Crafting: Shake your lack of moneymaker
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
May 28th 2007 at 2:25PM
I've been noticing a disturbing trend on the Professions Forum lately. Basically, whenever anyone asks what professions they should take, or whether crafting jobs like jewelcrafting and enchanting are worth it to level, posters advise them to pick up mining and herbalism or mining and skinning instead. The consensus seems to be that professions are only worth it for the BOP items, or for the few people on a server who get a rare enchanting/JC/other pattern. Everything else (except the easy-to-level alchemy) is a "money sink."
This saddens me. I enjoy crafting a lot, and the fact that my prot pally would be essentially throwing money down a black hole by doing jewelcrafting or enchanting or blacksmithing makes me feel that something is fundamentally wrong. Crafting just for the tailoring or blacksmithing BOPs, good as they may be, feels like getting a job just so you can steal office supplies and have health insurance.
The professions forum has a pretty interesting thread going about crafting, opportunity costs, and why raw mats sell for more than the finished product. It seems that most people want to keep professions from being money sinks, but the laws of supply and demand are weighing heavily on crafters (i.e. if everyone can do an enchant, that enchant will be cheap.) Do you have any ideas on how to make crafting more profitable? Or are the BOP items/enchants enough for you?
Filed under: Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Engineering, Leatherworking, Tailoring, Enchanting, Analysis / Opinion, Jewelcrafting, Making money
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Dipstick May 28th 2007 2:43PM
Jewelcrafting: Prospecting stacks of ore you mine (or buy from the AH) and then sell the gems for stupidly high prices. Of course this depends on what server you're on - on my server at the moment Star of Elunes are worth 80g+ due to the huge demand with arenas.
Nightseyes, Living Rubies and to a lesser extent Noble Topazes also sell well - leaving you with the 'crappy gems' Dawnstones and Talasites which are rejected by most people :P
I thought the prices would have dropped after the patch, but they seem to have increased instead - at least on my server.
Tinu May 28th 2007 2:49PM
Take Herbalism/Mining at same time.Pure gold.No recipe-no craft.
Pingmeister May 28th 2007 3:09PM
I agree it's a bit heart-breaking that MMO's (in general) seem to populate their world with so much great loot that it makes crafting unnecessary.
Crafting is quite a time/money sink and it would be nice if there was an actual reward for it other than people thinking you're insane.
Dirtyboy May 28th 2007 3:18PM
They completely nerfed alchemy with 2.1 to cater to the raiders. While I realize the devs are trying to not make the raid encounters not so reliant on potions/elixirs/flasks, why change a profession so people don't want to do it anymore? Maybe they need to make the alchemy more like Oblivion where you could craft your own custom brews.
Hey, a beermaker, now THAT would be a money making profession...
Michael May 28th 2007 3:29PM
The problem fairly simple, and Blizzard needs to hire an ecnomist, because they don't seem to understand it. Every profession is using shared items with one, or more professions.
I'll give the easiest example; all the professions take primals, so you could craft an item with a primal, and it'd only be useful to that specific profession, or you could sell the primal as a viable item to people of all professions. The raw materials have greater value than the finished goods in the WoW economy because the raw materials are shared and highly liquid.
A possible solution would be to create non-shared crafting items (used only by a single profession), give people an increased incentive to post them on the AH (make it easier, have an item description so people know what they are holding, reduce or eliminate fees for posting raw trade goods), and possibly allow people to pick up corresponding professions for free (jewelcrafters, blacksmiths, and engineers automatically get mining).
Areis May 28th 2007 3:38PM
1.) Make gathering of all items to be a secondary profession - i.e. everyone can gather everything. Keep the skill system though.
2.) Introduce an actual element of skill and chance into crafting. Use counterspells for when things go wrong. EQ2 comes to mind, but not as endlessly long or complex.
3.) Increase the buffs / stats from crafted items
Lori May 28th 2007 4:26PM
Mostly people say prices are a matter of supply and demand without analysing what drives supply and demand. I and I know of others that are Alchemy/Herbing to supply themselves, alts and the guild with pots. Sounds good but it means that I and guildies must put in farming time to gather mats, some of which are dufficult to find. Time we would rather spend raiding while others do the gathering (supplying) then we buy the mats (demanding) from the AH with gold we get from questing and selling drops. So, the cost of herbs on the AH goes up but the cost of pots does not since we are making our own. This is one example.
I agree with @5 about the economist if Blizz really wants to help out crafting. And they may need to dynamically adjust the amount of mats available to keep the value of crafted items higher than the cost of the mats. But then gatherers might be unhappy.
