Weekend (Aug 13)- By the Seat of my Pants

Weekend (Aug 13)- By the Seat of my Pants

Happyface has one foot in heaven and one foot in hell. The Auction House has turned into the wild, wild, west - or maybe a roller coaster out of control with all of the safety measures broken.

Last week a low cost, modestly traded enchanting mat, Greater Magic Essence, was trading at under 2g each. Happy had a decent pile of them that he'd bought for well under 1g each and was contentedly selling them off at the 2g price. The AH ran out of them, so Happy raised the price to 3g each. They sold out. Happy raised the price again. And again. By the end of the day Happy was selling them for 11g each until he ran out of stock. The run ended, with the dregs from other sellers now languishing unsold on the AH. When they get discouraged and drop the prices back down Happy will scoop them up to be ready for the next run. I expect there to be many such runs on the AH on many enchanting mats as players try to get alts to level 85, get professions maxed out, and get prepared for MoP.

At another level, there are Maelstrom crystals and Heavenly shards. The crystals typically sold for 200-300g each. Enchanters can "break" crystals into two heavenly shards, which typically sold for 100-150g each. Happy's basic strategy was to sell shards when their price point was better than the crystals, because Wild could make more shards from the crystals. When the crystals became more expensive, Happy sold those instead of the shards. During the past week and a half the price of crystals plummeted to under 100g each, with shards bottoming out at 40g each. Both mats will always be needed, even after MoP launches, but just what the level of demand will be is more of a guess than anything else. As the prices fell, Happy wondered where the bottom would be, and what kind of rebound, if any, there would be.

Happy bought thousands of gold worth of crystals and shards on the speculation that the price would rebound as players realized they still needed the enchants and other uses of these mats. Based on current demand, apparently, Happy didn't buy enough. The price is still wildly fluctuating, but the "right now" price on the AH as of Saturday morning is 175g each for crystals and 73g each for shards. That's almost back to "normal." Given that this is the weekend, Happy will be watching closely to see whether sellers dump stock, dropping prices, or buyers drive the prices even higher. Happy, for all the uncertainty, is having a great time.

I bought MoP for both accounts on Friday. The nice thing about buying the digital version is that Blizz will download the expansion in the background prior to launch so that I don't end up in the mess of people trying to download the game on 25 Sep or install it from DVD. Blizzard also, quite cagily, is providing some additional help for level 85 players who enter MoP without raid level gear. Wildshard, in his Cata level raider gear, has a gear score of i393. That is more than capable of taking on the quest and faction grinds needed to start leveling to the new max level, level 90. JB is also pretty well situated from a leveling perspective with her ilevel gear score of i384 (in melee DPS spec). Philly, however, has a pve gear score of i321. Even in pvp gear (not optimal for leveling), her score is only i352.

In MoP, players who have lower than raid level Cata gear are going to get slaughtered even in the early questing. This is what apparently happened in the transition from Burning Crusade (level 70 max) to Wrath (max level 80). Level 70 players in green level gear had a tortured path to take as they were very under geared in Wrath. Blizzard has an answer to that issue this time. A search of the MoP database revealed ilevel 372 green gear for level 85 players. That gear will be available for purchase from an MoP vendor (or vendors; in Beta vendor availability has changed several times). So, is MoP i372 gear at the same level as i372 gear from Cata? In a word - No. Let's do a little comparison, shall we? The below compares a vendor purchasable, MoP i372 chest piece with Wild's i384 raid level chest piece.

MoP i372 green Chest piece (low green level MoP gear):
    +1771 armor, +578 sta, +385 int, +265 crit, +244 haste
Cata i384 purple Chest piece (LFR raid level gear)
    +1869 armor, +646 sta, +371 int, +254 spi,  +252 haste

In other words, Wild's arduously acquired, end game Cata raid gear is just barely, and I mean just barely, better than the very worst gear available in MoP. It's the great equalizer. Now, to be fair, I don't know how many different pieces of gear are available, and I didn't see any weapons for sale. My guess is that not every gear slot or every spec will have vendor gear for sale. Still, it's possible that even Wild, and particularly JB, might find gear from a vendor better than what they currently have. Philly will need to get every piece she can lay her hands on.