Gold Capped: What we didn't learn at BlizzCon

Honest, guys, I tried my best. I was there at BlizzCon 2011. I got up and in line at the Q&A panels, determined to ask the Blizzard development team questions about the game's economy.
Ultimately, I was foiled by a bunch of dudes who wasted our time offering shout-outs to their guild (and by my own poor planning of not getting in line two hours before the panel started). But I digress. The fact of the matter is that there's a lot of stuff wrong with the World of Warcraft economy and Auction House. Issues that need to be addressed in the next expansion to promote a fair and level playing field, something WoW has lacked ... well, something the game has lacked for years.
So, if I did get the chance to stand up and ask a question of a Q&A panel, what would it have been? Well, after I wasted everyone's time thanking you, the readers (Booooo! No one cares about the readers! Booooooooooooooooo!), I'd have asked one of these three.
Fix the damn thing already
Since the new Pet Battle system will result in more players using the Auction House, are there any plans to improve the default Auction House user interface?
Simply put, if you're using the default UI, you are at a severe disadvantage against those who use add-ons. It's true, regardless of whether you're buying or selling.
At the very least, we need some basic sorting options that are sorely missing at the moment. We need an ability to search by price per unit to quickly find the best-priced items, even if they're listed in unusual quantities. We need an Auction House that consolidates identical listings. (That is, if someone lists 200 pieces of Whiptail one at a time, all at 2g a piece, the auction house should consolidate these on a single line so that buyers don't need to click through 10 pages of nuisance auctions.) We need an ability to quickly buy multiple auctions. We need, essentially, everything that Auctionator does that makes it a must-have addon.
Think it can't happen? World of Warcraft frequently takes popular must-have addons and integrates them into the game. It happened with Quest Helper. Heck, Blizzard is even working to include most of WoWhead into the game, including boss strategies.
This change is long overdue.
New dailies?
Think it can't happen? World of Warcraft frequently takes popular must-have addons and integrates them into the game. It happened with Quest Helper. Heck, Blizzard is even working to include most of WoWhead into the game, including boss strategies.
This change is long overdue.
New dailies?
Can we expect to see any new profession-specific dailies in Mists of Pandaria?
I will admit, I don't always do my cooking, fishing, and jewelcrafting dailies. Still, I'd argue that they're a huge success. Jewelcrafting dailies make the profession feel more fun. They're not required to make money; they just create an alternate route for doing so. In fact, I'd love to see Blizzard take the next step with jewelcrafting dailies in patch 5.0 by having them award skill-ups on completion like the cooking and fishing dailies. And further, I'd love to see other professions get dailies as well.
How could this work? Well, instead of having players grind through to Twilight Highlands to access those few initial epic recipes or patterns, have players complete a week's worth of dailies. This will eliminate the urge to be the first to level 90 and [Your Profession Here] 600, giving those auctioneers with a life the ability to compete (somewhat) with those who spend the first 30 hours of a new expansion playing non-stop without bathroom breaks. Yikes.
The new dailies could behave similarly to jewelcrafting dailies. Tailors and leatherworkers could have to create garments or find a special type of quest-only cloth/leather. Scribes could be asked to perform a quest similar to the one offered by their Forged Documents item. Herbalists might be asked to perform their skill on certain quest mobs or gather certain quantities of weeds growing around Stormwind or Orgrimmar. These quests would give players a terrific new route to leveling their professions (especially those poor leatherworkers stuck on low-population servers), give level-capped players something to do, and give Blizzard another opportunity to do what it does best: be creative.
... and finally ...
Can you please, please, please fix leatherworking?
Pretty please?
... and finally ...
Can you please, please, please fix leatherworking?
Pretty please?
Filed under: Economy, BlizzCon, Gold Capped, Mists of Pandaria






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Thiron Nov 4th 2011 5:42PM
Wait, how are jewelcrafting dailies NOT required to make any decent money from JC?
PeeWee Nov 4th 2011 6:26PM
The system with only having daily quests to get tokens for recipes must be the worst system ever. -.-
Pfooti Nov 4th 2011 6:33PM
All you need to do is shuffle, man. Keep on shufflin'. Every day, I'm shufflin' the shuffle.
CVSoprano Nov 5th 2011 12:41AM
While it doesn't have a token currency, the ability to learn the breadth of the Inscription trade is limited by daily cooldowns on Minor and Northrend Inscription Research. I think you can powerlevel everything else in a day, if you have the raw mats.
rayden54 Nov 5th 2011 1:02PM
@PeeWee
Here here.
Mackenzie Nov 6th 2011 9:45AM
Actually, the worst system is Tailoring, where you have to use high end mats to get patterns. At least you don't lose high end mats doing JC dailies. Seriously, x-amount dreamcloth for a pattern?
Even worse when it was enchanting and Maelstrom crystals were insanely hard to obtain.
Blayze Nov 4th 2011 5:43PM
All I want is the ability to make warpaint from orc blood. D:
Noyou Nov 4th 2011 5:44PM
I am all for profession dailies. Not as an alternative to leveling, but throw us 5-7 skill ups a week please. (note-if the weekly quests from dark moon faire are repeatable, this would solve that aspect totally) Nothing was more frustrating in the beginning of cata than having to use the same stones we needed to level on our JC daily in 3's and not get anything back. Yeah, I know, boo hoo for jewelers. You are dead on with leatherworking too. I am leveling my second LW on my secondary server. Now, they went back and made certain glyphs award 3 skill up for inscription but for LW there are designs that take some crazy mats and all you get is one. Another thing I wish they would do is a) bake the gathering profession into the crafting one, or b) let us get a 3rd profession. I wouldn't even mind it being on a weekly CD with a swap out.
