Moneysinks and WoW design

[Quineloe]

Originally Posted by The Black Hand

I'm pretty sure you would cry about having to pay 30 silver to accomplish an end game task. This is evident by the inane whining over the ENORMOUS (read: nonexistant) costs for T3 armor. The problem with WoW isn't casuals, it's raiders and their 'we deserve everything at no cost' mentality. Believe me, if you are crying now, other games in the genre are going to be a bitter pill for you to swallow once you pack up your shit and move on.

Nonexistant is wrong, if the information on CG is true then my whole T3 set will cost around 800g in materials. We deserve everything at no costs? Given AQ40 repair bills, potions use etc this sounds more like an ignorant casuals post on the official board.

Sorry but any raiding guild that is honest about the game knows this is horseshit. Raiding guilds have money to burn. Argue with me about it - I'll call you a liar and I'll be right.

where exactly has a guild that isn't #1 money to burn when the #1 guild already exploited the market as it is?

"Oh no, we wiped learning a raid mob that is going to further widen the gap between us and Timmy Casualguy. Why must we have to pay for this? Why? Why is my guild subjected to such nonsense? My guild who if they are worth a goddamn should have at least 15k gold and unlimited supplies just sitting in the bank."

Most of us don't even care where timmy casual is, as we're PVE. Now please don't tell us that Blizzard cares about timmy casual either, or where is his new instance since dire maul?

What is the difference between the exp debt of EQ1 and the G debt of WoW?

The difference is that you could work up exp debt in EQ1 in a group, where it was somewhat fun. WoW farming FORCES you to solo. You have to SOLO for herbs, mining, cash and all that. It's just stupid to build an MMORPG so heavily around soloing that you can't even GROUP for the same achievement. Where are our money dungeons, our resource dungeons? Deadmines had Tin Vein all over it, where's the Rich Thorium Vein dungeon?

[Digo]

We exploited the market? What are you talking about? We put up a few bracers and belts here and there but the real money came pouring in from selling cores, ingots, and elementium. But we're only the #3 guild! We can't sell elementium to anyone! The #1 guild EXPLOITED the market and now we're powerless to do anything about it. Nevermind the 10+ other newbie guilds starting Molten Core who through some cruel joke of God posses half a dozen bindings but lack the elementium to forge them.

If anything, it is easier for you to make money in the wake of progression. Drop rates on BOEs in Molten Core are higher than they ever were when I first raided that zone. BOP blues from LBRS, Scholo, and Strath sell for hundreds and hundreds of gold to casuals working on their Dungeon 2 set. Books from AQ20 sell for hundreds. It takes two hours -- TWO HOURS -- to clear that zone. Surely you don't spend all your waking hours raiding 40-man content, do you? (Clearly not, as it would be cost-prohibitive, what with this depression.) I suspect your guild doesn't raid for more than four hours a night. What are you doing afterward? What are you doing on weekends? Surely 20 people in your tragically oppressed and underprivileged guild must be capable of earning gold.

Forced to solo my ass.

[Quineloe]

I sold some T1 BOEs for 1k gold, now you can be lucky to get more than 300 for it. Yeah, the market definatly changed as more guilds got into MC. It will be the same with AQ20 books and eventually there won't be any good cashmaker left

[Valishar]

No one makes you raid

For a non-raider:
At a certain level, 5-man instances give no gear benefits, so you pvp.
At a certain level, pvp gives no gear benefits (when honor in = honor decay with your playtime).
At that point you can either raid or quit.

So yes, nobody makes you raid, I can easily quit if I have all the best non-raid gear that I can possibly get with my playtime. But it's in Blizzard's best interest that I raid instead of quit, since my subscription money is paying them.

[Faith]

I think there is a gap between the guilds made up by people who knew eachother starting WoW (or at least a large number of the members) and those that started from a small group of friends and were forced to pick up 35 other people along the way to be able to raid.

I started with a few friends, and we currently have everything but AQ on farmstatus. We sure as hell dont have these 50k gold deposits just sitting around since we burn through mountains of cash on potions and such. We cant sell lots of BOE things since we have around 10 people comming into the guild to replace people quitting every month. Our server is severly limited in the availible pool of "well geared" 60s that are willing to join a new guild, leaving us to find lvl 60s in blues and gear them up in MC/BWL. Blue BOE drops are worth squat on the AH since there are 20+ guilds running BWL+ and flood the market.

Most members work, so we raid 19:00-23:30ish, leaving no time to farm gold during weekdays. On the other hand all members get enough gold for repairs doing some 5 man runs on weekends, or farming whatever. I really dont see a problem with keeping up with repairs, the only thing annoying me is the costs to hand in stuff for Tier 3. Why add yet another pointless money sink? Its not like most people are rolling in 1000s of gold (at least that I know of) and having to buy arcanite and stuff for turnin will put a huge dent into the cashbalance for a majority of our members.

[Sancus]

my whole T3 set will cost around 800g in materials.

ROFL, what? Maybe if you include the Nexus Crystals as a gp cost at current AH prices, yes, but that's a preposterous assumption. Any competent guild has a huge amount of these things. And if they actually tried to sell them, the price would plummet to their actual worth, which is next to nothing.

