2023 A Gold Making Year in Review - Wowhead Economy Weekly Wrap-Up 308

Live Posted 2024/01/01 at 12:27 PM by SamadanPlaysWoW

Samadan2023 - A Year in the Gold EconomyWoW Tokenwowanalyica.comclassic.wowtoken.appJanuary 2023

To speak a bit to the original question of this thread:

“Are the devs sure that the crafting order system is a success?”

The crafting order system is by no means perfect. There are many ways we would like to improve it over time. We have been having many of these discussions internally, as well as listening to feedback from all of you. Since this is such a new system though, we don’t want to make any snap-judgements and make big changes before giving things a chance to settle and seeing how it develops over time.

We do believe that the system has been successful in one of its core goal though - to enable crafters to make soulbound, useful gear for players at all levels of play. This elevates the overall value of professions within the game and helps to deliver on the fantasy of being a crafter creating valuables for yourself and others.

It has also been successful in providing a new way to for crafters and customers to interact, one which is inherently more social, and when you get to use it, hopefully more satisfying than previous ways to do so! But again, very much not perfect!

As far as the public order system goes, it seems to be working well as an easy way to get something crafted for yourself if you aren’t worried about getting the best quality and want it quickly. This was always its intent. We definitely wish that as crafters, it was easier to find public orders to fill. Unfortunately even though there are quite a few public orders going through the system, given the minimal effort it takes to fulfill a public order and the relative number of crafters around to fill those orders, there will almost never be many orders up an any given time with the way it currently works…they get filled too quickly and easily.

We are looking into ways to have more orders to fulfill though, because for most, we think it tends to be a pretty satisfying activity and a great way to earn skill and a bit of gold when you can find an order to fulfill.

We also think the guild / personal order side of things are working moderately well. These methods allow players to connect and get their items crafted with more control. There are several issues we would very much like to improve though, including:

Helping better connect customers and crafters. There is nothing wrong with a bit of effort to get the best gear, or to attract customers. This is currently mostly accomplished through trade chat though, which while it does have a nice social component to it (something we love to see more of), it is by no means an ideal way to find a crafter for a specific item, or a customer to craft for.
Helping better support interactions between players who are depending on inspiration to reach a higher quality level.

We suspect that as players finish getting their high end crafting gear and complete purchases of other one time uses for Artisan’s Mettle, players will be more willing to use Artisan’s Mettle to guarantee higher quality crafts. That will help, but even then, inspiration will always be a useful way to get max quality gear crafted. The crafting orders system is not supporting this as well as we would like it to, since as a customer, you cannot place an order and know exactly what you will get - you need to rely on a handshake deal that your crafter has the inspiration they promised when attempting to craft items for you.

In addition, there will be lots of other quality of life features we will be looking into to help making it smoother to use, easier to learn, and more.

As always, thank you for the feedback. We will continue working to improve professions in general and the crafting order system in specific! Meanwhile, happy gathering and crafting!

-Drough

February 2023Dragon Shard farming if it was too late to make goldplayers even mocking up suggestionsMarch 2023 a big change to the Public Work Order system

Thank you so much for the feedback! We are aware of the issue where you cannot easily differentiate orders that provide reagents from ones that cannot and are working on a fix to get the same sortable column into the public orders tab as exists in the guild / personal order tabs, where it tells you if all/some/none of the reagents are provided. This should allow you to easily sort and avoid orders that don’t provide all reagents if you so wish.As far as orders that don’t include reagents and have a poor tip, while it is possible that some players are intentionally trying to deceive crafters into making recipes at a loss, in most cases it is likely a matter of customers learning the changes to the system and experimenting with what orders will get filled. We anticipate that with time, players will learn what orders they can get filled and which ones will not.It is important to make sure crafters have all the information they need to avoid accidentally crafting something at a loss if they did not intend it. We do predict that in some instances crafters will intentionally choose to do this in cases where they can earn skill from doing so. That said, we will be carefully watching how this change works out. We are also looking into improving the clarity of the order interface to make sure it is as clear as possible which reagents are being provided by the customer and which by the crafter. Meanwhile, you will always get a confirmation dialogue if you are about to spend some of your own reagents on an order to make sure you are aware of what you are doing.Finally, philosophically we made this change for a few reasons.

We would like to open the system up as much as possible to player choice and allow the market to help determine what orders are fulfilled and which ones are not.
The primary purpose of the public order system is to have a low barrier to entry for players to get their items crafted. Removing the need to buy your own reagents helps with that, although it does leave the onus on the customer to provide a reasonable commission. This is something we will also be keeping an eye on.
We would like to see more public orders to allow more crafters to have a chance to fill them. Lowering the barrier to post orders should help with this. As players learn the system, we are also hoping the ratio of orders that include an ample tip to be worth filling also increases. Finally, we have been looking at adding new recipes that provide opportunities to use the crafting order system, for instance the Curios released in the latest patch.
To this point, filling public orders has required very little consideration, particularly if there aren’t many, because it’s basically free gold for a click. With the introduction of variations in reagents, the choice of whether to fill an order or not will hopefully become more interesting, where crafters are weighing costs of reagents and skill gains against potential profits or losses from filling the order.

