I find the &quot;WoW token&quot; -- where, <i>supposedly</i>, people can buy game-time tokens from Blizzard for cash and then resell them to other players for virtual currency -- to be a <i>brilliant</i> scheme. (Note: I first noticed the concept in Eve Online, not WoW -- where did it originate?)<p>MMO operators have long struggled with secondary markets for virtual currency. They often have trouble trying to sell virtual currency directly to players because then it has the feel of &quot;pay-to-win.&quot; And so third parties have captured the lion&#x27;s share of this market for years -- by some accounts capturing billions of dollars annually in revenues.<p>But with WoW tokens (and similar concepts in other MMOs), they can market virtual currency to players, and because other players can feel like <i>they benefit, too</i> by getting their subscription for free, they don&#x27;t complain as much of it being a &quot;pay-to-win&quot; model.<p>In reality, though, remember that Blizzard controls the market for both buying and selling WoW tokens, and they can peg prices (in cash and in in-game currency) at whatever they feel is appropriate, by either providing or reducing supply artificially.<p>Yet it is the <i>artifice</i> of &quot;exchanging WoW tokens with other players&quot; that gives the whole practice an air of fairness. This brain-dead-simple scheme will make them tens or hundreds of millions of dollars per year in increased profits that for years has been instead going to IGE and a cadre of third-party gold sellers.