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Is buying gold too expensive?
Wednesday,March 28th, 2007
I was surfing the web today looking at the real-world prices of WoW gold, and I noticed something curious. 2 things actually.
- The actual gold prices at various vendors
- The differences in pricing between US and EU
Since I’ve never bought gold myself (never had the need thanks to the Cash Creating Guide) it was a revelation just to look at the prices.
Apparently 1000 g seems to cost $100-$200 on US servers at most vendors, with prices centered around $150. On European servers, you can get 1000 g for about $30-60 at most vendors.
Prices will also vary considerably depending on which server you are on, and to some degree depending on your team (horde or alliance).
Why the difference?
I have no idea, but it wasn’t always like that. Prices used to be pretty equal. Here’s an old chart:
April 2006 Gold Prices.
The prices refer to 500 gold. If you had bought 1000 g in April 2006 it would’ve cost you about $50 in the US or EU.
As you can see, prices for gold are down a bit on EU servers compared to a year ago, and up A LOT on US servers. Logically, prices should be way down on both because it’s a lot easier to collect gold in TBC.
But here’s my point: How long will 1000 g last you anyway?
The answer: Not long at all. Once you need an epic mount, a flying mount, a swift flying mount (the 5000 g version), enchants and gems and crafting recipes and the occassional nice blue or purple piece of gear from the AH, then 1000 g is a tiny amount all by itself.
Is gold too expensive then?
Let me ask you this: If you knew how to make let’s say 165 g / hour (doable in TBC), would you choose to spend $50 (EU) or $150 (US) for 1000 g? You could earn that in less than 6 hours.
And if you think earning gold is boring: Perish the thought! I’ve discovered that the faster you earn it the more fun it gets. When I first read the WoW Cash Creating Guide I was so excited with all the ways of making tons of gold that I didn’t do anything else in-game!
You’ll also get to see a lot of super-profitable places that most players don’t even know exist in WoW. The Cash Creating Guide has taken me all over Azeroth and Outlands so it’s a kind of guide to the attractions in WoW all by itself.
To answer the original question, yes, I think buying gold is too expensive (and I advise against it because it also violates the Terms of Service). It certainly costs too much if you’re on a US server. Especially when you can earn it on demand (if you know how) and have a great time doing so.
So if you’re considering purchasing gold, my advice is to save your money and take a look at the WoW Cash Creating Guide which can pay for itself over and over again (even if you’re casual about gathering gold). That’s what I did and I never regretted it.
My review of the guide is here.
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Dear Martin.
I belive you are right, cause I have been using ur tips for a long time on how to get gold, and I get at least 70g an hour, so the buying thing is a waste.
Keep up the good work!
Tyrrian
Draenor
Comment by Anonymous — March 29, 2007 @ 7:54 am
Hi Martin
Absolutly agre with you on this, I used your tips and have now been abel to get my elite mount, Cheers mate!
Also dispite the fact that byeing gold is against the game terms, it also ruins the play factor of the game, and in some instances destroys whole guilds.
Keep the good work up mate.
Andrew
Comment by Anonymous — March 29, 2007 @ 8:56 am
Hi martin
(i wonder how many money that guy gives you to advertise so much ;) )
but it is troe, buying money is too expensive and it ruins the fun of playing the game, also if your account get banned by blizz it costs you another 10-20 € or $ if you want to continue playing the game
(OFF topic alert)
and oh yeah still need to thank you for the wonderfull coordinates mod you putten togather for Brian kopp’s Alliance leveling guide.
It saved me +10 hours already with my gnomish warlock to get to 50.
Comment by Anonymous — March 30, 2007 @ 11:13 am
Is this really worth the money, i dont really wanna buy a $37 book
should i really buy it even if im not gonna play WoW for that much longer depending on my life.
Comment by Anonymous — April 10, 2007 @ 2:19 pm
Yea i really believe this. Ppl sell gold for way too much money like u said 1000g for 100-200 and really epic mounts are like 5000g so i think they should really lower the prices cuz seriously were not bill gates
Comment by Daniel — May 3, 2007 @ 10:05 pm
no kidding
i cant buy the book but i kinda need some other tips on getting gold because all of them are being used on my server
Comment by shadow — May 16, 2007 @ 7:25 pm
anyone got anyother tips?
Comment by shadow — May 16, 2007 @ 7:25 pm
I think that a lot of people like me play WOW for the fun of it for $15 per month so why pay all of this extra money for gold which exceeds your monthly fee for playing. It doesn’t make sense.
Comment by Tom Cervenka — May 16, 2007 @ 9:33 pm
Io Martin.