[Deris]

Originally Posted by Quineloe

I sold some T1 BOEs for 1k gold, now you can be lucky to get more than 300 for it. Yeah, the market definatly changed as more guilds got into MC. It will be the same with AQ20 books and eventually there won't be any good cashmaker left

Can sell Tier 1 Bracers/Belts for 1k+ easily for anything not Warlock/Druid on Deathwing .

[Drave]

(Imho) A better guild bank process (and other guild management tools, like those found in Eve) would probably help:

- Improve the game design (and economy)
- Improve guild leadership and management tasks
- Have less need for "perceived" farming
- Which would/could increase players' "fun"

YMMV.

[Dynalisia]

Originally Posted by Drave

(Imho) A better guild bank process (and other guild management tools, like those found in Eve) would probably help:

- Improve the game design (and economy)
- Improve guild leadership and management tasks
- Have less need for "perceived" farming
- Which would/could increase players' "fun"

YMMV.

There should be less use of fossil fuel in the world! Make it so!!

[Dis]

Originally Posted by Yermum Onceme

You do know, don't you guys, that those uber guilds went through those earlier stages? The ones where they had to farm 5mans for gear? Where they had to get their own resist gear made?

At some point a bunch of mouthbreathers decide they never want to farm or timesink again, just raid raid raid, and god forbid any have to do otherwise.

When has just wanting to raid raid raid changed since WoW, thats what I did in EQ...

All of a sudden WoW comes out and now some people (jobless, living in mom's basement crowd) decide now is a good time for not only time spent trying to defeat content inside the raid design, but you have to kill content outside of raid design.

Only thing I worked for outside of raiding is for keys, once they were gotten that was it I was done. You can kindly blow me, thanks.

[Drave]

Dynalisia,

My point is that the game design usually attempts to guide players into performing actions to the expectations of the developers.

At the moment there really isn't anything in the game that would guide a new guild (with players that are new to MMOs) into facilitating the dispersement of funds and/or materials to it's membership.

[Lusiphur]

Well .. my guild, being euro newbies, are still in the 'lets wipe 10 times in a night to Vael' stage. This costs me (priest) about 12g once candles are figured in. We do BWL 3 nights a week and MC once .. I usually come out about 30g down for the week in repairs (and yes I know plate pay more).

Yet I dont feel the pinch. Why ? Not www.rangrang.com or anything but by just doing an instance run on either my main or an alt once a week. Takes 2 hours max and if you are completing a few quests as well is mighty profitable. Did LBRS on my hunter twink yesterday in a pug. 90 minutes gave the twink three upgrades and all in I made about 30g for the run. So that's this week paid for. And even though it must have been about the 30th time I have done LBRS I still had fun.

While I agree the money sinks are driving the IGE's of this world it is compunded by people who wont spend 90 minutes a week doing something that can be fun to make some bank.

Although another 5 man to run for variety would certainly be nice

[Cybsled]

ROFL, what? Maybe if you include the Nexus Crystals as a gp cost at current AH prices,

Any set with arcanite is going to feel the burn. Prices are already starting to rise, and the farmers are reselling lower priced crystals at their prices. I've tried to buy out low priced arcane crystals only to see "Cannot find item". GG AH snipe.

Unlike mooncloth or Cured rugged hides, arcane crystals have a very limited number of places it can be farmed from. And most of those spots are perma camped 24/7. Burning Steepes is the worst. Sometimes you can get fortunate, but I swear I run by about 4-5 people on the southern border of the zone, where the majority of the nodes tend to spawn.

[Cad]

Originally Posted by Cybsled

Any set with arcanite is going to feel the burn. Prices are already starting to rise, and the farmers are reselling lower priced crystals at their prices. I've tried to buy out low priced arcane crystals only to see "Cannot find item". GG AH snipe.

Unlike mooncloth or Cured rugged hides, arcane crystals have a very limited number of places it can be farmed from. And most of those spots are perma camped 24/7. Burning Steepes is the worst. Sometimes you can get fortunate, but I swear I run by about 4-5 people on the southern border of the zone, where the majority of the nodes tend to spawn.

I made a serious effort to farm arcanite in winterspring and EP and Burning Steppes. The farmers teleport hacking to check the nodes were pretty obvious. I literally saw a node spawn once and a farmer appeared 20 yards above it about 10 seconds after it spawned.

[Vagoo]

Skipped a couple pages to post, but I think an important detail to note is that MC was a cash cow. Between droppable epics, ingots, cores, core leather, and all that other shit, guilds were rolling in dough. Pretty much all of the money my guild made/makes is from MC (I have the bank char).

When we switched our focus to BWL the gold influx stopped. No droppable epics, no cores, no nothing to sell really except elementium ore which is not so plentiful as to be a reliable source of income.

I have no real experience with AQ40 so I don't know if the trend continued there, nor have I been in Naxx on test.

The point is that unless raiding guilds have sellable items from the 40 man content, this concept of the guild bank funding everything becomes impossible.