"Crafty: WoW Sneaks In Real/Fake Cash Trades"

[kane_magus]

This doesn't surprise me at all. You know, given how Blizzard is already screwing around with Diablo III in a similar (but more transparent) way with the RL-money auction houses. The only thing that kind of surprises me is that they're not being blatantly upfront about it, like they are with Diablo, but are doing this roundabout "buy a pet in the out-of-game store with real money, then use that pet as currency in the game" thing. Right now, though, it's only a one way street in that you buy something out of game and use it to buy things in game, and there's no way to get money back out of the game (yet). Then again, as I said here, while I actually do kind of semi-seriously think they should just go ahead and implement some sort of direct RL-money-to-gold-and-back transfer in WoW, in order to kill off the illicit gold farms, they probably just don't want to rock the boat too much with WoW itself, at least at first. This pet thing is merely the first baby step (well, second step, since the news about Diablo III was obviously the first step).

In this particular case, the only issue I see with it not working is that I figure the in-game value for these out-of-game bought pets will be driven through the floor, given how readily available and not at all rare they are. So someone buys a $10 pet or whatever, but then is only able to trade it for a trivial amount of loot in-game, whereas someone pays $10 to a Chinese gold farmer and gets... however much gold that will buy (I have no clue what the exchange rates for that sort of thing are). Which is why I think Blizzard, if they're going to do anything at all, should just go ahead and do the full-on in-game money-to-gold thing and not fart around with this pet thing.

Honestly, generally speaking, I don't really have a problem with this sort of thing (aside from the innate, overall WTFness I have with the entire general concept of buying items in a game as a shortcut, instead of, you know, actually playing the damn game to get them). If people really and truly want to buy useless virtual crap in their games with IRL money instead of spending however many hours grinding to get the same shit for free (well, for $15/month or however much), and Blizzard or whoever wants to exploit that market (given that these things would just be happening in a virtual black market otherwise anyway), then whatever, more power to them, I guess. For me personally, if it's a game where other people buying crap for their characters would end up directly and adversely affecting my own experience in the game, then I just won't play that particular game, but I don't have an issue with other people doing that, if that's what they want.

Please note, however, that I say all of this as someone who never has played, and never will play, World of Warcraft. Maybe people who actually play the game feel differently about this issue.

(EDIT)

Okay, so apparently this whole thing isn't anything new. You buy the trading cards IRL, redeem the reward in-game, and then sell that. The only slight difference is that Blizzard is directly selling the pet, rather than having the TCG as another extra step.

(/EDIT)

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

For them to be essentially cutting out their trading cards must mean that they realized the cards were costing more than they were bringing in - compared to just selling it more directly.