Blizzard introduced a new feature that allows players to use the WoW Token market to exchange their World of Warcraft gold for Battle.

WoW game director Ion Hazzikostas said the players with enough extra gold to sell were dedicated WoW players, and they were using their Battle. The new Token system means that you can earn everything from new cards in Hearthstone to more loot boxes in Overwatch by grinding for gold in WoW.

players selling gold for real money - World of Warcraft Forums

And doing so is, in fact, much more efficient than actually playing any other game. In-game currencies are a reward that games dole out for playing and achieving certain goals.

World of Warcraft's new real money-for-gold effort brings more free-to-play to Blizzard's cash cow | GamesBeat | Games | by Heather Newman

Since you use these currencies to purchase virtual items that are also sold for real money, the game effectively pays you for the time spend playing it.

Most games do this at a rate of a few pennies an hour. The time you spend in World of Warcraft is a bit different; that time produces commodities that can be exchanged in an economy with other players.

I'm Paid To Play World Of Warcraft All Day (And It Sucks)

Instead of just getting a trickle of currency from the game as an incentive to keep playing, WoW lets you sell your time to other players. And other players will pay you a lot more for your time than the reward mechanisms in games like Overwatch. There are lots of ways to make money in WoW , and top gold-makers execute complex schemes to arbitrage raw materials through crafting professions, manipulate server markets to benefit themselves and speculate on rare items.

The most lucrative gathering profession in WoW right now is herbalism. An herbalist can farm more than of a plant called a fjarnskaggl in about an hour, and sell each of them on the auction house for about 40 gold, which conservatively translates to at least 20, gold per hour.

Farming foxflower or starlight roses may yield a similar or better payout depending on your server and timing. WoW Tokens are currently fluctuating in price between around 80, and , gold, so it should take you around hours of farming to earn a token. You can probably do better than this, but keeping our estimate of your gold-per-hour conservative shields you from disappointment if your farming output underperforms a more optimistic estimate.

So how does time spent grinding herbs, to sell for gold, to then spend on tokens in WoW compare to grinding currencies in other games? It takes about hours of playing Overwatch to earn loot boxes. There is a problem with each approach, however.

It will make you better at Overwatch , which enables you to climb the competitive ladder and earn golden weapons and other rewards for success in ranked matches. So, if loot boxes are your goal, grinding gold to buy WoW Tokens is much more efficient than earning them from playing Overwatch, but playing Overwatch is probably more fun, and the time you spend will help you hone your skills. That was pretty easy! Winning a game of Heroes pays out 30 gold. Losing pays 20 gold.

You also get a quest each day that is worth about gold. These quests require you to do something like playing a number of games as a hero from the Warcraft franchise, or as a support hero.

Even so, a daily quest will probably take at least 20 minutes on average. One WoW Token, which you can earn in four to five hours of grinding herbs, will earn you the same hero, with a few dollars of Battle. WoW tokens can also be used to buy cosmetic skins and mounts from the Heroes of the Storm in-game cash store, as you cannot buy these items at all using the in-game currency you earn from playing Heroes of the Storm.

WoW Tokens operate like cash in every Blizzard game, making them a very versatile item indeed. But it does give you currency that be used to buy anything in Heroes of the Storm , versus the limited types of items you can buy with in-game currency. Players in Hearthstone get a quest each day , which they can complete for a reward worth about 50 Hearthstone gold on average. You also get 10 gold — worth 12 cents — for every three Hearthstone games you win.

You get nothing if you lose, and a game of Hearthstone takes about five minutes, so you should get 10 gold every half hour, or 25 cents an hour. If you do every daily quest during that period, pay cash or Battle. Those packs would cost about 11 WoW Tokens, or about 55 hours of grinding herbs. Hearthstone is generous compared to most free-to-play games in terms of the value of its in-game currency payouts, but playing Hearthstone still rewards you only half as much for your time as selling herbs to WoW players does.

So what have we learned? WoW , in pure cash value, slaughters every other Blizzard game in terms of return on grinding investment. Your ice cream has jimmies. Blizzard is putting together this weird economy that works across its games, at least with the Tokens you earn in World of Warcraft , and the math on how they interact is wildly uneven. You also have to consider that WoW requires a subscription. So Blizzard has no reason to be concerned here, yet, nor should players be angry.

In his interview about the Token , game director Ion Hazzikostas said that the most time-efficient way to earn Overwatch loot boxes is by playing Overwatch. People buy WoW gold because they prefer to spend real money instead of spending their time doing the stuff in WoW that generates gold. WoW gold is now a much more lucrative reward for time spent playing than Overwatch experience points, Heroes gold or Hearthstone gold.

He lives in New York City. Log In or Sign Up Log In Sign Up.

Playing World of Warcraft is now the fastest way to earn Overwatch loot New, 13 comments. This Article has a component height of The sidebar size is long. Take a longer look at Uncharted: The Lost Legacy in extended E3 footage by Michael McWhertor. Attack on Titan season 3 announced by Ashley Oh. A Way Out blew us away at E3, but can the devs keep pace with their own ambition? Terms of Use Privacy Policy Communications Preferences Contact Send Us a Tip Community Guidelines Masthead All Systems Operational Check out our status page for more details.