Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is no stranger to costly in-game cosmetics, but its latest super expensive mount is so popular it’s causing a shortage of WoW Tokens in the in-game auction house.
As an occasionally returning player, I think the ah access is massively overrated. What is it that people are buying from there that they can't buy in the capital, but at the same time must be available on the road?
I have need for an auction house off road maybe once a month? Probably less often. And when I do I can just log onto a banking alt located right at an auction house, mail it to my main and grab it from any mailbox (engineering has portable mailboxes too by the way).
For farmers this effectively eliminates the need for an auctioneer alt. Now instead of sending mail to your auctioneer, you can now farm and when your bags are full instantly list it on the auction house. This is especially important on early markets (lets say new patch or expansion) as the prices go down quickly. This feels very much P2W for a full price game with a subscription.
Yep! People will buy WoW tokens from the auction house with gold, and they can either redeem the tokens for $15 of shop balance or 30 days of game time. I like making gold in game, so anything I've bought from Blizzard over the last few years (including WoW expansions and other games) has been with gold.
The price of tokens went up by about 100,000 gold after this mount got announced and they were selling out fairly regularly for the rest of the day. It seems to have stabilized now, though.
I think it will be common enough that they can easily access an auction house when they need it in the world. They may also introduce another one in the future, but at a higher price.