What happens when a level 70 team can aoe farm all of a BRD or up instance in 15 minutes or so? It seems like an inevitability that at some point the gear and levels players have available to them will allow for much faster money making than the game has been tuned around. Can Blizzard adjust the profitability of defeating level 48-55 mobs and content while still making them worthwhile to the player base they are intended for?

Or am I imagining a problem where none exists?

I dont see how that would be any different to say Aoe grinding SM with the current lvl 60 cap.
We will just see an overall increase in efflux of money from having more expensive gear to repair and more expensive flights.

i don't know about you but i can't wait to see my repair bill with T3 gear/higher lvl gear. The only thing i see happening is gold being cheaper to buy on websites for whoever uses their real money for gold.

Maybe blizzard will finally impliment that instance level cap they talked about awhile ago?

Yes, let's discuss an economy that we know almost nothing about and won't exist for half a year at least.

Seriously, if you think you can even BEGIN to predict the expansion's effect on the economy, I've got two bridges to sell you. We have no idea what new sources of gold or gold sinks will be availible at that time. We also have no idea what effect Jewelcrafting and the tons of new quests will have.

With that in mind, my proposal is to shitheap this post immediately.

instance level caps would kill though because then you have to rely on alts and etc to get stuff like Black Diamonds, Librams, etc....that just logically wouldnt work.

This concept is both foreign and offensive to Blizzard.

I can make 2 predictions:

1) The expansion economy will be different than the current economy.
2) This thread will be shit heaped.

thats presuming they dont make enchants to replace the usefulness of certain AQ enchants and etc

I don't understand how you can presume to predict the future when there are infinite unknowns that could arise.
Mentioned Above
New gold sources/sinks
jewel crafting

Also, new recipes for current professions, new materials (crafted), new raw mats (ores, herbs, etc). It's just too much guessing for me...

Considering the repair costs of T3, through some inductive reasoning with item levels, are predicted to cost at least 50% more than current T2 sets, i'd say repair costs at 70 are going to be big. But it's difficult to say what impact thats going to have. A more interesting question - will they keep devloping content for those who don't pay for The Burning Crusade? I'm putting my money on no.

Edit: Tradeskills and such dont impact the economy really, as aside from the stuff you have to buy (thread, flux etc) they only transfer money between people. This is about money going into the system through boss gold drops and vendoring of drops.

OK