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Undercutting is an art form in its own right. Some players undercut by 1 copper, others by 10-50% of the original price. Some use the Quick ...
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Hey Markco, Just wanted to tell you another gold tip. With patch 3.1 the JC pattern Citrine Ring Of Rapid Healing no longer requires 2 eleme...
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Cataclysm has been out for quite some time now. People are tired of heroics and are now running raids, this creates a demand for one item th...
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Guest Post By Deepcut From Warcraft Gold Analysis My name is Deepcut, and I currently play on the Eldre'Thalas realm. After seeing al...
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So I've recently started up a new game; Runescape. Now don't be all like Mageshadow, WoW is better than Runescape because I know tha...
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Update: Silly me didn't read the fine print and Blizzard slid a low ball in, You can't stockpile valor for 4.2 as it will be conver...
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Scott Alan Smith is a Crook! Edit: Screen shots and proof/explanation of the cookie stuffing Scott has used in the past are present a...
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Hey Marcko, Was soloing Dwarfageddon earlier today and I noticed the dwarves you kill drop the Lovely Charm. You get 10 of these and tur...
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No, it's not. Buying low and selling high is supposed to be easy and intuitive. However, for many world of warcraft players it just d...
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Post by Kammler from Kammler's Korner One of my favorite movies is the 2004 King Arthur (Clive Owen, Keira Knightley) Not only is it...
There are lots of ways to improve your character's performance in dungeons, but one of the most common is eating food. For much of Cataclysm, casters have been using the Fortune Cookie to get their +90 Intellect food buff. But oddly, I've found there are lots of people who prefer to use the fish-based buff: Severed Sagefish Head.
The thing is, the cost of a fortune cookie has been about 50% less than the Sagefish version of the buff, plus you get a fortune card from the deal. As a market savvy raider/dungeoneer, I've always preferred the cheaper fortune cookie. But surprisingly, not everyone goes that route. Maybe they don't know it exists. Maybe they think their "other useful stat" won't actually be useful, instead trusting a tooltip that lists the exact stat. I'm not sure what the deal is.
But here's what I do know: For most of the expansion, I've been selling the Severed Sagefish Head at about 100% profit (in other words, doubling my money). Prices were consistently high because the fish could only be caught by fishing in open water. There was no pool available to give a guaranteed Deepsea Sagefish. That is, up until last week.
A recent hotfix (see December 20 note) has removed the Algaefin Rockfish pools and replaced them with Deepsea Sagefish. This means you can more reliably farm them by fishing in pools, no matter what your fishing level as pool-fishing is a guaranteed catch. Prices are down a bit on average, but their still better than the fortune cookie.
And despite the higher cost, they still sell. If you don't have much gold, or just enjoy killing time while waiting for a queue to pop, head out to Twilight Highlands for some easy gold.
I hope this entry finds you enjoyed the afterglow of the Christmas holidays. Preparations for the New Years bash has begun as well in your future. Nothing like spending the new year nursing a hangover and exploring the world of gold making in Azeroth.
Something that both new and experienced crafters learn quickly; there will be a time that you expect a large tip for your efforts. Only to find that the person thanks you with a tip of the cap and a thank you. Somehow not realizing just how much you invested in the pattern, and leveling your profession to its maximum ability. Their newly crafted items equipped and ready for action.
The definition of a "tip" is a gratuity. By definition it is optional to give a tip if you have an item crafted for you. Etiquette would say that if you have a task performed, then a tip should be offered. Problems arise many times when the 10g tip that used to be a large amount of money in game during the burning crusade expansion is no longer appropriate in cataclysm. Inflation of quest rewards and easier availability to obtain gold has raised the expectation of crafters. But many times those asking for the items have not changed with these times. Multiple times i have taken the time to answer a request for an epic item crafting in trade, only to be offered 5g in tip. In my mind I jokingly will say 'I do not even go over to the other side of orgrimmar for less than 100g'.
If your tips have not been to your expectation, it may be time to go ahead and explain that there is a crafting fee for your time and effort. Sometimes where there is a large amount of competition for items (Rare Gem cuts etc) this might not be the best technique to use. Finding yourself with one of the only trained crafters with a specific pattern would change the idea of asking for a 100g or more crafting fee. Just be careful to know what your server population will support. Making sure that you do not quickly drive yourself out of the market.
