Speculating on Mists of Pandaria Gold-Making

Posted by Aleithia at 8:00 AM

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.

These are just a few broad trends, but they have informed (and will continue to inform) the development of this game we love to play. What are their implications for gold-making in Mists of Pandaria? Some predictions for you:

Glyphs are not done being overhauled. 

Cataclysm changed glyphs from commodities to "skills" you learn. No longer did people need multiple copies of a glyph if they wanted to switch out glyphs. Instead, learn it once and change them whenever you want for the lost cost of about 9g by purchasing a reagent from the glyph vendors. Most classes, however, don't have much choice in their glyphs. There are certain popular (read: mandatory) glyphs, so while there is an illusion of choice, in reality there isn't much.

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.

All professions will have daily/weekly quests.

All of them. Cooking, Fishing, Jewelcrafting and Inscription already have them. The new Darkmoon Faire added profession skill-up quests to help ease the leveling of professions. It's not hard to imagine all of the professions getting some sort of quest in MoP. I think a combination of weekly skill increases (+5 each week) coupled with a daily token system like Jewelcrafting would help people max their profession, while still allowing the dedicated trader to get a leg up by doing dailies.

Primary professions will have a weekly/daily craft cooldown.

Alchemy (Transmutes) and tailoring (Dream Cloth) have one already. Other professions will get one as a way to artificially limit supply. It will help casual auctioneers make more money off other players (an important point in the ongoing battle against hyper-inflation in Warcraft) rather than generating more money from NPCs (like the obsidium shuffle and 9g vendor gems). Too much gold coming into the economy from "created" sources (in other words, new money is created and given to the players from mobs, quests, vendor sales) leads to higher prices, making it harder for the average player to keep up with the "haves".

Gathering professions will be buffed.

The end-game benefits of gathering professions lag too far behind the crafting professions. Blizzard is looking for ways to get people out into the world more and away from the capital cities. Buffing the benefits to gathering professions will help a bit. There's talk that archeology could get random encounters at digsites with mummies or similar archeology-themed mobs. Killing the mob would result in more artifacts. Why can't mining/herbing/skinning have a similar function added to make them more interesting? Maybe killing the mob gives a unique material (like a chaos orb) that gives some added value to the gathering professions. Skin enough mobs in an area and DEHTA might show up to attack you. Fight them off and you get a buff to attack power against creatures to kill skinnable mobs faster.

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?