world of warcraft will not sell Trader’s Tender as a stand-alone product, confirmed WoW game director Ion Hazzikostas.
In mid-June, fansite Wow Datamined a variety of icons representing various amounts of Trader’s Tender, a special currency used to purchase rotating cosmetics throughout the game. newly introduced trading post. With so many different icons of different amounts made public as part of the data mine, many fans feared that the developer Blizzard might be looking to turn the Trading Post into another microtransaction store and Trader’s Tender in a premium currency that can be purchased for real money. Currently, Trader’s Tender is primarily earned in-game by logging in once a month and completing various monthly activities, something players were concerned would be capsized by the ability to purchase the currency directly.
Speaking with GameSpot, Hazzikostas cleared up some of the confusion surrounding the data mine. He definitely said there are no plans to sell Trader’s Tender as a stand-alone product. However, the team believes that it makes sense to offer various quantities of Trader’s Tender as part of various bundles, such as expansion deluxe editions. As Hazzikostas pointed out, players who purchased WoW’s latest Dragonflight expansion received a one-time reward of 500 Trader’s Tender. Blizzard will likely consider doing something similar in the future.
“In the past, we might have offered as part of a deluxe edition or a large package, a specific mascot of our invention,” Hazzikostas said. “Well, a lot of players would look at that [pet] and say ‘I don’t like the way that looks, I find that aesthetic lame’. But now we have a new tool in the form of the Tender that gives players potentially more choice, more agency to pick something they like. It shouldn’t be too far-fetched to imagine that we could have some major packages later this year that may include some Tenders as part of them.”
As to why the icons discovered through the data mine included so many specific amounts of Trader’s Tender, Hazzikostas said that it wasn’t so that players could purchase certain amounts. Instead, he said it was routine for the team to build a variety of assets in case they were used later as part of a bundle or some other promotion. The assets were meant to be encrypted, but due to a bug on Blizzard’s part, they became visible in a version of the game via the WoW public test realm.
“Usually we do a bunch of this stuff, a lot of it, most of it, in fact, never used,” Hazzikostas said. “That’s why they’re encrypted. There’s no need for them to be visible until there’s some plan to do something with them.”
Hazzikostas said that the team is not looking to change the way Trading Post works, noting that the community’s negative reaction to the idea of players being able to purchase Trader’s Tender has been heard “loud and clear.”
“Mostly, this is an in-game system,” Hazzikostas said. “The overwhelming majority of Tender each month is earned by logging in, claiming it, and doing any of a wide range of activities to claim the rest, and that’s not something we’re looking to change, subvert, or reverse.”
WoW’s next big update, Fractures in Time, coming July 11. will enter a new support style DPS specialization to the MMORPG of nearly two decades, along with new story content and a mega-dungeon that will see players go toe-to-toe with the greatest dragon in WoW history, Galakrond.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may earn a share of the revenue if you purchase something featured on our site.