As far as the AH UI, I feel it's fine for the casual user. I would allow a bonus for bulk listings to the tune of making the AH cut maybe 2% vs the 5%. That would probably be enough to stop the unnecessary single portions.
llcjay2003 Nov 4th 2011 8:02PM
"I would allow a bonus for bulk listings to the tune of making the AH cut maybe 2% vs the 5%. That would probably be enough to stop the unnecessary single portions."
I really like that idea. A lot.
Ruth Nov 5th 2011 6:59AM
The AH cut idea won't work. There are too many items, crafted and otherwise, that can stack to ridiculous levels, but nobody wants/needs more than a handful at a time. Also, how would you measure it? Larger stacks benefit from a smaller cut? What about full stacks compared to half stacks compared to single items? What about items that cannot stack? Are they shafted with the full AH cut? There are too many variables for too many items. The 5% was a flat fee regardless of the quality/quantity of the item.
Besides, who can buy 400 whiptail individually quicker than they can scan through the AH for 20 full stacks of it instead? Only people who use AH addons. So it's not really killing the 'casual' AH user. It's taking everyone longer to find what they want.
velutina Nov 5th 2011 12:02PM
I'm totally for having gathering consolidated with the crafting profession. This isn't necessarily the same thing as having all blacksmiths and jewelcrafters having the mining skill. Back in the day, engineers could use a Zapthrottle Mote Extractor, regardless of what your other profession was. Now, the Electrostatic Condenser is only useful if you're a miner, skinner, or herbalist. What if jewelcrafters could prospect ore in the field, directly from the ore node, instead of mining? I think the game is old enough now that the gathering professions aren't as attractive as they once were. Why should there be incentives for what is essentially a boring activity. In Vanilla WoW the gathering professions were for making money. Now we have lots of alternatives -- crafting, daily quests, etc. Another solution would be to have the gathering skills be secondary like cooking and fishing. Anyone could mine, skin, and gather herbs. Would that really break the game?
The LW problem is really more of a skinning problem as I see it. It's not that there are too few skills ups in LW. It's that it takes too many leather -- meaning that it takes too long to gather that many leathers. My second leather worker is 478 at the moment. I have to kill and skin 50 mobs to get one pristine hide?!
I agree with one of the other commenters that complained about old patterns being unavailable. Would it break the game to put them on a vendor in out-of-the way place?
Thiron Nov 4th 2011 5:44PM
Also, I'm a Leatherworker from low-pop server and I approve of this message.
Remember when Deepholm bats were skinnable? I was sure it was intended back then, to make LW mats farming on par with others...
techvoodooguy Nov 4th 2011 5:47PM
"Can you please, please, please fix leatherworking?"
+∞
I levelled LW from scratch on a new Goblin Shaman and I swear that I will /never/ do it again. If I move to a new server and suddenly need a LW I will pay to have that toon transferred (which is something that I never do because I enjoy levelling) rather than level LW again. The amount of leather needed is simply ridiculous, especially considering how much less we're collected bear asses. Nowadays, the quest currency of choice is /el numero/.
Raposa Nov 4th 2011 5:53PM
did you say we should grow weed in stormwind and org? cool
Carune Nov 4th 2011 6:04PM
Not weed, but rather "herbs".
Revnah Nov 4th 2011 5:53PM
Thank you, Fox, because that last question is what I've been wishing anyone would ask at the panels, as I sat here at the computer, broke and half a world away! Maybe you should make it the first question? In double bold and larger font? Because maybe, just MAYBE Blizz will see it? :-D
Hey, a priest can hope.
Schadenfreude Nov 4th 2011 5:55PM
One thing I would really like to see is a kind of reverse auction house-- currently, sellers list what they have and buyers sort through the listings. But what if you want something that isn't there? All you can do is check repeatedly, post on your realm forums and hope to get read amidst the trolls, etc.
What you should be able to do is post a "wanted" ad for an item, and couple it with the gold that you're willing to pay for it. Then, someone with the item can "buy" the listing with their item. They get the gold, you get the item.
Cricket Nov 4th 2011 6:28PM
The EVE online market works like that (and more!) and it is such a beautiful thing. I really can't get into WoW as an economy even though I usually enjoy the trading and crafting metagame in my MMOs, occasionally more than questing or dungeon-y things. Last I heard, GW2 is going to do buy orders as well and I'm really hoping SWTOR will have them. If so, it might be enough pressure for Blizzard to overhaul the auction house.
Also, long term buy or sell orders and more accurate timing information. It's not helpful to make things vague, it doesn't actually simplify anything. It's just annoying.
Sally Bowls Nov 4th 2011 7:27PM
yes to being able to place buy orders.
I would also like for the buy orders to be battle group wide.
As WoW shrinks and realms get less populous, it would be nice to still get mats.
llcjay2003 Nov 4th 2011 7:41PM
I want this so bad...
For example, I really want the Felsteel Longblade (http://www.wowhead.com/item=23540) for the next expansion for transmogging. However, it was a BS world drop pattern from TBC so it is a bit hard to find these days. It would be great to post on a WTB board on the auction house.