think we are too quick to make assumptions complicated. Often times the most simple explanation is the true one.

I wish I could think the same, but this is not about complicated assumptions or something around.

Its is about analyzing the data, Blizzard report to us with the Token real-time price on all the corresponding Realm groups. And the conclusions, these analysis bring.

The sole fact, that Blizzard changed the ugly zig-zag linear graph with "curved one" just a week after the US WoWToken launch, after tons of complains from the community in their forums, then they "unlocked" the hard top and bottom caps with some peaks, looking much more "natural", means only one:

Initially, they had clear intention to set the price at the level, which suits the most with their private business models, without taking into account the real supply/demand marketing model and hard-code it into the real token price.

The above was "mini" proved by me, with the several Tokens, obtained at different times of the day and different price levels:

While the token price was still moving down, I had never problem with the supply of tokens, available ingame. Even when the price move very close to "yesterday's bottom peak".

But when the price touch the floor, and start increasing, the supply was almost zero, and I usually had to try several times, before successfully obtain a token, or even gave up after 15 min of trying (The WoWToken ingame obtain query have 60sec cooldown).

The above can be explained only with "rough" connection between the Token price and the actual demand/supply, because it is common for the price to touch the floor when the supply is highest, not when it is low enough.
But with this pseudo-linear and highly predictable model, for every customer is common sense to buy Tokens, when they are near yesterday's lowest price, and sell them, when they are near yesterday's highest one. But this could safely unlock a lot of pressure on the Customer Support, especially with the unavailable tokens errors near the lowest price hours.

The current flat model could be just an improved version of the former zig-zag one, since the last could proved to be not-effective enough for Blizzard.

 

[frosticus]

my question is.

why do we only see the gold price for the token.

we cant see how many are posted.
we cant see who is posting
we cant choose one to buy
we cant see any evidence other than 'click this box and boom you get some game time' and 'click this box and 25k shows up in your mailbox in a couple hours'

why bother hiding if there is nothing to hide.
and on the other side of the coin. why not make the token an in-game vendor item only for 25k[US price ovb.] and the same vendor sell a token for 25k.

why go through the trouble with half assing the auction house interaction.
why even bother making the price vary.

and for all intents and purposes, a botters gold is exact the same as a legit farmers gold. players buy tokens. why differentiate between botter bought tokens and other tokens. 'artificial supply and demand caused by botters' what does that even mean

 

[crispybacon]

my question is.

why do we only see the gold price for the token.

we cant see how many are posted.
we cant see who is posting
we cant choose one to buy
we cant see any evidence other than 'click this box and boom you get some game time' and 'click this box and 25k shows up in your mailbox in a couple hours'

why bother hiding if there is nothing to hide.
and on the other side of the coin. why not make the token an in-game vendor item only for 25k[US price ovb.] and the same vendor sell a token for 25k.

why go through the trouble with half assing the auction house interaction.
why even bother making the price vary.

I've been wondering about that a lot, too. Never thought about the ingame vendor thing though, that's a really good question.

 

[frosticus]

why make it overly complicated, then hide what you did so no one can see the work you put into the system.

wouldnt it just be cheaper to not make it complicated and hide it and tell people you worked really hard on it.

 

[Aion]

There is single reason, Blizzard would have to reveal, that they do treat the Token buyers different than the other customers, simply because for them they are "lost" customers, which are 1-time buyers, and they cannot "suck" their pockets and credit cards.

 

[Visigothette]

Does anyone have anything to say in this thread that's like... supported by any evidence, or fact, or ANYTHING other than hate mongering, and conspiracy theories? All I see Is the usual "I got in trouble so it's time to unveil the heinous schemes that Blizzard is heinously scheming, but I was waaay to busy botting at the time to bring it to your attention THENNNNN butnowthatimbannedIhavealotoffreetimelol SO HERE THEY ARE!" GASHP. GAAAAAAAASHP. SQUEEEEE LOOK AT THE EVIL BLIZERD PLOTSH!

 

[frosticus]

removed because its bad taste to ask if someone is having a bad day.

