The Queue: The Continuum
by Adam Holisky 
Feb 22nd 2010 at 11:00AM
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.
Any chance I get I have to use a Star Trek reference. I really don't have any choice. If I don't then I'm nothing more than a Klingon p'tahk.
Lindsaya asked...
"What's with all the retcons? Why do they do this?"
Retcons you say? For that you must step into the Q Continuum, mon capitan.
Retcons, or retro-active continuity, are a thing of life. They are a disturbance in the space-time continuum, a great force that carries with it the power of a god-like being (cough, Q). One day you'll be reading that Rhonin the Prettiest Mage of Mageville is married to the angelic Night Elf ranger Vereesa Windrunner, and the next day you'll suddenly be reading that Rhonin is really a barbarian demigod who's having an affair with the dominatrix Mistress Windrunner at Gil Grisert's place.
All that stuff about Rhonin being awesome? Yeah, never happened.
Retcons are employed as a writer's way of changing lore elements that don't necessarily fit with the story they want to tell now. The writers of Warcraft lore, especially Knaak, don't do this to be mean or because they're dumb, they do it because the story is more important than unmodified continuity. It's their universe they're writing in, and at least in their eyes they can play Q. The problem is when a universe like Warcraft starts to have tens of millions of fans, and those fans become so heavily invested in the universe that they make it their own. This isn't a bad thing by any means, but it does lead to those fans becoming upset when things change all the sudden.
But, such is life with WoW. The game is fluid, ever changing -- both in lore and in mechanics. It's best not to complain about it, just go with the flow and enjoy the story.
Lisa asked...
"Why doesn't Blizzard sell gold? It would take away business from the other gold sellers and potentially even shut them down."
Blizzard is against the trade of virtual gold for real money. There are legal reasons, and there are ethical reasons. Plain and simple.
Blizzard certainly could begin selling gold on their own, and in the process shut down a ton of operations that farm and sell the stuff. But here too, are many gray areas. While some gold sellers would fold if Blizzard setup their own gold selling service, others would just undercut Blizzard, leaving them as the lowest price and the most economically viable solution to gold buying. Resulting in all of this could be a gold price war, in which the value of gold continues to decline; eventually making the currency completely worthless. This would entirely destabelize the economy in the game, and would have a rippling effect in other areas, since raiding, leveling, and PvP ultimately tie back to needing vast amounts of gold to be done at a high level.
At the end of the day though, it's very simple. Blizzard will not sell gold because they are against the trade of virtual gold for real money.
End. Of. Story.
Stella asked...
"In 'Day of the Dragon' it's pretty much implied that paladins hate mages. Do we have to accept that as canon or was it just a case of Knaak being Knaak?"
I think it's fair to say that the paladin order doesn't approve of manipulation of the arcane in the ways that mages do. Does that mean that paladins hate mages? No. Does it mean that they're not entirely happy with the path they've gone down? Yes. Are they going to refuse a sheep or the well timed frost bolt? Absolutely not.
Geres asked...
"A buddy of mine told me that casting instant cast spells on the run slows you down. Am I being had or did I just never notice this?"
Your friend, as they say, is full of it. Casting an instant cast spell does not slow you down. It might, maybe, possibly cause your video to lag a moment, but you'll keep running as long as you're directing your character to run.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW.com crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 8)
sgtsolidus Feb 22nd 2010 11:04AM
Great comment on the gold selling standpoint. Maybe now the masses will understand that gold selling would completely undermine the in-game economy.
Drakkenfyre Feb 22nd 2010 11:35AM
No they won't. They will keep asking over and over and over and over. This question has been asked a dozen times before, and will be asked a dozen times again.
The people who ask that question don't get it. They don't understand that no matter how low Blizzard would sell gold, the gold sellers would simply undercut them. They don't understand how making gold BOP wouldn't help, as the economy would simply move onto something else of value. These people didn't play Diablo 2 when Stones of Jordon were the currency. Gold was worthless. If gold was made BOP, the gold sellers would simply move onto something else that would become valuable, then start selling that.
People who ask why doesn't Blizzard sell gold don't get the destabilization it would have on the economy. They don't understand that it would ruin the economy. They also don't understand how selling gold would lower the value of gold itself. Soon, it becomes a game of not how much gold you can get, but how much gold you can afford. Then the gold becomes worthless. This is what would happen if they sold gold.
Fyssas Feb 22nd 2010 11:41AM
But I think that if they went about it as well as CCP and EvE then it would be successful. Thats the one thing that most articles or paragraphs I've seen about gold selling and WoW is that they never, ever refer to EvE.
