The Effect of One on Many: Altering the WoW Economy

As my first real post I'd like to discuss another facet of the game that keeps me interested - playing the Auction House. Prior to transferring (lol 20k gold cap) I had around 110k and was approaching the gold cap, as I had easily been earning 5-10k/week since the release of 3.1. As someone who works in finance in real life and does an extensive amount of analysis on the real-world economy, it's fascinating to draw parallels between the it and the WoW economy.

We've all watched how the actions of an individual can affect many, seeing the world's economy collapse as a result of the actions of US banks, and this is to some extent being replicated across the World of Warcraft as a result of MMO-Champion's posting of gold guides. For those who have missed it, they can be found on the front page of MMO-Champion, and discuss gold-making methods using professions, most prominently Inscription and Enchanting.

What are these doing? They're significantly altering the shape of the WoW economy. For example, the price of Cobalt Bars, since the original post yesterday about enchanting, have skyrocketed in value, doubling in value of some servers and increasing in value to some degree on almost all. Eternal Earths have similarly skyrocketed. Infinite Dust prices have crashed on some servers due to the methods contained in the post creating an over-supply of Dusts. It's yet to be seen what results the inscription post will have on glyph prices, but herb prices have already increased, by 50% on my server, Blackrock.

There's some money to be had if you know where to look, so get in early and beat the rush. Be sure to snap up any herbs/bars/eternals if you find that your server has not yet been affected by the price changes.

I'll keep you posted on this as it develops further, as BB will most likely develop more guides on the matter.

~P