I believe we associate “exploit” with people doing something ingame that isn’t normal gameplay to gain something they normally would not be able to have. Picking up dirt piles is normal gameplay. The incorrect loot rewards is a “glitch.” Idk how Blizz would adjust knowledge pts already spent on professions already lvled. If they were going to try some kind of reset, it needed done immediately hopefully within 24 hrs. After a week, the first week, it would have been very punitive to the new expansion players as well as embarrassing to admit such a mistake so early in the launch.
Since it doesn’t really affect the market now, it seems like “water over the dam.” Just because some have a huge gain over others in advancing their crafting doesn’t mean everyone has to buy from them. Or pay exorbitant prices. Have some sense and self-restraint. Rather than force yourself to buy the “best” for all your savings, place a CO, or work on improving your crafting yourself, or look for a guildmate who needs a CO and is lvling that specialization already.
There have always been players who were motivated to race to crafting firsts and try to make the initial gold from being first. The gold caps are very high now and with add-ons that allow mass posting, it’s not hard to know who the power sellers are on the AH.
Rather than envy another’s hard work or rage at Blizz for allowing initial DF players to gain massive profession skill-ups, let’s look at the big picture and state of the game now.
I started DF professions a week or so ago. I only had 4K gold from Chapter 1 questing. Players who have more gold can buy profession tools, etc. for thousands. That would be everything I have and some I don’t have. So I started with gathering and crafting from vendor recipes. I sold a few things at reasonable prices (a lot of inflated prices makes undercutting really easy). I browsed the AH for what I could make–items or reagents–and sold what might be needed for COs or basic low quality gear. It fills a slot and it’s cheap. I bought the same. It’s all I could afford starting out. Eventually, I made 10K.
I bought some reagents myself and used the Pub CO to get a tool made by another profession. I’m 70/100 with all the vendor recipes and 100/100 gathering. I could keep doubling my current profit as the market for the mid-lvl reagents and goods is still there.
You don’t need to be first to make gold. That said, items are not the high prices that “firsts” can post. What is more curious to me than “firsts” is who can pay those top prices? If players didn’t drop gold on inflated goods, where would be the inflated profit? The fact is, players bringing hoards of gold from longstanding characters and their “need” to max out ASAP with the best possible X? Y? … well, sometimes everything, drives this market the most.
Do I envy that? No. I don’t need the best to make gold and improve my character. I’m not that insecure. I can have a certain admiration for those who have a sincere desire to craft the best items so they need the best tools NOW. But … It’s not necessary. Most mid-tier crafting is top quality with 20 knowledge pts and 50 profession skill. Those reagents do have an active market.
I think there’s a lot of players worried, unnecessarily, about the pace of their progression. As if they’re being left behind. If everyone kept up with the world firsts, there wouldn’t be any gold to make because everyone would be able to make everything for themselves. Would that be bad? Not necessarily. But fast and easy crafting systems make obselete trade systems.
Conversely, I’m not threatened by buying what I can afford and gathering what I can’t. That’s normal gameplay progression and it balances the inflation of the market. When prices are too high, players go farm it instead. When prices are low, players save their time and just buy it.
The new crafting specializations make it even moreso that we won’t be able to craft everything ourselves even at max lvls. We have to specialize and sell what we can make to buy what we cannot. It’s intentionally exclusive to encourage trade and engage players in an active market.
Because veteran players have a lot of gold, they are willing to spend a lot on new items. That said, so long as players can go farm what they need, price gouging has a natural limit. Well, the limit is what players are willing to spend.
I don’t find gathering particularly difficult and sometimes fun, as the video narrator said, with the Dragonriding.
Since it’s possible to sell items mid-tier at top quality, I’m not afraid of getting stuck with a dead or useless profession. In fact, this is the first time that lvling a profession under max lvl is still profitable.
What is holding back a lot of COs, progression, and even AH sales on mid-tier items is that not enough players seem to understand the new crafting system, the AH market, or the COs. And that’s natural. How crafting is working now is new so it will take tutorials and word-of-mouth to help players engage with it. In fact, I feel like I made some nice gold with crafting for the first time because few were engaging with it.
If we consider prior crafting that required max lvl to make anything wanted, the new crafting is vastly superior. Also, since when was crafting not just a gold sink with items selling for next to nothing while gathering was the main way to make gold? I’m making mid-tier items and they’re worth more than the raw mats for the first time. Since buyers have to buy reagents to supply COs, there’s a market now for reagents that normally were rarely sold because it would only be to another crafter of the same profession. It’s brilliant really.
Tbh, there’s a lot to like about the new crafting system. It’s definitely not what it used to be and maybe that’s not a bad thing.
One thing players may need some time to realize is we don’t have to be maxed to craft something useful and profitable.
We’re meant to specialize and yes, we’ll have to buy reagents or items from others of our same profession sometimes. This could be the dawning of profession guilds.
We don’t necessarily need the best initial craft. If Recrafting let’s us improve items, we might have more leeway than we think about initial quality.