Weekend (24 Apr) - The Cataclysm Economy

Weekend (24 Apr) - The Cataclysm Economy

The weekly Friday night MM Bastion of Twilight raid never happened. We had only five guildies in game and the raid leader reported that due to some real life bad weather he was going to be very late. We tried to rustle up some additional players, but when it became clear we would have to PUG almost half the raid we decided to call it.

With the Wild family suddenly having an evening free, Bean and Shevils decided to give the Friday night battlegrounds a shot with a pint sized Hunter Fortress. Arathi Basin was the "Call to Arms" for the weekend, which offered extra honor and experience for both winners (a lot) and losers (not as much). We signed up for both AB and Warsong Gulch, and with a wait of only about five minutes we got Arathi Basin.

As far as our 15 person Horde team went, we were not all that good. After taking the Farm, we took the Blacksmith but quickly lost it. A major battle developed at the Lumber Mill that drew in more and of the Horde team. Seeing an opportunity, Shevils and Bean, with a shaman deciding to join us, made for the Mines, which was held by the Alliance. They had four defenders, including a priest healer. I thought we had a healer, too, but the shaman was melee and did ZERO healing. He didn't even heal himself. As we approached they sent a warrior forward, Shielded of course, and we took the bait, killing him, but losing our shaman in the process. With the enemy priest Shielding and healing everyone we attempted to focus fire on the priest, and they focused fired on Shevils. Shevils went down first and our assault failed. We made a second attack, and this time Shevils tried an end around to get at the hunter that was doing most of the damage. Again, with the advantage of Shield and heals, we were stopped again.

The rest of horde army waged a fierce back and forth in the area between the Farm, Blacksmith, and Lumber Mill. The Alliance held the majority of the bases but no one else but us seemed to care. We lost 680 - 1600. The pint sized Hunter Fortress did as well as we could. Shevils led in total damage and Killing Blows and Bean was the third highest damage dealer.

It took much longer to get a second match, but eventually Arathi Basin popped again. The Horde team this time had a Jekyl and Hyde personality. The Alliance team got off to a quick start and got an edge in resources. But we fought back, gaining three bases and the upper hand and began closing on the gap in resources. Shevils and Bean opted to defend the Lumber Mill with one other player, and we successfully beat back several attacks. The Alliance weren't giving up, though, and took back the Blacksmiths. Shevils and Bean were busy down the hillside from the Mill discouraging Alliance from coming up when we saw the BG commander ask in chat - why is everyone at the Mill? Hmm, last we looked there only three of us. But no, all those players who had been killed at the Blacksmiths had joined us at the Mill.

No one wanted to leave, and we then lost the Farm. Frustrated, Shevils and Bean raced down to help. We took back the farm, but ended up losing the match 1430 - 1600, a much closer fight but one I still don't understand how we lost. Since we were on defense so much, our numbers weren't as good as the first AB battle, but we did the best we could.

After that second battle Bean had a suggestion. No more standing around defending bases, she declared, I want to kill stuff. That's my girl.

PS - the shaman from the first battle showed up in our group for the second AB fight as well. He was afk for much of the fight - Bean noticed that he stayed dead for long periods. He did 35 total damage (both Bean and Shevils had more honor KILLS than he had damage) and again did no healing. I don't know why he bothered to come.

Now that we have the exciting stuff out of the way, Happy would like to address a topic that really started with Lao - so blame her. :P

Lao and Happy were chatting a few days ago and Lao casually asked what the current "bargains" were on the Auction House. Happy reeled off a couple of good deals, but Lao replied that those items were "old" stuff that she didn't have anymore. What have you got for Cata stuff? she asked. Which sort of stymied Happy because, when he thought about it, he really was doing very little buying and selling of Cata level stuff.

Happy has been mulling over the whys and why nots ever since.

The short answer is that it doesn't look profitable, at least not to Happy. Even though Happy is not actively buying and selling the stuff, that doesn't mean he isn't paying attention to it. Happy has an entire bag filled with Cata enchanting materials, herbs, and assorted other things. He has dabbled in a few sales, testing the market, so to speak. It's a very volatile market. Price swings are pretty wide, and sales are very sporadic. Also, in general, the cost of Cata mats are higher than Happy's tried and true inventory, requiring a larger investment. In other words, Cata mats are a much riskier proposition.

So, Happy had to ask himself, am I becoming too conservative? Avoiding risk at the expense of potential greater profit? Wild practically pushed Happy into the Cards market (because Wild wanted a trinket out of it). Wild saved Happy probably 7k gold by building his own card set, but at the same time Happy will say that he still has over 5k gold invested in cards that he hasn't been able to get rid of.

