The only real downside to inflation is that if you just have a lot of gold, and then stop playing for a couple months and come back, your buying power with your pre existing gold is reduced.

This can be remedied by trading your gold in for commodities like primals, ore, etc.

The market works itself out in terms of trading things on the auction house. The time spent to farm a primal will usually be fairly similar to the amount of time it would take to do daily quests to get enough gold to buy a primal from the auction house.

Inflation reduces the amount of time that players spend on fixed price expenditures such as skills, mounts, and repairs. I'm not going to lose sleep over that part of it.

It's not like a real auction at Christie's where there's one item and you can bid 6k to beat me.

We each have nothing to spend things on and if the mood strikes us both to create a rogue alt and we both want to buy that blue BoE sword for 100g and some decent 'of the monkey' greens for 5g each, we both can trivially.

I don't understand why you're so intent on saying that it's terrible that the new person can't buy that copper. If he's a blacksmith, jewelcrafter or engineer he can do perfectly well levelling his crafting profession with just what he mines himself. And the extra ore he has when copper doesn't give skill ups? He sells that for 7g a stack. And as you point out that's vastly more money than the 2 silver per quest he's getting.

Really, who do you think is putting up the copper and low level greens on the AH? Lvl 70's farming for them, seriously? Those are all actaul lvl 10-20 players making tremendous gold because the higher level players have a ton of gold they're willing to throw around on a whim (due to IQD inflation).

This kind of huge gold influx is good for a starting player, he makes a ton of gold relative to the static NPC driven expenses he has (skills, mounts, etc.).

But that is going to be true whether you have 15000g and he has 5000g, or you have 1500g and he has 500g. It has nothing to do with inflation.

The absolute gap gets larger, the relative gap actually gets smaller.

Lets say your fixed costs for a week in repairs etc are 100g. If you're earning 200g and I'm earning 100g, at the end of the week you're ahead, I've broken even. You have 100g worth of income to spend on whatever you like. You did twice the amount of "gold farming" I did, but we're not being rewarded remotely the same.

Now if hyper inflation sets in and you're now earning 2000g and I'm earning 1000g, you've got 1900 and I've got 900. Our profit is much more in line with effort.

The hardcore players are the only winners from low prices. Low prices leave casual players with no "disposable income".

Well from the information we have from the beta, starting quests are giving 30k xp vs 12k this expansion. Since xp gets converted into gold at the level cap, we should expect prices to multiply out by 2.5. Given 200g an hour farming is pretty easy for anyone to do now, 500g an hour seems reasonable in the expansion. So you in effect have 30 hours of played time worth of gold banked. I don't find that a big deal, given 30 hours playing this game is pretty much nothing compared to the amount of time it takes to hit the level cap to start with.

Again, inflated prices will help the new player catch up, since new players tend to be net AH sellers, not buyers. New players aren't the ones buying purples and vast quantities of enchanting mats just to let their alt level a bit quicker, or have an advantage in some twink BG bracket.

Everyone is still assuming those new players can sell as they're leveling up. How many times have you gotten some awesome green PoS gloves "of the whale"?

I'm not saying you're wrong, but there is a lot more to it than "higher prices make new players rich".

Green "of the enchanting mats" items sell, and I'd assume their prices are inflated along with everything else.

I believe "of the enchanting mats" means they have trash stats but still sell well to enchanters for DE'ing.

Inflation does help do that though. The stack of gold that's been sitting in my bank for the last year is worth less now than it was a year ago. The stack of netherbloom a new player picks up while questing is worth more since long term players still need it but don't farm it much ourselves.

Keep in mind that Blizzard probably feels as though inflation is necessary. They might not like it, but players enjoy getting lots of money. Blizzard likes to make players happy.

Incidentally, people keep talking about how much a "big money sink" is needed in each expansion. In BC, the 5k epic flying skill was certainly a big money sink. I wonder, however, how much of a money sink all of the savings of all of the players is. I'd bet that a large number of people have saved 5-10k gold. Does that count as a sink? It certainly does if the account isn't used much anymore....

Your sarcasm is neither funny nor amusing. It was pretty clear that he was referring to selling greens to enchanters through AH.

There are both good and bad results of hyperinflation, indeed. Bottom line is - smart lowlevel player benefits from it far more when he loses. By selling POS greens of the whale on AH he can now get his 1st mount easily. Wthout any professions and farming at all. And pay for skills. And get extra-common good greens, like +AGI Dusky LW set. Factor professions in - and dedicated smart newbie looks at epic mount the moment he dings 60 without that much extra effort. Mats are overpriced - his crafting profession, if any, would be supported by a gathering profession because he sees he can't afford mats.

Of course, this is about smart newbies. Judging by my recents leveling-up pugs, there actually are some. Dumb newbies are probably suffering because they spent last 1g on greens 'Of the wolf' and cannot afford to train now. (But hey - at least they won this [Hypnotic Blade] . Extra sprit is god for Mend pet, for sho. ) Well, less incentive to being dumb is always good.

I'm not going to lie, my goal in life is not to make you chuckle (and your little anecdote about dumb newbies with misplaced punctuation wasn't too great either).