Finally, while this thread has not mentioned the prospect of allowing public orders to specify quality, I have seen other posts that have. I want to re-emphasize that the reason we are not doing this is were we to, nearly all orders would move to be public, and most if not all would be set to require maximum quality. This would remove the opportunity for lowers skill crafters to full public orders, as well as undermine the crafter gameplay and interaction that comes from building a business and getting customers to send you orders.Thanks and as mentioned above, we will continue to watch how the crafting order system unfolds and iterate. Your feedback is always appreciated!-Drough

April 2023speculation for 10.1Glowsporesprep for 10.1value of Artisans MettleJewelcraftingKnowledge Point catchupCatch up for Knowledge is more passive rather than direct once you have already done it once. For example, there are knowledge rewards for reaching milestones with each major faction. This is considerably faster for alts.

Artisans Consortium Rep is now also account wide, where a big chunk of early knowledge points can be obtained. Meaning Alt can basically buy this soon as they have enough artisan's Mettle.

First time crafts are CONSIDERABLY cheaper to craft for than they were at the start of Dragonflight, and with the ease and quantity of patterns you can quickly get, mostly because of the reasons already mentioned, and even many super cheap end of patch patterns from the AH (pvp gear I am looking at you).

The obvious answer is "Farm Dirt" but this is bait imo. It is still just as difficult to find, just as rare and if that is the only reason you are flying around, you are wasting a lot of time doing this.

I would guess if you focus on the above you should easily be able to get 150-200 knowledge in your first week with any profession, even on a fresh toon.May 2023Dracothyst Cooldowns DrizzlingRose

Get your toon to 70.

Get alch to lvl 50 and spec into Transmute master, then resourcefulness in the skill tree.

Get to Zeralac, do the quests until the city burns.

Do the back and forth with Bartering

If you need more barter bricks, try 2 digging minigames

If you get unlicky with digging, pick up the waterlogged chest in the lake outside of loam, then urns in the shadowflame area (this may be capped at 2 bricks per day, not sure yet).

Get the panzo cream, trade it for the new Transmute:Dracothyst transmute.

Craft and log next toon

Dracothyst undermine.exchangeintroduction of the Classic Token
So what does this mean for gold making?

You can use gold in WotLK Classic to add game time.
You can use gold in retail to add to game time OR Bnet balance.
You can use gold in retail to add to Bnet balance and then use that to buy gold in WotLK Classic.

For many, the developments over the years with retail has changed the landscape for gold making.

Commodities becoming region wide.
DF Professions requiring customer interaction through Work Orders and Trade Chat.
Removal of Mission Tables.
Slashing of Vendor prices for items from dungeons.

However, in Classic many of the old gold methods remain viable, thus introducing more options..

Specific AH per faction per server plus Neutral creates niches.
Farming old Dungeons for gold is more viable.
Pretty stacking and flipping on the AH has more possibilities.
If well geared and have time, GDKP runs for gold.
Profession recipes are harder to get and open up more options as a barrier to entry.
Levelling professions takes time and resources, which can in turn be flipped.
The use of TSM and all it's tools such as sniping are all viable options.

Whether, this means gold is easier to obtain for game time in Classic or Retail depends entirely on the player, what options they have available and what they find fun.
June 2023levelling buffsfixes to cooldowns for Tailoringrevival of the alt armycross realm trading.

Players will now be able to trade items and gold directly to characters on other realms in their region. Previously this was limited to things like conjured items or eligible raid/dungeon loot, but all those cross-realm restrictions will now be lifted. Play with your friends and trade whatever you want to whoever you want!

How I have made 120 Million Gold in 6 Months.
I've been debating my inner mind the last few months, as my IRL life and health continues to spiral downwards, whether I finally expose this to the public and away from the large scale RMT-Rings that have owned this scene for too long.But after I have added enough game-time to my account so I never will pay to play this game ever again, and gifting my whole guild countless store mounts as Christmas gift's, I think now is the time.

Exposing this is dedicated to my friend Maurian , who never spoke to me , or logged in after he told me too much.This is for you Maurian <3

THIS METHOD WILL REQUIRE 2 ACCOUNTS OR A TRUSTED FRIEND

You will be buying certain 418, 421, 424 ILVL BoE's. oribos.exchange is the site that I use to target the acquisition of all of my inventory.For my fellow US Players most of the time your stock will be obtained from Illidan & Area-52 , due to the large frequency of botters who farm these BoE's.

An example of my most favorite BoE's to have in my stock at all times are:

418: Trinkets, Rings, Necks , Int Staves
421: Trinkets , Rings, Necks, Staves, Armor slot's and type's that currently have large profit potential on your sale realm at the time of purchase.
424: Every slot, Every Weapon.

Currently the most fastest moving ILVL Bracket with the largest chance of big profit would be the 421 BoE's, as the expansion begins to dwindle , and the demand for these BoE's declines, more people are opting to purchase the 421 BoE's, as they can receive gear from key's easier at this current stage.

