Observations in the first week of 3.1

Posted by Warcraftecon | April 21, 2009 .

Bank Tab

Well it has been one week since the release of 3.1, with a 3.1.1 patch due out today to fix some issues that came up during the week. Some economic predictions that many players made turned out to be completely wrong, at least for the time being. The auction house seems to be flooded with all kinds of items and driving prices down. This I believe is a temporary situation. A lot of people came back to the game to experience the new content. Depending on what they want to do, they will need gold to pay for things like Dual-Spec or the cost of progression raiding. This leads to farming or selling off items previously obtained pre-patch to pay for these things. This is one of the causes of why the market is flooded. A lot of people are playing the game again, and are sometimes passively collecting items that are then sold on the AH. This is similar to when Wrath was released. Prices of things like [Eternal Earth] flooded the AH dropped below 5g each. There were many items like this that had a huge supply, but not enough demand. As months went by and people picked up on the JC/DE method, the demand went up, which may have caused the price to go up. I had noticed the low prices of many eternals during the first months of Wotlk and decided to invest in them. It turned out to be a very good investment when I started crafting things with my professions. Picking up cheap eternals before they went up in price gave me a high profit margin on items like crafted BOE epics. It seems to be the same thing that is happening now, a lot of people have noticed falling prices and flooding of the AH. This phase may pass soon when the supply starts running low. In the mean time, very few items have actually increased in price.

Too Much Speculation

It seems like there was plenty of people, including me, stockpiling raw materials pre-patch hoping to get rich quick during the first week of 3.1. These items included enchanting materials, gems, flasks, food, ect. They were in preparation for Ulduar, an increased demand on raiding related items. Ulduar is a step up in difficulty from Naxx/OS/EOE raids. There will definitely be fewer players clearing Ulduar compared to the previous raids. This is still new content and the majority of player base have not even obtained a new piece of gear yet. This means there is still a low demand on things like gems, maybe Season 6 and further progression into Ulduar by more guilds will increase this demand. I would think that a few weeks from now, items will sell a bit better. Soon ilevel 200 epics from the Argent Tournament, Emalon ilevel 213/226, Season 6 PvP, and Ulduar gear will be in the hands of more people that will need these enchants and gems. However don’t expect these materials to jump up too drastically, if anything, they will sell more consistently rather than increase in price.

Other items that players were stockpiling were based off of the new [Runed Orb] recipes. Some of the materials were changed the week before the patch. The most noticeable one was the removal of [Eternal Earth] from some of the Blacksmithing recipes. A few players that I know tried saving up some of these but later found out there wasn’t going to be an increased demand for them. There was just too much speculation on these new recipes. As some of you may know, these recipes are fairly rare in Ulduar as well as the [Runed Orb]. Guilds are still progressing through Ulduar and over time more people will eventually obtain these items. Most if not all the required materials for these recipes actually went down in price, possibly even due to people liquidating their inventories this week. The demand for these items are not quite there yet, an alternative would be waiting it out till these recipes and orbs start appearing on the auction house for a reasonable price. These are pretty much the only gear recipes that people are going be using till the next raid encounter. Most of the old ilevel 200 recipes are not very desirable anymore due to obvious reasons. There may come a point in time where all the materials of a particular Ulduar recipe will cost less than the finish product. There is potential profit here if you happen to have these recipes. The combination of others not having the recipe and low priced materials, leads to you crafting the new generation of BOE epics for a decent profit. Also keep in mind that a lot of guilds maybe giving out the recipes and orbs to their raiders instead of selling them for profit. Some good news I discovered this week was that some of these recipes are a best in slot for a lot of classes, if not in the top 3. Previously I had thought that the crafted ilevel 226 were decent, but they were just fillers till you obtained a better drop in Ulduar. This seems like there will be increased demand for these items than people thought previously.

Glyphs

The Glyph market was one of the markets that did very well this week. Although I do find it strange that they added rare world drop books that taught the new glyphs. They had tried so hard to balance each profession to give comparable bonuses and started to shy away from BOP and profession specific items. Now everyone who gets their hands on these books are able to sell them for a few thousand gold, while the Scribes have to charge insane amounts per glyph just to cover the cost of the book. Obviously over time more and more people will get their hands on these 50 new glyphs that come from [Book of Glyph Mastery] which leads to lower prices on the books and the glyphs themselves. Scribes who had the capitol to purchase multiple books I would assume did very well, especially if you were the first to discover what is considered a must have glyph, possibly selling it on the neutral auction house if the other faction didn’t have it yet. Some probably have not recovered their losses yet however. An upcoming change in today’s patch is that the books have had their drop rates increased (Source).

Keeping up with Demand

After reading patch notes from the past month, it seems like Blizzard have made some game changes that make it easier to deal with the demands of raiding. I believe there was a Blue Post addressing this topic a while back. The prime example would be the new flask changes, which allowed players to use 1 hour flasks to save money and offered more flexibility in raids. The funny thing was that flasks have hardly dropped in price this week, they still cost the same. This is probably just temporary, look for lower prices soon since the same amount of materials creates 2 flasks instead of 1 now. Alchemists are surely taking advantage of this change by not selling the flasks at half the cost as before. This is not the first time they made changes to raid related items so the players don’t have to spend hours farming for them. A few others in 3.1 include the new fishing daily’s, [Sea Turtle] mount, Argent Tournament daily’s, and gems purchasable with honor. Some of these things simply add to the supply on the AH and usually drives prices downward, while things like new daily quests puts more gold in the hands of people so they can purchase items need for raiding or other activities. I’m sure some of you are fishing like crazy and have noticed the huge supply of fish on the AH. This keeps supply high, prices low, while keeping up with the high demand from raiders. Blizzard’s standpoint seems to be that preparing for raids should not be such a huge burden, like it has been in the past. Anyone remember in vanilla WoW where raiders went around collecting world buffs? They want you to have access to the basic raid buffs like flasks and food without you having to pay very high prices for them or spend hours farming before each raid. Ulduar is the next raid tier and is not as easy as Naxx was, people will most likely go through more consumables than they did before. Now most of these consumables are readily available in large quantities for everyone. Just ask yourself how many people would actually fish as much as they do now if there was no new mount to catch? Everyone who is selling their fish is contributing to the supply of cheaper food on the AH. There has been some speculation that the flooding of the AH will decline over time and things will be come slightly more profitable again.

