After a couple of controversial expansions, World of Warcraft Dragonflight has been a breath of fresh air for the 19-year-old MMO. It seems to be doing almost everything right and is making the game fun again. The story has been engaging, the content has been enjoyable, and it has added a plethora of exciting features to Azeroth. This expansion has even added great pieces of evergreen content like the WoW Trading Post, but recent datamining suggests that things may be rapidly changing.
A brand-new World of Warcraft 10.1.5 PTR build recently went live, and the community quickly got to work datamining everything that it included. While there were a lot of interesting additions, one addition points to a massive direction change for the Trading Post. What was supposed to be this free service may soon become just another microtransaction shop. If these datamined assets are actually what players think they are then Blizzard may have ruined one of the game's coolest additions, but that remains to be seen.
WoW's Trading Post May Become a New Cash Shop
World of Warcraft's Trading Post was introduced at the beginning of this year, and it seemed like it would be a great feature. It gave players access to a rotating catalog of cosmetics that they could earn just by playing. Every month, active subscribers would be granted 500 Trader's Tender and would be able to earn an additional 500 by completing tasks in their Traveler's Log. They could then use that Tender to purchase an assortment of cosmetics that ranged from mounts and pets to armor appearances and transmog sets.
The Trading Post helped players expand their cosmetic collections, gave Blizzard a way to release previously unavailable cosmetics, gave World of Warcraft content that could persist across expansions, and gave players a reason to engage in content they may not have done before. It was a fantastic addition to the formula, and the best part was that it was included at no extra charge. There were no microtransactions tied to it as the only way to earn Trader's Tender was to actually play the game. This type of content was unheard of and seemed too good to be true, and the skeptics may have been right.
Recent datamining has discovered shop assets for various Trader's Tender bundles. While these do not exist in the game yet, they do exist in the files and are eerily similar to images players would find in the Battle.net shop. There seems to be 17 different symbols that go from 250-1,000 Tender in intervals of 50, and they are all named "interface/store/shopcurrencyoverlay.blip." Many signs point to these assets being purchasable Trader's Tenders bundles, and that would make the Trading Post nothing more than another World of Warcraft cash shop.
If Blizzard actually ties microtransactions to the Trading Post, then this fantastic feature will quickly lose its appeal. It will work and feel like the in-game store that already exists, and adding a second version of that on top of a subscription fee feels wrong. It would be one thing if World of Warcraft was a free-to-play game, but Blizzard still asks players to spend $15 every month to access Azeroth. While the studio has not said what these assets will be for, the Trading Post's future currently looks grim,
These datamined assets could also be a good thing depending upon what they actually turn out to be. Blizzard could be using them to tell players how much Tender a cash shop item will cost once it eventually arrives on the Trading Post, it could mean players will be able to purchase cash shop items with the in-game currency, or it could be something else entirely. Players will not know for sure until Blizzard says something, and hopefully it says something soon.
World of Warcraft is available now for PC.