Feeling out your sale realm's, and getting an idea of what item's move well is also important, I often can sell a 418 trinket (Dancing Dream Blossoms) for 3.8k, at a buy price of 150g.

You then will trade all of your inventory off of the second account (purchase account) and list these BoE's on realms where you can make up to x10 profit. These BoE's move EXTREMELY FAST , and your competition is people who's job, is to cancel scan you and re-list.The more you cancel scan, the more profit's you will see.

This method is made possible since, BoE's are still server-bound.Combined with these BoE's having a stupidly high sale rate and demand.You're simply enabling the supply of a high demand on realms that are not your purchase realms.
July 2023release of 10.1.5TSM 4.13The Secrets of Naxxramasundermine.exchangeAugust 2023Has The Profession / AH Rework Killed Small Goblins?return of the Brutosaur September 2023 release of 10.1.7 a nice little buffOctober 2023prep and speculation for 10.2 got hotfixedflipping epic gear in WotLK

And there it is...
The NA token higher than EU... pic.twitter.com/b09Zo7nO73

— Samadan 💙 (@SamadanPlaysWoW) October 9, 2023Novermber 2023 was all bout Blizzcon

Various Inverviews" url="https://www.wowhead.com/news/blizzcon-gold-making-news-and-10-2-tips-and-pvp-gear-wowhead-economy-weekly-wrap-336098#blizzcon-gold-making-news

Professions? Carrying DF style forward?
As in expansions in the past, professions are tied to the expansion, so new points and perks coming in WW. At a high level, they're happy with how professions play out, but some tweaks with stats/crafting orders, but happy with the system foundationally. Will iterate and continue forward.

New spec points are coming to Professions. Inspiration stat is being looked at. Looking at ways of increasing availability of crafting orders, possibly NPCs putting in crafting orders

The current plan is for The War Within to have its own version of the existing Profession talents system, so players who really love professions will be able to learn talents, spec into specialized things, and use the Work Order system in the next expansion.
The Work Order system is confirmed to carry forward, though they've heard a lot of player feedback and so they're looking for ways to make them better.
Archaeology is a profession that needs a lot of love. Nothing to say right now, but stay tuned - there's stuff in the works.

We had some restrictions put in placeways to make goldDecember 2023 various ways to make gold in Season of DiscoveryIn SummaryThe Year AheadFurther Reading/r/woweconomyDiscord Server

Comment by VadeousOh, my reddit post made it here .

Mom get the camera !Comment by MyFingerIsOnCDPersonally, I would prefer an AH+ where we went back to the old AH, but in order to buy certain high end crafted items, a player needs to provide a token that they earned during Mythic content or whatever.Comment by SoeroahPersonally, I would prefer an AH+ where we went back to the old AH, but in order to buy certain high end crafted items, a player needs to provide a token that they earned during Mythic content or whatever.Comment by BeefythanI liked the Idea of work orders, I really did. But right until it actually launched, I assumed I, as a crafter, would be the one posting the work orders I could/wanted to do and that people would then access an AH style interface to get them.

The idea of inspiration for better items was great, but it should have been a random teriary stat, and lose the damn ranks of mats, and intermediate mats and resultant item quality. The fact that they gave me a whole new bag slot for crafting gear and it's not even big enough to cover my ores, rousing/wakening elements, flux, the ranks of gems I get from mining - not to mention the sparks, bits of sparks, artisans mettle (that should 100% be a currency)... It's a mess. I maxed out Blacksmithing and mining knowledge wise and I have nothing to spend the extra knowlege I get now (I do not need more mettle, because I don't use it because work orders are such a mess).

I've mostly come to terms with it though, I'm just the go-to crafter for my guild. Crafted plate items? Probably made by me.

I've not bothered even getting other professions to 100 skill, because it's just not worth the hassle. Region wide AH means I don't really bother gathering at max level either, since prices are so low. I only gather for XP while leveling.

I've set myself a bit of a task to farm up a million gold this month, without playing the AH and honestly, it looks like running dungeons and vending gear is my fastest way at the moment. (Mostly atal'dazar on normal, five-six minutes and 600ish gold. Repeatable when my world quests run out.) I can't spare the time to sit and shepherd trade chat and argue with people about prices. So I don't. Crafting is now a novelty side event for me. Which is sad, I've been a Blacksmith since BC on this character.Comment by BiancoTFix the Knowledge points and add a catchup, please.Comment by DagroonI like the new system, made millions with it. Having to deal with players can be fun. Having to spam trade is not fun. I hope they find a way to improve it.

Blizzard needs to get into their thick heads that players don't want less than perfect quality. There is almost no incentive to put up a public order if you can't specify quality. It would also help if players could put up public recraft orders.Comment by elicieFix the Knowledge points and add a catchup, please.Comment by barbasolWhat I want to see:

#1 Yes, just use the dang AH (and people who really like trade chat can still use it!):
Personally, I would prefer an AH+ where we went back to the old AH, but in order to buy certain high end crafted items, a player needs to provide a token that they earned during Mythic content or whatever.