So far we have covered what Cross Realm Zones is and how it works as well as the impact to lower level zones on different servers. Let’s move on to part 3 of the Cross Realm Zones Impact on your gold.
High Population Zones
When I first learned about the technology that Blizzard announced was coming in MoP, I really only focused on the High Population Zones impact to gold making. No one knows for sure how big of an impact it will make until we see it in action, but we can certainly take some stabs at it!
My initial thought that has persisted even as I learned more about how this will work, is that the zones for levels 8-90 will be the most affected by the “splitting” of the zone due to the high number of players trying to quest. For those that remember the last couple of expansions, the starting zones for the new levels were insane. Too many people trying to get what they need and in a hurry to get it done. Mix in with this, the toons that simply want to farm nodes to make gold (prices are always highest at start of expansion) along with the professional farmers (bots) and you had a rough time getting any substantial supply.
What we do not know is at what point do they separate or split the zone, is it 100 people in the zone? 200? 500? I would be willing to be the number is high which means there will still be some serious competition but at some point the supply will double in availability because the zone will split into 2 zones. That means we should see more supply hitting the market faster.
My guess is that this will not really impact pricing in the initial 2 weeks because demand will outstrip supply no matter what due to the number of people trying to level crafting professions and get ready for raiding. What we will see are prices will fall sooner than they did in Cataclysm or WOTLK. This will be truer for those on low pop servers than the high pop servers because of the demand levels.
In any case, beware of flipping at high prices for very long as the price may fluctuate a lot during the first months of the expansion.
My Strategy
I see a huge potential right now in the lower level commodities, the ore, herbs and leather that are used for leveling from 1-525. This stuff is cheap right now, insanely cheap in some cases, so buy it. You filled up your Guild Bank and your bags? Good, then go buy some more because the new technology combined with a new class/race is going to drive demand higher than people expect and not many people are stocking up on the low level supplies. If they were buying it up then the AH would be seeing much higher prices.
Be patient on this strategy. This is a midterm investment that I think can earn you back 500-1000% returns on your investment.
I will post more about how to flip MoP commodities as we get closer to the release but for now, go develop a game plan for the lower level supplies and buy now before you miss the opportunity as I expect that once the prices start to climb in MoP, they will not drop as often or as much as we have seen in the past.
We're on a mid-pop realm, and we got merged Tuesday night (the 4th). Low-pop realms felt the hit to their AH and economy within 24 hours. For us, it took a little longer. The supply started to dry up, prices started to rise, and opportunistic goblins saw an opportunity to profit from their stockpiles - the dumping began.
ReplyDeleteThat stockpile dumping alleviated the initial pain of CRZ reduced supply for a few days. By Friday we had burned through most of the stockpiles, and the prices have started to really climb. Now it's Sunday night and the AH is an entirely different beast. Usually on weekends, the weekend players glut the AH with their goods and Sunday night/Monday morning are great times to pick up trade goods for cheap.
Ores, herbs, even leather are reflecting the reduced supply now. (Which is strange - I didn't expect leather to get impacted. It's on the level of an unlimited supply, if you're willing to farm it.)
This is going to be great for people sitting on stockpiles, or willing to go out and farm.
It's going to be hell for people leveling professions.
From a goblin's point of view, it's going to become MUCH easier to reset or control a niche market.
Now, if I could just get a certain guild master and our highest dps guildy to raise their default prices on inks... we could push inks to about $20g per and push all those "posting glyphs for more than 5g each is just greedy and unfair to the other people on the server" kobolds who keep dragging the glyph market down.
*evil grin*
Push them out of the market*
ReplyDeleteI really hate the glyph market these days, it has gone to hell with all of these morons who like to post glyphs at or near cost. I have seen glyphs for less than cost which normally means I should buy them and relist, but doing so only seems to encourage their bad business sense and you get 10 people who immediately post them dirt cheap again.
ReplyDeleteInks we can control better but the market is much smaller so profits are slower. Imwill post a few glyphs here and there but I just don't like messing with them anymore as a whole. It's a shame.