Masaren

On the subject of professions, I'dreally be willing to switch from enchanting/tailoring, except I've a lot of rare patterns, and it kills me to think that I'd lose some one of a kind drops if I did so.

I'd really like to see something implemented where if you dropped a profession and then switched back, you'd retain all the known patterns, etc.

 

Rivkah

Given that hunting party has a 8 second cooldown already, the nerf to the percentage seems a bit much to me. I guess the theory is that people were talking about not needing 5 points to have it proc every cooldown and so this forces a 5 point investment, but due to RNG it'll still probably lead to noticably less gain from the talent.

 

Valerian

Seems kinda odd they'd change Primal Tenacity and Improved Mangle back to exactly what they were before too. Hasn't been that much time since they released the changed ones.

 

◊ zirky

This makes sense. The mechanism already exists, however. Look no further than the respec system which allows one to lose "trained" talents, only to be able to pick them back up at a later point. It would add a good deal of flexibility to the profession meta game if added.

 

Duncan

I have a question regarding spellpower in WOTLK and PRE-WOTLK items. It might have been answered before, if so, point me to it, please. I must have missed it.

BC brought "~30% +heal counts as spelldamage" to the table and all PRE-BC items got updated to have that effect.

Are all items - especially BC items - going to be updated again? In theory there should be +heal gear and +spelldamage gear moulded into spellpower only gear, but how? At wich rate/ratio? What will happen to Kodohide (i.e. +heal gear) and Wyrmhide (i.e. spelldamage gear)? Will both have the same amount of spellpower?

Does anyone have a WOTLK screen of let's say a S2 +healing chest and S2 +spelldamage chest?

 

djhbrd

I know they implemented this for switching specializations (Elemental/Tribal/Dragonscale LW, for example), they didn't also do this for entire professions? That's too bad. I would totally be switching to Inscription instead of JCing, but I hate the idea of losing the tens of thousands of gold I spent on patterns.

Most likely. They did it with ratings in the 2.0 patch, so I anticipate them doing similar things in 3.0. What I'm wondering about is items such as the Windhawk leatherworking gear, since it has both healing/spell damage and raw spell damage. I know it is one of few items like this, but I'm curious as to how would the spellpower conversion will affect it.

 

• Phara

Wowhead's Wotlk Site got the items updated with the new spellpower values. As for what you asked:

http:// wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=31992
http:// wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=32020

 

impossible!

They'll be adjusted to both be spell power items. Each item will have its +healing or +dmg adjusted to +spell power relative to itself. That draw to each will be based on spec.

Kodohide legs

Wrymhide legs

e: Melded together. Windhawk Hauberk

 

Kyai

It's a nice idea, but seems wide open to abuse. If you can work out the price-limits for various desireable items, you could brute-force the spawning of those items on the AH by listing a seed version at way over the price-limit. Then buy up the NPC-seeded items.

 

Douglas

But I was essentially proposing having an infinite number of them on the AH at that price anyway. Otherwise it couldn't work. Part of the idea is, at any time, anyone at all could buy as many as they want at the price NPCs sell for.

 

Gadz

So you are proposing a vendor for everything you could possibly want.

 

Katinsha

Is it an idea to split this huge thread in different topics concerning the expansion in different threads, like it's done in the class section? I'm having a hard time really following the discussion since it's 6000 posts long and many posts outdated by now...

Ideal would be an abstract in the first post of findings from beta that people will most likely want to know about the topic discussed.

For instance a topic about professions:

Abstract contains links to new potions, gems, enchants, etc
Describes possible mechanic changes and new mechanics (like skinning and mining buffs)

Another thread perhaps about itemization in WotLK.

In the replies beta testers can post screenies and descriptions and of course discuss everything they feel worth discussing.

Anyone feeling like making threads about the expansion that are more specific and with a summary up-front?

 

Douglas

Yup! Exactly. Plus, a vendor who will buy anything you could possibly ever want to get rid of, with a gap between those two price points, and with all those vendors plugged directly into the auction UI. This would let Blizzard control the economy much more directly, and could be used for example to ensure that crafters could always make gold by crafting.

It's always struck me as absurd that we've got this rich, populated world, of which the player base in theory only forms a minescule percentage of the population... and yet that small percentage utterly controls the economy. When the price of herbs gets high, if no players scramble out to pick them up, NPCs should. If the price of mageweave gets low, if no player snatches them up, NPCs should.

I think it would dramatically improve the game, especially on low pop servers, but I don't expect Blizzard will ever do it.

 

Sydane

I would never want Blizzard to implement anything that amounted to price controls. It's a game, it's a totally free market, and many of us enjoy participating in that part of the game and profiting from it.

