This post was published 9 months 12 days ago which may make it out of date. This does not mean the information is wrong, or useless - it is a warning just in case!To see the current, and all previous discussions please check out Discussions.
Last week’s discussion was about why we play the auction house. The results were slightly mixed, yet there was an overwhelming thought of ‘freedom’.
Firstly freedom of time. The auction house is something you can dive in and out of at your own leisure, and use it at your own pace. You are not tied to raid schedules, nor do you have to rely on other people to be about.
There is also the freedom of being able to buy what you like, when you like. It is fair to say that the majority of players live with a constant battle, where they try to earn money at an equal or slightly greater rate than they spend it. Yet if you have far more gold than you are spending, there is no more battle. You are also able to splurge on things that might be large expenses to other players, such as epic flying skill on all of your alts.
Some disagreed however, Dàchéng even went so far to say that gold is a fairly useless currency and the only thing that matters in the end is raid emblems. Not sure I agree on that one – gold is the only currency that doesn’t go out of date.
He mentioned not being able to convert gold in to Emblems as their weakness, yet Emblems can not be exchanged ‘upward’, only down – so the old Emblems become unnecessary whereas the gold is still used for enchants/gems/glyphs and the like. Still a very interesting take on gold, and I can understand where he is coming from in some regards.
There also seemed to be a challenge aspect to it for a lot of people. They pushed themselves to reach a certain amount, either a small amount which they keep raising or something more fixed like 50k, 100k or the goldcap.
Overall it is fair to say that while there is not any single reason for people to use the auction house, it is a means to an end: The enjoyment of doing so, the fun of a challenge, the freedom from being poor, the freedom of doing what they want when they want or simply to leverage themselves in other areas such as raiding or arenas.
Thank you to each and every person that commented, this week’s discussion post will go up later today for you to all muse over!
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To comment about “gold being useless” I have used gold to buy items in raids all the time as well as paying for a gear run by guilds.
Right now on my server one of the top guilds was selling a toc run for 15k where you got all the loot. That is not a bad price if you can splurge 15k for an alt and have him geared passed 95% of the server. Also saves having to raid for months as you get all the gear in one run.
I find exactly the same thing being said by many many people. This is especially common in Asia apparently, where they have ‘Gold-pugs’ where everyone bids gold on items, and the gold is shared out equally at the end of the run.
So it is definitely a good use of gold, which makes it far from useless as you say.