Some of that is likely true - especially less supply because of less active players, but I've spent a lot of time farming even though I don't need to - sometimes gathering can be a fun quite way to spend down time IMO. If I'm in the mood for it, I might farm ore for a few hours some days while watching movies etc. Not really the way I'm getting rich, but just something to do sometimes.

I can attest to that for myself at least, partly because I get easily bored from flying around collecting herbs and such. I find I collect much more when I'm doing many other tasks at the same time, namely leveling. I make so much more money leveling a toon than playing a high level one (yes I know that's not optimal, but it's what I can stand.) Even that form of moneymaking has diminished as I'm logging in less, finding other things to do before Cataclysm.

I can say with certainty that there are 10+ serious, dedicated, multi-toon botters on my server who supplied a large percentage of the raw materials you used see in the AH.

@Graylo
If you ever did any research in WoW bots, you'd find that there's a large community of users who share and exchange ideas on how to bot and beat the system. For the average user, setting up a bot to work effectively isn't trivial, but there are plenty of savvy players that can manage this easily.

If you had been on my realm for the first 5 months of this year, you would've been amazed by the number of bots I saw in the Basin. And these bots were there constantly, 24x7. I had them on my friends list and reported them repeatedly. I continue to farm my herbs the old fashioned way, and while it literally took several months for Blizzard to finally take action, I am pleased that these cheaters are gone.

I purchased almost 6000 stacks of herbs around 2g each the week before the Warden upgrade - half of which was Goldclover, of all things. There would be hundreds of stacks in the AH every morning, and there would be hundreds more waiting for me when I got home form work. It was so surreal, I started to think the AH was bugged.

Since the Warden upgrade, nothing.

Not only do the botfarmers distort the ability of the crafters to produce massive quantities of goods, the low prices make it pointless for regular players to go farming on their own. Many gatherers dropped their useless professions and picked up cheap crafting professions for the double stat buffs, and this is why we are seeing a shortage today. If the bots stay gone, prices will rise until they're high enough to convince people to pick up gathering skills again and go farming. Maybe then we will finally see what the true marketplace will look like once our costs aren't twisted by the infinite amounts of vendor-priced raw materials.

My brother in law works security at an art college and he will take his laptop and just fly circlearound the basin mining and extracting. He generally averaged 20-30 stacks or saronite, 2-5 stacks of titanium and numbers stacks of elementals in 1-2 hours. He did this because if he ever had to immediately walk away he could but if he didn't have to go anywhere it was just a farm day. I am sure there are others out there like him.

I am not saying there aren't/weren't bots out there too, but there are some people that do actually farm.

The catch with him is that he cancelled his account two months ago due to boredom with content, theoretically waiting for cata. Though now he will be in afganistan this fall and may miss th xpac release and not come back tithe game.

I happen to be one of the (apparently) few real farmers out there, and I have to agree.. this *IS* a golden age of farming. At least utill the bots find a way around the new warden. *runs out the farm as much cobalt as she can*