Gold Capped: What we didn't learn at BlizzCon
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the auction house. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or by making him a festive fall cookie platter.
Honest, guys, I tried my best. I was there at BlizzCon 2011. I got up and in line at the Q&A panels, determined to ask the Blizzard development team questions about the game's economy.
Ultimately, I was foiled by a bunch of dudes who wasted our time offering shout-outs to their guild (and by my own poor planning of not getting in line two hours before the panel started). But I digress. The fact of the matter is that there's a lot of stuff wrong with the World of Warcraft economy and Auction House. Issues that need to be addressed in the next expansion to promote a fair and level playing field, something WoW has lacked ... well, something the game has lacked for years.
So, if I did get the chance to stand up and ask a question of a Q&A panel, what would it have been? Well, after I wasted everyone's time thanking you, the readers (Booooo! No one cares about the readers! Booooooooooooooooo!), I'd have asked one of these three.
Fix the damn thing already
Since the new Pet Battle system will result in more players using the Auction House, are there any plans to improve the default Auction House user interface?
Simply put, if you're using the default UI, you are at a severe disadvantage against those who use add-ons. It's true, regardless of whether you're buying or selling.
At the very least, we need some basic sorting options that are sorely missing at the moment. We need an ability to search by price per unit to quickly find the best-priced items, even if they're listed in unusual quantities. We need an Auction House that consolidates identical listings. (That is, if someone lists 200 pieces of Whiptail one at a time, all at 2g a piece, the auction house should consolidate these on a single line so that buyers don't need to click through 10 pages of nuisance auctions.) We need an ability to quickly buy multiple auctions. We need, essentially, everything that Auctionator does that makes it a must-have addon.
Think it can't happen? World of Warcraft frequently takes popular must-have addons and integrates them into the game. It happened with Quest Helper. Heck, Blizzard is even working to include most of WoWhead into the game, including boss strategies.
This change is long overdue.
New dailies?
Can we expect to see any new profession-specific dailies in Mists of Pandaria?
I will admit, I don't always do my cooking, fishing, and jewelcrafting dailies. Still, I'd argue that they're a huge success. Jewelcrafting dailies make the profession feel more fun. They're not required to make money; they just create an alternate route for doing so. In fact, I'd love to see Blizzard take the next step with jewelcrafting dailies in patch 5.0 by having them award skill-ups on completion like the cooking and fishing dailies. And further, I'd love to see other professions get dailies as well.
How could this work? Well, instead of having players grind through to Twilight Highlands to access those few initial epic recipes or patterns, have players complete a week's worth of dailies. This will eliminate the urge to be the first to level 90 and [Your Profession Here] 600, giving those auctioneers with a life the ability to compete (somewhat) with those who spend the first 30 hours of a new expansion playing non-stop without bathroom breaks. Yikes.
The new dailies could behave similarly to jewelcrafting dailies. Tailors and leatherworkers could have to create garments or find a special type of quest-only cloth/leather. Scribes could be asked to perform a quest similar to the one offered by their Forged Documents item. Herbalists might be asked to perform their skill on certain quest mobs or gather certain quantities of weeds growing around Stormwind or Orgrimmar. These quests would give players a terrific new route to leveling their professions (especially those poor leatherworkers stuck on low-population servers), give level-capped players something to do, and give Blizzard another opportunity to do what it does best: be creative.
... and finally ...
Can you please, please, please fix leatherworking?
Pretty please?
Maximize your profits with more advice from Gold Capped. Do you have questions about selling, reselling, and building your financial empire on the auction house? Fox and Basil are taking your questions at fox@wowinsider.com and basil@wowinsider.com.
