Enchanting & economy in WotLK

As was announced, with the removal of Dungeon Finder, the “disenchant” button will also be removed from the game’s need/greed table. Two main reasons for this mentioned are: Blizzard doesn’t like the fact that people were able to use other people’s profession without permission and the fact, that “disenchant” button was only added due to the fact, that Dungeon Finder was cross-realm, while cross-realm trade was not possible.

I do understand how some people may get behind such change. It does, however, have broader implications than social interaction alone.

First of all, this mostly concerns dungeons. Outside of them people rarely group for long enough to get a significant number of disenchantable items drops. In dungeons we will have two types of drops: greens, which will be only slightly affected by this change, and blues & purples which will be heavily affected.

Greens are BOE items, so greeding them and disenchanting later is not a real problem, but blues & purples are BOP, which makes them undisenchantable once rolled by a non-enchanter. In my opinion, not being able to disenchant a large amount of blues & purples will affect the economy.

We have to keep in mind, that WotLK will bring us dual spec (albeit probably somehow “restricted”), heirlooms and ability to create level 55 character (DK) right away. This, in my opinion will create more demand for enchanting (double gear for dual spec, alts). At the same time I find it hard to believe that it will be compensated with huge influx of new enchanters. This will result in surge of the prices of materials, or even shortages. It’s a long shot, but that in return can potentially lead to more people running with unenchanted gear due to prices or materials shortage.

One can argue that it will be a welcome benefit to enchanting profession, and I agree that enchanting will become more beneficial with that change. I would not like this thread to evolve into “which profession is harder to level, and therefore deserves more benefits”, but would like to say that enchanting already receives a huge benefit in WotLK, and a one that severely limits player interaction at that – tradeable weapon and armour vellums, allowing for easier money-making.

As I said at the beginning, I do understand how some people may get behind the announced change due to reasons stated by Blizzard. I believe, a middle ground can be reached in this issue. While we can remove “disenchant” button from need/greed roll menu, how about adding “disenchant” window to trade menu, to allow safe disenchanting of BOP items? The way I envision it, it would work similarly to opening lockboxes.
This will allow more items to be disenchanted, and at the same time disenchanting will keep its social aspect untouched.

I’d like to know Your opinion about it. Do You think removal of “disenchant” button will affect economy? If so, how? How do You think it will affect enchanters and non-enchanters? Will it affect gameplay?

A little disclaimer, just to cut all the arguments about “my own agenda” – I do have max enchanting on that character, and won’t mind the “disenchant” button if it was implemented. I treat it the same way I treat conjuring food/giving buffs. I do that without being asked, and in return I receive buffs without asking. Everyone benefits if we all use our character’s abilities to the common advantage. I know people may have other opinions on that, but that’s how I view things.

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Why not giving an option to the players if there is enchanter in group? Simple question to enchanter “Do You want to allow Your enchanting skills to disenchant the itmes for the group?” If Yes we get the button back and thats it, u dont anymore have the argument of “we dont want ppl to use other ppl profession without question” :slight_smile:.

On 10000000000000000000000000000000% most of the enchanters will click yes :wink:

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You can trade whatever has to get disenchanted to the enchanter at the end of the dungeon/raid (within 2 hours ofc).

You can? Was it added in WotLK?

This applies to heroics only in TBC. Was it changed in Wotlk?

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I did some googling and it was added on patch 3.2 apparently but I cannot provide proof or source atm.

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Thanks for the info! I found this in 3.2 patch notes:
" Players will now be able to trade soulbound items with other raid or group members that were eligible for the loot. This system will work like the Item Buy Back system and allow 2 hours for players to trade an item after it has been looted. Players who choose to enchant or add gems to the item will get one last confirmation before losing the ability to trade the item."
Hope they intorduce it along with dual spec to allow for faster materials gathering.
This, if applied to all group content as the info suggests, practically solves the economy issue, thank You for this information!

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Yes I wouldn’t mind having this from the start of wotlk classic.

It will have 0 impact, or if not 0 it will not be noticeable.

This has been in the game since classic released, and is also present in TBC classic. I regularly have people trade me their bop items won at the end of instances for disenchant.

In Classic it only works for drops from instanced content that has a lockout (raids and heroic dungeons). In WotLK it applied to everything, including normal dungeons.

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Ah … oh well … it still won’t be any problem. The chances to have an enchanter with the needed skill in leveling dungeons will be super low, and as far as normals are concerned, just as it happens today, it can be established that the enchanter is the only one to greed on items and distribute the shards at the end.

While this may apply to new players, You have to consider the fact that many current players will be leveling their main characters and alts during pahse 1, and many of these characters will have appropriate enchanting level. And if any conclusion is to be drawn from current expansion, dungeon leveling can be big in phase one.

Although, if dungeon trading is implemented then i agree:

With or without trading, it really won’t be a problem, just like they weren’t in TBC either. Sure prices will be higher in the first weeks, just like they always are in the beginning.

LK has another huge advantage that will make most enchants extremely cheap, and that is the existence of vellums. Instead of throwing enchanting mats away to skill up, most people will just sell them on the AH, and there will be a TON of them.

I am aware of vellums, wrote about them in the opening post. Their addition can be very interesting, because it opens the possibility to level with more materials-heavy enchantments just to make more profit form AH. Endgame enchantments, the most expensive ones will stay expensive though, as people don’t use them to level professions.
As a side note, leaving vellums in the game seems inconsistent with their statements about promoting social interaction, as it completely removes any interaction between enchanter and his/her client.

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It’s a very bizarre decision, I’ll give you that. But still, I don’t think the disenchant button will have any effect other than removing a QoL, but I guess it does come with the package of RDF

I am not sure if OP is serious or hasn’t logged in game since retail WOTLK.

Brother,economy is already ruined because blizzard hasnt punished any AWC player for token to tbc gold exchange during their streams.

Economy is already ruined because people are buying gold left and right,and no one got punished,except those small time players no one has ever heard of who traded one token,while people who traded 30-50 tokens never got punished.

Economy is ruined because there are endgame content boosts going on every 5 minutes.

Economy is ruined because blizzard doesnt ban bots.

Are you seriously having concerns about wow economy because of 1 Small Dream Shard or 1 abyss crystal? per dungeon (MAYBE)

Was actually wondering when the ruined economy propaganda and how much worse it will be, will start.

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I wonder how much more expensive the enchants will be.

Most enchanters will click no becouse would inflate amounth of ench resources which would drive price of ench material down and enchaters would lose gold while non enchaters would make free gold of parasiting on other player profession.