The game rules for the WoW Token in World of Warcraft have changed. Blizzard requires that you must have had a subscription in the recent past.
The so-called WoW Token
is a popular means in World of Warcraft to earn game time or credits without spending real money. Many can cover their subscription costs
with it without actually spending money. However, this also allows scammers to operate bots quite cheaply. Blizzard is now taking action against this – which means that to use the WoW Token, you must have a real money subscription.
What is the WoW Token? The WoW Token has been controversial since its introduction, but it is used by many players. It allows players to purchase a WoW Token for real money and then sell it in the game for gold to other players. This is essentially a legal way to buy gold.
The WoW Token bought for gold can in turn be used by the buyer to add €13 as credit to their Battle.net account or to obtain 30 days of game time for World of Warcraft directly.
This, in turn, allows some heroes with particularly large amounts of gold to completely earn their game time through gold. They do not pay a cent for the monthly subscription but earn it through in-game gold.
You can see the trailer for the current Patch 10.2 here:
What is changing? Blizzard has now announced that the use of the WoW Token will be restricted for some individuals – namely for anyone who hasn’t spent real money on WoW game time since 2017. Corresponding accounts will no longer be able to purchase WoW Tokens for gold.
To lift this restriction, it is necessary to purchase at least 30 days of game time for real money – for example, through a subscription.
Anyone who has had an active subscription for at least one month since 2017 is not affected.
Why is Blizzard doing this? Blizzard refers to it in the announcement in the official forum as a protection for the “integrity of the game” and it can be inferred that this will be a blow against bot operators.
Because bots are able to earn their game time relatively quickly and afterwards generate a profit for the gold seller. Typically, bots can earn gold faster than Blizzard can identify and ban them – hence, bots almost always make a profit, even if they are discovered after a short time.
The necessity of an active subscription ensures that bot operators must inevitably provide payment information, such as a bank account or a PayPal account. This means that bot operators have to reveal more about themselves, and this could lead to a long-term decrease in the number of bots, as operators can simply be excluded based on their payment data.
Whether this will actually lead to a decrease in the number of bots or a more effective ban remains to be seen.
For the vast majority, this change will have only a minor impact, as “paying €13 once” in 7 years still sounds quite fair, if one can buy with in-game currency for the rest of the time.
Or how do you see the whole thing?
