Inflation in World of Warcraft

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

With the onset of Warden 2.0 (bot killing software) illegitimate farmers have been obliterated on most servers and thus materials have been getting more and more expensive on the auction house... in fact many servers can relate to seeing 75 gold adder's tongues, 25 gold borean leather, etc. To make matters worse, many players also have old mats left over which they can craft items with that no one else can compete with. For the time being, there is really no way to combat someone who has a stockpile of materials. All you can do is buy out people who have stockpiled materials and are posting relatively cheap mats without accounting for the new prices. Over time the prices of items across the board will go up along with the materials, so be patient and adjust your buying and selling rates accordingly.

As an example, borean leather has risen to 25 gold a stack on my server. Therefore, I want to sell most epic leg armors for 180+ gold in order to turn more than 20 gold profit per leg armor (I'd much rather have 100+ gold profit). Instead of crafting these items I am simply buying people out who post for 160-300 and relisting for 350-400 gold. Some days I have to buy a dozen or so leg armors and only sell a handful but eventually prices will react to the 25 gold leather. Players just won't be able to turn a profit without increasing prices closer to my own values and so I'm just helping things along. I also buy out borean leather at 20 gold in order to deny supplies to other auctioneers and therefore help inflate the prices further.

Glyphs are going up in value over time as well while many scribes are unable to produce glyphs for their 5-10 gold profit margins any longer. They have been forced to increase the price of glyphs to an average of about 15 gold on my server with all major herbs being above 30 gold a stack. The combination of increased prices on herbs and my temporary glyph wall the last two weeks has pushed three major competitors right out of the market (literally they have not posted for almost a week now) and left me with plenty of room to take advantage of the situation. The vast majority of glyphs I sell are coming back for 40-60 gold each, which makes opening my mailbox even more fun than prior to Warden 2.0's release. More expensive and fewer materials makes selling a very profitable endeavor for the moment, as long as you adjust your prices accordingly.

So don't complain about the rise in material costs and lack of abundance in materials, but take advantage of the situation.