Token Bliss

At the beginning of the month, Blizzard announced that WoW Tokens could now be exchanged for a Battle.net balance. I had been sitting on the worry for a while since it was touched upon at Blizzcon last year. I knew it was only a matter of time until it was implemented, but I did not expect it to be so soon or without warning. Since May 2016, I've been purchasing my game time using gold, and it's been really nice. Since then I watched the tokens fluctuate in price from 30k up to around 60k. I knew with this announcement they would definitely rise, and I was worried about what kind of prices I would be paying.

On the night that this feature was implemented, tokens creeped up to 80k. I began to see a lot of worry with some people on whether or not they would be able to keep playing the game this way. I felt really bad for the people who had been playing this way simply because $15 is a bit out of their budget to spend on entertainment each month. Would they be able to keep up with the rising price of the tokens? In fact, I became a little worried myself once they sailed into the 100k+ territory.

Image credit: Reddit

I am sitting on a nice pile of gold right now. I don't really go out of my way to make a ton of it, but I am very comfortable with what I make each month. To renew my game time for February, I bought a token for around 84k. After the initial token boom, prices seem to be settling and are now sitting around 88k - 90k. Would I like to see that price lessen a bit? Of course! Just like money, I prefer my gold in my bank instead of having to spend it.

But what about those who have an abundance of gold and want to cash in? The tokens can be redeemed for $15 when added to your account. This can be used to buy in game items or other Blizzard games. Reddit had many threads with tips on how to get the best deal when converting tokens, and I love that. It's always nice to get the best bang for your buck, even when it's in game currency. It's going to be interesting to see how different game trends will effect the prices in the upcoming year. I wouldn't say I'm happy about this change, but this is something I will just have to learn to deal with if I plan on continuing to use this method for my game time.

That Look is so Burning Crusade

Legion has been full of throwbacks to Burning Crusade. As someone who started during that era, I have been loving this. With patch 7.2 slowly creeping closer and closer to release, we've been getting more and more information on different things being released. This patch will bring the Tomb of Sargeras raid along with a new tier set to collect - Tier 20. I'm normally excited for new tier sets, but these leave more to be desired.

Continuing on the BC nostalgia train, Tier 20 is an upgrade of the Tier 6 sets. I know many people have been asking for high resolution versions of older gear, and Blizzard delivered. Among some of my favorites are the warrior, paladin, and priest. Even the new demon hunter set looks good. Sadly, I think a few of these missed the mark. When I look at some of the colors for the mage set, all I see is a mess. To me, the blue, green (definitely this one), and mythic yellow recolors look like they were altered using a color slider in a photo program and not fully balanced giving it a very strange look when put all together.

Hmm, I'm not sure.

Maybe it was just me being a little too nit picky, so I went on Twitter to poke around and see what other people think. A few weeks ago I asked everyone how they felt about the sets. Most people were underwhelmed and most seemed to prefer new sets inspired by older tier instead of a complete update of an older one. I have to agree. I love trying to collect the new sets because they are new. I like to see what the team comes up with using the expansion aesthetics to build a set. Honestly I feel like this fell short on all ends as the original death knight and monk sets that were created look very strange as well.

I know some of my followers don't speak for the entire community, so if you're reading this and have a differing opinion, I'd love to hear it. Do you like the HD remake or would have preferred an original set? Do you really like one of the sets that others have talked badly about? Let me know in a comment below.