To those that don't know EvE is an MMO set in space, and its economy is insanely complex. The way they shut down gold selling was that you trade one valuable commodity for another, with it being game time being traded for in game currency (ISK), on a player to player scale. So one player who is very efficient at gaining ISK, can hypothetically not pay for the game again, whereas those who don't have the time for farming can trade the time which they would've used for ISK. That's it explained simply.
In reality you swap game time for ISK off the official website, and you also have the choice of swaping ISK for game time. There is no player interaction as far as I am aware (the above paragraph was just an explanation of how it works).
Mattimus Feb 22nd 2010 12:46PM
They've actually already gone about making gold worth less, though not by any means worthless.
You can make a ton of spending money just by spending a half hour each day doing the Argent Tournament dailies, and you get some of the best gear outside of raiding ToGC and ICC from Heroic emblems.
What CAN you get with gold nowadays? What will it buy you? The most expensive purchases at the moment are Non-combat Pets, multi-passenger mounts, those Dalaran rings that I honestly see nobody using, and BOE raid-recipe gear. Yes, these things are pretty cool, but it's not like pre-BC where Gold required an investment of hours and hours farming, and/or knowing how to play the AH, and there was more to spend it on in pre-BC too -- PVP gear cost gold, assuming you got to the appropriate rank, and (on my server at least) seeing an epic mount was a rarity, as few people had the drive to save up the 1,000g.
Things change, and I think Blizzard's way of going about it is the right way: make Gold way more available with the dailies, and require alternate kinds of BOP currency such as Emblems for gear and other items.
You still need the gold to stimulate the in-game economy, and to encourage trade between players, but it's also not hard to come by and not as essential to improving your character as it used to be. After all, if you aren't raiding ICC, do you really need to drop 10,000g on a Battered Hilt? Tyrannical Beheader will get you through those heroics just fine.
Daedalus Feb 22nd 2010 12:46PM
There's also the legal aspects Adam alluded to...
First off, if it were "legal" (ie, not against the terms of our contract with Blizzard) to exchange money for anything in game, an argument could be made that that conveys some property rights. (The ToS and EULA probably preclude that, but it wouldn't stop a creative lawyer from making the case.)
Secondly, if you could exchange real currency for gold, then it could also be argued that gold was in and of itself a real currency, and subject to all the laws surrounding it. For instance, earning gold in game could be considered income, which could conceivably be taxed.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to declare Invincible's Reigns as a windfall on my 1040 next year.
Eliezer Feb 22nd 2010 1:41PM
@Fyssas
The reason that it /mostly/ works for CCP and EVE Online is because of the economic structure. Let us examine the changes in WoW that would make the WoW economy roughly analogous to EVE.
First, 99% of gear could either be bought with Gold or produced by Tradeskills.
Second, everytime you died (EVERY TIME), ~80 to ~90% of your gear would be destroyed. ~10 to ~20% of your gear would remain on your corpse that anyone in the area could loot and keep.
That model supports the massive amounts of ingame cash that flows through EVE. Not WoW's model.
Also, the "Gold Selling" in EvE is recycled. A Player produces it either via the market (so accumulating ISK already in play) or "creating" it via getting it from PvE missions. This then allows you to give that ISK/Gold to another Player, and that Player in turn pays your subscription fees for EvE Online.
Nobody "makes (RL) money" here, except CCP. They simply allow players to exchange game cash for subscription fees.
That model is completely inapplicable to WoW.
Wild Colors Feb 22nd 2010 1:41PM
Errr...no, the ability to swap real money for gold would not debase the gold economy. It would simply peg it to the real money. I.e. if a flying mount costs 5000 gold (for the sake of argument, say that this takes 25 hours of game time to gather), and 5000 gold can be bought from Blizzard for $50, then the flying mount is worth $50. Further, 5k gold is worth $50. This would actually help to stabilize gold inflation, since it would be pegged to $ inflation (this isn't strictly true since gold will likely continue to grow easier to obtain). If I valued my time at over $2 an hour, I would, in theory, pay the money and get the flying mount that way. Otherwise I'd grind for it.
EVE Online (referenced above) does this in a more interesting way to avoid directly pegging the virtual currency ("ISK") to real money. You can purchase an in-game "pilot license extension" for real money. If you use this item in the game, your account gets one month of additional time. You can then auction this item off to other players. Thus, while the item is always worth however much it costs for one month of game time, the exact ISK amount people are willing to pay for it will vary. In essence, CCP has permitted the exchange rate between ISK and real money to float. This would be the way to go, if Blizzard wanted to do something similar, as it would have the least effect on the in game market since the players, rather than Blizzard, would determine the exchange rate and the value of the currency.
