Isn’t it that prices are like this because people aren’t buying gold, so nobody’s botting materials and there’s no materials selling competition?
The botting has gotten better on Era since SOD has come out but it is still happening. Herbing is marginally profitable but only if you’re on at odd hours and/or you find yourself in a zone without bots. Both of which are still very hit and miss.
As for making gold on Flasks not really. Dreamfoil is are around 5g each and Black Lotus are around 100g each. So you’re looking at maybe 20-30g profit on each Flask at the moment. Farming straight Dreamfoil is the real gold maker but that is where the Corporate herbalists make things very difficult. Farming Encrypted Twilight Texts is still better gold per hour.
If you carry GDKPs it is even better gold per hour.
Mostly gold buyers buy those texts, so selling them is almost guaranteed to get paid in RMT gold.
I’m here for actual classic reasons. Progression Raiding with roughly the same people every week, everybody with very similar equip (no decked out Naxx geared players holding our hand). Basically how it was 20 years ago except the AH is a complete disaster. Doing GDKP for for profit borders on prostitution. I would have to be pretty desperate or in a really dark place for that to happen. 
I’ve done my progression - I rather enjoy my bis toon in pvp and eat consumes like a madman
And I have quite a bit of fun in my weekly naxx gdkps
Once progression raiding completely dies off in Era, and it is teetering, GDKP will not sustain a new player base by itself which means the entire Classic Era’s days are numbered. I’m hopeful Microsoft will actually step in and stop GDKP/Booster/Gold Buyer/Seller plague before Era loses its luster.
New players can easily do progression, nothing is stopping them. There are even experienced alts they can recruit if they are running stuff decently well.
GDKPs don’t have a big impact on price of consumes, that is mostly set by the amount of bots / people leveling.
More levelers / bots = cheaper consumes
Less levelers / bots = more expensive consumes
“Nothing will stop them” if they “Buy Gold”. Black Market Gold at that. Which by itself, long term, isn’t going to maintain enough interest to keep the servers running.
Why would they need to buy gold. Just farm like a regular fresh server, do progression runs, and eventually they can clear naxx.
That is my point. With the direction Era is currently headed, GDKP will be your only option eventually. SOD pulled a chunk of the player base most of whom were progression raiders. There is already a shortage of new players for serious progression guilds. Now the question is, will there be enough new player growth to sustain Era moving forward. Either way it is highly doubtful Microsoft is going to allow the Black Market Gold System to continue. Pretty soon your new GDKP buyers will be getting their gold direct from Bill Gates. Then Era will really be a joke.
Yes, Era was fine when TBC first came out and there was like 1/10th the population of today. (I remember zero WSG and only a few raid groups still going, then WSG on friday / sat night, now we have WSG all the time)
Last year population went crazy but it was a bunch of WOTLK tourists that were gold buying crazy and expected to be full bis in a couple weeks. They are gone to SoD and so did most of the bots (which is why consumes went crazy in prices).
Era only needs like 2-5k people per cluster to feel populated. Sure it is nice to have more people, but I rather have people that enjoy the game than people that come with the idea that they deserve everything and Era should bend to their will.
I mean this is exactly why I stopped leveling in Era.
I’m good when nightslayer is going for 4k a pop when its been on last phase for how many years?
People with brains will see its pointless to start on Era.
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4k is a lot for t1, I got most of mine on the rogue for far less per item. They are usually a few hundred to 1k per item.
Though it does depend on how many hungry rogues are in the run. I’ve been seeing a lot of early rogue tier go for near min bid in last couple months.
That’s alright, it is not worth the time.
Raid tier wouldn’t be the problem. I was just using it as an example.
Something like Gressil/Kingsfall or DFT even.
Just play SOD. 18 silver for swifthtistle, 10g for a shadowfang and assassin blade
And the best part…, GDKPs are a bannable offence
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Despite not having played SOD I’m really happy to hear this. Hopefully these rules get implemented into Era soon.
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Those who farm and sell and those who work the AH to their advantage now have the upper hand.
Post your gold wipe, would you impose some kind of handicap, so these players don’t unbalance your economy again?
Seems like some real world economics you should study to come up with a better idea here.