You know, one of the biggest thing that I think people are missing is that 2.4 is still quite a ways away; it hasn't hit PTRs yet, and given that this is a serious content patch (new raid zone, lots of new dailys, changing mechanis), it will be on the PTR for a sizable amount of time.

Arguably, the number of LPS in the economy has not changed YET, there's still the same number of them as yesterday, and they will continue to be used at the same rate in enchants. The thing that is really devaluing the large prismatic is the knowledge that, when 2.4 hits, there is a lot more supply available to the system (from void crystals being turned into LPS).

That having been said, I think that this is a market overreaction that will be corrected soon. Blizzard makes this announcement, and the speculators are doing everything they can to take advantage of hysteria created by the announcement, but this is not a sustainable trend. Speculators buy up Void Crystals, and frightened people sell off swaths of their LPS stock in an attempt to cut losses. Sure, Void Crystals have risen in value, and will likely continue to rise in value, but Large Prismatics should hold their value until they day 2.4 hits.

My prediction is that in a few days (likely Tuesday, when prices take an upward price across the whole of the economy), Large Prismatics will return to a price closer to their natural price. In other words, if they were selling at 30g before the announcement, you'll probably see them go back up in the 28g neighbourhood, because people still need LPS right now, and the available supply has not changed _yet_. Once people have bought and used all the LPS being sold by frightened people, scared that the price will plummet, things will go back to business as usual for the month or three that 2.4 takes to come out.

However, when 2.4 hits, it's a whole different ball game. LPS supply will ACTUALLY rise, while demand remains the same. Prices will fall to an equilibrium at about 50% of the Void Crystal price. However, since Void Crystals will rise to match this (as there is higher demand for Voids and the same amount of supply), it will balance out ... somewhat. I preduct LPS stabilising at around 20g, and Voids at around 35g (accounting somewhat for the value stripped by limited transmutes of voids per day). We'll see how right or wrong I was in a month or two. In the meantime, I'm going slowly convert my remaining raw materials (eternium, primal earth, adamantite powder, etc.) into large prismatics, sell them off as best I can for as close to the high price as I can, and then slowly divest away from the LPS market.

wrt to the heroic gems. As an alternative to Steamvaults, Anzu drops some very nice epic gems in heroic sethekk (obv need a druid to summon him though).

After speaking with a couple of friends in guild (and seeing the free-transfer notes with the new realm announcement), I asked myself "How much would somebody pay for a Scarab Lord title"?

So there it is: How viable would selling the needed quest-process+rep be for individuals with massive net worth? This is something you simply cannot get anymore unless a new server opens up, and as such, the value of a Legendary Item that is truly unique (unlike Never-Drops-Fury and Sulfuras) that comes with a sweet, SWEET title should be truly exorbitant. Yes you'd likely have to spend a considerable amount of the initial capital investment just paying off your guildies to help you run the guy through, but I imagine you could probably sell a package for 25-50,000 gold to someone who's willing to eat the 3month return window cost.

Thoughts? Am I thinking this through too much? Let me know!

Don't the new servers already have AQ etc open already so you can't get that title anymore?

That was my understanding. If the gates aren't open, I think they even shut down transfers for the first 3 months (which is obviously not the case for the new US server since it's all transfers)

You may actually see a price increase, depending on how much people dump on the AH, since people will be leery of holding over too much of an inventory after the (uncertain) date for 2.4 so are less likely to continue all the shard-making activity they had been doing to create supply.

I would probably drop like 15-20kg for the Scarab Lord title....but it isn't like that is a possibility anyway so it really doesn't matter. Unless a server still has their gates closed.

From what I know it already has happened when a player from an old server with the quest line already completed transfered and opened the gates getting the Scarab Lord title and mount. I`m already done with about 80% of the quest chain, now i`m just waiting for WOTLK to be announced and my guild to take the usual break from raiding and will try to do the same thing (trasnfer, afk3 months and transfer back).

Yeah, it's definitely possible - had one of our raids go casual a few months back and he went to a different server for just this. Came back with the mount and the title.

I recently took up Jewelcrafting to get some good money flow after I saw some of the recommendations on this thread.