However, the likely reason Blizzard won't do this is the legal implication of assigning (or permitting to be assigned) a real dollar (or euro or whatever) value to in-game items and wealth. This could have the effect of making it taxable, which becomes quite a mess. It also would give you greater rights to sue Blizzard if they decided to ban you or had significant server down time, since you would be cut off from actual valuable possessions (Blizzard's stated terms that you own nothing in the world are more difficult to support in court once you start paying for things in the world).
Frankly, there aren't any straight ethical arguments against legitimate currency exchanges that pass the laugh test. We all acknowledge that the in-game items have actual value, so that's not a problem. Perhaps you could argue it is "unfair" since people could "buy their way to the top," but it's already only the global elite who can afford the computers, internet connections (or cafe time), and subscription fees to play this thing.
Irem Feb 22nd 2010 4:18PM
@ Wild Colors
It wrecks immersion to tie actual money to ingame currency. Part of the "role playing" aspect of an RPG is being expected, in some ways, to behave as though you're part of the world of the game (whether or not you actually roleplay that in a theatrical sense). Our first characters all start out dirt poor in rags, and one of the rules of the game is that your success is partially determined by how well you can manipulate the game world in order to support yourself.
There are some people who aren't interested in the roleplaying aspect of WoW and would be just as happy if we could all buy epics for $25, log in at level 80, and go raid. They really could not give a crap about the story of the game, they hate leveling, they hate farming, and they are very vocal about the fact that if the "RPG" part can't be done away with, that at least they'd like to be able to pay to skip the parts that are boring to them. It may not be an "ethical" issue, but some of us who actually enjoy the RPG aspect of an MMORPG are a little resentful of those people demanding that our hobby change to fit their needs just because there isn't a game that caters specifically to them yet. More and more MMOs are starting to do that, though, and Blizzard is one of the few companies not jumping on the "we think RMT might be the wave of the future" bandwagon yet. I appreciate that from them.
scherbaddie Feb 22nd 2010 6:05PM
>5000 gold can be bought from Blizzard for $50, then the flying mount is worth $50. Further, 5k gold is worth $50.
That is, until the gold sellers start selling 5000g for $40, which Blizzard responds to by selling 5000g for $35 and so on.
We already pay Blizz $15 a month for all the gold you want - just go and pick it up.
slythwolf Feb 22nd 2010 8:04PM
I don't think people who buy gold don't understand the effect it has on the economy. I don't think they necessarily do understand, either. I think they just don't care. They want to get gold what they perceive as the easy way, and they don't care what other people do.
(It's only the easy way to get gold if you have disposable income. I live in Michigan, and right now it seems to me that it's a lot easier to make money in-game than in real life.)
PictoKong Feb 22nd 2010 11:04AM
"This would entirely destabelize the economy in the game, and would have a rippling effect in other areas, since raiding, leveling, and PvP ultimately tie back to needing vast amounts of gold to be done at a high level."
I dont want to pay 7684329658975469 gold for my epic flying mount :(
(cutaia) Feb 22nd 2010 11:23AM
Next expansion: Zimbabweclysm.
Hivetyrant Feb 22nd 2010 4:52PM
"Next expansion: Zimbabweclysm."
I like it, and instead of mounts, we could have wheelbarrow's or trailers for us to cart our gold around in as no ammount of magic pouches or backpacks could hold that much.
Caine Feb 22nd 2010 6:55PM
Where the game dream is to own a tier-pair of shoes?
sgtsolidus Feb 22nd 2010 11:07AM
Actually to further that idea. If blizzard started selling gold then they may as well just make everything cost real money.
Eyhk Feb 22nd 2010 1:28PM
Which would completely undermine the game.
I've quit countless online games that started doing this to the point where the only way to win was to out-buy the other players regardless of skill.
I respect Blizzard to that respect in keeping the integrity of the game economy.
I also appreciate the fact that they made it easier to obtain the minimal amount of gold to play the game in terms of consumables and enchant/gem/glyphs.
Everything you need is all in-game.
As long as Blizz keeps it that way, I'm in.
Pemberton Feb 22nd 2010 3:22PM
And I'd quit the game - I work hard enough for my gold. I pay money to play - the rest goes to feeding my family. If Blizz starts rewarding people who have extra money to burn, I'm out. No QQ there.
Moonkinmaniac Feb 22nd 2010 11:10AM
play any "free to play" mmo for five seconds and read the trade chat and you'll know why selling gold would ruin warcraft. Here is an interesting one I came across..."WTS gold fish mount....$300.00."
AudreyR Feb 22nd 2010 12:05PM
Gold fish mount? Yes please! Blizzard selling gold? Hell no!
Syme Feb 22nd 2010 11:10AM
Retcons were the first thing I thought about when I found myself in Storm Peaks weilding The Lorehammer (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42918). My guild had a good laugh when asked, "Has anyone seen Chris Metzen? The Lorehammer and I would like a word with him about the Eredar."