Greedy Goblin

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Mount up

You most probably heard of mount changes. The largest changes are:
  • 60% mount is available at lvl 20
  • 100% mount is available at lvl 40
  • flying mount is available at lvl 60 and flies with 150% instead of 60%
  • faction discount applies to epic mount (-1000G with exalted)
These have several effects on markets that goblins shall consider.

The first is that players can fly instantly (or 1 hour later) they entered Outland. This alone turns Outland questing upside down. Until this, you had to ride on the ground in Outland while questing. Riding means being attacked by mobs. This means killing and looting them. This means lot of grinded materials to the AH. Not anymore. You just land, kill quest monster, fly up. So prices up for:
  • disenchantable outland greens
  • surprise: Outland enchanting materials
  • Outland skins
  • Outland herbs and ores. This needs a bit of explanation. While people quest they see yellow dot and go there. Kill mob and harvest the node. It can be done with flyer just as much. Actually can be done faster. However the new flying questing turns the habit of players upside down. If you already killed 200 mobs today for 5 quests, you won't mind kill 2 more for a herb. However when it's "OMG 25 quests, half level just today", you will do mind wasting time for 2 unneccesary mobs.
  • Lowbie greens: the 60% mount makes the difference between riding through and forced to fight (and loot, and sell)
Prices down for
  • Higher level Outland greens
  • Higher level Outland herbs/ores
  • Outland rep items
The reason for all three is the same: since you'll have to kill much less mobs for a quest, you'll complete zones much faster and with much less kill XP. So no more "ding 68 in Terokkar". People will reach Blade's Edge, Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley before lvl 68, so they will get high-60 items and access high-Outland nodes. The reason for the fall of Outland reps is that you can reach honored just by questing in Nether and SMV, needing no item turnins for the shoulder enchant.


One more effect: less grinded item (incl Northrend) altogether, so overall grinded prices up (or at least slower deflating). The reason is that epic flyer, that motivated most of the casual grinders became both cheaper and less neccessary. The normal flier will be acceptable for a casual now.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agreed. I've already stocked up on 10 stacks of Arcane Dust, and am moving on to essences. Obviously the void crystals still won't sell. It will be worth stocking up on 300-375 prof leveling mats as casuals won't be farming for themselves or AH so we will be able to sell them mats for very high prices, non casuals or non farmers will also still need these mats, thus making this a huge demand.

Archangel said...

I buy Void Crystals (usually 4-5g on my server) and break them in 2 Large Prismatic Shards each. I always put Large Prismatic Shards on the AH at 4.5g per piece (stacks of 10), no matter the minimum buyout. They sell very well.

Fawr said...

I think these are really long term trends. Worth turning cash into items if you intend stockpiling long term (to procect against deflation), but otherwise they will just be a waste of bank space.

Pangoria Fallstar said...

The increased flight speed of regular flyer negates alot of my want to upgrade to epic flyer. Since riding on ground helps my profession (skinner), so regular flying only made me fly back to Naxx from graveyard a bit slower.

Anonymous said...

How come they didnt add wings to my 20k Mammooth?

whatsmymain said...

I think you are overstating things here. Most of the quests in outlands that involve killing a named mob typically involve killing the things around it as well. I know the strategy I use and I believe is most common is simply to ride your mount directly to the mob and kill whatever follows you in. This won't change much with a flying mount.

If the prices on herbs/ore go up you will have a lot of people going and grinding them on their faster flying mounts because after all the end goal isn't the epic flying... its the 20k mammoth and choppa!

I also believe that most of the gathered materials come from people with epic flying allready. After all most M&S aren't so stupid that they would mine on a 60% mount while everyone soars over them.

whatsmymain said...

Also I think you will see a rise in lower level materials since it will be a lot easier to level gathering professions while questing if you have a mount earlier especially the epic mount.

Which means more people going into outlands with the appropriate skill level.

Townes said...

