The Cooldown - Understanding Truegold Demand in 4.2

Posted by The Lost Meeple at 8:00 AM

Guest Post By Stede of Venture, LLT.
Let me just start by saying that I wrote this Guest Post for JMTC rather than my own blog, Venture, LLT, simply because I wanted to enrage a larger audience. So, lock & load your peashooters and take aim - and by all means, feel free to skip down after the next sentence to the comments and flame me, you lil volatile fireballs.

Oh poor Truegold - despite its efforts to remain the superhero of 4.2 stockpilers across the world, it is crippled. Yes, I said it - you guys with Truegold stocked up will end up selling them at marginal profits - not the through-the-roof prices you probably hoped for. There's a good explanation for this, but first, let's set the foundation:

First, there's gold in Azeroth - lots. As evidenced by the page hits Markco sees, more and more people are coming to the dark side and embracing their inner goblin. Blizzard has had to nerf the shuffle by an incredible 1200% to reign in the amount of gold that entered into the economy. This leads to competition when it comes to stockpiling. And Truegold is an easy target - 10 seconds of work for an item that everybody is gonna need. Why not grab some volatiles on the cheap and start stocking up on them? With margins as thin as 50g going into the patch - a lot of folks saw a big opportunity.

So, before I get that one guy that says, "I have the market to myself, Stede - you're an idiot," allow me to say: grats, sir - you may be excused to skip down to the blogroll (Markco - this guy needs your blogroll reposed - plz man, plz) to find more stimulating / less irritating reading. For everybody else who saw some teenage dude camp all your markets on TUJ while you were working your 9-5, read on.

So, we have our premise that the supply of Truegold is not anemic. I won't say it's inflated, but it is, at the very least, quite perfectly normal. Which brings us to the point that will bring much wailing and gnashing of teeth - the demand spike will not come. Any industrious goblin knows what will use Truegold - crafted epics. Namely, 365 Blacksmithing-Crafted Weapons, and 378 Crafted Gloves & Boots. These fall into their own two distinct classed.

The Weapons are purchased via the new daily Firleands questing currency - Marks of the World Tree. While the exact timeframe seems to have been a moving target to some degree, the survey says that we'll be 21 days into 4.2 before these recipes can be purchased. The good news is that they don't require any Living Embers (the new, unbound 'crusader orb' that drops only from new raid bosses). The bad news is that 365-359 = Six. Let that sink in. Six. Twenty-one days into the patch you can buy a new weapon at a ~5k+ crafting cost for an extra 6 ilvls.

But hey, why not, right? I'm reminded about the 346 Blacksmithing-crafted weapons in the last tier. Those didn't sell at all. Of course, 365 weapons don't drop from anything like heroic dungeons this time around, either - so, maybe, I'll be wrong, but 6 ilvls just seems so small. In any event, this doesn't seem like it will be a raider's cup of tea.

But what about that 378 gear? Well, that stuff requires a handful of those Living Embers I was telling you about - the ones that drop only from raid bosses. Which means, that for every 4 or more raid boss kills there are, there is an opportunity to craft one of these items. The bosses in Firelands on Normal difficulty drop the same 378 gear (Ragnaros drops 384, iirc). If you can down four of em, it shouldn't be that far-reaching to think that one may drop gloves or boots.

However - T12 gloves will be available for Valor Points, and will count towards your set bonus, and will be 378. The boots are different. We all recall the T11 Valor Boots, but you'll notice that there aren't any T12 Valor Boots. So, the boots recipes will probably be popular, but we're talking about 1 set of boots a week - tops, for every guild capable of clearing 4 bosses. There will be demand, but there will be enough of a bottleneck as far as Living Embers as to restrict demand for this gear considerably. I'm convince that demand won't be able to live up to the expectations most have (particularly when you consider the competition), and you'll see that reflected in stagnated Truegold prices.

The last point I want to make is that 359 epics will no longer be crafted and sold in any quantity worth considering. Nobody is gonna spend triple the crafting cost on 359 gear when T11 raids are nerfed to puggable facerolls, and 358 pvp gear is avilaible for 1/3-1/10th of the price. Well, maybe some poorly-informed, loaded noob who's in a rush to lvl his BDK so he c4$|-| !N on $w337 100t$ in Firelands will, but... on second thought, maybe that is a good market.

Of course, by extension, this makes all the BoE epic 378 hands recipes you noobs were trying to sell on Day 1 for 25k, are quite worthless. Although that's another story entirely, and good-effing-game if you managed to sell one for 25k, I'm certain that by the time this post pushes it's way to the front of the line that we'll all know that the drop rate on these is so high that even 5k is a gouge.

From where I sit, if you're sitting on more than 2 or 3 stacks of Truegold (maybe more if you're on a high pop server), and you're scratching your head at the indifference of your AH prices, it may be a good idea to start using your cooldown for living elements. Volatiles are going to stay in demand. Though some of that demand may seem transient, Fire and Earth are safe bets - strictly because people always need new leg armor - this will drive true market volume. If you stockpiled Volatile Life when it was low - start putting it to work. Keep an eye on things, though - they always seem to change if you don't.