Diablo Immortal is receiving a lot of criticism for its Pay2Win aspects. Now, a player has found an unusual way to finance it: World of Warcraft.
This is how he did it: In the Diablo Immortal subreddit, user “daymeeuhn” (via reddit) shares that he used a total of 600,000,000 – that is, 600 million – units of WoW gold to improve his Immortal character. In the game, he calls himself “Naecabon”.
Getting that much gold in WoW is, in itself, already an impossible task, says Naecabo. It worked only because he could rely on codes from old loot cards that he had collected ages ago at Blizzard events, which had since gathered dust in a drawer.
But now the moment had come to use them: “I spent May exchanging old codes for spectral tigers and the like in-game for gold by using Discord markets,” he explains: “I never used RMT (Real Money Transactions) when it came to gold, and I had no interest in selling the gold for US dollars,” the player says.
He understands that gold can also be perceived as a currency with real cash value, but from his perspective, that is very difficult. Because selling WoW gold can lead to bans. It simply isn’t worth it. And also, selling the loot codes he describes as almost impossible based on his experience and one can easily be cheated.
After over 3 weeks of trading: “Cash whales, I’m targeting you”
The starting point was the announcement of the PC port, and over time, 600 million gold accumulated, describes “Naecabon”.
- The entire WoW gold was exchanged by the player for WoW tokens. This took over three weeks.
- He converted the tokens into Battle.net credit – about 15 $ per token.
- This credit then flowed into Diablo Immortal.
In total, the player claims to have received 3,243 WoW tokens for his gold, which he converted, amounting to a value of 48,645 $ – or 46,236.59 €.
With that, he improved his legendary gems in Diablo Immortal, reached 7,000 resonance, and completed 2,165 Elder Rifts.
The outcome: an extremely strong character. But why all this?
This is the reason: “I thought it would be really fun to try to create a ‘whale’ character in the game that uses WoW gold as its main source of funding. I find it funny to crush a cash whale as a ‘gold whale.'”
A “whale” typically refers to players who gain an advantage in games through very high real investments.
“My character is now a proverbial powerhouse that crushes cash streamers […] with eerie efficiency,” says the player: “There is no real reason for it, except that I want to have fun. If you see me fighting cash whales in battlegrounds, you should know that I attack them using ‘World of Warcraft’ currency as my main funding source,” he says.
He also refers to an example of streamer “JTisallbusiness,” whom he encounters in a battleground and promptly annihilates. The latter describes Naecabon as one of the currently best-equipped players (via Twitch).
If he ever has to “swipe” to remain relevant, he would weigh his options. But for now, he wants to “fight the good fight,” he says: “Cash whales, I’m targeting you.”
What do you think of the action? Do you find it good, or is it essentially the same as “normal” Pay2Win? Feel free to leave us a comment!
Basically, Diablo Immortal is mainly criticized for its Pay2Win mechanics. A strong free2play player raised this issue again recently.