Supply and demand should be your main drive in understanding when to ask for a crafting fee. And when to just invest your own mats and put the item up on the AH and not worry about non tipping customers at all.
Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@Dragonbearjoe" or leave a comment here. You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up and I will buy you a glass of juice.
Past articles by Mommar:
Tis the season to be goblins
My rod shall comfort thee.. and make gold
Today is the day we all wait for during the winter's veil holiday. The opening of the presents that have been taunting us under the tree. Rushing to see what items we receive, and what items will find themselves on the auction house.
As always the Red Helper Box and Green helper box will be flooding the Auction House for those that already have the pet on their characters. But now is an excellent time to save those in your bank for the middle of the year. We aren't that far from the rush of Mists of Pandaria and the quest fill in those pet slots. Also keep an eye on the Auction house to buy up some of the pets such as the Jingling bell to flip over later in the year.
Also with Winter veil comes a quick daily Your a mean one. The quest starts at level 80 and where you may not be able to contribute that much to the fight, you can easily wait til it's over and get credit for the finish. Make sure to talk to the reindeer after it's free and pick up some presents in the cave. Many of the presents are vendor gifts from the toy shop in dalaran. Look to drop those in your bank to sell at a later time or just give to friends for the fun of it.
The event goes on through the 2nd of January, giving you plenty of times to finish the daily multiple times. The big prize is the miniature winter veil tree found in the stolen present. Make sure to drop this on the AH for large amounts of profit for little work.
My last gift is something that an e-mailer brought up that was working on his server.
With the enchanters ability to shatter maelstrom crystal into heavenly shards the market for both is up and down. Keep an eye on this market when you can split the maelstrom crystal in the shards and sell for a profit. Do not forget to look at the enchants that require these to make sure they are in balance with the materials. Purchasing and reselling the enchants to sell at a higher price is a good way to raise your profit margin.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Have a wonderful winter solstice.
Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@Dragonbearjoe" or leave a comment here. You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up and I will buy you a glass of juice.
Past articles by Mommar:
My rod shall comfort thee.. and make gold
How do you calculate the cost of an item? Without getting into opportunity costs, let's assume all raw materials have a cost associated with them, even the self-farmed items. We'll use Dragonscale Leg Armor as an example as it only has two components: 1 Pristine Hide and 20 Blackened Dragonscales.
Figuring out the cost is easy enough for the Dragonscales: look up the data on the Auction House, your favorite pricing addon (ie, Trade Skill Master, Auctioneer or Auctionator) or at an independent auction site (The Undermine Journal, AH Spy). All will return different prices most likely, but you'll be able to get a good sense of what it's worth.
Pristine Hides are a bit trickier, because they can be purchased at three different levels:
- Buying 50 Savage Leather, converting them into 10 Heavy Savage Leather and trading for a Pristine Hide from the leatherworking supply vendors.
- Buying 10 Heavy Savage Leather and trading it in.
- Buying 1 from the Auction House.
Prior to patch 4.3, I purchased large amounts of Savage Leather to turn into leg enchants for sale after the patch. My average price was around 3.75 gold/leather, or 187.5 gold/Pristine Hide. The Blackened Dragonscale cost me around 14 gold each, or 280g/stack. Add in the cost of the hide, and I was able to make the armors for 467.5g each. Post-patch, they were selling for roughly 800g on average after the initial surge in pricing, for a profit of 333.5g. Not too shabby.
The problem is that replacing them costs much more now. Savage Leather is sitting around 6g on average (300/hide) and Blackened Dragonscale is actually down a bit at 13.75g or 275/stack. The cost of producing them now is 575g and the average sale price has dropped to around 700g. That's a profit of ~125g—Still nice, but not as good.
Of course, right now there's not a real problem because I'm still making a profit on the leg armors. But what if prices for finished goods have dropped below the cost of your materials? This is a very real possibility the longer 4.3 lasts before Mists of Pandaria comes out. Raid Finder has been great for business, but soon the large uptick in business will fade and prices will begin to dip lower and lower. So what to do?