There probably need to be more craftable items that have nothing comparable available otherwise. The riding crop is a good example.
@6 Item one would really increase the supply while I assume three is intended to make crafted items better, more desireable than drops. Why not completely eliminate gear drops, to be replaced with mat drops so all gear needs to come from crafting. A really radical change.
Annar May 29th 2007 1:20PM
Why doesn't blizzard add more "crafting skill only" unique items like master weaponsmiths weapons (lets face it, they are damn good).
This way being a crafter actually makes sense otherwise than just money.
tom May 28th 2007 4:59PM
Wild idea: allow a third profession, that cannot be a gathering one. Problem: one more profession to level may be a bit much for most, so it wouldn't be used.
Lame idea: allow only one gathering profession at a time. May drive prices up by lowering supplies of raw mats even more.
Removing BOP may be a solution, but then most people would get the same stuff.
Why not implement something like "A brings the mats to B that crafts an item that is only available for B (so BOP) and A (that would be BOG for Bind on Gather)??
Hmm, I like that.
Dave May 28th 2007 5:59PM
The reason that the vast majority of crafted stuff sells for less than the materials is that (especially on older servers) the game has progressed to the point where very few recipes are generally difficult to make. -Most- people with a significant amount of money to spend and are a high enough level to use them either can make or know someone who can make Super Healing Potions. By turning my herbs into the potions, I'm not really adding any value, since the vast majority of those in the market for the potions can get a guildmate or alt to do it for very little effort. The herbs are -more- valuable as herbs than as potions because they can be used to make other potions instead, they can be used to skill up alchemy, and when you make potions yourself, you have a (small) chance of getting a discovery recipe.
wowinsider.qsh May 28th 2007 6:10PM
Except for vigrin servers where no 70's exist, there's simply a much higher demand on endgame crafts than anywhere else. People don't care about the mid-level items because players level out of the gear fast, and they desire instance blues more. For any player leveling the money provided by a dual-gathering setup simply outweighs any items they could craft and use. It's simply easier to make a little "fast cash" while leveling, buy a few pieces of gear as you go, and then at 70, when all is said and done, turn around and level up a production craft for those useful endgame items.
I see it less as "supply and demand" and more a matter of "planned obsolescence"... those mid range items just aren't useful for long enough.
EWLameijer May 30th 2007 8:11AM
Interesting questions and interesting answers.
Of course be aware that economists tend to live in "perfect worlds", with infinite supply and demand, total information and purely rational choices. And those assumptions are not really valid in the real world, and not even in World of Warcraft.
It gets a bit boring to explain how to earn money with crafting, since lots of people stand ready with formulas and diagrams to prove that you can't make money. Still, I have found that crafting can consistently make money, be it that it often requires some investment and thinking (and investment is not so stupid as you may think, since in WoW you don't get interest over your gold by keeping it in the bank). Some things work since WoW is "not perfect". For example, tigerseye today on my server sold for about 2s50c to 1g each. It may be obvious that the rare uninformed persons and occasional underbidding make it possible to buy materials very cheaply - though in most cases I am of course outbid.
Second, often there is very limited supply of items - if you are the only one with a certain item on the AH, it can sell at higher prices than would be "reasonable" since most people rather pay a slightly-higher-than-theoretically-reasonable price now than having to make 5 trips to the AH in as many days to get their items slightly cheaper.
Third, yes, world drops are often better, but well-competing world drops are not always on the AH.
Yes, it is true that guildies can make items for "free" - however, in my guild not many people go through the trouble of looking up all recipes and the mats and see which are useful for them.
In a perfect world it may be impossible to make money with crafting recipes. Fortunately for crafters, World of Warcraft is not perfect. If there should be a complaint, it is that it is not extremely easy to do so, as it costs time (AH browsing), calculations and dedication to make it work. Pick two gathering professions and live simply and happily. Crafting professions take a bit more brainwork, probably that is why most people don't make much money with it. Let those who can't make money feel free to hide behind formulas and calculations and theories. For me personally, it's the practice that counts, and if it does not fit the theory, too bad for the theory.
Unregistered May 28th 2007 10:03PM
stop wow farming!
cut out the farmers. make mats vendored and only saleable to prof people who can use it, and are bind on pickup.
if blizzard likes, situate these vendors within instances of appropriate levels just to make then crafters do a little more work getting there.
ErsatzPotato May 29th 2007 8:24AM
Ten blacksmiths easily eat the output of their own mining plus that of another fifty miners. Short of extreme measures [below] materials will be more valuable than the stuff every crafter makes from them.
