Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsGold Capped: Patch 4.1 and Maelstrom Crystals
by Basil Berntsen 
Mar 28th 2011 at 5:00PM
Is the sky falling? Will patch 4.1 herald the end of the high price for Maelstrom Crystals? The informal communication channels between auctioneers (sharing market analyses with each other in IRC and custom channels or tells in game and on gold blogs) have been abuzz with the frantic analysis that patch 4.1 will drive the price of Maelstroms down to ridiculously low amounts. Personally, I'm not sure I'd blindly buy that.
Buy it? Really?
Okay, I'll stop. But I don't believe that the price move will be as dramatic as is being forecasted, for a few reasons. Firstly, and this can't be overstated: Since everyone thinks it's going to happen, they're all dumping their stock now trying to get their money in before the crash. This has already moved the market quite low and often the effects of this type of speculation will be stronger than the event itself.
Speaking of which, let's take two steps back and look more closely at the facts behind this conclusion. Patch 4.1 will contain a new 5-man dungeon that drops epic loot, and Maelstroms will be available for 3,750 honor or justice points, the same way you can get other valuable trade goods on the live realms. There was some question about "can not be disenchanted" tooltips on the new epics, but I can confirm that on the PTR itself, all the new 5-man epics can be disenchanted and have no such tooltip.
We auctioneers have long memories
In one of the patches in Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard introduced normal 5-mans that dropped epic loot. This took the price for the equivalent crystal down by a factor of 10 or more on most realms, as anyone who wanted fast easy gold could farm up hundreds of these by chain-running heroics for a few hours. Anyone who had stocked up on mats took a loss, and all the scrolls that people had made became worth much less.
Everyone remembers this and expects Blizzard to repeat itself. Honestly, I suspect that we're being a bit presumptuous in assuming that everything will happen the same way this expansion. I am not a gambling man, and making that assumption is a serious bet. The Trial of the Champion instance was remarkably short and boss-heavy; it had no proper trash, and the drops per hour were much higher than our new 5-mans will be.
Buffering
One thing's for sure: As the price for these crystals decreases, the number being bought will go up. In order for the price to hit some crazy-low price like, for example, 300g each, there would have to be a massive exponential increase to the number being created. The reality is that as the new stock forced people to undercut more heavily to sell their crystals, the best-in-slot enchants would become more and more obtainable to more players, who would snap up reasonably priced stock.
This buffering effect will prevent the price for crystals from plummeting too far.
WoW bubble 4.0
The other sure thing about the economy is that inflation will continue. A rising tide lifts all boats, and the prices for everything are going to continue to go up as the average amount of money you'd find on a player goes up. Let's take a second to define this. Inflation is the increase of the amount of gold available to the playerbase. If you were to go add up all the gold on each player and each guild bank today and compare it to that number from this point in the last expansion, you'd see that it's considerably higher now than it was then.
This is for a few reasons. The organic ones are natural and intended: First, monsters drop more money at level 85. Second, there are more players now than there were then who are looting more monsters. Third, quests reward a lot more money in this expansion. Fourth, a significant portion of players are in a guild with access to the Cash Flow perk.
The possibly unintended, but definitely significant, source of inflation is that right now, 90% of the value of every stack of Obsidium Ore mined will end up coming from a vendor. If all products made out of raw ore had to be sold to players, it would be worth a lot less. As it is, you don't have to undercut to sell 900 cut green gems to a vendor, and all that money you just got didn't make anyone else have to lose any purchasing power.
Sure, there are new gold sinks. Repair costs are higher, and the new vanity mounts cost more than ever. Still, in a couple of months, there will be a significant portion of the population that has access to less expensive, vendor-bought goods for any vendor-based gold sinks. These gold sinks will slow inflation, but they don't balance it.
A rising tide ...
The point is that while Maelstroms will become easier to obtain, the price for everything is going up and will continue to go up as the economy inflates. Combine that with the fact that there's a lot of pent-up potential demand for Maelstroms for BiS enchants normally passed over by players right now due to cost, and I don't see the prices free-falling. They will probably go down, but not to the level they were when we could manufacture them with farmable mats.
