[00:05] expansion, another issue coming back just the same as it was before, and it adventurer. And it seems it's here to stay despite the appearances. [music] Gold has been a weird currency in World
[00:19] of Warcraft, and we have done our fair share of complain I mean, making videos to raise awareness. And we thought we solved it. We went from completing a story campaign by killing the biggest, baddest boss for a
[00:34] 50 gold reward and some forgettable blue items to actually getting 4,000 gold for the same quest in season 1 of Midnight. So, the issue has been fixed, right? Obviously wrong. The problem was never as straightforward as quests giving
[00:51] slightly more gold, and we already have the expansion inflation to contend with. This all started from a recent Reddit post made by Ryan La Lord. That's right, folks. All of your Patreon support has made it possible for Marcelian and
[01:05] myself to afford a first-grade reading level tuition and have since discovered Reddit posts. Our education system aside, Ryan La Lord has made a very straightforward point about the gold issue, albeit narrowed
[01:18] down to one of the biggest problems, repair bills. They're more. Now, I mentioned previously the expansion inflation and didn't really explain it since there's not much to explain. It's not that complicated to be honest. Every
[01:31] expensive. That's about the level of economical development we get from a video game that has managed to surprisingly recreate a relatively fair replica of a real market inside its own auction house system.
[01:47] Relatively. You see, there are multiple types of players and multiple types of World of Warcraft activities, and everyone is more or less entitled to play the game that they enjoy.
[01:59] We have been through expansions like Legion, Battle for Azeroth, and Shadowlands to understand that borrowed power, which would force the player in certain activities, was not enjoyed or really appreciated by a large section of
[02:15] the community. I dare say that anyone that enjoys playing a video game and making any modicum of decisions would prefer not to be told how to play the game by the developers. This is a larger issue rooted in multiple systems of the
[02:29] game and I won't go into all of its intricacies in this video, except one, intricacies in this video, except one, gold. The fundamental currency of any fantasy game, role-playing or otherwise, multiplayer or otherwise, stands at the
[02:42] crux of all interesting transactions that a player of such games can engage in. Except repairing. Repairing is as interesting as waking up in the morning after a long day at work, still groggy
[02:56] and sleepy, and stepping on a wet sock on your way to the bathroom. Who left it there? Why was it wet? You could say these questions carry more weight than why am I running out of gold repairing my gear in an MMO? And of
[03:12] course, the discussion is larger than that. End-game content enjoyers, which make up the majority of the community, engaging in the largest parts of the game, regularly struggle keeping up their gold balance between upgrading
[03:27] gear, buying flasks and potions, raising their cooking to make their hearty food, selling their children into becoming wards for the goblins of Undermine, hoping that the newly formed alliance can give them the necessary funds to
[03:43] enchant. There's no point if only one quest per patch gives you 4,000 gold, good enough to cover the repair costs of one night of playing World of Warcraft out of however many you end up playing
[03:57] per week. At the same time, the rest of the quests still being stuck in 2010 understand there is such a thing as actual inflation of gold in the game. And if easily available gold sources that can make a difference in the flow
[04:13] of items on the auction house would actually exist, then things could change drastically. I also understand that I shouldn't have to spend one hour each day scanning, canceling, [music] and reposting stuff on the auction house to
[04:27] compete with the 10 whales on my server that have more gold than the rest of the people combined. We are worried about gold inflation, pretending a video game market is like a real economy, yet at the same time a real economy has
[04:42] albeit imperfect, of regulations that can control the capability of monopoly or of a few players being able to decide the prices of items, and whether or not Johnny Two Fingers that just finished leveling his leatherworking can actually
[04:57] sell an item at all. Auction housing isn't the only way to make gold, yet the more we dive into this amazing solution to our problem, the more we realize we will have to cut down on our nights of playing dungeons and raids so that we
[05:11] can do world quest world tours for a few more thousand gold. Finish every single weekly on every single faction on every single character to prevent our gear getting into the red mid progression. Or, you know, solve all of these issues
[05:26] with the good and trusting plastic square, the real end game boss of a modern live service game around which developers most certainly do not decide the content they create and manage. For sure.
