A major piece of economy news hit this week in that trade restrictions are being relaxed even more in 10.1.5. The implications of this are huge and so this week we discuss what it means and how it changes the face of gold making. We also have a look at the new (old) transmog coming in 10.1.5 and some prospecting spreadsheets for WotLK Classic!
My name is Samadan and I’ll be your guide through the World of Gold Making!
Cross Realm Trading
The past few days have been a flurry of speculation and talk around the recently announced relaxation of cross realm trading rules.
Players will now be able to trade items and gold directly to characters on other realms in their region. Previously this was limited to things like conjured items or eligible raid/dungeon loot, but all those cross-realm restrictions will now be lifted. Play with your friends and trade whatever you want to whoever you want!
This is an incredibly important change and another step towards opening up quality of life improvements that let players play with players, no matter their faction and realm choices. The overall responses seem overwhelmingly positive and it’s easy to see why.
Ion Hazzikostas has been quoted many times before talking about wanting WoW to feel all connected together regardless of server. We talked about it way back in Blog 216 when 9.2.5 was on the horizon and there was an interview with Ion on ForTheWin..
The intention is certainly to open up the world to everyone, so it feels a lot more cohesive without arbitrary restrictions based on old ideas.
Back in the beginning, each server had it’s own economy and population and then further split by factions with only a neutral Auction House to open up trading between factions. It was self contained and helped players forge an identity on their own particular server and faction.
Over the years we have seen developments in the game with dungeon finder, merging auction houses, sharding and layering servers together and the focus has slowly merged the identity of players more towards the game as a whole rather than individual servers. It mattered less what server you were on, more what faction you played.
More recently, faction restrictions are being removed in specific group play, commodities have merged into one region wide auction house and mailing cross faction enabled.
We are almost there. Some things are still tied to specific servers and factions…
- Trade Chat & general communication remains split by faction and server.
- Work Orders and non commodities on the AH are limited to servers.
- Cross Faction play is limited to dungeons, not open world grouping
Layer by layer over time, the walls are being broken down, some have been hard coded into the game and require an enormous effort to untangle, but the direction is clear.
One thing that went slightly against this philosophy was the Work Order system where it was lauded that you could work to become famous on your server for crafting a particular thing. Server identity has long been eroded, so this is disjointing to see it emphasized so late in the progression towards an open world.
What does this mean for the economy?
Ever since the region wide commodities, individual server economies have been out of whack. Materials might be cheap, but the rest of the items are tied to any particular servers population causing massive imbalances. Previously, each server was self contained. Low pop had slower sales but higher prices. High pop had slimmer margins, but greater volume of sales. There were different economies and different niches for different players depending on their playstyle and server choice.
These imbalances in the past could be capitalized on by players using gold to pay for server transfers, buy cheap items on high pop realms and sell them for a profit on low pop realms. I did this myself as an experiment by taking a Holiday to Draenor.
Pet trading cross server has been a fantastic way to transfer resources from one server to another. Now with cross server trading enabled, players have an easier route to directly transfer gold and items between servers. Whether this current change is restricted to trading or opens up to mailing remains unclear.
This also makes it more convenient for players searching for items on the BMAH as it will be easier to shift gold onto other realms where bidding on containers has less competition. So will everyone else though!
Studen Albatroz has a video going through his thoughts on the changes …
Despite the thumbnail indicating otherwise, his opinion is that “change is good and prevents the game from getting stale. It’s too early to tell how prices will work out.”
Kaychack, a prominent multi realm trader also comments – “People who enjoy flipping are going to have the time of their life” -oh yes!
Right now, in it’s current proposed form (assuming no mailing) those with two accounts can conveniently move between realms, picking up bargains and selling them elsewhere. Players with a rare transmog, can try shifting it on several servers. Until we have a completely region wide Auction House, this actually opens up a few more choices and opportunities to the average gold maker.
Overall, prices and margins are going to go down as is always the way once you are competing with an entire region. Just look at Enchanting and Alchemy since they were affected most by the region wide AH change. The old ways are changing forever, time to adapt and form new opportunities!
In Depth Look at Naxx in 10.1.5
Manthieus has been taking a look at the upcoming old transmog reintroductions coming in 10.1.5 and how we can understand what’s coming and how we might profit from the process…
A lot of the information is still buried in the PTR and not fully known how everything will unlock and of course we don’t know what the demand will be once players start obtaining these new (old) transmogs. With the above cross realm trading, the early opportunist is the one to profit most here.
WotLK Classic & Prospecting Titanium
The Lazy Goldmaker has a great article and video going through the latest opportunities in gold making in Phase 3..
Make your gold when you buy
If you want to make gold with prospecting you have to make your gold when you buy. What does that mean? It means you have to pay the right price, so knowing what the value of the gems you will end up with is CRUCIAL.
In the video and full article, he goes through the related spreadsheet and how to use it to make sense of prospecting profit margins.
Further Reading
Most of this information was discussed and originally posted on the /r/woweconomy subreddit or in the accompanying Discord Server.
I hope you found this useful and If you have any suggestions or feedback, please do say so in the comments below..
Until next time, Happy Goldmaking!
Samadan