Well, I've not been as aggressively restocking my large supply materials (Leather, Ores, Herbs) as aggressively, instead waiting for prices to drop and my inventory to dwindle. Some items will continue to hold value into MoP, but many won't. Rather than gamble on a large overstock of something, I'd rather use up my inventory and then restock as needed.
I'm also only restocking my limited supply items (enchanting mats) in small batches to better control my costs. The last thing I want to do is purchase 500 Maelstrom Crystals at 200g each, only to see them drop back down to 150 or 125 as more gear from raids and 5-mans starts getting sharded again.
The Cataclysm is far from over. Best case scenario, MoP arrives in May or June. More likely it's August or as late as December. But with the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic, declining subscriber numbers and Dragon Soul fatigue soon to set in, it's time to start thinking about ending in a good position to start the next big surge with the release of Mists of Pandaria.
- Silver Rod (2x Rough Grinding Stone + 1x Silver Bar)
- Golden Rod (2x Coarse Grinding Stone + 1x Gold Bar)
- Truesilver Rod (1x Heavy Grinding Stone + 1 Truesilver Bar)
- Arcanite Rod (3x Arcanite Rod + 1 Dense Grinding Stone)
- Fel Iron Rod (6x Fel Iron Bar)
- Adamantite Rod (10 Adamantite Bar)
- Eternium Rod (4x Eternium Bar)
- Elementium Rod (15x Elementium Bar)
- Titanium Rod (2x Saronite Bar + 1x Titanium bar)
- Elementium Rod (15x Elementium Bar)
Go to this place and farm. Put this on the Auction House and sell it. Flip this item for large amounts of profit. Multiple journals carry multiple amounts of threads on how to obtain gold on warcraft.
Many of our writers have different varying ways of stating their point of view. Some are able to put a more technical analysis on their gold making journey. Others tend to put more of a homespun wording on how they present the information. Others couldn't spell if their life depended on it. No matter what information is offered, or how they present it, one complete axiom is the same.
This idea may not work on your server.
Sorry to have to break the news to you on this. But no idea is 100% guaranteed to work completely. These tips and ideas are not sham-wow tested and approved. And when someone posts up a tip, they fully understand that you may not be able to add this to your repertoire of ideas to make gold.
Transmuting volatiles, flipping epic level patterns, buying raw gems and crafting to higher selling items. None of these listed methods will work completely. The only guaranteed 100% add-on that will work and guarantee money making opportunities is learning how to think outside the box. No matter how an add-on is presented as being foolproof, there is always a fool well engaged in proving that description incorrect.
So why is it important to know this when your reading the writings of JMTC? Because hopefully you have picked up as you read our entries, that the authors are not just wanting you to see information in a specific format. But we are hard at work trying to show you how to think for yourself. Saronite ore might not be a good option of prospecting. But that thorium that someone posted up for 10g a stack sure looks interesting and might generate profit. Every piece of information you are presented is one step to add to your stack of knowledge. Because that item might not generate a profit for you now. Later on it might be just what you need to jumpstart a sagging economic downturn.
Money making is not a go here and farm this, craft this, sell this type of system. Your brain and your ability to think will create loads more money than any journal or warcraft blog can teach you. Our hopes are to just be able to nudge you in the right direction, and then present ideas that might help in the long run.
If we can give you one idea that will allow you to expand your empire into another area. And bring you that much closer to your goals. Then we have done our jobs.
Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@Dragonbearjoe" or leave a comment here. You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up and I will buy you a glass of juice.
Links to Previous articles
Would the owner of the saronite please stand up?
Stars are full of gold
You got your jewelcrafter in my alchemist
join the fun ... buy the t-shirt
Tools of the Trade
I don't know about you, but my post-patch sales are slowly starting to return to normal. Prices are still generally higher than they were before, but raw material prices are generally higher now also. I love addons and their ability to automate my buying and selling, but I also like having a more intimate knowledge of certain markets so I can watch for trends and plan farther ahead.
As I've been doing my daily gold-making routine, I got to thinking about the trends from past patches and what would happen in the near future with Patch 4.3. The more I think about it, the more I think this is completely different from any patch in the past, with the possible exception of Patch 3.3 and the introduction of the Dungeon Finder.
