Blizzard has revealed it is exploring the possibility of bringing into World of Warcraft in-game items that extend players' subscription time. Posting on the Battle.net forums, community manager Micah "Bashiok" Whiple wrote up a list of features Blizzard was working on over the next year.

Among those listed is the possibility of giving players the opportunity to buy "tradable game-time tokens" which can be exchanged in-game with other players for gold. According to Blizzard, this would grant players a "way to use their surplus gold to cover some of their subscription cost" and give other players the option to earn gold via a "legit and secure system."

A similar model is already used in Carbine Studios' MMO WildStar, which was released in June this year. The game features an in-game item called C.R.E.D.D. which adds 30 days of subscription time to a player's account when used. C.R.E.E.D. can be traded in WildStar's Community Exchange, and is also available to purchase via real money.

Other features listed include integration with Twitter to send out screenshots, an Heirloom tab, and additional end-game content. World of Warcraft's most recent expansion, Warlords of Draenor, launched last month and resulted in a surge of subscribers that pushed the MMO past the 10 million mark.

What do you think of the introduction of a tradeable in-game item that extends subscription time? L

The developers at Blizzard are currently weighing the possibilities of allowing players to purchase game-time tokens for the purpose of trading them with others for gold in World of Warcraft.

"Our current thought on this is that it would give players a way to use their surplus gold to cover some of their subscription cost, while giving players who might have less play time an option for acquiring gold from other players through a legit and secure system," the blog reads.

"A few other online games offer a similar option, and players have suggested that they鈥檇 be interested in seeing something along those lines in WoW."

Consideration of this merger between the two economies of World of Warcraft was announced via a blog update in which the developer looks forward to their plans for the MMO in 2014.



Below are thoughts from some wow gamers



Hitting level 90 is about as much "winning" as paying your sub - normanislost.

Even if one can see this move in a good light and argue in favor of it convincingly, I will then say that World of Warcraft should have done this a long, long time ago.- Gelugon_baat.

Gold is quickly becoming worthless thanks to easily acquired crafting materials and no mount upgrades. - Richardthe3rd.

To sum it all of for the confused Lemmings. You're pretty much buying game time with real money and trading it for game gold. In other words, no one is going to be enough to make that trade, if they are they it won't matter because they won't have enough gold to buy them off people anyways. - HIT3kNology.

Why would Blizzard implement something that is meant to help something that is specifically against their ToS (and explicitly stated so) and aid groups that they've formerly shut down and sought legal action against? - BuBsay.

Well, at least that means that gold value will be more stabilized since it will be backed by these tokens that will likely have a fixed cost. If they go this route, that is. - rawkstar007.

This is really smart, this way they get to motivate people to play more. Of course, it depends on how much gold buys how much time. But as an idea, it's pretty good~. - juanmdp.

...before the expansion they had 7 Million players, it could drop to half that and they would still be the largest MMO by far. Elder Scrolls is running with far less than that, the same for DCUO, and the Same for SWTOR. At this point they could probably keep that thing running with 1 million subscribers, so much of the back end has long since been paid off, they would just repurpose the servers for other games, and merge servers to maintain a better player population. There are distinct advantages to them having been so big. - Bigbudd45.

Nice. I hope it's not too expensive. I had about 200k gold saved up when I quit WoW a few months ago. If I could come back to WoW and spend 10k to 50k gold for a months subscription, that would be great!

They better not charge 100k or more per month. I know that some players may benefit from a cheap cost and end up playing WoW for free for the rest of their lives, but who cares? Not everyone in WoW is a millionaire! They probably represent less than 5% of all 9 million players.

So come on Blizzard, make it cheap! - Eklypse21 .

That would be nice, but i doubt it. I bet they want to help the people who spend enough time in the game to save money, not give game time out for free for everyone that wants it. I'm not sure how much gold 100,000 is these days. Aren't there mounts that cost almost that much? - vPuik .

i wonder if that would benefit the game or hurt it, id definitely play if its free, but they do get a lot of money from their millions of subscribers, do they need it? haha, activision is banking, but then again almost all major companies in this industry are - CRIMSON-XIII.


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