But back to the matter at hand. Is it time to get into the current market? Happy's profits are down, and the times when he pulls in over 1,000 gold a day have grown fewer. Wild is going to burn a lot of gold if the three night a week raiding continues. Between 100g a pop flasks (3 per night), 10g a pop potions (about 6 per night), and repair bills topping 50g for EACH WIPE (last week - 20 wipes costing Wild in the neighborhood of 1,000 gold) Wild needs a ton of gold to maintain his habit. Wild had also hoped to get some of that gold back from the trash mobs in BT on Friday, but of course that didn't happen.

Happy decided it was time to do a more serious test of the cata enchanting mats market than he has done to date.

Let's start with celestial essences. They come in greater and lesser. Three lessers (LCE) equal a greater (GCE). The price of a GCE can run up to 60g each, or as low as 18g each. Sounds like a great way to buy low and sell high, doesn't it? The problem is that the price changes hour by hour, far faster than most other items that Happy sells. On average about half of the items Happy posts on the AH don't sell in the first 48 hours and expire ("expire" means they drop off the AH and would have to be reposted for sale). Happy would guess that as much as 90% of GCE/LCEs that he posts won't sell, primarily because of rapid underbidding by other sellers. Also, note that a week ago I would have said that the bottom line price on a GCE was about 25g - yet this morning I bought a stack of ten for 19g each. Will Happy now be able to sell those he bought at 25g for a profit? Maybe, when the price spikes up again - and if he's lucky - and his goods happen to be the cheapest when a buyer needs them - and he doesn't get underbid five minutes after he posts. Will Happy ever see an 18g price again? Who knows, but then buying them at 25g again when the price goes up doesn't look like such a good deal anymore.

All of the cata mats are like the above. Next, let's look at a group of items called volatiles. These are technically not enchanting mats, since the the cost to post them is higher than the straight one silver cost that all enchanting mats are charged for. Still, they are used by enchanters and Happy has been tracking them. Here is what things look like today (Saturday).

V. Fire: buy one and it'll cost 13g, a stack of 20 costs 6g each
V. Earth: 1 = 12g ea, 20 stk = 5g ea
V. Water: 1 = 22g ea, 20 stk = 6g ea
V. Air: 1 = 25g ea, 20 stk = 25g ea
V. Life: 1 = 10g ea, 20 stk = 9g ea

I'm using a 20 stack for comparison since for the majority of items Happy sells that's the largest stack size (and in general larger stacks have a lower cost per item). Volatiles can be stacked up to 200, though, and the stack number has a bearing on where on the list the items will appear, so that can make things kind of crazy, since the goal is to get your stuff to the front of the list.

I'm sure everyone focused in on v. water, where theoretically a 20 stack could be bought for 120g and then sold for 22g each for 440g, a 320g profit. The reality is that v. water is one of the easier volatiles to acquire (through fishing) and few buyers will pay 22g gold for a single. Loosely, v. water sells best at around 8g each. So, you say, post 20 6g singles for 8g each and take the 40g profit. You might be right to do that. However, Happy posted ten of those v. waters as singles at 19g each. In theory, if someone bought just four of those ten waters, Happy would have made all of his money back and any further sales would be pure profit. Won't someone underbid the 19g? Absolutely. But if Happy posted an 8g price, might that not also get underbid? Maybe. They could also be swept up by another seller and then posted for 10g each. Do that a few times and suddenly a 19g price might look good. It's that crazy.

Happy posted his v. waters an hour ago. He's already been underbid at 18g each. Happy had also made similar style posts for fire and earth volatiles. They've also been underbid already. Not a single volatile of Happy's has sold so far.

Here's the next test. Staying with water, Happy posted another ten singles at 12g each. That's well below the current 18g price, but still a nice profit - if they sell. Underbidding by a large amount tends to really piss off other sellers, too. Happy doesn't care about that, though, unless they do it to HIM. I'd also note that all of the stacks at 6g each have sold. Happy would now have to pay 8g apiece to buy a stack.

So, why would anyone buy singles at 12g each when they could buy several at once at 8g apiece? The logical reason is that the buyer doesn't need a large stack, just a few, and his overall cost would be less to buy exactly what he needed even though his cost per item was higher. The less rational reason is that a great many buyers only look at the first page on the Auction House and buy whatever is "cheapest" (ie, what's at the top of the list). Sellers who spend a lot of time on the AH can get very creative at ensuring that "their" product is always at the top of the list, and that usually means selling singles, which are generally more expensive than stacks. Happy rarely, rarely, sells anything but singles.

Happy checked up on his volatiles about two hours later. All ten of the v. waters had sold. Happy was also able to sell another ten waters, as well as a smaller number of earths and fires. By Sunday, however, the deals that Happy had found on Saturday were all gone. Had Happy started his experiment on Sunday, he would have seen a very different picture. There were no bargains, nor was there any chance to make a profit as singles prices had dropped too far and stack prices had gone up too much, wiping out the sale value of both.

For Happy, the experiment confirmed his assessment that the market was extremely risky. But he also learned that it is possible to make a profit from this market of cata volatiles, dusts, essences, and shards, nonetheless, and Happy will be looking a lot harder for those bargains.