Ever curious about the economy of WoW? Or try to figure out why blizzard charges so much for certain in game items? Well I went and sought out the WoWenomics team to do a little Q&A with them. Anyone who wants the nuts and bolts of the WoW gold game should visit WoWenomics blog site. Having said that I fired some questions their way and Jederus answered the calling, this is what was said:
Slash Nerf: How does the cost of certain things such as expensive flying mount training, cold weather flying and dual specing provide any kind of gold balance on a warcraft realm? And does this cause more to sell on auction house then are actually buying?
Jederus: Expensive but highly desired skills and items serve to remove gold from the game by acting as gold sinks. A gold sink, by design, helps keep the server’s economy in check by giving players something to spend their money on. Gold sinks can be something as mundane as repair costs or as profound as a 20,000 gold mount. As far as the desire for these items causing more AH activity goes, it’s hard to say what each person does to meet the gold cost for an item they desire. Sure, many players use the AH and of the ones that do, many sell more than they buy. That said, there are also players that dislike using the AH and prefer using the daily quest system as their primary path to riches.
Slash Nerf: In your opinion(s) has blizzard's cracking down on gold farming and buying died down significantly since BC? And how had this impacted the state of all realm AH's?
Jederus: I would say that Blizzard is not pursuing gold farmers and sellers and more or less than during Burning Crusade. We still see gold advertisements because people are still buying gold and it is cheap for the sellers to advertise so their cost to benefit ratio fits the mechanic of sending spam. I should add that Blizzard could certainly be more aggressive in getting rid of gold sellers but these aggressive tactics might involve more thorough investigations and account bans. Both the manpower for the investigation and the loss of revenue for the company from issuing bans could hurt Blizzard’s bottom line and, as a for profit corporation, this is not something they are interested in doing.
Slash Nerf: Alot of players are rather uniformed of profitability of cooking and fishing. What is your stance on these professions for gold?
Jederus: Both the cooking and fishing professions are fantastic moneymakers. Put together they are even more powerful. The interesting thing about these professions is that they don’t take up a regular profession slot so, in a sense, they are a free skill. Some people make more gold from these free skills then they do from their regular skills. Glacial salmon is one example of this. On most servers this fish goes for approximately 35 gold per stack. This is often higher than the going rate for a stack of Saronite Ore, high level skinned leather or many types of herbs on those same servers and each of these takes about the same amount of time to farm. In cases where the fish is not selling well, simply use cooking to turn the fish into a more profitable consumable and profit on that end. Dragonfin Filet and the Fish Feast are excellent examples of items that increase greatly in value when cooked.
Slash Nerf: Have too many people abandoned certain professions causing other players to florish with their unliked profession(s)?
Jederus: That’s an interesting question. I’m a firm believer that all professions have profit potential. I do think that one of the best opportunities to make gold in the game is in exploiting niche markets. That is, if you are crafting something that everyone else is not you can set supply, and thus prices, at whatever level you can sell your goods at. Even with popular professions there are ways to exploit this mechanic. All too often crafters get caught up with only making and selling the highest-level items within their professions. This results in fierce competition and can be discouraging. Overlooked are lower-level niche items like an Engineer’s Gyrochronatom (used for, amongst other things, a Badlands quest) or an Alchemist’s Frost Oil, which is used in two quests and the crafting of several non-alchemy items.
Slash Nerf: Some dont choose a main profession and just gather herbs and mine nodes. Is this a good move to make gold?
Jederus: This is a fantastic move to make gold. Focusing on straight farming skills actually increases your money in two ways. The obvious way is that you are now able to gather twice as many items as you normally would. The less obvious way this specialization makes gold is that you are no longer spending gold for recipes and recipe training, crafting materials and junk items to skill up. So, you are both making more and saving more. Unless you’re going to work hard to find your unique niche in crafting, farming is the way to go speaking in a strictly profit sense.
Slash Nerf: Here at Slash Nerf I like to start a trend with knowing what "Nerf" you like to see either in or out of game! So all bets are off here. What Nerf if you got 1 would you ask for?
Jederus & WoWenomics team: Hmmm, I put this one to the WoWenomics team and there were all sorts of ideas flying around: nerf the official WoW forums, nerf commercials, nerf bosses and work in general, nerf the prices at Starbucks. However, after much heated discussion, I think we came to agree that family aggro during our play time was the one thing most in need of a nerf (just don’t tell the wife okay?).
I like to thank the entire WoWenomics crew and Jederus for taking the time to answer. They are no doubt one of the top if not the top provider of WoW gold and economy info out there. So go check them out! Happy farming!
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