Who buys gold, really?

Tobold is one of those WoW bloggers whose analyses tend to make you think. This time, it’s a post on gold-buying that has our interest piqued, if only because it asks a question near and dear to our MMO-playing hearts: gold buying.

Specifically, who’s buying all the gold that gold farmers spend all day amassing? It’s an important question for simple supply and demand reasons and, by Tobold’s reasoning, it seems more likely that the hardcore raiders have something to do with it.

He words it thus:

A single Gruul raid can cost over 1,000 gold in potions and stuff… Now there are certainly raiders who have the time to grind for all that gold or materials themselves. But not everyone does. The fact that gold farmers target level 70 players with their advertising suggests that it is them who buy most of it. Raiding itself and preparing for it with attunements and grinding reputations is time-consuming enough, I wouldn’t be surprised if many raiders “outsourced” their gold farming to a gold seller.

While there don’t happen to be any conclusive answers to such a question, it does get us thinking as well. Are casual WoW players more of a problem with regard to gold farming when compared to hardcore raiders? The number of casual players vastly outnumbers the number of hardcore raiders mind you, so it’s possible that liberal doses of powerlevelling services and gold buying could make casual gamers just as big a culprit in the continuing saga of the gold farmer as that of hardcore raiders.

In any event, Blizzard‘s use of bans and the upcoming changes to alchemy should lessen the amount of gold needed to get through a raid instance at 70. Whether it lessens the number of gold buyers out there is still going to be up for debate.

Tobold is one of those WoW bloggers whose analyses tend to make you think. This time, it’s a post on gold-buying that has our interest piqued, if only because it asks a question near and dear to our MMO-playing hearts: gold buying.

Specifically, who’s buying all the gold that gold farmers spend all day amassing? It’s an important question for simple supply and demand reasons and, by Tobold’s reasoning, it seems more likely that the hardcore raiders have something to do with it.

He words it thus:

A single Gruul raid can cost over 1,000 gold in potions and stuff… Now there are certainly raiders who have the time to grind for all that gold or materials themselves. But not everyone does. The fact that gold farmers target level 70 players with their advertising suggests that it is them who buy most of it. Raiding itself and preparing for it with attunements and grinding reputations is time-consuming enough, I wouldn’t be surprised if many raiders “outsourced” their gold farming to a gold seller.

While there don’t happen to be any conclusive answers to such a question, it does get us thinking as well. Are casual WoW players more of a problem with regard to gold farming when compared to hardcore raiders? The number of casual players vastly outnumbers the number of hardcore raiders mind you, so it’s possible that liberal doses of powerlevelling services and gold buying could make casual gamers just as big a culprit in the continuing saga of the gold farmer as that of hardcore raiders.

In any event, Blizzard‘s use of bans and the upcoming changes to alchemy should lessen the amount of gold needed to get through a raid instance at 70. Whether it lessens the number of gold buyers out there is still going to be up for debate.