However, I do wish they would keep a closer eye on the availability and controls on the flows of certain things like motes. It has always seemed from the recipes that use them that motes/primals/essences/eternals were intended to be somewhat common, as most recipes use them in extremely large quantity. Unfortunately, except in rare occasions, demand always far outweighs supply.

I wish they would have tighter controls on how much each of those items exists, and when massive amounts are being consumed for recipes, enchants, and so forth, and prices as a result get too erratic, they increase supply. It doesn't bother me any that the market puts the price of Primal Air at 60g. What bothers me is when I go to the AH and there is only 3 for sale. It shouldn't be nearly as easy to control and manipulate the markets as it is now. Increasing spawn rates of nodes and mobs based on how much they are farmed would go a long way towards stabilizing the values of those more essential items.

 

Harwin

I'm still not sure how you guarantee that crafters can always make gold by crafting.
If there's no time delay on when NPCs put stuff on the AH, then if the price (high end) at which NPCs put leather on the AH is lower than the price (low end) at which NPCs will buy a crafted leather good using those same mats on the AH, then what stops me from buying them until I'm out of gold, starting to craft (with perhaps a 20 minute crafting bar because I'm making so much) and then selling it all back?

I guess the idea is that they'll purchase goods for *exactly* the cost of making them (NPC costs in both cases), so players can take care of gaps in that (people who will pay > minimum for the result of crafting or people who will sell leather for < maximum) and crafters will then exploit that tiny differential? (Until the price settles on the NPC price anyway because everything else is bought instantly)

It seems like it would remove the "crafted stuff sells for less than it costs to make", but I feel like all prices would gravitate straight to the NPC price, in which case why have an auction at all?

 

Douglas

The idea is, you'd have two different NPC prices, the "buy" price and the "sell" price. All player pricing would end up occurring between those two points, which Blizzard could place as far apart as they wanted.

There are other ways they could regulate this, by for example throttling the rate at which a single account could buy or sell a particular item. But it all presupposes Blizzard wanting to exercise that much control over the economy. While I think it would improve the game, it's by no means clear that Blizzard agrees. I'm sure that many players who get rich off the AH today via relisting tricks wouldn't agree.

 

Sydane

The problem is, this idea doesn't just "regulated the economy," it essentially makes the entire drops system of the game pointless. The only way it could be at all viable would be to have the prices on each end be so extreme that it won't do what you want it to do anyway. Most people do make a lot more of their gold selling things on the AH than they may realize, without participating in any relisting whatsoever. If you eliminate that from the game, you take away one of the strongest aspects of the entire genre.

There is already a baseline value to the npc for a lot of items (and this does affect AH prices on things like greens), but generally it doesn't have a large impact because the amount is so low. If there's a hard cap on pricing, people would just sell valuable things via trading and not the AH (see Neopets for examples of this and how poorly it works). I really fail to see how this could be at all good for the game or the average player.

Price controls are exceptionally difficult to get right, and it's very hard to imagine it would be at all possible to do in a game like this. The most effective thing to control anyway, in real life and in the game, is the supply. That they could do, and somewhat easily.

 

Talgog

Are we discussing auction house manipulation or crafting not being a viable way to make money? The two aren't the same. Given a sufficiently demanded end product, a manufacturer or service provider can pass through whatever costs he wants and then some. What raw materials cost is basically irrelevant. Ask the people who controlled Arcanite Reaper and Lionheart Helm production, or, more recently, the first guy who had Executioner on the server.

The reason crafting simply isn't a viable way to make money is that it cannot, by Blizzard's design, compete with other sources of gear beyond the initial stages of level cap progression. When BC first launched, I was in the first wave of 70's and did major business in armor. All forms of armor, khorium, felsteel, whatever.

The problem is that there is virtually no business in crafting T5 or T6 equivalent equipment. There are very few patterns, many are BoP, the finished products of many are BoP, most of the gear requires mats that are controlled by the guild that gathers them for the time period where progression is relevant, and the biggest money maker (belts) used a BoP reagent until extremely recently. There is extremely little you can actually sell, aspire to learn, or do independent of the guild. There also would be very little demand because of PvP gear.

Blizzard just does not introduce viable crafting patterns that produce BoE gear with every new tier of gear. No amount of theorycrafting will address what is a deliberate design decision.

 

Starfire

I always thought the weakest point of professions was the lack of uniqueness. And/or other people willing to things for nothing more than "favour". What I mean is, why would I ever pay a Blacksmith to craft something non-unique if I can either hop on my alt and craft it myself OR get a guildie/friend to craft it for free/cheap. For the most part, patterns aren't exclusive enough... of course you could also risk patterns becoming TOO exclusive. (For instance, on Silvermoon it took almost 2 years for the server to get its first tailor 2% crit gloves from MC (the name evades me >>)).

