Has anyone tried opening an Icy Prism on the PTR that was made on 3.1 live? I've tried with 3 PTR copies but haven't seen any epic gems so far (that is hardly conclusive though).
I believe Brilliant Glass went through a similar thing in TBC, but I wasn't a JC at the time and I can't find any concrete answers on what happened then.

There was a big topic about it back then on these forums. They would all shift around contents when the patch released iirc. The ones that were 'looked in' but not looted also had different/new items.

You were trading with a large capital base for two years and your server transfer itself is not extraordinary. A lot of people move with as much or more (there was a question here about how to convert money to Hog to get through the stack limitation). I doubt that either of those is going to be why you were banned.

Most likely, the person you talked to is correct and mailing thousands of gold around like that looks like money laundering for RMT purposes, particularly with the size of the underlying account once some "GM" took a look at what had been flagged. They probably didn't even read the two year history.

If he was mailing it from the same account (what I gather) that wouldn't raise a flag as gold laundering. Now if it was from multiple accounts then perhaps that would raise the laundering flag (though if they are the same name any investigation should reveal it). Not to mention his history.

Seems to me that there was little to no investigation , he was hacked, or he isn't giving us all the info.

This is often the case. A GM will glance over the account that was flagged, see some semi-suspicious activity, and ban it. Then the account holder has to contact customer support where a more thorough investigation takes place. I've had several friends and guildmates who were banned for little or no reason, but customer support cleared up all but one fairly quickly.

Forest Emeralds are back in:

Now, that stockpile is not so worthless! Hope everyone didn't sell theirs...

You're assuming that orange, purple or red gems will be more profitable. This is possible, but isn't guaranteed. Even if red gems sell for more, manufacturing costs must also be taken into account.

In the current market it would cost 90g to transmute a Cardinal Ruby (1 Scarlet Ruby + 1 Eternal Fire), whereas it will only cost 30g to transmute an Eye of Zul (3 Forest Emeralds). While these prices will likely change post 3.2, the point is clear that it isn't enough for a particular gem to sell for more, they must sell for a sufficient amount more to cover the difference in cost of creation.

Also, while it isn't worthwhile to buy rare gems with emblems/honor, epic gems will be a different story. Whichever gem sells for the most will be the primary target for emblem/honor purchases, increasing supply and thus reducing prices. Transmutes will play a similar role to a lesser extent. For these reasons, epic gem prices will be in much closer parity than rare gems (i.e. I find it unlikely any one gem will cost 2-3 times more than another, let alone 5-6 times).

I'm sure people will unload their legacy emblems of heroism for mostly reddish gems on the First Tuesday, but there are enormous stockpiles of titanium ore that speculators have stashed for this day too. There may not be a shortage of reddish gems, but there will absolutely be a glut of bluish gems. By the time both pre-patch stockpiles are depleted, it will be a competition between people running 2 heroics for the choice of a gem and people buying 1 stack of titanium ore for a random gem. My JC can't run 20 heroics while I'm drinking morning coffee, but she can absolutely buy 10 stacks of ore. As long as it remains easier for a player to pay cash for an epic gem -- especially for as long as runed orbs can be sold for more gold per emblem -- the JCs will dominate the market, and that means too many bluish gems. Mass production JC is so profitable that I have a hard time seeing instance farmers seriously put a dent in the prices set by prospectors.

I could see low-overhead bluish gems becoming very lucrative to a savvy AH gamer though. On this point we agree.

Focusing on where we disagree, I did forget to factor in the presence of Runed Orbs. Demand for those will greatly diminish thoughts of cashing emblems, though not honor, for gems. The gap in gem prices will, even in the long term, be greater than I might have initially anticipated because of this additional factor.

Speaking in the long term, I disagree regarding mass production. The supplies of Titanium are limited such that I don't believe the AH will be sufficiently stocked for that term to be accurate. For example, my server/faction could not support even one JC who wished to buy 10 stacks of Titanium Ore a day. It will differ wildly from server to server, faction to faction, but I suspect that Titanium Ore will not be a ubiquitous enough commodity for JCs to be able to dominate the market. They might supply the majority, but not remotely in the way that Saronite prospecting trumps buying rare gems through honor or emblems.

You do know that the rate of Titanium ore spawning is something Blizzard can and will adjust as they see fit?

Edit to add: are the cooldowns for gem transmutes actually linked? Not seen anyone test this. It might be one of each colour per day - I can't see why the non-reddish colour transmutes would get any use otherwise.

Yes, all of the gem transmutes share the same 20 hour CD. Transmute: Titanium and all Eternal transmutes are also currently on the same shared cooldown.

Can you clarify whether you're talking about two separate cooldowns (one for gems & one for eternals/titanium) or a single shared cooldown for all?

The same 20 hour cooldown is shared by all.

and currently I can sell a Runed Scarlet Ruby for 80-90g and I'm lucky if I can get 15-20g for ANY Forest Emerald cut.

I make more money buying Scarlet Rubies on the AH, cutting them, and selling the cut gems, than I do prospecting my own Forest Emeralds and selling the cuts.

I think it's pretty clear to all - just going by sales of current cut gems - that the Red cuts (Str/Agi/SP) will sell for far more than any Green cut will - even after taking into account production costs. That is, unless on your server, you don't have as wide a spread and stupid players who deck themselves out in green cuts

Marthisdil, it sounds more like there is a lack of Jewelcrafters on your server that realize there is a higher demand for red gems. On my server the profit margins on red gems are lower because most jewelcrafters buy those recipes first. The red gems themselves are more expensive of course, but if you are simply looking to buy red gems from the AH, cut them and make a profit - there is not much opportunity there.

Delete Me.

Could also be the opposite - some high-volume jewelcrafters realising that the majority of the profit is in prospecting rather than cutting, so they just dump all their gems on the AH uncut. Lower volume folks like Marthisdil can then pick up crumbs by buying the red gems and cutting them, if they're unwilling to put in the time/investment to start buying and prospecting in bulk themselves.

Cut gems will always sell for more then uncut gems. There is no reason not to cut them if you have the pattern

This is very much not true, especially when people are skilling up.

True, in the case of the new, epic quality gems, however, they will most certainly sell for more cut than uncut (except in the case of extremely useless cuts).

But, since all the epic cuts require 450, this shouldn't be an issue.

Well, not always. Take our favorit hate gem, forest emerald. I have loads of the stuff uncut becuase there's no way to get rid of them at a decent enough price. A few [Jagged Forest Emerald] and a few other cuts can be sold each week, but most of the cuts are downright aweful and even worse, they never sell.

Saving uncut gems means you are open for changes in the market. Maybe Blizzard pulls a rabbit out of their hat and make int/mp5 by far the best stat for every caster? Highly unlikely but it could happen, far more likely is that they'll add a way to get rid of Forest Emeralds. Either through new better cuts or like in 3.2 the transmutes.

There's no gain in always cutting things, having a healthy stock of raw mats makes you more flexible to market changes. Even if they are fairly minor and far apart at this point in Wrath's life time.