So, what concerns me is that if there’s a gear that will be mandatory, such as legendaries, we will have to farm gold again. Or, we can just buy gold in-game, on which Blizzard counts a lot, btw.
Think about it, right now the legendary system is not too different. There are people who mastered their crafting, and there’s a huge demand on these items that they craft, and people buy it from the auction. I don’t believe that anyone’s going to use the trade chat for crafting orders. People will just check the guide and go purchase the item that is needed for them. They will see what’s the price for their recipe and ask the same money. The same way, there’s nobody that crafts 291 rings for 20k now, and there’s nobody that crafts them for 300k, and if they do, they will slowly drop the price and come to the market-level. What I mean, is that there’s always a market within the game, and the prices on the auction are not actually random and chaotic. The prices change because of many factors. And if the resources are rare, the prices will be reasonably high again. If the resources are not rare, the prices will be super cheap, so nobody will farm the profession for gold-making.
Now, what’s the real difference? Am I missing something?
If the crafted gear is not important for high-end gaming, nobody will care about it and it will be a dead feature. If it’s way too important, we will have to farm far more gold than now.
I see two solutions for this. It might sound a bit off-WoW, but hear me out. The crafted gear can work like flasks. Flasks are a good and stable income because they will expire after an hour. The crafted gear can be really top level, but it might be broken and can’t be repaired. It will work like a flask, but much longer, let’s say a week. So, players have to purchase it again. Crafting these type of gear will not be too hard or too expensive, so crafters will have no reason to sell them for 150k gold. This way, I think the prices will be fixed around 2000-4000 for the gear. Players will still have reasons to farm this gold per week, which is pretty normal for raiders and Mythic plus players. Crafters will focus on the quantity, not rarity. High quantity and accessibility will create cheaper products.
This is just an opinion, maybe not perfect, but I feel like it’s much better than what we have now. In some servers, people pay 150k gold for 291 ring. That was the reason for me to stop PVP ing on my 2 other characters because I physically have not enough time for such huge gold-farming, and out of principal, I don’t want to spend money on gold.
The second solution I see is to make it solely cosmetic. Let players have customizable transmog orders instead of real gear. For example, I want my sword be blue, so I have to find blue ingredient. The crafters can see what color I want, and create it for me. Or, the player can adjust the size of the weapon, like in Mount and Blade. Bigger and longer weapons will require more resources.
Transmog is something that is between the high-end gaming and dead-features. It’s something that people take seriously, but it doesn’t have much effects on the high-end gaming.
I know that my words can create disagreements, but one thing cannot be denied, if you are going to make another expansion where player progression relies on gold, then you are just re-painting the same Shadowlands crap system, and you are not learning on your mistakes, and you are focused on selling gold for real money. If it’s not your intention, Blizzard, then please be careful about this new system and don’t force us to farm gold for character progression.