Those are all reasonable speculations, but some could go the opposite way. I'm currently taking an alt through Outland on rested XP, don't mind the extra mobs, and since you can get to 68 very efficiently doing all of Hellfire and Zangarmarsh, a little Terokkar and the majority of Nagrand - all very quickly - I can't see getting the flying mount.

Maybe if I wasn't using a DK as first toon on a server and had the money. But still, the new flying mounts are faster, and I'd use them for gathering if I wanted to farm ore or herbs, and prices would go down, not up. As is, I want to get leveled and to Northrend. This goes faster dinging 68 in Nagrand than having to fight higher-level mobs in BEM and Netherstorm.

To me, it's a waste of 600 gold that isn't speeding leveling very much (a level a day is very little play in Outland on rested XP, and nearly all the tightly packed mobs in many zones are either quest mobs or have something you want, meat, leather, etc.) So my plan, at level 64, is to clean up Zangarmarsh in another session or two, level the usual way, get just as many of those greens to DE, kill extra humanoid mobs for cloth cos I'm leveling tailoring, and get to Northrend where I can make more money questing. And to be higher level to farm low-level dungeons for greens to DE and to give to my alts.

Human behavior is a little unpredictable, but when you can do Outland gathering with 150% speed instead of 60%, for 600 gold, I'd expect supply to go up.

Anonymous said...

I kinda hope prices will rise. ATM I'm already stacking some outland enchanting mats, trying to deplete the market of mats a bit. Even though I was hoping to be a top contender for the market of mongoose and other outland enchants, it seems I just remain a mediocre player at my server. Especially the supply of void crystals on AH just doesn't seem to end, I must admit I have no clue where they keep coming from.

Anyway, for my army of low level alts, these level changes are nice. But On the other hand, also thinking about yesterdays post: why even easier? Leveling is already a piece of cake compared to how it was in classic wow.

I used to think Blizzard was slowly turning it into their easy entry level MMORPG, so the top players wouldn't hesitate to migrate to their new MMORPG when it was released. But there's still nothing known about that game, even the releasedates of SC2 and Diablo3 are still unknown.

ZachPruckowski said...

Bear in mind that this is at least 2 months away. Obviously you should plan ahead, but it's not effective immediately (a lot of discussion on the web seems to skip this).

My major question with this is "What will this do to overall disposable income?" I think this will make things like the chopper and other "luxury goods" more popular, because people will have more money on hand. If getting flying for an alt (or a newly leveled main) goes from 8k gold to like 6.5k gold, that could make for a larger money supply for lvl 80 luxury goods.

I'm also wondering who's going to be like Pangoria, and say "150% flight speed is good enough", and skip epic flight altogether. If this becomes a prevalent attitude, I wouldn't be surprised to see the price of Northrend herbs/skins/ores rise as fewer people bother to farm for epic flight. This change could happen even now, if people now give up plans to get epic flight and wait for the "normal flight speed buff".

Anonymous said...

The people who ding level 68 go to Northrend ASAP so why would the price of higher outland items go down?

Hardly anyone on my realm sells Fel Iron , Adamantite or Khorium. Adamantite is probably the cheapest but thats still going for 50g/stack. I've been leveling an alt on a different realm and had been selling Fel Iron ore for 75g up to 200g depending on the market.

I hope you're right though , I had been selling Mongoose enchants for a steady 500g but that suddenly dropped to 250g recently so hopefully mat prices will go up and with it the cost of mongoose. I guess I'm lucky that I have a bank alt filled with Arcane dust.

Anonymous said...

gevlon have a look at:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9520916021&sid=1

what do you think of the way this guy's thinking? giving away 50k+ for a mount if it drops!

Dan said...

Thanks for a solid (low-risk) investment strategy once again. I'll be holding onto my Outland enchanting materials seeing as for whatever reason they're becoming a lot more common during my scans for disenchanting.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous

Someone on my realm Nordrassil keeps doing runs for it where he says he'll pay 10,000g if the mount drops.

Anonymous said...

I would pay 50k for the ashes of Alar.

Taco