WOW Economy - Inflation Problems

Community General Discussion
1

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to share something that might probably be considered a hot take.

We need to bring back expansion-to-expansion gold inflation to WOW.

Up until Legion the economy followed a rather simple cycle - with each new expansion all your accumulated gold lost value - quests started giving more gold, new mission tables allowed you to print money, etc, etc.

Now, while somewhat unpleasant, massive inflation between expansions kept the economy healthy by preventing people from accumulating massive amounts of gold.

An example from back in the day - back in WOTLK if you had 20000k of liquid gold you were considered rich.

In Cataclysm, this number jumped up to about ~100k.

I skipped MOP, but judging by the price of the Grand Expedition Yak I’d guess that if you had about ~500k you were a rich person.

Repeat until Legion.

After Legion - inflation stopped. 10k in BFA could buy you the same stuff 10k can buy you now.

Why is this a problem? Let me elaborate…

Today I decided to finally upgrade one of my rings. I went to the auction house, looked up “Jeweler’s setting”, filtered by “Current Expansion Only”, proceeded to…

WAIT A MOMENT, WHAT?

The price of the setting went from 900 gold to 2300 in two days? What’s going on?

Then I went to Undermine Exchange - for those of you who don’t know, this is a website which tracks quantity & prices for auction house items across regions & realms.

Please refer to exhibit A:

Apologies, I cannot post a link - you can look up Magnificent Jeweler’s Setting in the Undermine Exchange website to see what I’m talking about.

On the second of September someone spent around 24 000 000 (yes, that’s twenty four million gold) to buyout all jeweler settings and re-post them at x2.5 the price.

I know what most of you would say - “yeah, well, it’s a free economy, there shouldn’t be no price controls, etc, etc”

Keep in mind I’m not talking about price controls or “regulations” - all I’m saying is that up until Legion this never happened because, well, you simply couldn’t accumulate such vast quantities of gold that retained their purchasing power between expansions.

Some people are just better at making gold than others - if we stay this course and there’s no meaningful inflation between expansions, in a few expansions we will have a “regulated” economy - it will be regulated by the 20 people who know how to make money and will, in turn, control the market.

That’s all.

2 Likes
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Only thing i disagree on is when it happened i say after the removal of mission table in SL it has got a lot worse were a select few players can control the pricing now which should not be allowed but here we are.

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This has been happening with everything, not just 1 or 2 specific items, when a new patch arrives. For example, rank 3 Bismuth was around 40g 2-3 weeks before 11.2; now it’s at 90g+

Someone decided to buyout everything and repost to make a profit. Well, we can then work against them by crafting new items and posting them for lower prices. The best way to “punish” AH goblins and barons that try to control the market is to simply not buy their stuff. Find a Jewelcrafter and ask them to craft it for you. Or simply stay longer without extra gems until the prices drop to what you consider appropriate; after all unless you are in the 1% of high-end players they are not required.

The only reason these AH golbins/barons continue acting as they do is because players keep buying from them.

1 Like
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No, we need to suck the gold out of the economy to keep the inflation under control. Currently it works quite well.

Wicked way of thinking is the fact that you believe devaluing of savings is a way to prosperity. No it is not. Stable prices and low inflation is a way to prosperity.

All you want is devaluation in your favor, same as people or companies asking for cheap loans with low to zero interest. We have seen in the past where loans with low interest rate close to zero lead to, it ends up with huge inflation spike in the future, simple as that. All you want to do is throw quantitative easing at the player base :slight_smile:

Once this is done, it is very hard to end the spiral of inflation. You would just cause the token getting more expensive by 50k Gold every month without any possibility for normal player to keep up, literally making them even more poor than now.

Now you will say this is a game and not real world economy, wrong, WoW mimics many real world economy aspects pretty well and same rules apply.

2 Likes
5

Thing is they have nerfed every single way a normal player can get gold without having to buy it.

raids and dungeons nerfed
proffs nerfed
racing gold nerfed

Only real way to make gold is to boost or have masses of gold from wod/sl mission tables and control the AH

to buy a setting worth 2500 you have to find at least 4 world quests in 1 reset to be able to get that amount

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Inflation is a problem and its a long and complicated discussion.

The magnificent jewelers setting I saw yesterday because I bought some. Look at the components, one of them got more expensive. Thats the root cause of this (I didn’t bother to check why). Did they buy that up too or did drop rates decrease?

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I don’t boost anyone and have enough gold for everything by just doing WQs, weekly events, gathering some mats and selling them. What are you talking about? All this and you are pretty much covered for your needs.

If you increase the gold available, so will increase the price of the setting.

You cannot think that if the game allows you to earn more gold per time spent, the price of the setting will be the same, right?

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How many hours per day do you play ? and not to be rude you have 51k + achives which means you play alot more than the normal player can.

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Not that much lately. Some days I don’t play at all, some evenings 1-2 hours, usually more on the weekend, but not a rule. If I go to my weekend place, I don’t play at all as there is no good internet :slight_smile:

Gold world quests and few pinnacle caches with alts are like 3 hours weekly in total and I get at least 50k G weekly, yet spend like 5k. Player of the type you are mentioning for sure does not need high end consumables for 300k per month.

