Depends very much on your server. On mine you could sell the Felcloth for about 2g less than the Mooncloth you could make from it. 2g every 4 days is not an income stream. I suspect quite a few people claiming they made a bazillion gold from crafting, transmutes etc. simply never looked at what they could get by simply selling the raw materials.

As someone else has pointed out;

Having directly comparable gear value (eg. ilevels / good stat distribution / whatever) from differently choosen paths is a good thing as long as the effort required is roughly the same.

To me, buying cloth off the ah and creating loot in about 30 minutes including the trips back and forth the mailbox does not compare to months of raiding and farming consumables for said raids.

The same can be said about popping 1 hour of arena play vs having to farm consumables for an item that might eventually drop and you might, eventually, win said item.

There needs to be a sensible investment/reward ratio. This is true for all aspects of the game and can quite clearly be seen in engineering's current implementation and complete lack of a decent end result after a given investment.

The investment, be it gold, mats, time, effort, frustration etc must match the reward given at the end.

... and where does the gold come from to buy the cloth on the AH? Please don't say eBay :-)

That's really beyond the point, but if Joe Casual wants he can outgear many raiders simply by questing efficiently, buying whatever cloth he needs and craft his gear. The only thing he'd be putting off was his epic flying mount really.

Getting gold in tbc is silly easy even for Joe Casual.

I believe the point was that it's months of farming for said casual, unless they're buying their gold of course. Not agreeing or disagreeing- just helping clarify.

Though the effort spent PvP'ing casually until you get your gear might be comparable to the effort spent by a raider who joins an established guild that already farms instances, and just picks up gear that othervise would be Disenchanted? Sort of seems like a casual PvP'er get gear about as easy as a casual raider?

Well not really comparable since it'll still take loads of time to get PvP gear with just the points you get from a really low rating. While someone who joins a raid guild and goes to farm instances can get twinked up pretty quick.

Of coutse a hardcore raider might have to work alot for the gear. But likely more work for the satisfaction of having beaten the stuff, and getting loot that proves that you really did it. Figure some hardcore PvP'er who goes for the status of a high rating and possibly some of the special sesonal rewards, also has to put in loads of work/skill. Not sure how much effort hardcore PvP people put in compared to hardcore PvE people though.

However for fairness: If comparing the work done by some casual PvP, or crafter, puts in then compare it to a casual raider who just joins an existing guild and gets to collect epics from farm content. Thats the relevant comparison anyway.

But the actual real life time investment is similar. I don't see many casuals running around with full tailored epics- I do see many more hardcore people with them though.

Over my wow raiding career I've raided for about two years and recieved about 110 epics on this character. I estimate it took me 15 hours of raiding per item. I think warriors, priests, rogues, druids and paladins got more overall gear vs me at my attendance level (95~% lifetime)

I dont really feel that the real life time investement is that important, especially seeing as Joe Casual has a vastly easier time putting in an hour here and an hour there opposed to the raider who has a fairly large block of time he/she needs to dedicate at once coordinated with other people who'll have to do the same.

That's the thing - lack of reward for huge blocks of time on an ongoing basis, repair bills, pots etc etc. Not to mention that buying mats from AH and paying a crafter to make an item is hardly time consuming.

Raiders deserve better rewards for casters, but the effort/reward curve has to be of the form Reward = Ae(-kt) + c. The casual players will get more out of their limited playtime than the hardcore raiders.