World of Warcraft is by far one of the most popular and bestselling online games in the world, as the World of Warcraft game world is so elaborate to the point that it has its own fluctuating in-game currency. The game's virtual currency can be exchanged for in-game and real-life items, such as WoW tokens, and the prices of these items vary based on the status of real-world currencies to the extent that some might even consider WoW gold to be its own official currency.

In-game currencies are often weighed up against real-world currencies, as one can use real-world money to buy in-game currency, especially in WoW. For Venezuela, last year in August, the value of WoW's virtual gold was as much as double the Venezuelan Bolivar, but recently, it has been shown that virtual Azeroth gold is valued as much as 7 times more than the Bolivar, and this number might be even higher in terms of the currency's black market value.

 

If one considers the exchange rate between the US dollar and the Bolivar, 1 US dollar is equal to 68,915 Venezuelan Bolivar. Additionally, the price of one WoW token can currently be bought at $20 or sold for a fluctuating amount of in-game gold, which is currently at 203,035 gold pieces per token. Based on these calculations, 1 US dollar therefore costs 10,152 in-game gold. By dividing the 68,915 Bolivar with 10,152 gold, it shows that WoW virtual gold is worth 6.8 times as much as the Bolivar. If one does the same calculation with the black market price of the Bolivar, which is currently at 636,771.03 Bolivar per US dollar, WoW gold is a staggering 62 times more valuable than the Bolivar.

The use of the Bolivar in Venezuela might be replaced by the Petro cryptocurrency, but it is still alarming to see what value virtual currency currently holds in the world. This is an indication of the growing status of video games in society, as well as the impact that video games have on the world's economy, and with the release of the next WoW expansion, we are yet to see how much the in-game currency's value will grow.

World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth will be available on August 14th of this year.

Source: Fortune