This is my first expansion when I really got into professions. I love the rework, talent trees, outcome quality, and all that. However, when I finally levelled my jewelcrafting enough to craft guaranteed r3 gems, I realized it makes zero sense crafting them at all with current prices on the AH. If I were to just sell the raw materials I’d use for the craft, I’d make 30-50% more money.
From what I understand, now that you don’t have to provide the materials for crafting orders anymore, you have a lot of scammers posting an order for ~1gp, fishing for someone to fill it, and then just dump it on the AH for the price way below market value. Not only it breaks the economy, it just destroys the fun and the sense of reward you get for putting time and effort into professions. I can’t say for sure about all the professions, but from what I see on my jewelcrafter, engineer, and blacksmith, I think it’s safe to say this is the situation across the board.
I think this could be solved by interconnecting crafting orders with the auction, and setting up the price floor on crafted goods for both order commission and the auction price. No need for any complicated added value formula, just make it equal to the sum of all the required materials at their current AH price. This way the market will still decide the value of the goods, both crafted and raw, self-regulate prices on higher quality crafted goods, while keeping the competition more fair and the professions more rewarding. Anti-dumping regulations at their best.
For crafting orders, it can be also adjusted so that for every piece of material you provide for the craft the minimum commission also goes down by the AH price of the said piece of material. Just to clarify, this whole thing should only apply to public orders. Personal and guild orders are just fine as they are, whether you’re ordering from a crafter you know, make something for a guild member, or craft stuff for your alts.
This is just my personal perspective, and a rough suggestion of a solution. Like I said, I do like the system, but the current state of things is very frustrating and discouraging to say the least. And of course, the discussion is welcome. I’d love to know what fellow crafters think about it.