So let’s take a look at something that seems pretty innocent on the surface. Blizzard announced on the official World of Warcraft forums that the Black Temple raid would be temporarily unavailable in WoW Classic, saying the raid will be available once again during the next weekly reset (next week). It’s a bit unfortunate if you farm it for items for whatever reason, but seeing as how the Classic version of the game doesn’t have transmog anyway and it’s not part of the current endgame, it’s a fairly minor issue. Right?
Well… maybe not. Because it turns out that Black Temple is, in fact, a great farming spot for botting and farming for gold. Realizing sends you down a rabbit hole of looking at the nature of gold selling and third-party sites in WoW Classic, ultimately dissected and examined in depth in a recent video from MetaGoblin (below) that explores the farming spots and the incentives that back that up with the inclusion of the WoW Token into the classic game and how little that actually does to prevent these sites from making money.
Aside from pointing out the Black Temple farming and the ways in which third-party sites have utterly destroyed any element of in-game economy, MetaGoblin’s video also points out the important fact that most of the sites invested in selling gold already have the gold sitting around. Blizzard selling gold legitimately doesn’t hurt them; it just incentivizes them to use their gold to buy subscription time while pivoting to selling farming and grinding services instead. It’s a fascinating look at the culture and the issues around gold selling, and a useful rejoinder to any claims that the token will somehow make the fundamental nature of “needing to pay money for gold” in the game any better.
So maybe the Black Temple being unavailable for a week is more ominous than it seems, and not just because it means you might not get to kill Illidan this week.
