Blizzard have revealed a number of exciting changes coming to it’s sole, but gargantuan MMO, World of Warcraft next year. Out of the many, many additions, one stands out among the crowd: a in-game sub time item, similar to PLEX in EVE Online.
“We’re exploring the possibility of giving players a way to buy tradable game-time tokens for the purpose of exchanging them in-game with other players for gold.” said community manager Bashiok in the forum post. “A few other online games offer a similar option, and players have suggested that they’d be interested in seeing something along those lines in WoW.”
The current idea, and this is very much only an idea at this point, is it will provide a gold sink to WoW’s most rich. “Our current thought on this is that it would give players a way to use their surplus gold to cover some of their subscription cost, while giving players who might have less play time an option for acquiring gold from other players through a legit and secure system.” explained Bashiok. “We agree it could be a good fit for the game, and we look forward to any feedback you have as we continue to look into this feature.”
I wouldn’t count on this coming in the very near future. Currently, it’s possible to attain some of the best raiding gear via the Black Market Auction House. While it’s a rare occurrence, it would still facilitate the ability to pay for gear via cash with the existing system; changes would have to be made.
In other news, players can get their hands on a new legendary follower – the first of its kind. It will contain “suitability legendary abilities”; you’ll want to make sure you’ve started the legendary quest line from Khadgar if you want in on it.
The next raid, Blackrock Foundry, should be opening its gates to the public in February, if all things go to plan. Presumably also in patch 6.1, we’ll also see the revamp of the Blood Elf race, among other slight tweaks to existing races based on player feedback.
Look out early next year for Patch 6.1 to land on the Public Test Realm, so you can give some of these new features a whirl.