So Christmas is coming up and I have a friend who collects pets and I want to get them a TCG pet thing and it turns out that it’s cheaper to get the actual card rather than the item from the AH. Can I get banned from it though? I know I can get banned for buying gold from other sites like that. Is this the same?
You are literally buying the cards in shops. It wouldn’t make any sense to bann people for it.
Also they are not personalized and ypu are technically not buying ingame stuff with real money but a real life card.
It’s impossible to track.
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Well it also wouldn’t make sense to ban people for buying gold now with the addition of the WoW token.
The difference there is that by buying Gold through other means than via a token Blizzard is suffering a financial loss.
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Not really because someone had to play to make the gold that you bought by paying a subscription.
And where did the token come from in the first place…?
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The bigger issue with buying gold from other sources is the matter of fact that much of that gold comes from the seller either botting or hacking other accounts to accumulate the gold that they sell.
As for the original question, the issue with buying stuff from 3rd party is that if they scam you, Blizzard will not come to your aid. So if you buy the card and it’s already used then you will lose the money and you won’t get the item.
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^^ This
It works in WoW because someone else is paying for the subscription at a premium cost. So another player is paying £17 (or euro equivalent) for a token, which another player will buy for gold.
A third party site means blizzard are being cut out, no one is paying for a sub price for that token.
except from this case:
1)Gold seller buys wow token for 150k.
2) Gold seller gets to farm 1 million gold through token
3) Gold seller buys more tokens to repeat step 2
3) Token price increases
4) Increased token price increases token value
5) more people by wow tokens.
6) blizzard profits.
There is a way around everything.
Blizzard are still missing out on the income from the person buying the gold.
Normal situation:-
- Player A who has a recurring sub wants some gold, buys a token for £17
- Player B needs game time, buys the token from the AH for 150k
Blizzard makes money from Player A’s sub and Player B’s token sale.
In your scenario:-
- Player A wants some gold, they go to third party website pay IRL cash to that third party not Blizzard.
- There is no Player B in this scenario.
- Player C - The Goldfarmer already farms gold and plays for free, buying tokens to fund their gaming.
Blizzard is getting Player A’s regular sub but they aren’t getting the second premium sub payment of £17 because it’s not going to blizzard, that money is going to a 3rd party site. Player C’s buying a legitimate token doesn’t make up for the token that Player A is not buying. If both Player A and and the Goldfarmer were normal customers, Blizzard would have gotten £34 from the two purchases. They are being cut out.
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They are getting a sub from player A, they are getting a token from the gold farmer. The gold farmer wouldn’t be in game in the first instance if they weren’t farming gold.
Now what remains is the efficiency of the gold farmer. I the gold farmer farms 360K per month then Blizzard aren’t losing out as he would be only selling 180K gold (a token costs €20). Now the gold farmer needs to farm more than that because he has to compete against Blizzard, but on the other had the purchaser may not buy from Blizzard if he doesn’t consider it value.
So all in all unless the gold farmer is highly efficient then Blizzards loss should be only marginal. Of course I have no data as to the efficiency of gold farmers.
You seem to be missing the point. They are still down one token transaction IRL currency in your arrangement.
No, because I’m making the assumption that if not farming gold, they gold farmer wouldn’t be buying a token. The only purpose the gold farmer has in game is to farm and sell gold. I don’t see the gold farmers sticking around to clear content.
But without data on the productivity of gold farmers it is difficult to assess the actual lost. There is also the issue of the bell curve on where players who buy from gold farmers (greater quantities) would actually buy from other players (Blizzard Token).
Like all economics it is an inexact science though.
I have laid it out as simply as I can to illustrate where Blizzard’s loss is. You just dont’ grasp it.
Your scenario is a SUB LOSS for Blizzard. The person buying from the gold farmer is not paying Blizzard, Blizz are down £17 no matter how you spin it.
Edit to add
Let me do it another way
Normal situation:-
- Player A who has a recurring sub wants some gold, buys a token for £17
- Player B needs game time, buys the token from the AH for 150k
Blizzard makes money from Player A’s sub and Player B’s token sale.
In your scenario:-
- Player A wants some gold, they go to third party website pay IRL cash to that third party not Blizzard.
- There is no Player B in this scenario.
- Player C - The Goldfarmer already farms gold and plays for free, buying tokens to fund their gaming.
If your scenario replacing incorporating the gold seller it would work like this:-
- Player A who has a recurring sub wants some gold, buys a token for £17
- Player B needs game time, buys the token from the AH for 150k
- Player C who has a recurring sub wants some gold, buys a token for £17
- Player D (was C in previous scenario) - The Goldfarmer buys game time for 150k gold.
- Player E pays a sub but needs gold, goes to a goldselling site to buy gold, does not pay blizzard any money.
So blizzard should be getting 3 x token IRL money but are only getting it twice. They are losing money.
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I can agree with your hypothesis, however the major factor to consider is would player E buy gold via token as the price point is much higher than from the gold seller. If he would not, then Blizzard aren’t losing out, if he would then they are.
The real factor here is that, if those gold sellers are increasing the amount of gold gained from wow tokens, then more people will actually buy WoW tokens and thus blizzard will technically gain by ignoring them.
I think the discussion has been totally oftopic.
The OP was initially asking if Blizzard will ban him for buying a TCG card.
No, they wont, because the card is a real world item, they can forbid you to buy or sells real world items. If the buyer have the card is his property, not Blizzard, so there is no way for Blizzard to legally interfer in buying and selling real cards.
Yes, i know that most of those resellers actually send you in email or ebay message the code from the card and not the actual card, but still that information is part of a real world card that is the seller’s property, because that information from the card is what give it value they can sell it too, also Blizzard can’t interfere in that.
There is no different between buying a TGC item in ebay or just buying a dvd of a movie or an used game. Reselling physycal items is totally legal.
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Yes we have gone totally off topic.
Well done 
By the way, loot cards can be buy and sold with real money…but it goes againts the rulesto buy it and sold it with gold. You can buy and sell the items those cards give after the card is turned into an item if those items are not BOP, like pets and mounts, but not the card itself, that means buying with gold TGC toys (i thing all those items are BOP) is not allowed
buying the loot card itself with real money is allowed.
buying the ingame item from the loot card with real money is not allowed.