If you played pre-Dungeon Finder, you might remember the pain and suffering involved with forming a 5-man dungeon group. Spamming chat channels in the cities looking for a group, then traveling out to the dungeon, only to lose someone and have to go back for more people. It could take hours to find a group and complete a dungeon. Suddenly, you could queue for a dungeon and within a reasonable amount of time, be in the dungeon and completing it with relative speed.
Groups with an enchanter could disenchant gear easily, resulting in an abundant supply of raw materials. This drove raw prices down and set a lower average price for enchanting materials. While this phenomenon was largely contained in the enchanting profession, there were tendrils of influence that hit other professions as well.
Raid Finder and Transmogrification Change the Game
Fast forward to the present time and we're living post-4.3. The Raid Finder and Transmogrification have fundamentally changed the way people acquire gear and what they do with it. In the past, sharding gear was common. If it wasn't an upgrade, why keep it? Now, suddenly, gear is useful for appearance and not just stats thanks to transmogrification. I've been keeping more gear, especially on my leveling toons, on the off chance that I might need it someday for transmogging.
The Raid Finder introduced a new level of gear to the equation as well. Now, instead of running 5-mans over and over, people graduate to the Raid Finder to get better gear and earn some Valor Points as well. Because it's a 25-man group, it's rare to find gear that drops and no one needs. If not for a main spec, then for an off-spec.
Combine these two factors and you have far fewer enchanting materials entering the market, especially earlier in a patch's life cycle. This means prices will stay high longer than in previous patches, though they might still return to a more "normal" level. In the past, you could count on enchanting materials going down in price over time, but now they'll consistently grow higher on average over the course of an expansion.
Higher enchanting prices means more Jewelcrafters shuffling ore into jewelry for disenchanting. This means there are less uncommon (green-quality) gems available for transmuting into shadowspirit diamonds or rare (blue-quality) gems. Ore prices will rise as Jewelcrafters consume more ore in the shuffle. This, in turn, means higher gem prices for consumers as costs go up.
It will also become more important to find reliable suppliers at the lowest possible level of the production chain. Ore, Herbs and Leather farmers that regularly send you supplies will be invaluable in fighting rising prices. Just be prepared to up their pay over time or some other enterprising merchant might steal them away from you.
What long-range implications do you see now that we've had several weeks to adapt to 4.3? How has it already affected your business? Are you finding supply of raw materials to be a problem?
Many times we talk about active strategies to obtain money. Jewelcrafters are currently going through their progressions of posting up Raw or cut gems at large profits. Other professions are crafting items
Links to Previous articles
Stars are full of gold
You got your jewelcrafter in my alchemist
join the fun ... buy the t-shirt
Tools of the Trade
Goodbye Darkmoon Faire
Freud never said anything about warcraft gold
Between Deathwing and panda invasion
For the 5th day straight I was raking in a large amount of gold on my server. While letting one of my add-ons sort things out, a conversation started with one of my group cartel members. We have actively been keeping an eye on Gem sales to make sure that they don't get too low.
Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@Dragonbearjoe" or leave a comment here. You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up and I will buy you a glass of juice.
Links to Previous articles
You got your jewelcrafter in my alchemist
join the fun ... buy the t-shirt
Tools of the Trade
Goodbye Darkmoon Faire
Freud never said anything about warcraft gold
Between Deathwing and panda invasion
Many long-time readers here are at the point in their gold progression where they can focus on lucrative, high-payoff gold making ventures like the recent stockpiling and selling of goods for 4.3. But what if you're just starting off making gold? Either you're too low level to max professions or you don't have much capital to invest?
Well, the new Darkmoon Faire has some options for you! One of the new features is the weekly profession quest. I took my main character to the Faire and figured I'd do the profession quests just to do them. I quickly found some roadblocks to quick completion: I had to leave the Faire and return to Stormwind to purchase supplies.