(OFF)I would like to buy this guide and check it out but my mom won’t agree with me though.
(ON)Gold can be both expensive and cheap. First time I went onto Google and searched for: “WoW Gold Guide” there were no result of a guide wich told you where to go and where to farm. There were only like: Cheap WoW gold here, WoW gold for alliance. But one page that popped up showed the lowest price i’ve ever seen, 100 wow gold for $2-3 (EU). Think this is one of the cheapest wow gold.
But though I think buying your guide will more profitable.
Yours,
Simon Persson, Sweden =)
Comment by Simon — May 20, 2007 @ 8:38 am
WOW is more made for fun not for spend your money on gold
Comment by matthew — June 13, 2007 @ 11:25 pm
What’s the point of buying gold? You buy the game to play it, kill things on the way, level and then sell all the useless stuff, auction the extra good stuff and trade the rare epic stuff you can’t use anyway. Or start a new chracter that can use it. Buying gold destroys the fun of the game and tells you a little about the people selling it. They’ve obviously got no life if all they do is farm for gold to sell it. What a waste!
Comment by Gustavo — July 1, 2007 @ 6:25 pm
I would rather waste hours on earning gold than to just buy it. It think its a big waste of money and it takes away a lot of fun in the game
Comment by Mibe — July 2, 2007 @ 7:13 pm
well i must confess i have considered buying gold after level 70 :s because i hcannot controll myself everytimei get 50g iend up in AH ad buy something without even think about my money….you may laugh of this but please keep it inside yourself: i’m a level 70 that mostly got aroun 5-30g….
Comment by Paul — July 12, 2007 @ 10:42 pm
*sigh* ..
Nagrand - Elemental Plateau (67,23)
Wind Elementals = Drop 1-2 motes of air, 10x combines to 1 Primal Air = ~20g per
Fire Elementals = Drop 1-2 motes of fire, 10x combines to 1 Primal Fire = ~25g per
Water Elementals = Drop 1-2 motes of water, 10x combines to 1 Primal Water = ~20g per
Varies on servers though.
Much people there, but itll give you atleast 100g/hour only on primals. Think of the green/blue BoE’s that drop ^^ Tested it myself, it works.
Comment by Finalmike — July 17, 2007 @ 10:13 am
I am liking your tips and highly considering the cash creating guide
Comment by wheetwert — July 18, 2007 @ 8:58 pm
Yes primals and motes seem to be the way to get gold the fastest by farming buying gold is becoming a waste of time
Comment by Sarlas — July 21, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
Well if guying gold was too expensive then gold farmers would not be here right now … so obviously Gold Farmers Are doing just fine … seems people are buying it from them since they are still around …. but then again … they are doing the same things we are to make gold. So why buy it?…safe your 100-200$ and get another year of WoW …. And in that 1 year of wow you can make thousands of gold …. like you said 1000g in 6 hours … wow sounds like a good deal:P
Comment by James — August 21, 2007 @ 4:34 am
oh to fix your “gold Spending problems” get the mod Deposit Box … a little box on your interface that you can set to put in 50% of the cash or whatever% you want into it … and you can just forget about it for a month ..open it up later on find you got a few 1000 gold … Very Nice mod i use it my self….
Comment by James — August 21, 2007 @ 4:36 am
Hi Martin
I think it’s a waste of money buying gold for real cash. I think it’s a part of the game to get the gold yourself. It’s kinda funny to see how much better you get when u reach the higher lvl’s too. I agree with you that the gold wont be enough when u need to get epic mount etc. indeed.
Comment by Mads — August 30, 2007 @ 8:29 pm
Hi Martin
1)It’s a waste of money.
2)Account can be banned.
3)Yes the gold is too expensive to by.
4)And I wil better loose 1 hour to farm that gold instead of bying it !
P.S Sorry for my english I’m from Russia.
Comment by OperatoR — September 9, 2007 @ 9:06 pm
my thinking is that is too easy to find a guy that has bought 1000 gold…it is too easy to code a little daemon that gives an alert to that sudden increase of money. so the risk to be banned is high enough to do no try.
