WoW: The economic game - a rant

I posted this on Klepsakovic's blog then I decided it might be of general interest. hadn't had a good rant for a while :-)

Ah but what's a "decent bit?"

Take Saronite. If it's over-farmed then the price drops to vendor price. Is the vendor price not a decent price? 25g for a stack of something you found for free while doing something else?

If you want to craft that Saronite into armour or whatever you need to follow market economics. Blacksmithing has always been a very badly designed profession from an economic point of view.

Apart from a few hot items like Truesteel everything on your recipe list is useless once you have skilled up. The value of things like Runed Copper Bracers is to skill up or to make one for yourself if you're a lowbie alt.

If people flood the market with the few good sellers (eg belt buckles) then it's bad for casually trading Blacksmiths but the casual guy didn't become a Blacksmith to make money. He picked it for the socket.

WoW has a terrible economy. It's always had a terrible economy. The only way it would not have a terrible economy is if people needed crafted gear for raids and top level pvp AND if gear gets destroyed. Those in turn are terrible choices to make when designing a game for raiding.

What interest there is to be had in WoW's economy is now being appropriated by hardcore players. Where once no one cared about gold now hitting the gold cap is a thing to brag about.

This really isn't any different from other areas of the game where hardcore players dominate. Hardcore pvpers win arena. Hardcore raiders dominate raiding.

The only reason this is a development is because it's a side of the game which was always trivial.

And you know what?

It still is trivial.

So if you're mainly a raider and you can no longer sell belt buckles just run a few dailies. Or grind some eternal fire in WG.

If you grind it you'll notice how little gold you actually need in the game - there's nothing to buy except fluff.