Gametime Tokens: Is This the End of the World As We Know It? Or Not?

Blizzard has now officially announced (though it's something they've talked about before) the in-game gametime tokens. The way it works is that players will be able to buy these tokens for real money, but then they can trade the tokens in-game for gold. Effectively, this means that players can sort of buy gold from Blizzard, in that they can sell these to other players and thus get gold.

How do we feel about this?

Well, my intention is to effectively opt out. I plan on continuing to pay a standard subscription the way I have since I started playing in 2006. It's predictable, it's simple, and it's worth it.

I don't think this takes us all the way into "Free to Play, Pay to Win" territory, but it's a step toward a precarious ledge.

However, there are a few saving graces, or at least ameliorating factors that are noteworthy:

First is that they are not adding gold into the system. The gold you get does not come from Blizzard, but rather from other players. Now, there are some weird rules that I haven't quite gotten my head around revolving around standardizing the prices of these tokens, but the key thing is that it's other players who buy your tokens.

The other thing is that gold is ultimately, while important, not really the maker-or-breaker of a character's power in WoW. If you have 500k gold, but you only have an item level of 615, that's not going to get you into Mythic Blackrock Foundry. Sure, there are pieces of BoE equipment you can buy or you can get tons of materials to upgrade crafted items, but for the most part, gold is kind of a secondary form of progression.

You see, my big concern about the idea of buying gold from Blizzard is that Blizz would then be incentivized to make the game cost more gold to succeed. Today, as long as you don't become an auction house addict, the simple act of playing the game - running dungeons and raids, doing quests - will do more than enough to keep up with your maintenance like repair bills or buying flasks.

I'd hate to see WoW fall into the kind of gameplay that occurs when a game maker wants to make you spend more money as a function of the game's mechanics. I hate simplistic F2P games like Candy Crush with a passion, because they purposely make their games frustrating in order to draw more money out of people.

Now, you could sling some mud at WoW as well - the way that randomized gear drops, for example, make players spend much more time on content than they might otherwise - but I do have some faith in Blizzard that they really do want the game to be enjoyable.

And in that way, the monthly subscription is a pretty fair way of doing things - the Mythic Raider pays the same as the guy who just does Pet Battles. Success requires a certain dedication of time, but the dollar cost is all the same.

That's the way I like it, and while I know that the market forces seem to be pushing harder in the direction of F2P all the time, I think we'd all be poorer for it.

But is it time to panic yet?

Probably not. As long as those of who don't want any part in these shenanigans can still keep playing the way we have, we'll be ok.