The current economy is extremely inflated. By the time we get into TBC, the amount of gold in the economy is going to be at absurd levels.
I am wondering how much of the economy a person will be able to side-step when TBC comes around.
Most things that are farmable in TBC will be farmable by the average player, with the exception of Terocone which will be completely slurped by bots (it was mostly botted out in 2021 as well)
The primal farming areas will be botted to hell as well, but I feel like we’ll probably still be able to farm this. The supply for some of these will also come from mining nodes in such a high supply that it shouldn’t be unobtainable.
I have an army of alts for profession cooldowns, and I have an alchemist/fisher/cook. I think for the most part I should be able to maintain my own supply of raiding consumeables.
Essentially I’m trying to figure out if there’s going to be a “black lotus” of TBC.
Honestly, I’m looking through a list of pretty much all of the materials required across all professions in TBC and the only thing that really jumps out at me is terocone which you had mentioned. The only other thing I am keeping an eye on so to speak are primal fires/manas (because of the two tailoring sets that require it that every mage will be after) and eventually primal shadows for shadow resist gear once BT drops.
Tangentially related – it’s never too late to add the epic unarmed mounts to the game with an inflated pricetag. Swift Ivory Raptors will sell for 5000G. But that would make the fungal parasites in Eyr’s skull go because it would be totally immersion-breaking if any of the 200 Eyrs still playing on Whitemane could ride an epic unarmored mount.
Some craftable gear is OK during initial phases, but none of them are forever pieces so may as well save your time/money for flying/mounts. Just raid, badge of justice or w/e, good to go.
The biggest reason is to keep some things rare. As example the Black AQ40 mount is far more meaningful if you see it in Retail, then in classic where far more people have it.
It’s less to do with retail, than giving everyone everything, so it’s not so much about retail, but killing the uniqueness of the few things that are actually unique in WOW, and yes flooding classic with currently rare mounts would diminish things that have been limited since vanilla across the entire game.
Personally I would like to see them phase out more things and bring in different models. WOW has got to be one of the more boring games in the sense of character individuality due to its reliance on tiered gear, which almost always ends up with everyone looking the same. Obviously its helped a bit in retail with transmog, but were simply unlikely to get that in Classic.
I don’t even get this like, what are you talking about. what is the harm in giving us unarmored options for our level 60 mounts. right now the unarmored mounts are not rare, they are non-existent.
How many times in any expansion (the answer is never, but people are free to lie on the internet) does Player A see Player B with something no longer available (say, the Black Qiraji mount) and say 'WOW. THAT’S SO COOL. I WISH I HAD SOMETHING THAT COOL. BUT I RESPECT THE EXTRA-COOLNESS THAT COMES FROM THAT PLAYER HAVING ACCESS TO SOMETHING I CAN NEVER ATTAIN FOR MYSELF. I WILL SEND A WHISPER TO THAT PLAYER AND ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR COOL EXCLUSIVE ITEM. THEN I WILL SUGGEST THAT WE DO A HEROIC RAID TOGETHER SO I CAN EXTEND MY EXPOSURE TO THAT EXCLUSIVE COOLNESS. MAYBE AFTERWARD WE CAN EXCHANGE IRL CONTACT INFORMATION AND DO SOMETHING COOL LIKE START A NEW BREWERY."
If you level fast then you will be there before the masses.
TC is super common after the first rush and players are in Kara / Grul already.
Other mats can kinda be occasionally expensive, but it’s more likely that the economy will be very different from that you experience now on Fresh. Reason is that TBC is just way different and only a portion of the players will stick around and the kind of RMT buyers that exist will run into walls made of bosses that they struggle on in their pugs.
TBC lends it self better to guild teams than pugs, and this is not me saying that TBC is hard, just that most pugs can’t do the 1 - 3 mechanics of the vanilla bosses; they will flop in a lot of situations VS the TBC bosses that have a couple more.
It’s not really about whether or not the content is objectively hard but rather if it’s objectively harder than the tier before it or any content before it. I think T5/swp is significantly harder than anything in Vanilla or the tiers before them respectively and any time you have a difficulty jump like that you’re bound to have some people stop playing. I can point to many instances of this being the case across expansions.
It’s not a coincidence hardcore Vanilla started getting really popular after Ulduar came out lmao.
There really isn’t a huge blocker in TBC from a consume point as it doesn’t have anything thats remotely like arcane crystals, or black lotus. From a consume point, as some have mentioned probably one of the more contested ones would be terocone, but it’s more like farming dreamfoil, and honestly is probably easier then that, as long as your not farming peak time.