[05:41] racked with doubts and unanswered questions, what exactly is the problem and how can we solve it? I am glad you asked friend. I have read almost an entire article on Wikipedia about game design and I think I'm
[05:56] finally ready to answer that question earnestly. And you'd be surprised as to how simple the answer actually is. In a world of swords and fireballs with demons, gods, entropy and destruction threatening our world, the heroes that
[06:10] save it are actually working minimum wage with no pension plan or future retirement assured. How about if in this world of Warcraft if you will, defeating the impending doom that threatens us all including
[06:24] this very interesting, very fair and very regulated open market would very regulated open market would actually earn you the biggest of bucks? How about if we go into another world, let's call it Void Storm and enter the
[06:36] enemy stronghold, let's call it Void Spire, and we actually stop the army looking to take over the Sunwell and presumably kill every living soul on Azeroth nets us enough gold to do it again the next day without taking up a
[06:50] second job as a security guard for Gallywix, I'm sorry, Gazlowe and his greedy girthy goons. How about we actually make enough gold selling an epic feather of untold magical powers from a resurrecting
[07:03] phoenix that has its existence split between the duality of light and void for more than the value of a third of a flask of lower quality. In short, why am from the biggest and rarest and most dangerous monsters slain and instead I
[07:19] have to help old granny Eversong get her wine and check so I can afford repairing my shield that has been saving me from literally black holes. Oh, that's okay. Actually, there is an even better solution.
[07:34] solution. Boosting. and slaying monsters for epic loot, we do it for Billy Greasy, the son of a 9-to-5 office worker that forked up the credit card for a wild token and paid a
[07:50] rate of 19 people to carry him through Void Spire. I'm sure that's a much better solution than increasing the gold rewards from slain bosses or quests to rewards from slain bosses or quests to save towns assaulted by void armies.
[08:03] Oh, no. Wait, that is a better solution because that makes Blizzard more cash money so they can pay the game developers that work tirelessly to bring us glorious cosmetics for the new game system introduced in the minute
[08:17] expansion. Unless they are AI, in which case we are all royally screwed. boring subject I have to discuss about the video game. I'm sure there are
[08:32] reasons as to why we have so little gold after playing the game more and more. I'm also sure I don't really care. If I was a real character in World of Warcraft that has just saved Silvermoon and cannot afford a hearty feast because
[08:47] my blacksmith charged me for all of my savings to repair my gear, I might just take a break the next time Zal'kath would threaten the Silvermoon auction house. I'm not asking to swim in gold. I'm just asking to not feel like my
[09:00] character is the real life office worker. But instead of pushing stacks of paper, I push swords into dragons for less than what a janitor makes. Because >> there are solutions to this and you won't like them. I do indeed have enough
[09:15] gold where this issue isn't really an issue. And the way I make my gold bothers me. And the reason I make my gold is because I refuse to fork out my credit card and buy wild tokens. The best thing to do is to actually
[09:29] clear all of the world quests. You get quite a few world quests per week that reward you with over 1,000 gold. Not always and not on every character. Ah, yes, you cannot do it with just one character. That will most certainly not
[09:43] be enough because the amount of gold the open world generates cannot cover the expenses of that same character clearing it and also doing raids and dungeons on the side. Past this, you want to get as many pinnacle chests as you can. These
[09:58] are your weekly quests, your meta quests that change every reset. These are your self referral sworays, your storm guardian assaults or abundances. Once per week, however, these chests can reward you with anything from 2K to 4K
[10:11] gold each. And sometimes, if this is still in the game since I haven't really seen it in over a year, these chests can drop 14,000 gold or more. Add these to the world quests, which most of the time overlap in terms of objectives, and you
[10:26] actually start making a fair amount. Do your weekly delves and praise for their chests as well. Nightmare praise and bountiful tier eight delves or higher, of course. The good part of there being a shitload
[10:39] of content right now is that most can generate you gold. And, of course, let's not forget the auction house. You can either develop a profession and start selling goods there, despite your competition being people that play
[10:54] competition being people that play multiple accounts farming herbs and or nodes, scanning every few minutes for auctions and work orders, and sniping them consistently. That means you just get to not play WoW and do this other
[11:08] Well, you're still playing WoW, of course, but not how you want to because it couldn't be a proper hamster wheel without someone spinning the wheel for you and also dangling a carrot in front of you as well. But, of course, you are
[11:22] also a working adult. [music] You go to your daily job and don't have time for all of this. But, what does your daily job give you? The sacred power of disposable income. Why bother with playing the game when you can not play
[11:38] the game and instead pay more for the game to be able to do in the game the thing you already paid 80 bucks for expansion and 15 bucks every month. Honestly, whoever is in charge of subscription engagement and the
[11:53] microtransaction store at Blizzard is an evil genius and I want to hire that person in my company if I ever make one. But all of this is not new, right? We've been through this before and we will go through this some more because that's
[12:08] what the wild player is for the wild developers. Maybe in three more developers. Maybe in three more expansions with five more YouTubers, 50 more Reddit posts and 100 more streams talking about this, we might finally
[12:21] raise the gold rewards for bosses and raids by another 10 gold. Now, that raids by another 10 gold. Now, that would be the real success or totally not sell Mythic Plus runs for gold so you can afford a flask by learning how to
[12:34] tank better with our video. Oh, would you look at that? A video for Oh, would you look at that? A video for you to click on.