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Professions - a conspiracy theory?!
Rhinotones
Member UncommonPosts: 250
I was watching a video titled "WTF happened to professions". It was an interesting discussion but I felt they had not really looked past the actual changes with professions though they did touch on some interesting points. I kept asking myself, what was the big picture behind these profession changes. Surely it wasn't just to make it more streamline with the introduction of garrisons.
With the introduction of garrisons, characters have access to all professions now including mining and herbalism. But why? Was it simply to make your garrison a one stop shop for profession materials? Well yes, it was. But there's a deeper reason, gold, or the control thereof.
In past expansions making serious sums of gold was quite simple for those dedicated to crafting. Making 100k to 300k/month was not inconceivable. Some players were legit and focused on crafting so they could increase their wealth to purchase rare mounts ect whist an unsavoury group called gold farmers did it to sell gold for real $$. Enter WoD and the garrison with its profession changes. Now that most players are self sufficient there is nowhere near the potential to build wealth. This has placed everyone on a much more even keel gold wise.
There's a large number of ways to spend your gold in wow also. Seems to me that blizzard were hard at work since MoP trying to lower the amount of excess gold in game. 120k mounts??? Really Blizz???
Once they had this under control it was time to introduce the WoW Token. Blizzards solution to replacing the gold farmer and putting the profits from gold sales in their pocket. With the fact that it's harder now to create the same levels of wealth as times past it has also increased the need for gold. Those fortunate enough to still have plenty will continue to play free...for a while anyway. Those without can always buy from blizz.
I wonder how long it will take before the demand for gold out weighs the supply available and they start selling gold, not from players but themselves?
Comments
You get more than enough gold to sustain your garrison just from playing. Yes, the various mounts, pets, and toys cost a lot of gold. Perhaps it was Blizzard's intention to make them expensive so they could sell more tokens. I don't see the problem, they're vanity items.
Well, getting a balanced economy in a game where monsters and crafting mats spawn out of nowhere is never an easy task. Garrisons aren't helping, that is true but the system is pretty broken (in Wow and the rest of the games) from the start.
Goldsinks just isn't enough.
In a real classic economy do money and resources come from somewhere, gold and silver needs to be mined and minted from limited resources and once that is done they circulate but a system like that is very hard to implement in a MMO, new zones would be outmined really fast and gold would sit at a few players account piling up.
Then again, todays economy is based on numbers in computers, there isn't enough bills for everyone to get out their money in cash which people in Greece have noticed. Modern money is based on people thinking it is worth something and therefor it is unlike gold coins which only can exist if there is enough gold.
The deflation in a MMO after release tend to be like the Spanish economy when the conquistadors plundered south America. And it is pretty hard to fix with just goldsinks which more or less is the only way most games uses to keep deflation down.
You can keep the droprate of gold down somewhat but players tend to figure out how to farm it relatively fast anyways.