There are three ways to make crafting in an MMORPG profitable.
1) Make gathering the required materials craft specific. The tightened restrictions on disenchanting are a mild example.
2) Make crafting the class: you're not a warrior who smiths you are a smith period. That's your class. You stand in town and make and sell stuff and get knocked over if hit by a rat if you leave town.
3) Make the abilities needed to craft specific things so fantastically rare or difficult to get that only a few can make them and the rest all ditch crafting. WoW already does some of this. It's called getting very high end (in addition to maxed skill) jewel crafting and enchanting.
All three of those have lots of problems.
In WoW, where any player can make five characters and slap crafting professions on each one, there's no possible way short of slapping BOP on everything in sight (#1) to make crafted be worth more than materials. Ten blacksmiths easily eat the output of their own ten mining professions plus that of another fifty miners.
They're doing a pretty good job in my opinion. Others can't DE your soulbound quest items, nether being BOP for BOE crafted epics, etc. Don't think there is a way to do what the blogger desires without making it an entirely different MMO.
ErsatzPotato May 29th 2007 8:24AM
"Wild idea: allow a third profession, that cannot be a gathering one. Problem: one more profession to level may be a bit much for most, so it wouldn't be used."
You've inverted the pyramid: it takes multiple gatherers to supply a single crafting profession. Leveling crafting professions is the biggest reason why mats are worth more than crafted items.
Sylythn May 29th 2007 10:52AM
The other issue I see with crafting professions is that the market value of raw materials are well-known and documented for the average player to see. How many times have you decided how much a toy is worth based on the market value of the petroleum used to make the resin? Raw costs are hidden to us in the real world, so marketing and perceived value rule. There is no perceived value when you know outright the exact value of the item. So even if you manage to craft something great - good luck doing more than breaking even on its sale.
Now there's some hope - Nethers have to be obtained by the crafter, so BOE items that require Nethers can and will sell for far more than their mat costs. What surprises me is that with all the advice to pick up gathering professions for the money - why aren't we seeing a flood of raw materials and thus a lowering of prices? I don't think there's all that many people actually taking the advice...and it heavily skews that the more 70's on a server, the less the gathering professions as many people switch to crafting.
Armath May 29th 2007 12:09PM
I think part of the problem is that the selling of crafted goods is very different from the selling of the materials.
If you put a stack of copper ore in the AH, there deposit amount is trivial. But if you put something you crafted there, the deposit amount may be half or more of what you would get selling it to a vendor, so if it doesn't sell in the AH, you've just lost over half it's remaining value.
Another problem is the disconnect between the buyers and the sellers of crafted items. I'd like to see a way for people to put an offer for a crafted item into the AH (or something like an AH), where you would 'buy' the offer with the item. Of course, that would probably increase the demand for low-level mats even further.
Coherent May 29th 2007 3:05PM
Tradeskills ARE a waste of time currently. They're basically roleplaying devices. Tradeskills were thrown last-minute into the game, they've never been particularly balanced or particularly useful, and they offer only token gameplay elements (hardly any quests interact with tradeskills, and even then only in the simplest of ways: bring me a shrubbery! bring me XXX, and YYY!
A LOT of the gameplay elements are like that; they clearly only added them in the final stages of game design, so none of the ordinary quest elements rely on them except in the most basic and primitive way.
To make tradeskills more entertaining, they would have to add on quests at all levels that allow you to work towards a range of optional endgame abilities or roles, like building a powerful and lethal permanent pet or attaining an exalted ability unique to that tradeskill.
Jellodyne May 29th 2007 5:37PM
The reason mats are as much or more than finished goods --
1. Mats are more flexible -- the same stack of thorium bars can become that thing I want, instead of that thing you guessed I wanted so you made. Or the mat could be used by some other craft profession entirely.
2. There's no shortage of talent to make stuff -- even the smallest of guilds is going to have a distribution of tradeskills, so if you need something made and can get the mats the crafting is 'free.'
3. People level their crafting making things, which is value added to them. Which is to say, when you make something with mats, you remove some of the value from the mats.
That said, what sort of fun is grinding mats to sell? Sure you make gold, but the reason nobody does it is because it's lame. Crafting is fun and useful to your friends.
Byron May 29th 2007 6:59PM
#10 hit the nail on the head - when leveling to 70, go with two gathering professions, make money, buy bigger bags and the occasional gear upgrade when you really need it. Then, at 70, and only then, retrain one or more crafting professions for the end-game BoP purples. Good stuff for melee in Blacksmithing, decent stuff for Hunters in Engineering, etc.