Specializations help a little, but even as it is... I've got 3 Alchemists and I know of at least 6 other guildies that have at least 2 Alchemists.

As long as friends have the recipe, I am not willing to pay a "price" (of course, I always tip guildies/friends, but I don't really consider that part of "profit").

In other words: At least one person in my guild has every recipe in the game collectively, being a member of my guild, I generally get something crafted/cut/enchanted for free. I have no real need to "pay" someone else.

 

Mynea

Crafting is a viable means of making money, even if crafted gear will not often sell. I make money entirely through crafting rather than gathering, but what I craft are consumable items - flasks, spellthreads, shards, gem cuts, transmutes, and the like. I think Blizzard said that they were interested in giving each profession a perk to make it potentially desirable at the high end, hopefully they are also looking at some commonly-consumed items for each so there will be continuing demand.

 

Harwin

For crafting to make money you also have to have a rare, in-demand recipe. Since there's little actual craft time involved (barring things like transmutes which use up a cooldown and therefore take "24 hours" - and are somewhat rare because of the cooldown involved), the pay on crafting is ultimately reduced to a tip once the pattern becomes widespread.

Gathering, by contrast *always* makes money. When I have gathering every node turns from a 0-value item into a positive-value item. This is mainly because nodes are limited - I can't just hit a button and walk away from my keyboard and gather herbs indefinitely the way I can with turning raw materials into crafted goods.

I believe(and responded as if) Douglas was suggesting that all crafters be able to turn their knowledge of patterns into income, independent of the commonality of the pattern.

While this makes sense in the real world, that's because there's some time involved. In the game the time involved is tens of seconds - the premium I can charge on something like that is maybe a gold(I get more than that typically because it takes longer to find and trade mats with the person desiring me to craft something than it takes to actually make it)

 

CouldCareLess

With regards to the AH NPC idea, real world economics and in game economics are not entirely dissimilar. The less interference by governing agents provides a much smoother running system. If someone really wants to come out of nowhere with 50+ stacks of adamantite priced 10g under the next highest person, sure, the market will drop significantly for a time. I needn't go through every step by step on how an economy balances itself out, but rest assured, we need no more non-player influence with what we have.

 

flyingtoastr

Except they don't work that way in game.

In real life the economy is regulated by 2 things: consumer demand (and the price they are willing to pay) and cost of materials (in both time and capital investment). All materials in WoW are in infinite supply (every time you kill an evil Blood Elf 2-3 Netherweave Cloth are created from nothing) and takes only a time investment. Therefore as the buyers in the economy obtain more money (through whatever means) the economy shifts drastically. That is why inflation has reached such obscene levels with the advent of the IQD dailies; the masses have a ton more money they can spend and are willing to spend it on continually increasing cost items.

This is very much unlike the real world where capital investments are a massive cost control.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

I don't think there needs to be any sort of real intervention in the auction house. This almost sounds like a political discussion.

Ultimately the prices set for auction house items are indeed set by time spent. If there's huge inflation so the prices of primals go up, it can to the point where farming primals is as good or better a source of income than doing dailies.

Since we're dealing with a video game, inflation doesn't necessarily lead to an unfun game. As long as you don't have to farm for countless hours to get your basic playing or raiding needs it's fine.

 

Roywyn

As some of you know, the downranking penalties have been increased in current beta.

Basically, every spell has a level after which it looses a certain percentage of scaling every level, until it reaches zero and only does its base damage.
For example, you learn Fireball at level 44 and you get the full scaling until say level 48.
Then at 49, you'd only get 95% scaling, at 50 only 90% scaling, at 51 only 85%, until you reach 0% scaling at 68.

It's somethin like this, but we haven't been able to pinpoint the details yet.
Quantum did some great work with his level 75 mage, but there are some oddities that would require double-checking by a level 70 mage.
Bellastor also did some tests showing that spells get 0% benefit from spell power around ~27 levels after learning them.
And his data suggests a linear decrease after certain level (5-10) until it gets to the level of 0% scaling.
WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion

Help request for a level 70 beta mage
If somebody has a level 70 mage on beta and could spec it 0/0/0, note their +arcane spell power and shoot a volley of the ranks 6-11 of Arcane Missiles at Dr. Boom and note their damage done, I'm quite certain we can figure out the downranking formula from there.

BC downranking depended on the level a spell was learned. In Wrath, it seems to depend on the last time a spell improved by leveling or something similar, which is why we'd need data from a mage of a different level than 75.
Preferably level 70, but anything would be a great help.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.