What happens to the guy who takes the wonderful advice here and picks up his Herbalism/Mining to make money. e grinds up to 70, gets his epic mount, wonderful! But wait, having 2 gathering professions at level 70 is kinda crap, so he decides "hey, I want to pick up Engineering for those cool goggles!". Naturally he drops Herbalism. Now he has 2 choices. He can spend a few tens of hours mining the rather ludicrous mats required to get from 1-375 or he can buy the mats off the AH. Now, as even more time has passed since he's been leveling the mats required to level engineering will cost even more than they did as he was leveling. Kinda sucks that everything he worked for is pretty worthless.

Or take someone like a Holy Priest. You can't grind out Primals on a Priest too well, so naturally you're stuck doing dailies every day for income. The problem is that the money you get from those dailies is static. You'll always be getting the same amount, but that amount is continually worth less and less as inflation increases. Are people who don't have the option to farm going to be screwed as well?

Again, this is a lot more complicated than one simple "inflation is good for newbies".

Am I the only one who doesn't really care at all what Blizz does or does not do about inflation?

90% of all lowbies are someone's alt. Of the other 10%, a good portion of them will have the sense to take at least one gathering profession and do fine. Of the ignorant ones among that 10%, if a few quit... eh, so what. It's probably more than offset by the 70s who don't quit because they don't have to go through mind-numbingness incarnate to get their epic mount.

As long as you have a gathering profession you gain as much from inflation as you lose, and the game encourages players to take one crafting and one gathering profession. Those who take two crafting professions are assumed to either know what they're doing or will simply muddle along / whatever.

*shrug*

So what? Screw em. This is a idiotic argument to be having. Stupid people will find innumerable ways to screw themselves over and quit because of it. Let dumb people be dumb and spend your time arguing about something useful.

Agreed. This really boils down to a "casual vs hardcore" argument, and I can guarantee that ain't happening on our forums, so shut up and find something else to discuss.

Edit: removed.

On the topic of professions - since DKs start at lvl 55, that means that everybody can make DE bot (and any craft bot, really) without having to level it first. Plus this bot will automatically start with bags, some greens to DE from starting set... actually, I assume, DK starting gear is non-vendorable? Otherwise what prevents me from making DK, selling his greens, sending money to bank and repeating the process?

By making the starting quest gear act like pvp gear purchases. You can't sell/DE them, but you can delete them.

I am curious if Blizzard will give DK's bonuses to their starting professions to keep them from having to travel back to starting zones for farming purposes. Seeing dozens of DK's running through Deadmines to level up first aid doesn't strike me as especially desirable.

I think giving DKs a free 250 skill points (and perhaps all the trainer taught abilities) for their first 2 professions would be fine.

The alternative is having a swarm of lvl 55-80 DKs mining copper, skinning boars and picking peacebloom in newbie zones.

Though you could AH the mats, as has been noted in previous discussion gathering them yourself is easily the most cost effective (and really, time effective) way. It simply doesn't take long, it's just incredibly annoying and probably frustrating to any genuine newbies WotLK launch brought in.

Who really cares if someone gets a free 250 skill enchanting bot? He'll still have to level it to 410-420ish to be able to DE everything in WotLK, the same argument for 'free' prospecting or milling bots. Who cares if he can prospect mithril ore, the real utility is WotLK ore and 250-450 will be far more effort than 0-250.

You can sell the greens, but they're like 5 silver each. I suppose you could net half a gold or so, but it doesn't really seem worth the time.

You need only 300 enchanting to DE anything in TBC, and if you are willing to limit yourself to greens (which DE bots should), you can get by with 275. Now, 250-300 is hard part for an enchanter, but with strategical race choice (BE) and some investment, you can break through. Leveling 300-325/350 is easier by far, and mats/greens are there - at 350 we are probably good for all things Northrend. Same can probably be said about prospecting. Yes, giving new DKs 250 skills will not enable them to manipulate Northrend materials immidiately, but it still lowers barrier of entry.

I see. Now, in relation to Lanlaorn's idea, I wonder if you can DE them (or other green/blue items from quests around Ebon Hold).

It would be hard. I don't think you can get access to profession trainers until after you've gone though the DK starting quests. At least, I didn't notice any trainers in Ebon Hold, and I don't think the DK starting chain is skippable.

I don't see a problem with DKs having a starting bonus to their professions, primarily because you can only have one of them per server.

Basically, if you want to 'exploit' the free skill points as a Disenchanter/Prospector/Miller, you've resigned to never having a 'serious' DK. Then again, if you're making your DK your new main, then he'd have more proper professions such as Mining/Blacksmithing, which seems perfectly reasonable to give a bonus to.

On another note, have there been any (planned) changes to the LFG tool, or any news about the rumored Blizzard-made threat meter?

Has there actually been any news out of the beta that would suggest that Enchanting wouldn't retain it's scaling viability though? I know all the gatherering professions has been given some love at last, but there's a fair few crafting professions who could use that as well. And for a profession like blacksmithing - where a fairly big issue is being outscaled - they'd need to shift their overall design into a system that provides many more levels of crafts. I would be more than delighted if that were to happen, but I havn't seen anything so far that suggests they are - though I'm hoping that's because I missed something, and not because there aren't any such signs.

There's a reason they added the level restrictions to professions in the first place, and while you could design around them by making more recipies tied to rep or BoP requirements, you'd have to actually do that design. Which again, while nice, is not something I've seen any hint of Blizzard doing

Having said that though, gatherer profession bonuses wouldn't pose a problem. You have a hard time accessing the relevant zones anyway without the appropriate level, where as for example an alchemist can take pretty darn big advantage of transmutes and discoveries without ever venturing out of the safety of a town.