So this led me to thinking, why not sit and sell the reagents needed for the quests? I gladly would have overpaid for them in order to save the trip back to a city. Not all the professions need items from a town, but here are the ones that do:
Tailoring
1 Coarse Thread, 1 Red Dye, 1 Blue Dye, sold by the tailoring supply vendors. Ask a guard for tor the location of the Tailor trainer in any capital if you aren't sure where to go. The base cost before discounts is 10 copper for the thread and 50 copper for each dye, or 1 silver, 10 copper for the group.
Inscription
5 Light Parchment, sold by the Inscription supply vendors. Ask a guard for tor the location of the Inscription trainer in any capital if you aren't sure where to go. The base cost before discounts is 15 copper per sheet, or 75 copper for the group.
Cooking
5 Simple Flour, sold by the Cooking supply vendors. Ask a guard for tor the location of the Cooking trainer in any capital if you aren't sure where to go. The base cost before discounts is 25 copper per flour, or 1 silver, 25 copper for the group.
Leatherworking
10 Shiny Bauble, 5 Coarse Thread, 5 Blue Dye. See Tailoring, above, for information on the Coarse Thread and Blue Dye. Shiny Baubles are available from fishing supply vendors. There's actually a fishing vendor on Darkmoon Island that sells these, but some people might not bother looking. If you skip the Baubles, you'll need 3 silver for the thread and dye. If you purchase some Baubles to save your customers the hassle, you'll need another 5 silver, or 8 silver total.
Alchemy
5 Moonberry Juice, sold by Innkeepers. Stop by your favorite inn to get some. The base cost before discounts is 20 silver each, or 1 gold for the group.
Once you have the materials, park yourself at the faire and advertise in General Chat (/1 will start typing in general chat) that you have materials for these 5 professions. When I was playing around with it, I found it most helpful to play off the convenience factor, and generally sold supply packs for 5 gold across the board. At worst, that's still 4 gold in profit for each pack.
I didn't stay long, because I had other things to do that were more profitable, but if you don't have the capital or professions to do those other things, this is a great start. One particularly useful message I was barking was: "Tailoring, Inscription, Cooking, Leatherworking and Alchemy quest items for sale! Turn 5 gold into 16, get 4 tickets and 5 free skill points in your profession!"
Don't underestimate how much gold people are willing to spend to avoid the hassle of gathering these materials themselves. You still have a couple days to give it a try, but chances are most of the player base that is going to do the quests are already through them. But keep this in mind for the next Darkmoon Faire as a way to make some start-up capital!
On the day after a patch hits the realms, the jewelcrafting market provides many frustrations...
Which one of my crafters is going to make the most money? Did i put enough materials away to ride
the wave of buyers to it's maximum? How will I find the best way to replenish stock? Is the elementium shuffle still valid at the inflated stack prices for ore? Can I buy enough stock of blank gems to fill orders.
Inferno rubies sold out on many markets faster than people could restock the shelves. Whether they
were cut or in raw form, blank searches for inferno rubies were continual. Same with many of the other colors (ember topazs and demoneyes seemed to be in the same predicament).
Across the board, realms saw the depletion of the inferno rubies stock piled go quickly. Six slots to stack their main statistic causes a lot of sales. Not to count the need by multiple alternate toons etc. Also included in this rush was the mass amount of shadowspirit diamond orders needed to be filled.
The problem with this issue is what could the jewelcrafter and alchemist combination use to maximize their profits? With the stacks of elementium and obsidium ore dwindling, the JC shuffle became much more expensive On my server some of the ore stacks were going for over 250 a stack at it's highest. The basic gems were going for obscene amounts (40g a piece of jaspers, hessonites going for almost 50 and carnelians at 80g per). Is transmuting inferno rubies and ember topaz the more economical way to use materials? Would it be best to transmute shadowspirit diamonds (3 of each common gem needed) or transmute the rare gems that were selling and then wait for the market to balance itself and then sell inventory of the excess common and rare gems?
No doubt both would make large amounts of money. You could easily just transmute the hessonites, carnelians and even alicites into their respective gems with the needed herbalism materials and make a profit. Or take all of them and transmute the respective shadowspirit diamonds. At its heights on Tuesday and Wednesday on many servers even just listing the basic gems themselves you could make mass amount of gold.