What are our reader’s observations during this first week? Please feel free to share your thoughts and speculations on whats happening in the economy and the different markets.

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12 Comments so far

Onion April 21, 2009 6:33 PM

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Definitely a buyer’s market atm, in almost all aspects. good time to level alt professions i’ve been finding.
taco April 21, 2009 8:55 PM

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So did anyone play the market because of arena season 6 today?
Warcraftecon April 22, 2009 1:43 AM

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I did notice items sold a lot faster and some prices actually went up a bit. We should see increased demand on certain items like gems over the next few weeks as more people obtain their PvP gear along with Emalon and Ulduar items. The increase in demand may not necessarily mean higher prices, as you can tell, there is a huge supply of all these items on the AH at the moment. Eternals do not have much use now aside from certain constant demand items like leg armor kits, eternal belt buckles, specialized cloth, ect. Our eternal market has crashed, they are dirt cheap now and the new Ulduar recipes do not require enough of them to cause a rise in price.
Aliyanara April 22, 2009 1:52 AM

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for the 70+ items it’s a buyers market, i stocked some food, dragonscales etc.. but they are still waiting in my bank.
nexus crystals and void crystals arent selling, nothing actually is…
Though… low lvl and i mean very low lvl -mithril bar blacksmithing supplies have a high increase.. before patch 2G for 20copper bars, now 4-5g in copper bars. probably due to some ppl with alts lvling blacksmithing orso now that it has been fixed?

oh well, glyphs did well, but that was it.. right now i’m even on my chart, bought for 500G in mats for 3.1 sold for 520G or so.. and still more then half the items are on my bank… hopefully the market stabelizes soon, or im going to cut my loses
Sophie April 22, 2009 2:52 AM

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I’m still waiting for Et. Earth to come down on my server, should be soon. I did write an article yesterday about 3 things (aside from glyphs) that I noted are still selling quite well despite the depressed market. Let me know if they hold true on your server, too.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1670046/making_wow_gold_after_wotlk_patch_31.html?cat=19
jwxspoon April 22, 2009 2:59 AM

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On our server the herb market has completely tanked. Changes to the Flask of Endless Rage recipe (removing fireleaf in favor of goldclover) has caused fireleaf to drop from 40-50g a stack to 10-15g. Most Northrend herbs have had their values cut in half with staples like icethorn and adder’s tongue now selling near 20g a stack. Mid level herbs have gone up in price to the mid 20′s probably because of the new market in glyphs.

As a dyed in the wool herbalist, this has hurt myi ncoem trmendously. Might have to branch out into some other professions if this doesn’t ease.

jw
honorshammer April 22, 2009 4:51 AM

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I did observe several guildies have decided to take up Fishing. I’m not sure if it’s isolated to my little world or a larger trend, but if it is, you could see more fish on the AH.
Gynestar April 22, 2009 5:19 AM

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I too stockpiled some items (Arctic Furs, Icy Dragonscale) but I am being patient. There will always be casual players that want crafted epics and can’t raid for better items. The problem is with a lot of these requiring patters, runed orbs, etc it will be awhile before prices start to move. Look at the glyph books. In what little time 3.1 has been out, this green random drop has gone from 3k to 1k on my server. Why? because there is a balance of supply and demand. The problem with the new crafted epics is the buyers don’t have endless sums of gold so it will take a while for their price point and the sellers price point to match.

Gynestar
bankatron April 22, 2009 4:50 PM

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I am finding trading conditions tough since 3.1

Even my usual reliable niche markets of old-world gems and metals have taken a beating. I am still making gold, but at about 1/5 of the rate I was pre-patch. I am also ending up with an ever increasing inventory as I am still buying out underpriced items, but not moving the volumes that I used to.

I am sure it will come right eventually, but it is quite frustrating at the moment.
Cathy April 24, 2009 7:51 AM

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I had put aside 40some titansteel which severaly dropped in price in 3.1. I’ve taken a hit on those for sure. There was a day or two in between where the prices popped up.

Even the buffed food did not do nearly as well as Ithought. I can usually sell it but generally after relisting it a couple of times.

Flasks have been my bread and butter since 3.1 Now I just gotta keep up now on the farming since my stash has been exhausted and I’m down to my last couple of stacks of frost lotus.
Pepperbro April 25, 2009 12:59 AM

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Enchanting mats on my server have crashed everything dropping itleast 30% along the board since 3.1 Was selling Dusts at close to 5g per, market is still dropping severly, currently at 3.5g per dust instead of 5 per patch, Dream shards are down to 10g instead of 15g average sale, and greater cosmic essences have dropped to 11g from 17.

Market is still currently crashing hoping it cottoms out soon. Not sure if its normal but my auction house is sitting with 7k dust on it usually now.
Neverto April 28, 2009 8:58 AM

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You guys arent just looking where you should be looking.

High-end enchants have gone way down, and now people are back leveling or starting a new profession.

Think about hitting the market in a different way.

To be efficient at making money, you must be efficient to think differently (oustide the box) than any other people.

Attack different markets, low-end professions mats for instance, the demande is there atm.