I am considering returning to Classic, but the prices on WoW Naxx consumables seem extremely inflated. As a legit player, it feels extremely disheartening to have my consumable farm times doubled or tripled due to large amounts of gold being pumped into the economy through artificial means, so my question is;
How prevalent is gold buying in Classic?
I have no numbers, but it seems very prevalent among raiders and item buyers.
I have no facts to back it up, but judging by the amount of bots that have been running since day 1 of classic… it must be a lucrative business
Please dont buy gold and support the bots
Based on the amount of bots running around, and the prices of some stuff, it’s extremely prevalent.
That said, a lot of consumables can be solo farmed inside instances if you have herbalism. Doing that will be much more efficient than pretty much anything else you can farm. The only significant exceptions I believe are black lotus, mountain silversage and plaguebloom.
“How prevalent it is” depends on the server size and type.
On my carebear PvE server (Pyrewood Village), I don’t think it’s particularly prevalent, because the numbers are nowhere near these huge PvP servers. At least I haven’t noticed anything glaring.
It’s easy to make gold yourself, if prices are inflated it means you can also sell your stuff for an inflated price.
Mages can earn money by boosting other players without using a bot. A dedicated booster mage can earn a ton of money legally.
People just know hot to make money because there are so many guides on the internet. Back in vanilla i remembered that i never really had gold, not even an epic mount… now in classic i have more gold than i need (at the moment).
Gressil sold for 198k in naxx the other day. Over at latys twitch.
Without having proof, I find it hard to believe that this amount is self-farmed. GDKP is popular, and if you can win items from buying gold, alot of people will buy said gold.
When I ranked this shaman, my plan was 13/14. Had to stop at 11 due consumecost and I needed to save my gold for pve on my main. Point is, some pvpers even buy gold.
But how to find the exact percentile will be difficult.
I might have excessive faith in the humanity, but I think goldbuyers are a small minority. Maybe 3%, maybe 5%, doubt that more than 10% of the players.
I want to believe, but the sheer number of bots and massively inflated gold prices tell another story.
Varies on server.
Currently on Bloodfang Horde (a dying faction on an server with a lot of Alliance activity), mongoose potions are 10g each, Firewaters are 10-12g each, Elemental Sharpening stones are 17-25g each. Flasks? Basically bankrupt you.
That’s not including the price of protection potions. The thing is though, dispite how expensive raiding is…
Getting gold isn’t exactly difficult. I still get plenty of gold from twilight pages, Winterfall Furbolgs are still a good grinding spot. Arcane Crystals are 80g each if you have mining. It’s all a matter of motivation.
The prices of consumables skyrocketed because there was a high demand with Naxx coming live.
As I’m writing the prices are starting to drop and they will continue to do so.
Getting gold is part of the game anyway, and it’s supposed to be “not that easy”. It may be frustrating to know others are buying but that’s how it is.
I also don’t think that gold buyers are having that much influence on AH prices. For every gold buyer there must be a bot to provide. And bots are effectively flooding the market driving the prices down. It’s basic economy.
Ofc there are some players, horders or buyers, who bid crazy amounts of gold for items, but that’s really a very low %.
And don’t forget we are at the end of Classic, so for many gold is irrelevant now. My best guess is that most players harvested a lot of gold till now.
You were just cought off guard.
It’s massive. Bots print raw gold 24/7 by botting BRD (just “/who blackrock depths” and see for yourself), and there are buyers from top guilds to casuals. Farming is a waste of time outside of very specific, usually instance-bound ones (DME/SM/Mara herb runs) which bots do more of than any player anyway. With multiboxing being allowed for the majority of the game’s lifespan too, the wealth distribution is massively screwed on top.
A progression night in Naxx can cost you up to 1k, which is an absolutely nutty number to begin with. This is the result of the gold value being inflated, farming your own consumes not being viable for the most part, and there being no real gold sink.
So instead of wasting your life on farming that sweet 8 dreamfoil and 0.3 black lotus per hour people just buy gold from bots to buy herbs from other bots. The whole market is broken.
That’s the cost of an epic mount. A few progression nights in Naxx = a few epic mounts. Many people have a few 60 alts on epic mounts. Nothing extraordinary.
Also 1k is way more than it is, unless your guild forces the raiders to flask. Which it shouldn’t, unless it’s a very hardcore guild. But a very hardcore guild = very quick progression = cheap.
I think people exaggerate the current issues. Sure, there are bots, there are goldbuyers, there is inflation. But it’s all quite manageable, especially if one actually played for more than a year. And if one only casually logged for a few months, perhaps one doesn’t put enough effort to clear Naxx, tough luck…?
Exactly! Farm for a few hours and you’re set for the week. Everyone knew that Vanilla is grindy and requires preparation to raid. Now it finally became true in Naxx and everyone is “bah, so expensive, am I supposed to FARM to kill KT??!!”.
No gold buyer that i kow has been punished so far , several r14s and realm first kt kills , rmt isn’t punishable by blizzard in my experience so far.
Probably every raid logger buys gold (or slack and not use consumables)
Totally.
And you re-buy those epic mounts every wednesday too.
… Wait.
This is just not true There has been gold sellers with over 100M gold permanently banned gold buyers get banned as well
Here is a vid about a more mainstream goldseller banned
As i said GOLD BUYERS , and lets have more in depth , they ban bots and big holders of gold that sell it but that gold is still in the game and so far none of the people that have bought from 100k to 500k gold in total over the past year have never been banned at all or suspended , the problem of rmt will remain in game forever as they don’t put resources into dealing with , not wanting to delete the gold the gold sellers made and sold , if you say but what if they spent that gold and they don’t want the bann the toons i have a fun method they can try , but they will , you delete the gold people bought and if all the illigal gold they bought is more than they have then they go into negative gold , sort of the are in debt to blizzard , and 80% of gold they make goes to blizzard to pay of that debt and 20% stays with the toon as you don’t want to lock them out of the game completly , but it will never happen , gold buyers are free to buy gold without any penalties , gold farmers and sellers just get new acc , rmt is staying with us forever , you have it in retail in selling m runs , blizzard just doesn’t want to deal with it as many people who have raided or done any high end game know it is a public secret , it is just sad but yes classic and retail have elements of pay to win as gold buyers are not punished.
I have never heard of anyone getting banned for buying gold. And that’s the cause of the problem. There is absolutely no risk doing it.