What started this posting was a conversation with one of my guild mates who mentioned a frustrating experience for one of our guildies in a low level zone where she was trying to farm ore. She was being beat to mining nodes and was seeing players everywhere she went in the zone and then realized these players were from a different realm. A few days ago she was farming this same zone with no competition and only running into the occasional player.
That is when I had an “Aha” moment. Cross Realm Zones has already impacted us, now the question is how and what to expect going forward. Up until this moment, I was only thinking about how this change would impact leveling zones from levels 86-90 when MoP is released. The reality is that there is now a major change throughout the entirety of the leveling experience which in turn will drive changes in the economies on each server.
To better explain this I am going to give 2 different examples, lower populated zones versus higher populated zones.
Lower Populated Zone Impact
This is a rather interesting change because of the impact it will have on the supply in your Auction House. This change will impact all lower level commodities like ore and herbs. This really impacts the toons that want to level their professions more than anything else.
Leveling requirements have changed so dramatically over the years that toons now level faster than ever and will sometimes skip entire zones because they out leveled the zone before getting to it. If that toon was leveling a “farming” profession like mining, skinning or herbalism, they may go to that zone to level their skill and could so very quickly since no one was there. Until now.
By implementing this new technology, the toon that had an entire zone to themselves to farm their nodes is now competing with many people who are from different realms. Translate this to the impact on the Auction House and you will possibly have a lower supply, or at the very least, a slower supply into the Auction markets than previous. What does this mean to prices? Seems to me that when supply slows up but demand stays constant then prices go up and for someone like me this is going to be a great way to flip more goods at higher prices.
We may also see fewer people choosing farming professions because of the competition in the zones will make it slower to level the skills. If this is the case it will only further suppress the supply side of the equation.
Larger realms will more than likely see prices slowly increase without much of an issue and will be absorbed into the game because there is a ton of gold floating around on higher population servers. Small population servers may be hurt the most by this, as they may see higher spikes in prices that is not as easily absorbed. Both markets will be prime space for people like me who make the majority of their gold flipping items for profit.
No comments:
Post a Comment