All that said, prices for this type of good are supposed to trend downward as the expansion chugs along. More raid drops are sharded, people have more points to throw away, and eventually, it should all settle down to some sort of equilibrium. I'm not betting that they'll go up (at least not right away), but I certainly don't think they'll lose so much of their value that it's worth fire-selling what you have now.
Maximize your profits with more advice from Gold Capped as well as the author's Call to Auction podcast. Do you have questions about selling, reselling and building your financial empire on the auction house? Basil is taking your questions at basil@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Sky Mar 29th 2011 12:35AM
I would like to add two more things that I think you forgot to mention:
-ToC did give out epics, but the average player who specifically queued for ToC rolled on the items to equip them and the shards came from people who did not need the gear and are just doing ToC because they got it in their random heroic. So theoretically, if 100 people did their daily random heroic they had a 1/11 chance so roughly 9 out of 100 people got access to the easy shards.
However, when ZG/ZA comes out players will have the option to queue for a 'random tier 2 heroic'. Assuming players are rational, players who are geared enough would do random tier 2 heroics instead of tier 1 heroics. So theoretically, if 20 out of 100 people are geared enough to do tier 2 heroics, 20 out of 100 people will get access to free shards.
Tl;dr: the addition of tier 2 heroics will increase the supply of shards more than ToC did.
-Another point I wanted to make is that since JP vendors are going to sell crystals, the price of crystals will 'converge' with the price of the other mats. For simplicity's sake let's assume there are no transaction costs. If the price of a stack of elementium ore is 50g, then the price of a maelstrom crystal would converge to roughly the equivalent of 4 stacks of elementium or 200g. If this was not true (say Maelstrom crystals were 400g), then people who want ore would buy crystals, sell them in the market and buy the amount of ore they need and make a profit. The more crystals people buy from JP vendors, and sell in the player market, the more the price drops. Obviously this assumes that everyone is a rational and optimizing individual (which is not true in WoW and real life) so prices will not totally converge, but converge nonetheless.
Zetliam Mar 29th 2011 1:50AM
He specifically mentioned running normals for toc. Those also dropped epics. Those could be chained since there is no lockout requirement on the normal 5mans.
On your second point, there were "vendor methods" in wrath to get things in the past and it didnt destroy the market. I dont think that it will be nearly as bad this time around either. They set it to a fair value (which is higher than it was in wrath) and it should stay pretty ballanced. I think the only reason we dont see Gems on the vendors is because they are waiting until the release of the epic gems. They held off on puting the crystals on vendor until they were equally as easy to get from dungeons.
Saeadame Mar 29th 2011 6:17AM
The thing about ToC is theoretically true, but you also have to remember that the gear people want to equip doesn't always drop. Maybe a piece of caster mail drops. No Shaman? It's getting D/E'd, even in groups where people specific queued. Also, not all the items a person wants drop in the same run. So you might already have Awesome ToC Trinket, but you still need Awesome ToC Weapon. If the trinket drops for you again in another run, and no one else needs it, it's getting sharded too.
The same will happen in ZA/ZG - things will drop that no one in the group needs or no one in the group can use, and so even though they're there for upgrades, they will be gaining some Maelstrom crystals.
Anyway, I think what Basil says still applies. You could run reg ToC from dawn until dusk trying to get upgrades, but inevitably you would be sharding a great deal of the items because not everything that drops is useful. The instance is very short, and there is (virtually) no trash, so even people running for upgrades would be gaining quite a few shards. On the other hand, ZA/ZG, particularly for people who need the instance for upgrades, will take much longer, so the return for those running for upgrades will be much less than it was for ToC in terms of epic enchanting materials per hour. So I think the numbers would relatively balance out in that way. I remember running through ToC and sharding at least half the items even when I needed the gear, so I suspect other groups were somewhat the same.
