Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is no stranger to costly in-game cosmetics, but its latest super expensive mount is so popular it’s causing a shortage of WoW Tokens in the in-game auction house.
I think it will be common enough that they can easily access an auction house when they need it in the world. They may also introduce another one in the future, but at a higher price.
There's no reason not to let all players access their mail and auction house anywhere through the menus, except that Blizzard has decided to paywall that 'feature'.
As an occasionally returning player, I think the ah access is massively overrated. What is it that people are buying from there that they can't buy in the capital, but at the same time must be available on the road?
I have need for an auction house off road maybe once a month? Probably less often. And when I do I can just log onto a banking alt located right at an auction house, mail it to my main and grab it from any mailbox (engineering has portable mailboxes too by the way).
For farmers this effectively eliminates the need for an auctioneer alt. Now instead of sending mail to your auctioneer, you can now farm and when your bags are full instantly list it on the auction house. This is especially important on early markets (lets say new patch or expansion) as the prices go down quickly. This feels very much P2W for a full price game with a subscription.
A feature that costs Blizzard nothing, given an obscene price larger than any game or expansion they've ever sold, dangled with rationality-undermining time pressure, and using some bullshit tokens for artificial scarcity.
Only legislation will stop this.
Nothing inside a video game should cost real money.
If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else.
Nothing inside a video game should cost real money.
I wouldn't go that far, otherwise you would also kill off essentially third parties producing content a la Second Life or the asset stores in various game engines as well as services provided by players to other players.