So lets do a quick math review:
Assuming you are a transmute specialist (you did remember to change over before the more expensive
quest costs were put into effect right?), you need 3 of each of the low level gems.
*these were basic figured from theunderminejournal.com. As always your server may vary*
3 - hessonite (40g+ selling raw)
3 - nightstone (40g+ selling raw)
3 - carnelian (60g+ selling raw)
3 - alicite (20g+ selling raw)
3 - zephyrite (15g+ selling raw)
3 - jasper (20g+ selling raw)
Doing the math, crafting two shadowspirits you ended up with around 400g+ in materials. That split to somewhere around 220g per diamond. Now on my server the main shadow spirits were selling consistantly for around 360g per cut diamond.
Lets look at the transmutes we have available.
3 hessonites per transmute (@40g x 3 needed)+ 3 cinderbloom (@2g) =136 per ember topaz
3 carnelian per transmute (@60g x 3 needed)+ 3 heartblossom (@4g) = 192 per inferno ruby
3 alicite per transmute (@20g x 3 needed) + 3 + 3 Whiptail (@2g) = 66 per amberjewel
3 zephyrite per transmute (@7g x 3 needed) + 3 Azshara's Veil (@2g) 28 per ocean sapphire
3 jasper per transmute (@20g x 3 needed) + 3 Stormvine @3g) = 69g per Dream Emerald
3 nightstone per transmute (@40g x 3 needed) + 3 Twilight Jasmine (3g) 120g per Demonseye
You can continue down the list, and accepting the idea of variance between server fluctuations. It
begins to come into light that the best way to maximize your profits is to transmute to the individual
rare items and cut them for a profit. Even sales of the raw rare gems tend to hold onto this idea
for now.
A third option is just to sell the materials in their raw state. This ends up being the quickest, because it lists items without any crafting necessary. But it also is the most limited in profit making. You are susceptible to the rises and falls of the market.
Later on as the patch continues, there will be a leveling out of the market. Shadowspirit diamonds will begin to catch up and become the leading profit margin. Elementium ore is already beginning to catch up from the large burst of need, and many of the common gems will start to come down to a regular price. As more and more jewelcrafters become comfortable resuming their normal crafting progression, resuming their elementium/obsidium shuffle. Pyrite ore on many markets didn't take as big of a nosedive as some had speculated. Since there was multiple markets to relieve the stockpiles of pyrite ore (bars, transmutes, crafting ) it didn't shock the market as expected. The possibility that an emptying of pyrite inventory later on in the next couple of weeks may also drive down many of the gem markets.
The need for the inferno rubies and ember topaz cuts, as well as the other colored gems will equal out to levels similar to what they were at the end of patch 4.2. If you keep these basic math formulas in your head, then you will be ready for the switch and still keep on riding the profit wave.
Just keep a mental tally of how much you are putting into each transmute, and decide which one will make you more profit. For now the obvious choice on most servers is going to be the transmuting the inferno rubies, ember topazs and other rare colored gems. But be ready for the momentum shift to come.
Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@Dragonbearjoe" or leave a comment here. You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up and I will buy you a glass of juice.
Links to Previous articles by mommar
join the fun ... buy the t-shirt
Tools of the Trade
Goodbye Darkmoon Faire
Freud never said anything about warcraft gold
Between Deathwing and panda invasion
So, the patch is live. Everyone's happy. Prices are rising, demand is great, money is flowing. It's been 3 days into the patch so I think it is time for the first review.
First of all I have to say that I wasn't playing at all on Wednesday, so I can only rely on two days of experience.
The patch in many aspects brought exactly what most of us expected. There were a few surprises though, at least for me.
Traffic on the AH increased very much. It's been long since I've last seen a crowd like this in the AH or in the capitals cities for that matter.
Materials have twice the price as prior to the patch. That is bad, but not surprising, everyone is crafting. What's more troubling though is that realm stocks are running low on mats. There are less then 25 stacks of ores, herbs and what-not on the AH usually, and you can't find much more. With a million crafters spamming the trade chat with WTB macros, you can't even find a decent amount at the chat either. I hope you guys stocked up on mats before. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to play before the patch due to IRL reasons, so on some items I'm already running low, but I manage.
