Mama’s got a lifestyle to maintain.

I’d like to read a question that I may or may not have actually received via email.

Dear Rokk,

Have you ever purchased gold with RL currency?

Sincerely,
Some Dude.

P.S. You’re awesome.

Now regardless of whether I actually received this email (ahem), I will answer the question.

Yes, I have bought gold online, through a third party site, for real cash money.

But not in WoW. It was in Everquest.

Why would I do such a thing? Well, I had the disposable cash and no real skills that I could use to make gold (or platinum, in this case). I had nothing to sell, nothing to offer. I decided that I would rather give someone ten bucks for a bunch of platinum so I could play the game and buy gear, rather than sit by the second torch in the East Commonland tunnel repeatedly shouting (but not spamming) “WTS (some arbitrary item).” Oh, and bonus points for you if you get the very old-school reference.

It wasn’t easy to make platinum in EQ.

World of Warcraft is another story entirely.

I’ve probably got about 90k gold spread across all of my characters. Most of that gold was made through selling tradeskill items, the occasional transmog doodad, and by farming and/ or questing. While I’ve been working on making gold, a few things had popped up on the AH that I wanted to buy but couldn’t afford. I just learned to live without it. I never considered buying gold because a) the gold came from hacked accounts (blood money) and b) I’d rather not have my account banned. So I stayed frugal and decided I wouldn’t buy gold.

Until now. Sorta. Indirectly.

In Patch 6.1.2, Blizzard is going to be getting into the gold-selling business. Kinda. They will have a WoW token in their store, which can be used to buy a month of game time. You’ll buy the token from the Blizzard store using real greenback-style money, and it will show up in a special slot on the Auction House. It can then be bought for a predetermined amount of gold (a pricetag that will be set by Blizzard).

Everybody wins in this deal. You’ve got the WoW Millionaires with more gold than they know what to do with, who can now use their fortune to pay for their WoW time. You’ve got players with a little disposable cash who might be looking to pad their character’s pockets, that can buy these tokens and sell them for gold. And Blizzard, well they get to makes more money, because they don’t have enough gold-plated toilets in their big WoW mansions.

It has yet to be determined just how much the tokens will sell for (either in gold or dollars). The speculation is that the prices will be determined by whatever gold is being sold for on third party websites. I poked around and what I came up with was roughly 1000g for one dollar. If a token is sold for $15, which is roughly the cost of a month of WoW time, then the token will sell for 15000g. Math stuff.

So going back to the question of buying gold (re: buying tokens and selling them for a fixed price on the AH)?

I’ll most likely buy a few tokens. Probably for some seed money so I can create and flip some more expensive tradeskill stuff. Or maybe I’ll just blow the gold on hats or something.

Are you going to be taking part in the token market, as a buyer or seller? Tell me in the comments below, if you would be so kind.