The problem again - if you increase the amount of gold available, the price of things will adjust and in the end it will be the same price for time invested and some extra up to that as is usual with inflation spirals. So everyone will get even more poor, effect none + savings devauled as a “bonus”.

If you want to do something with the prices, you would have to make materials available in higher quantities for the same amount of time spent. Carefully though, it is very easy to make them wortless if overdoing that and whole economy would crash.

2 Likes
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wish i could earn that much, if i had the time i would for sure but not anymore.

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Well, the token was at its most available back in Legion & WOD, when inflation was, as you put it, “spiraling”.

As for interests rates, quantitative easing, loans - what are you talking about, there’s no such thing in WOW - there’s no central banking system, there’s nothing of inherent “value” against which you hedge your money (cars, property, houses, etc.), there’s no inherent risk to anything - so what if you lose 5 or 10 or even 50 million gold in WOW? There’s no repercussions apart from the fact that you’ll feel bad :smiley: Comparing the WOW economy to the real world economy is like comparing the Investopedia Simulator to the Stock Market.

Your gold “savings” aren’t worth anything either with inflation or without inflation - if a flask costs 2k because you can mint 100k gold a month from mission tables/old raids/quest rewards it will cost 2% of your income.

The only difference is that with expansion-to-expansion inflation Mr. Goblin won’t be able to buyout an entire auction house worth of insert-type-of-lotus-here with the 100 million he made last year that didn’t lose any value.

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TBH If I had spent that time working in real life, I would have bought much more gold with tokens.

Thats a theory of reasonable tkinking tho, spending 3 hours in WoW per week working on my gold income is more appealing to me than to work 1 hour extra :slight_smile: Just because WoW is fun even grinding Gold, if you make it that way…

1 Like
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Yeap, someone also bought out all Blasphemites - supply went from 13k to 800 in ~2 hours. Price went up accordingly, naturally.

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Such a simple thing like increasing the amount of gold from world quests means increasing the amount of gold in the economy = inflation, right? Yes there is no real central bank, but the principle is the same, there are ways Blizzard can increase the amount of gold in the economy.

I understand now, you just want to attack the “rich” using devaluation of gold savings. Again, see how this works in real life… in the end the normal people suffer the most, so would normal players.

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This is actually happening and its mostly under the radar.

Gold supply has been tightened (less gold WQ’s etc) - though there have been a few more recently. Repairs etc (gold sinks) are also through the roof.

“Normal” players now struggle just to get gold to repair if they do stuff like M+.

1 Like
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What I want to say is that inflation is always ahead and earnings are behind it and increase later and more slowly, if you cause high inflation in any way in the game, you would have tougher time to earn the specific % of price of a commodity you are mentioning, just because the price increase would be faster and come sooner than the increased earnings for same time spent.

In the end it negatively affects all of us in the long run and this only just to target some specific AH goblins. And believe me, those are so capable that they will prosper again and maybe even do better under the new conditions.

1 Like
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But this is anothe issue, I agree that M+ should give more gold and if you have a good run not dying 10 times, in the end it should net you some positive income. At the moment even if you don’t die, you hardly earn enough for repairs of naturally decreased durability of worn items.

But the solution is not to cause high inflation in the whole economy, the solution is to adjust M+ end chest gold to be more reasonable. But if a group wipes 10 times in M+, it has to cost them and be a negative, just so that they learn to do better…

On the other hand you cannot expect to be in the same position like a player who throws a healthy mix of activities into his sessions (including making some gold), if you do nothing else than M+.

1 Like
18

I mean, sure but I still class it under “inflation” and repair costs are where most players see gold disappear. It’s a tax on just hitting stuff and its increased absurdly this expansion.

I made a thread on it a while back and its basically linked to quality and ilevel so the higher the ilevel the higher the repair cost. Last patch if you just flew up, dismounted and died it was over 220gold to repair that.

I don’t disagree but I see this as follows: How long do I need to do “other stuff” to fund my M+ adventures? It used to be maybe 30 minutes would fund a week. Now I / most people need to sink a LOT more time into making gold because stuff is more expensive and gold supply is constrained.

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Up to M+10, where the real gear rewards end - this you can all do without any consumables and still the group will do just fine without any issue if geared properly. So the only investment is repair costs - just do better and do not to die. I believe this is the level of normal player.

Up to +12/+13 to get the Legend Mount, you will need some flasks, food and oils, but not that many runs are needed to not be able to make enough gold for that. This I believe is the level of above avarage players, but still achievable even casually, if you take your time not rushing.

If you push over +13 just for the rating, well yes, but this is like raiding mythic, you just have to invest in that and I can imagine the costs can become crazy - buying runes etc.

But TBH I am slow M+ runner, at the time I start to run +10, most people are done for the season. But I like so many activities in WoW that simply cannot dedicate more time to M+ to be so fast and push like others. I also only PuG. So yes, I have no gold issues here.

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Gold inflation has been rather slow over the past few expansions.

Nothing can compare to it from MoP into WoD. Due to the Garrison, 20k in MoP became 300k gold in WoD. That was a massive increase.

Right now I am easily making 40-45+k per character a week from doing gold WQs, weekly and paragon caches.