 

[webhond]

funny how u keep making up things.

blizzard catered to those that wanted to buy gold.

and made it legit for them.

Buy token in shop, sell in ah for fixed price.

Would be retarded to think or believe that this isnt rigged.

also us - eu - china and what not. all gold prices are what its worth there.

more money in the economy, higher price.

us, obvioulsy not only bankrupt in real life, has the lowest price

while taiwan or whatever... every kid and his dog has 10 mill gold, and has the highest.

 

[Aetheric]

Precisly, my mind is blown by the majority of people that think that players are actually setting the value of wow tokens and that players are the only one's buying them. Blizzard is buying the large majority of the tokens sold.

^^ Absobloodylutely this !

Anyone who thinks this whole token thing is managed by a "free" market, should think again.
It's one big manipulation scam.

 

[Aetheric]

Has anyone else noticed anything with the realms since big bust and accounts wound up in WoW jail?

Not in terms of server-load - only Blizzard knows..
But I do know of guilds that have been blown up by this - many of the "star-raiders" (read: top DPS) all of a sudden were gone.

 

[frosticus]

i just posted some vanilla mats in a vacant lot which used to be the AH.

 

[webhond]

Solid factual evidence you bring to the discussion, I don't know how I could disagree with you, except OH WAIT you're fucking dumb. Literally everything you just said, was fucking dumb.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA

ok son. keep on dreaming then!

 

[HBfanboy1980]

hehe you guys love your conspiracies!

The visualization for token prices is managed by the site generating [displaying] the data... make your own site or use excel and pull the data yourself. You can make is a straight up line graph with no smoothing if you want. However, at some point the zig zag as we have called it will mellow out. Faster now that a large pool of players with disposable gold aren't factored in.

The prices for the token or on a managed timer as supply decreases the price starts climbing again, but its not free flowing obviously. They do give you the data you need guys its in the weak form of an estimation before purchase but it does allow you to gain some insight.

Blizzard has never given or shown exact subscriber numbers except quarterly, not sure why they would let us see the exact numbers of tokens in real time. (Not saying I wouldn't like to see all the tokens on the AH and gather my own numbers) I am just saying they are just being consistent here with past and present behavior regarding financial statistics.

I mean the damn token costs exactly as most people here on this forum were predicting for US servers. People with brains knew EU tokens would cost more after the prolonged ability for people to basically bot free accounts via the russian account thing. That it costs as much as it does is no surprise at all is it?

Nobody has explanations to back up their Bliz is controlling token prices when they start attempting to explain all the regions gold pricing and why they may be so varied... try to relate your theories in a way that make sense in the taiwan or korean markets.... what could blizzard be "controlling" with the token prices being set so high. What do you think that artificial involvement would be accomplishing?

 

[frosticus]

 

[HBfanboy1980]

<3 @frosticus

 

[Macatho]

dev 1-hey, that looks pretty spiky.
dev 2-what do you want it to look like?
dev 1-less spiky.
dev 2- /facepalms and turns down the 'randomisation' knob.

^This

 

[HBfanboy1980]

Guys Blizzard just provides the data! The way it is represented is up to the person controlling said data.

If it was 100% text based and displayed as such, nobody would even care nor look at it.

We probably wouldn't even talk about it because it was so annoying to read...

 

[frosticus]

Guys Blizzard just provides the data!

i think this is the point we are trying to make. its just data created in a vacuum.

dev 1-we need to make it look like the price is fluctuating, like supply and demand
dev 2-why?
dev 1-just make it spiky and stuff

 

[frosticus]

Fun with Graphs and how to influence peoples opinions!!​

 

[HBfanboy1980]

I respect your doubt. However, nobody has made a compelling argument for or against the data being accurate. It is possible that at some point in the future we will have numbers and more data though and you guys may be proven incorrect! So for now I see wow tokens as a more compelling reason for people to leave a private server than for them to be impacting the gold sellers.

If we loosely followed you guys line of reasoning they could as well just disappear the gold from the top 1% and accomplish the same thing with much less effort. Hell who knows though, maybe they did?

Keep an open mind