I think you are right…but I think it’s a good thing honestly.
Everyone is facerolling content anyways…if it takes more time to compete for and gather materials for recipes (thorium) and elixirs (black lotus)–it will slow everyone down a little. I think.
I can run around places like Winterspring, Ashzara, Burning Steppes…FOR HOURS…and see MAYBE a handfull of nodes.
Other day in WS. 2 hours. NOT ONE NODE!
Fankly at this rate…the headache of farming gold to BUY ALL MATS is probably less than the headache of searching for nodes. 
…then I find a node finally…hit it once…and it goes away… 
I could see that. However this a matter of Blacksmithing having little value until maxed with some rare recipes. Thorium Shield Spike for instance.
It was a massive problem in vanilla which made them change how spawns worked. I am just surprised they didn’t use them considering we are on the final patch. I just wish they would confirm that it was coming later as a pacing mechanic instead of ignoring every bug report.
The spawn rates for all nodes are jacked, not just thorium.
I did two laps of tanaris and got 8 Mithril
8!
I tend to agree that the spawns seem messed up, like finding tons of copper in Desolace that should be spawning tin/silver/iron/gold. On the flip side, might be too used to retail or private servers being far more streamlined in this manner. I don’t remember it being this bad, but it does feel off to me.
As for OP, tough luck. The resources should be hard to get and competition should be fierce. Arguably the damage has already been done when it would have made more sense, like when people first started getting to thorium. At this point it’s just people getting too used to crap that they knew from the start wouldnt be a forever thing, and in fact, should have been gone a long time ago.
Layering isn’t the answer, my amigo. There is no way to layer just one thing.
Have you forgotten already the massive layering exploits that led to MC and Onyxia being completed and farmed out so soon?
Layering led to the mess we have today, where a few were able to cash in.
The only way to fix this is with a traditional 8 hour shut down and new code. In the time before time, it was called a patch.
The only reason I would assume one might want to keep layering or to expand it is so they can catch up with everyone else in less than 3 days, with thorium veins and the like being secondary.
it’s all nodes.
Back in vanilla I could spend an hour running around durotar and have my bags full of copper ore. I tried that on this dude and I had 30 ore after an hour.
They’ve messed something up.
Just wanted to bump this post from September when I shed some light on the fact that having servers with higher numbers and a much higher percentage of the server pop actually raiding compared to Vanilla wow, we would literally run out of lotus/arcane crystals.
Luckily Dire Maul rolled out early and jump runs have enabled large servers to keep up with crazy demand for Arcanite bars.
However some of our servers have become so large(having queues of over 3000 people trying to get online) that mining and herbing even together outside of instances is literally slower gold/h than selling conjured water for tips in town while you watch netflix.
Even with an escalated economy where you are able to get over 2g for a normal herb this is still apparent as it takes 15 minutes to find a herb. As for black lotus, you literally have to be in a cult right now to pick a lotus unless by chance you pass one as it spawns.
AQ40 is going to arrive soon and content is actually going to be challenging with guilds using flasks and having to progress and wipe with consumables.
Please can we either make a proper fix and sort out these absurdly huge servers or at least figure something out with dynamic respawns so that people can actually use their professions outside of instances.
It’s pretty annoying that I can’t find a rich thorium vein very often… But at the end of the day… I don’t really care that much. It’s not game-breaking, and I have plenty of other things to do.
This is a perfect time to suggest reducing the server capacity to help fix this issue!
So this is a reply 7 months later, but wanted to showcase the arrogance here.
7 months later, this Niia character appears to be exactly correct and Holymirax appears to be definitely out of line. We are definitely not at vanilla population caps and coordinated lotus camping is most definitely a thing. 200g lotuses are probably neither normal or intended.
Sounds like we should reduce server capacity immediately to remedy this situation.
Blizzard just announced they are doing something about these ridiculous server pop numbers, hopefully they can show us their proper plan soon.
I’ve been playing WoW since 2004, and have always been an altoholic plus heavily focussed on gold-making. That means that I have looked at gathering professions, at every level, every year.
Things change. Sometimes Ore is great, sometimes it stinks. Sometimes Herbing is great, sometimes it stinks. That’s part of the game. That was part of the game in Vanilla and ever since.
Expecting gathering to be great in Classic – at every level, on every server – is silly, in my opinion. Vanilla was usually not that way. Why should Classic be?
Yes things change but to the level where its better to sell water in town than use two gathering professions in an end game zone is ludicrous.
Blizzard…increase herb spawn rates, allow black lotus to spawn in Blasted Lands and Azshara like it did back in Vanilla.
Youre right… Not enough black lotus. Too much thorium though. a 20 stack of bars is only like 3.5g on my server. complete waste of time to farm unless its off peak hours with hopes for good RNG on a crystal.
Not enough Black Lotus for the high capacity servers. Needs a fix.
what server is this? On Benediction you can go 2 hours and not hit 10 plaguebloom or silversage. You can go 2 hours without seeing a thorium vein. The BL prices are 160+ , silversage & plaguebloom are 25G a stack and elemental earth is 4-5 G a pop. It was not like this back in the day and something really needs to be done.
You’d still have problems if they layered high level zones as people would just be layer jumping to get those rare items.
Sweaty players will find ways to abuse the system unfortunately.