I am a big fan of this system, making professions useful but that being said, I can see this as being the next tool used by gold farmers/sellers.
The drop rates themselves feel bad, maybe it’s better for herb/mining but skinning you don’t get that many for the time you would actually spend skinning.
So what do you do. You go check the AH… and boom, 2g per scarce material item and u need like 12-15 odd pre lv20.
I can see the gold farmers just buying it out and listing higher than it should be. We are already talking about like 8-12g on beta, to craft a lv17 odd blue, it’s stupid.
I know these materials are in the game already but I believe they are like 5g each on a vendor. If the plan is for this to be a gold sink for alts then so be it, but if the idea is to make useful items on mains, I think we need to do something before launch with it.
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I don’t think we should be too quick to presume how the economy is gonna look after launch, based on a level capped beta.
A few things make the beta experience skewed compared to what we might see in 1 or 2 months.
1 - number of players is likely considerably lower than release, despite being a shared global server
2 - everyone was kept from progressing, and thus stagnated at a point where a few single scarce materials were in exceedingly high demand for BoP crafts, Pristine Leather in particular
3 - if you take a look at the later BoP recipes, they start requiring more stuff, both dropped, gathered and crafted, so there won’t be a single thing for the bots to focus on, due to the diversity of demand that we’ll be seeing lategame
4 - Blizz has already shown that they’re ready to strike down hard on both bots, and the people they sell their gold to. As this becomes more prevalent, the reward for botting will go down, and we’ll naturally see fewer and fewer of them (that’s the hope at least)
Is it gonna be perfect? Probably not, but it never was. Bots always had something they could target farm, whether it was black lotus, black dragon scales, water motes in the lake outside Shattrath, or whatever else. Pick your expansion, and there was something in constant enough demand that automating a farm for it was profitable. Gold sellers have never bothered buying out the market and dictating a high price, because they rely on volume alone to carry their throughput.
The people actually attempting to control a market and drive up prices, are players who enjoy playing the auction house, and since we’re moving to one giant EU server for each ruleset, the sheer amount of stuff posted will drastically increase, meaning it will be immensely more difficult to ever actually empty and control a given market.
Pristine Leather, I am pretty sure it’s bugged, the drop chance is astronomically low. Or maybe you get more when skinning lvl60 mobs ? There is also the fact that once you are done crafting blue gear for you and you hit 60, all the consequent Pristine Leather will end up on the AH, what would you need it for ? Perhaps alts, but even still, you’d have a surplus and eventually start dumping it on the AH?
What I tested last night was the Legacy skills - the one that gives you 100% more rare mats from Skinning, a.k.a. Pristine Leather. And the first ever time I got Pristine Leather, I got exactly 1. So I am pretty sure that Legacy talent is not working yet, either. If it worked, I would be getting always a multiple of 2. Which would help immensely.
I still don’t like how “bursty” Pristine Leather drops - nothing x 1000, then boom - you get 3. Sometimes back to back - 3 from one mob, 2 from the next one, then 2 days of ZERO, despite hundreds of skins. It just doesn’t feel good, it would be better if the drop chance was higher but we got like 1 less. So you get 1,1,1,1,2,1,2,1,1, etc, but more consistently.
Right now it feels like winning the lottery. Except then you realise you need to win the lottery AGAIN to craft those pants. And despair haha.
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i found on my first character leveling it, i got loads of it, but on my more recent characters, its just non existant
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Just counted the total, on my druid, for the whole time playing, lvl 1-28, with 2 days exclusively hunting mobs and skinning only, I have collected a grand total of … 19 Pristine Leather. Out of literal thousands of skins. Less than 1% drop chance.
On my hunter, currently lvl 17ish, skinning everything I can 24/7 while questing, so far I have gotten a total of 3.
In both cases, I always chose to quest in areas with mostly animal mobs that I can skin on the way, avoiding humanoids like the plague.
Brutal.
For my holy pally gear I need Pristine Leather for her blacksmithing recipe, good luck trying to buy it at nearly 1g a piece. Double fatality - despite levelling all that Blacksmithing, I still can’t craft her blues because of Pristine Leather. That’s not fair, really, other recipes require things you can actually buy - like gems or scales, sulfuric acid - stuff that does not cost 1g per piece, not even close. But because Pristine Leather is so busted, even Blacksmiths suffer.
It is what it is, hopefully they do something about it for launch.
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you cant judge the economy by the beta. people were stuck on L20 and then L30 and are doing upgrades that most will not bother to do in live servers because you can get better items just 3-4 levels up by questing. I myself spent around 3 gold for upgrades at level 20 that were replaced by level 24, and gold is not important in beta but in live everyone will save that for their mount at L40 instead of an upgrade for 3-4 levels.
i hear ya, but by the same logic, why introduce the merchant favor system in the first place? as the items are BoP you cant make for alts etc, so if you Nuke level past them, its a useless item/system
Because it gives people another thing to interact with, stuff to do, and stuff to have fun with?
Just because it doesn’t stay relevant at every single stage of the game, doesn’t mean it’s not relevant for the playing experience.
It heavily reinforces player interaction and trade across multiple professions, it helps move the server economy, and give more people a way they find satisfying to make gold.
I don’t see the point to craft level 20 blue items, you can easily level up in greens, and all those recipes and materials aren’t worth the favors and time spent grinding, especially since they’re BOP. End-game recipes might be of interest when preparing for raids, but that’s about it.
As for communication between players, it would be much better if Blizz didn’t ruin dungeons and group play, since that’s always been the thing that brings people together in wow, not the mindless grind for Pristine Leather or just gold to collect Favor Boxes.
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because different players have different rythms. I’m not saying noone will make them, I’m saying that it will not be so many as in Beta. so yes maybe by the third alt you feel to take it slower and having those 3-4 levels go a slittle smother with better gear would be a good investment Or maybe you decide to stay at that bracked for a while with that alt for better battleground experience etc.
The only way this can be succesful is to offer different play styles or otherwise everyone will be bored in one year and that is a tad less than forever.
They were common at the start of the beta and are a lot more rare like others have said, I’ve skinned hundreds of mobs and still haven’t gotten one yet on my third character so I think they were just made more rare which would increase their value on the AH.
Paladins scale on spell damage gear, you can’t “easily” tank or level with base damage on your spells.
On my paladin at level 27 I’m still using all the item I crafted one of them was at level 15 and nothing has come close to replacing it. And I haven’t seen any loot that’s going to replace it either in any dungeon or quests people have done on the beta.
no realms is so that gold farmers don’t have to transfer is what it feels like.
many of these changes benefit specifically the RMT market while it becomes nothing but a gold sink to mains if you decide to sponsor the bots by buying the materials, or a waste of time trying to get them yourself of off rng.