As for the converging point, I think that since those other items won't change based on the price of maelstorm crystals (because, obviously, it's much faster to farm ore/herbs than it is to run a bunch of heroics to buy them for JP), I'm not so sure the price of the crystals would change much based on the price of the other things. I think supply and price of Maelstroms will still largely depend on people running the new heroics or raiding (and, on that note, some raiders don't even do heroics, so they're not accumulating any JP at all). It would take killing between 48 and 53 heroic bosses (depending on what guild perks you have) to be able to buy one Maelstrom crystal off the JP vendor. In that amount of time, most people (assuming they're running the new bosses) will have probably gotten AT LEAST 5 crystals (just from my experiences with ToC - about half the drops will be sharded, so about 25 shards, split between the 5 people in the group) just from bad luck with loot drops that no one wants. Adding one more crystal from the vendor certainly makes some difference, but I don't think it's that much.
Plus, there's more incentives than just Maelstroms for overgeared people to run the new dungeons. The VP return in those dungeons is higher, and you can reach your random dungeon VP cap from just doing 7 ZA/ZG randoms, where as it would take you more than 7 dungeons if you mixed it in with a few of the tier 1 heroics. And people WILL keep wanting VP, for buying and selling the BoE boots if nothing else.
qitsyoj45 Mar 29th 2011 7:01AM
JP are now a very interesting currency and it may be that the JP/VP system is a notable legacy of Cataclysm era WoW that we some day can't imagine being without, like the introduction of map makers for quest objectives or the daily quest concept from earlier upgrades.
At first, JP are precious. Someone with their first level 83 toon would no sooner trade JP for mere herbs or ore than voluntarily jump off Dalaran. But as they approach the 4000 cap more JP seem less valuable, because you can't keep them.
Then JP shift from precious to merely valuable as you gear up. You're buying BiS items for some slots, then maybe second and third choices until you get a drop you want, then maybe some offspec gear or heirlooms, most players will find something they want for a while, but gradually it's less and less important. That level 13 goblin will probably do OK without an heirloom weapon for a while.
At last JP are useless for gear. This is the point where you are happy to see Rajh or some similar end boss as you materialise into a daily PuG because you'll get your VP in less time and don't care about JP. Probably less than 10% of Cataclysm players have reached this point on even one character. These are the players for whom the JP -> trade goods option is intended.
But then the real twist happens, at a tier upgrade better gear appears for JP. JP that were almost worthless to you a few days previous are now suitable for buying what was once some of the best gear in the game.
This decidedly non-linear value of JP is a really good thing in my opinion. And it makes attempting to set a "price" based on JP trade goods fairly nonsensical, each player will value JP differently.
Feezee Mar 29th 2011 5:18AM
Another reason for the low prices of Abyss Crystals early on in WOTLK was Naxx. It was out for ages and very easy, so there was a good number of epic items that could get DE'd. The raids in Cata are much more difficult and there are much fewer drops.
Puntable Mar 29th 2011 10:28AM
I think everyone is underestimating the number of characters that are "done" with heroics (they don't need any drops from it), and are not raiding. They will be doing nothing but running ZA and ZG over and over and over, until they are "done" again.
Elvgren Mar 29th 2011 12:09PM
It's just utterly insane that Bliz lets an enchant RECIPE go for the equivalent of 25K. They put no effort into any sort of profession balancing at all, and left a gaping whole for the AH parasites again.
They need to eliminate the ability to corner a market, balance the pricing/eliminate the AH or they need to make bank alts a separate class and lock them into PvP with NO faction so anyone can just hunt them to extinction.
They REALLY need to just make you guys your own game and let you have your fun without impacting mine, and vice versa. I am not saying you shouldn't have your fun ... you just shouldn't be able to turn my game time into grind time because you can afford to stand around the AH all day.
Here's to the crash and burn of every "market" in the game. It can mimic real life even more! You to can profit and contribute nothing but a faster pace to the next collapse.