I'm not the only person doing this, evidenced by the number of people competing to heal up injured druids, or collect Magnolia's from the lava field. Its not surprising, 365 gear, patterns and achievements occur at every turn. But what affect is this having on the economy?
Now I'm not talking about the AH here. I realise that new patterns bring different pressures to mats and items for sale on the AH. Although interesting for each goblin out there (we all made a fortune over recent times) this isnt the focus of my thinking. What is interesting, is the fact that each and every day money is being created out of nothing more than completing a series of simple tasks, and that this is occurring day after day after day.
I'm going to use simple rounded numbers here just to illustrate what I am talking about. Puraa completed 14 dailies to receive all her Marks of the Tree. She gained 27 marks and over 200g. I did that twice meaning my wealth increased by more than 400g for the day just from doing dailies.
Now according to wowprogress, Caelestrasz has around 7900 active level 85s on the server. Their definition is:
Population - amount of level 85 characters that meet any of the two conditions:
- The character is from a guild and the guild killed something in Tier 11 content
- The character killed something in Tier 11 content
- The character is from a guild and the guild killed something in Tier 11 content
- The character killed something in Tier 11 content
Now here I am going to be very very conservative in my estimations. In MTRs we have 138 level 85 toons. Of these I would doubt that anymore than 40% are doing their dailies each day, and another 20% when there is time. So to be conservative I'll select 30% as my base line number.
30% of 7900 is 2370. Again lets be conservative and round this down to 2000.
The ration of Alliance to Horde is 1:0.81. This means 1105 Alliance to 895 horde. With dailies bringing in 200g a day that means that purely from quest rewards the base wealth on the alliance half of the server is increasing by more than 200,000g per day...
Let me say that again - each and every day, based on very conservative figures, gold in the economy increases by more than 200k a day - by more than 1.5 million gold a week.
Patch 4.2 arrived 26 days ago. More and more dailies have opened up as we have progressed through the dailies but I would also suggest that the number of people grinding the dailies has also diminished in the same period. So (and here I am guessing) I believe that since 4.2 arrived there has been a influx of more than 5 million gold into the Alliance economy on my server.
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Now does this actually matter? Well yes actually it does. Any first year economics student, by the time they have studied Macroeconomics, will tell you that economists generally agree that high rates of inflation and hyperinflation are caused by an excessive growth of the money supply. And in terms of a servers money supply, 200k a day is not a mere drop in the ocean. And the results can be seen every day in the auction house.
Heavenly shards are currently 80-100g on Cael. Dream shards were its equivalent in WotLK, and I doubt there are any readers who can truthfully say that dream shards (once prices settled) were costing 80g+ to purchase.
I feel it myself. Once again it was Heavenly Shards that made me notice. Someone dumped 60 shards on the horde ah for 50g a pop. I bought them all and sold them for 90g+ over the past 24 hours. I invested 3k in the venture, and did this without a second thought. 3k is around 0.2% of my total wealth, its nothing. Yet it wasn't that long ago that I would be holding my breath as I out laid that amount of gold.
Cata gems cost more than they did in WotLK. But the funny thing is, WotLK gems cost more than they did during WotLK. Yes this is, in part, game mechanics (there is still demand because cata gems cannot be used in pre cata gear), and supply/demand (fewer gems available) but it is also in part because people have gold in their pockets and are happy to spend.
This happened before when Cata dropped. We all smashed through 5 levels and came out the far end about 2500g richer. We know there are at least 7900 85s on Cael, so that threw around 10 million gold into each factions economy. It was harder to gauge then, because mats were 'new' and 'rare' and people were paying stupid prices. But the effect was the same.
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This post doesnt have much point - its just an observation and I don't know what we can gain from it. The fact of the matter is that we have to remain relative in our thinking. The 200k I earnt this past week isn't as impressive as the 200k I earnt the week of Glyphmas.
People scoff in trade all the time that the spectral tiger mount is listed for 60k on the AH. But they sell for that. Jeez people pay 50k for a set of cloth gloves. So when considering your future opportunities, remember than 1k profit today isnt what it was a year ago. Think percentages - it keeps you focused.
3 comments:
I was kooking at my sales of WoLK gems, and who is buying and equpping them.
While there are some twinking toons, there are also some truly clueless level 85's out there.
I also noticed this steady inflation over the past few weeks.
On a few servers I've been on, I remember seeing cut WotLK gems go for more than cut Cata ones. I'm surprised theyre still floating just above 100g (for cut Infernos), when I remember cut Scarlet Rubies two years earlier going for almost the same amount. This is not to mention the other cut colors hovering at maybe 30g each.
Overall, it truly amazes me when people complain (even from expansion to expansion) on raising prices, even if these people only have a basic understanding of a WoW economy. Furthermore, it surprises me when people feel a 5g or 10g tip for your services is still adequate. :P
Great post, I hope it will jog people's minds.
Even more of a inflater of the economy was the vendor value of vendor-sold cut and raw gems. Yes, the Obsidium Shuffle and Elementium Shuffle have been the worst economic inflating factors, even more than the dalies.
And the easy accumulation of more Volatile Earth and Volatile Fire from the Firelands Invasion Daily Quests have tanked those markets, even with the increase of truegold demand.
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