Wow economy musings...

nesf

This is inspired by a lot of bitching at the moment on the alliance side of Argent Dawn over the present state of the economy (60g arcanite crystals anyone?), but nearly all of the people there don't seem to have a clue about what they are talking about tbh.

People bitch about everything costing more while ignoring the fact they get paid above the odds for everything they sell (well no, most leathers still suck). Everything is balanced out for the most part because of the large amount of gold sinks that Blizzard have in the game, gold, more or less, holds it's value pretty well. If you have any kind of trade skill you can benifit from this inflation as much as anyone else. The only people who are getting screwed badly are those whose only income is through selling to vendors and relying on gold from quests for income. Actually, I think we're all better off from the inflation. I remember in the early days of the Argent Dawn server where prices were low and skilling up took a very large fraction of your cash reserves.

It's just that you hear so many people bitching about people buying gold being the reason why the economy is ****ed up, this makes me laugh really. The reason why rare L10 items are 20+ gold is not because L10s are buying gold but because half of them are alts for L60s running around in epics who can grind out 20 gold in well under an hour in the Blasted Lands or similar. The price balance for low level items is just silly. Bronze more expensive than iron? Iron being as expensive as mithril at times? Mining mithril and under gives you a much higher return for your time than mining thorium. It's crazy, but if you have a L20 alt and need to level up engineering then are you going to spend hours grinding for materials or are you just going to pop into the AH and pick them up for him/her?


The economy is messed up because the average player has at least 1 L60 character. The average income at the moment per user is insane compared to a year ago. Any economy (real or game world type) will naturally inflate in such conditions. At L50+ you can grind for a minimum of 10g/hour (that's without nice greens or blues). Apart from repairs/ammo/etc, your average L60 after their epic mount is just making a profit from day to day of playing. There's nothing left to buy in the AH, every item you want/need is BoP by this stage and you are scaling income-wise much faster than the game can accomodate (went grinding for cash with an epic'd out L60, it was just silly the amount they can make in an hour in a quiet area).

Maybe the expansion might bring things back in line, but I think people should stop thinking in terms of gold values back from when we all started playing. It's akin to thinking of 1 euro being worth 1 punt from the 50's. It just doesn't work. Money is a store of value in the sense of what it can purchase. It itself does not hold a fixed inate value in the long term in most market types. Forget what 1gp used to be able to purchase and measure it in terms of how much gold can buy average basket of trade goods now versus a month ago.

(/rant)

anonymous_joe

When I was lower level on a new-ish server, trade goods and trade skill items were worth very little, as most people were at the same/similar level. As such I saw no value in these skills. (I was also very new to the game :P)

I now have a level 12 priest in my guild I was using to farm cooking mats for my rogue, turned out, my herbalism could make me a few gold...

Low level herbs with no suppliers (bar my alt and 1 or 2 others) sold well enough, and could be gained for no effort. I'm looking forward to what happens when my priest hits 20-40. Those herbs can be very valuable, and a nice money spinner for my rogue, who is in desperate need of enchants...

Obviously it's all very simple supply and demand interaction, and can be annoying at times, but hey, what can you do?

Jim

People are charging 60g for Arcane Crystals because they are now needed to get attuned with Naxx if you are not exhalted.

nesf

Jimeatsmenu wrote:

People are charging 60g for Arcane Crystals because they are now needed to get attuned with Naxx if you are not exhalted.

Yup, they were 30g until 2 days ago when people remembered that.

ZygOte

just when i think im getting a handle on this game....................... :rolleyes:

ssh

Sold two for 150G last night - some guy whose guild were going into Nax and he needed to get attuned *quickly* :-D