Warcraft’s economy is becoming unbalanced. Initially there was a natural progression of wealth that existed alongside character and profession progression. This is no longer the case.
The reason as I see it is the economic weight of so many level 80 characters paying the way for their ‘toons.
When I start a new alt, what do I do?
Well, if you’re anything like me, you are trying a new class, race or combination of the two. At some point you give your character a profession, then, using the huge piles of gold from your main characters you level them up to say 225 in about 90 minutes. Buying stacks of low level items in the process.
Then, if my experience is anything to go by, I stop and think. “Do I want to carry on with this ‘toon?”
I do not progress them past say level 40, never finish levelling the professions, and often end up deleting them to make room on the server for something else. What’s even more asinine is that I will often then repeat this process with a different race or class (Doh!!)
I know I’m adding to the imbalance problem. Crafting is a gold sink. Until you get a crafting profession to 450, you are pretty much pouring gold down the drain. Sure the odd item sells, but most are destined to be vendored for a fraction of the production cost – or just thrown away. Apparently it costs over 5000g on most servers just for enchanters to level their rod. Just the rod! Never mind the 450 enchants they have to perform as well.
With Cataclysm, I expect the Warcraft economy to change in the following ways;
A revamped set of crafted item. One’s that are actually worth buying and wearing at low levels. These will cost more to make, offer more points to the maker towards their professions skill.
Huge gold sinks put in game to stop the rampant inflation that is becoming a real issue. Expect to pay huge amounts for the right to fly over Azeroth and even more for speed perks for your mount.
Archaeology will provide ingredients to “boost” existing items. Either with a stat increase or with a fundamental change to the way the item is crafted
Vendored items introduced for levels 81 to 85 will be expensive. Very expensive. As will repairs, and flights into the high level areas.
The players will be forced to “ungroup” either from guild or (in my case) multibox setups to progress from 81-85. Instance in groups but level alone will be the way. This will prevent exploiting colleagues to rush through these levels. Blizzard are determined to make this a unique and exciting journey for players – not just the rush to level cap that previous expansions have been
Cataclysm is perhaps the last chance for Blizzard to fix the economy. Sure it works now, and many don’t see the real world warning signs of hyper inflation and manufacturing redundancy being relevant in a game. But they are. These two economic problems are rife in Warcraft, and they will eventually grind the economy to a halt. The laws of supply and demand need a helping hand in WoW. This is Blizzards last chance.
Luckily it seems they are initially looking to fix the economy. However, if it doesn’t work, then patch 5.0 may well be the end of it.