Comment by c4p4 — September 11, 2007 @ 9:17 am
lol, im 15 on 6th october, how am i supposed to buy gold? its not an ENTIRELY adult game,and gold spammers are the one bane of the game in my opinion
Comment by nightblayde — September 27, 2007 @ 9:03 am
Hi all,
1.It’s too expensive…
2.Like you say Waste of money…
3.Gold is too expensive for buy…
4.The powerlevling must be for free or 1-70 20eu not 255ru
Comment by ziga — September 29, 2007 @ 3:37 pm
Martin,
I am a casual US player, but dedicated to the game’s spirit and purpose. I have never bought WoW gold with real life money, nor will I ever. In truth I considered it once a very long time ago, well before the onset of the BC expansion. I was part of a guild whose members numbered in the hundreds and over half of them had reached level 60 in just a few short months from game release … I was still in my late 30’s and broke … and wanted my mount badly. PvP did not exist then and my chosen characters, a priest and a paladin, were difficult to level. Then I received a tip from a hard-core member that turned my playing experience around: I learned not to buy the latest gear off the AH as I leveled. That was it! To my surprise, it really did not matter if I had the latest gear for my level for the quests I was doing or the mobs at my level or just above (excluding elites) and my gold began to accumulate. I also became determined to sell everything that dropped I could not use - even grey’s! To my surprise, again, most things sold! I was not aware, then, of how quickly WoW was growing in poplulation, but I saw how players were eager to buy anything that they thought would be helpful or impressive at their level. The last thing I learned was to manipulate the AH. Yep, buy low and sell high. Leveling was still painful, I did not like grinding in areas hours on end to just to make gold and I loved (still do) the RPG content (which in my opinion is largely being ignored by Blizzard today). As a result of my efforts in the AH (with patience and discipline) I was making 20g a day while spending maybe half an hour or less a day with my bank character, freeing my main characters to play and enjoy the game.
Ok, sounds like a testimonial and to some extent perhaps it is, but, and your mileage my vary here, I hope it may serve as a little bit of wisdom. By the way, things have not changed that much with regards to the above even though I have multiple level 70’s now. I still conserve, am extremely patient and, above all, exercise discipline. So many people want the best, the brightest, the biggest and the baddest (ewww bad form!) gear they can find or buy and are impatient to farm materials for themselves. As long as those attitudes prevail, having “enough” gold will never be an issue.
Tyndl
Comment by Tyndl — October 10, 2007 @ 8:55 pm
Hi Martin,
I think it’s too expensive to do, but if you have the cash then why not? But in my opinion it’s stupid to make money in wow this way because it’s good and enjoyable to play normally… Also, no matter what the prize is, i think it’s stupid to give real life money to get virtual ones
Comment by Alex — November 10, 2007 @ 11:56 pm
Well i think many pepole forget this IS a game…. Sure we all get sick of it that it takes to damn long to lvl and takes to damn long to earn gold but lke now i am almost at 500 gp and i have earnd each and every copper of it and it will be so sweet buying this DAMN riding skill :)
Personally i am getting so SICK of pepole online adverting their site and so on…..
So buying WoW gold ….for me no!
Comment by Kristvin — November 14, 2007 @ 10:34 pm
To the person that posted about Elemental Plateau..
Actually, this is one of the worst places to farm IMO, because there are at least 5 people there at all times, which makes it hella hard to farm there. HOWEVER. It’s worth it, methinks. My friend has found TWO, that’s right TWO, phat 70 epixx farming there. 1. Leggings of Beast Mastery and 2. Blade of Wizardry, both of which sold for over 2000g!
Comment by Chaotixx — November 22, 2007 @ 6:11 am
Those prices are not what I have seen. I was seeing prices around $40.00 / 1000 U.S. and frankly it would sure be helpful to have a little around. Too bad it’s against TOS or I would buy some for sure. Anything to help me get my feet on the ground would be helpful so I could get some training and professions set up so I could make some myself.
That’s my two cents worth. I am consumed enough trying to figure out the Alliance Guide to bather with a Gold Guide right now. Have you ever thought of selling it yourself LOL?
Comment by Monty — January 8, 2008 @ 3:51 am
i think buying money for wow is the stupidest thing ever because you buy that game to play it to have fun thats the purpose of o game and just because you want to have more gold in it you would rater spend your own real money for fake money and you have to give you password to someone thats even stupider because someone could be playing your account spending your money that you use to be able to play it and i even saw a site where tehy hold wow passsowrds for anyone to take and use it just stpuid if you ever buy fake money with real money just so people will think you have a lot of fake money on a ame then you need to get whatever is wrong inside you brain fixed
Comment by W.O.W Player named scoun — January 30, 2008 @ 1:50 am
Hey martin, Most places ive come across [mostly cause im bored and want to see how rediculous prices are] i had come upon a new gold farming server. IT WAS BOOMING! Wow is all i can say to it. 1 cent per 100 gold! i got 100k gold only for 100 dollars!
[now i would say thats a bargain]
I would tell all you this website, but i want to keep it a secret so that the prices dont go up hehehe.
Cheers!
Comment by Austin Oneill — February 14, 2008 @ 3:53 am