As for the products, the demand is incredibly high. As usual, gems and enchants are the best-sellers. Yesterday I sold a stack of Bold Inferno Rubies in about 10 minutes.
Surprisingly (for me) there is a high demand for crafted gear too. I expected that the Vicious PVP sets will be a hit, but I just can't understand what people still want with these Hardened Obsidium sets (and others like it). I know that the racional explanation would be that people are leveling alts, but first of all, right after the patch no one is on their alts, and second of all, that still doesn't explain why can I sell 10 complete sets a day. Actually I can't now because I have to prioritize with my obsidium but no matter how much I post on the AH, they all get bought.
Another thing I'd like to point out is that if you still have leftover Bloodthirsty pieces, check if there is a Vicious piece posted on the AH which match your Bloodthirsty, because if not, you should post the Bloodthirsty first, and hold back your vicious untill it gets sold. People are not looking especially for a Vicious Leather Gloves, but rather a good PVP gloves, so no they will take the Bloodthirsty. In this sense the patch also increased the demand for old items.
Epic gems are also here. As expected, their price is extremely high. As it turned out, there is no other way of acquiring the raw gems other than raiding. You cannot transmute them, and they are not in the fire prism. If you are raiding, selling these gems can be a great source of income, but if not, speculating with them, reselling, or cutting them is a risky investment. They only came out three days ago so their price is still very unstable. However if you know what you are doing, and have enough capital you can easily earn thousands of gold with a 3 second cast. Or lose just as much.
Altogether the patch is a blast, Thursday I closed with +73k and +61k on Friday. Too bad I couldn't play more (I was only home about 2-3 hours each day).
How was your patch-experience? How did your realm's economy react to the patch? (comments section below)
One of the biggest challenges Blizzard faces as Warcraft continues to expand in scope is giving players choices, but maintaining balance amid those choices. Every expansion brings change to the World of Warcraft. By looking at those changes, we can see trends that point to further development into the future. Some of the major trends we've seen so far:
- Deep But Simple
Talents have undergone changes with every expansion. What abilities do, how hard they hit, how many you get for "free" for choosing a spec, how you modify them have all been overhauled. The goal was to make talents easier to understand while bringing more depth to the game. - Accessibility
Classic WoW was noted for it's grind-y nature. You had to put in hours and hours of time to get anywhere and progress your character. New raids often required completing old ones to be able to access them. But over time, things like price reductions (mounts, training of skills), alternate progression (badges, more crafted gear) and new/changed features (Dungeon/Raid Finder, weekly valor caps, daily quest hubs, reduced XP for old content) all aim to remove the barrier of entry for people new to the game. Increasingly, it's easier for new players to catch up to long-time players. - Balance and "Fairness"
While Blizzard can never make all things equal, they strive as much as possible to do so. DPS numbers, class cooldowns, mobility and utility all need to be balanced. It's the reason Druids lost their position as the sole battle res, why tank abilities were brought into line to provide similar tools, damage reducing cooldowns and raid survivability. Profession bonuses are all about equal so people don't feel they have to take a certain combo to maximize their effectiveness in game.
A quick look through the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator shows that many of the unpopular glyphs are being included as part of the base spell. Blizzard has even stated that they are considering removing prime glyphs in their current state because they are so uninteresting from a choice perspective. The entire system isn't going away, however, so something is going to have to fill the gap to make glyphs an interesting/meaningful choice going forward. At a minimum, this could mean many new glyphs. But it could also mean a completely different concept for glyphs and what they do. Maybe there is a set of glyphs for your companion pets that ties into the new pet battle system.
I can also see the relationship of gathering/crafting professions becoming more closely linked, much like Mining/Blacksmithing. Smiths require a miner to smelt ore into bars. Why don't other profession pairs have this relationship? It would encourage people to keep the gathering professions while making pairings on the same character more useful. A system like this could add some depth too, where some recipes required you have both the crafting and gathering profession on the same character through the use of some bind-on-pickup item.
What are your thoughts on the future of crafting in Mists of Pandaria? What changes do you see on the horizon?
Unrelated note: Hope your 4.3 sales went smoothly! Any surprises for you there?