So I chugged away....and now I'm cruising at 354 skill. Yes, I nabbed some recipes like +8 crit, +8 resil, although they haven't been selling very well on the market. Now I've decided to save up for one of those nice World Drop 800g+ recipes you see on the AH.

What cuts are the best to sell for cash?

Have a look at page 35 of this thread there's a quite bit of info there (halfway down the page).

Personally I find it easier to just sell raw gems... on my server at least the difference between raw and cut is miminal and I still make a very nice profit.

(edit - must remember num lock - duh)

With the speculation on 2.4 and such, what about Kazzak and Doomwalker being BoE loot? I realise they are intended for raids but how low could you go for the kill? The epics could get a nice 1-2k and split amongst 10 thats a good bit of cash.

I highly doubt that Kazzak is a viable 10 man raid-encounter.

Doomwalker on the other hand is doable with 10 well equipped people.

The major problem will come with the competition....

Actually the large pris supply may crash and spike the price even higher, I know myself and 2 other guildies who manufacture 100+ lps a week and sell on the ah are stopping for the time being, and on a low pop server where 3-4 people can easily have 50%+ of the supply things could get wonky

I would exercise extreme caution in overspeculating in the Void Crystal/LPS market. I'm sure it will stabilize at some point but it might be many weeks or months after 2.4 comes out (which will also take months to come out). It could be half a year or longer before we ever see the true fruits of the LPS/VC conversion.

This is so not only because of the 24 hour cooldown on VC conversion, but because the only thing we know about the VC/LPS conversion is that it is a recipe. We don't know whether this recipe is trainable or comes from a reputation vendor or is a rare drop. It might be that only a handful of Enchanters will have access to it - if so the impact on the LPS market will be very little and void crystal prices will crash again. In fact, i highly doubt it's Blizzard's intention to open the floodgates from a year of people disenchanting karazhan loot.

Simply put, both the Rate of Return and the Risk involved make this market a very low priority in my eyes compared to current markets. For argument's sake lets say the fruits of this Conversion come out in 4 months time. If i had 100g to invest, i could make upwards of 30g in the first day by investing in markets such as [Netherweave Bag] and [Mystic Spellthread]. Then as my auctions sell i could reinvest more and reap the benefits of cumulative capital and end up with several thousand gold over the course of 4 months. If i used that 100g to buy 10 Voids, the most i could get is something in the order of 400g in 4 months. This is being generous on all counts. Frankly if you want to make high money for time it's not that flash, there's loads of competition, and there are people (as posted above) making a ton of money off of the speculators.
(However, if you have more capital than you care to invest or use, it would probably be a good decision to buy the Voids.)

On a side note, looking at the content being added and the changes to raiding, I'm prepared to believe there will be a substantial influx of gold into the WoW economy - so i might find some other commodities to invest in before 2.4 hits.

The Void Crystal to LPS conversion aside, I reckon we're going to see a spike in enchanting mats and gems when 2.4 hits and people buy up their HWL gear from rep vendors.

It probably won't be as large of a spike as Season 3, since the desirability of HWL gear will be stymied somewhat by Season 1 availability and an as-yet-unknown required reputation level, but I fully plan on buying 4/5 of the HWL's Retribution set on patch day, and I imagine a lot of other people might be doing the same.

As far as "Where is the gong so i can hit it with my scepter" i'd asume.

Yeah, I just recently finished the questline - have the scepter, and banked it.

I'm not really looking to transfer to a new server though. :P

The AQ gate is already open on Ghostlands (the new US server). The window of opportunity for that particular title/mount has passed never to return.

I don't think it matters if the gate is open, but rather if the gong has been hit.

Where's my facepalm ascii?

The initial gong hit opens the gates and opens a period of X hours for others to ring it to get the mount/title. If the gates are open- banging the gong again is no different than banging away at the gong on Mal'Ganis. You get a pretty epic dagger as a memento of your trouble and nothing else.

Dunno if the new servers are handled differently, but I opened AQ on one of the EU TBC servers - The gates were closed until that day *shrug* Maybe they changed it for the newer realms; maybe someone with a 95% completed questchain just openend the gates and didn't tell anyone.
The only thing I'm 100% sure of is that the pre-quest for the AQ-opening (collecting all that cloth, fish and whatever) is automatically completed on the new realms.