The Great Herb Price Crash of 2012 - A Tragedy Told In Graphs

[PowerGamez]

25g/stack of Green Tea Leaf! Lol - it's ridiculous.

[Ashnazg]

I'm absolutely loving the drop. Over the past 24 hours I've been buying Common Herbs for 40g/stack or less and crafted around 3200 Ink of Dreams and 700 Starlight Ink.

Being able to craft darkmoon decks for ~2.3K and reselling 40-60K is pretty win.

Where are you finding scribes who part with their cooldowns for cheap? On Illidan, scribe cooldown (Scroll of Wisdom) went for 1.5k-2k last I checked.

[Aurora]

I'm a little confused on why people even bitch about prices on anything going down. What do you even use gold for? I had 2 million gold at the start of this expansion and just wasted like 200k on crap just for the hell of it to use gold. I just don't get what you need gold for. I could of easily just not spent that 200k and I would be fine lol.

Why do so many people come to the profession forum to post this nonsense? There's a comment like this in every other thread, making gold and playing a virtual economy is fun to a lot of people. It isn't difficult to understand.

[Pugbot]

Well, it was bound to happen with the DMF leaving town and the ink trader setting up shop but I didn't expect this level of "crash":

https://theunderminejournal.com/item...jin&item=72235

This is Silkweed on my server, as Silkweed is the primary herb most people use for milling purposes due to the difficulty of Fool's Cap to obtain and the relative ease of obtain-ability of this herb coupled with the small amount of alchemy uses. Obviously not the whole story is being told by the Market Price, as the bottom of the market is now down to 2g. The quantity available is also fairly telling of current buying habits as supply hasn't really changed. There's been almost a 66% reduction in price over the last week and it's STILL not selling.

What if you buy and craft into inks? Well that's a sadder story:

https://theunderminejournal.com/item...jin&item=79254
https://theunderminejournal.com/item...jin&item=79255

Yes, even trading up you're only make a 30g profit on IoD to Starlight. Starlight suffering currently a 75% reduction on price.

Thanks to Golden Lotus, herbs are worthless to an alchemist with the main block to market availability being the Golden Lotus, the ridiculously rare herb that nobody can seem to get enough of:

https://theunderminejournal.com/item...jin&item=72238

But even there we see the pinch as more and more people spend their SoH on alts, on gatherers on this herb. What if an alchemist were to buy both the Silkweed and Godlen Lotus and produce the final result, the Flask of the Warm Sun (+int)? Well...

https://theunderminejournal.com/item...jin&item=76085

That's right. A grand total of 15g profit, if the flask even sold at all. Judging from once again the glut of market availability, people are relying on guild alchemists for their raiding needs right now.

The real question is, in the face of nearly unlimited supply how can Blizzard make markets viable again?

I wouldn't consider myself an expert on this topic, but I do have some experience.

First, when Cata came out, shortly after wasn't there a reduction in the herb nodes? Im thinking it was specifically only whiptail in Uldum that was reduced, but maybe there was more.

Second, when have potions/flasks ever made money? In my experience it is only the specialization procs that make you money. But the demand for flasks was never high enough to consider making 20 of your own flasks, maybe getting 5-10 procs, and selling them. You would be sitting on that inventory for quite a while. It is an OK option to do this alongside other auctions, but alchemy was never close to a primary income maker in Cata.

In my opinion you could have made this exact post for Cata and WotLK. This is how alchemy has been. Specialization procs make you money, but the demand for them isn't very high because of the availability of guild/friend alchemists.
Alchemy's primary money maker in Cata was transmutes. Turn 3 green rubies in one red ruby and proc 1-5 and there's your income. I have NEVER seen an option to make substantial money in potions/flasks/elixirs.

[iggie]

Gold will be flowing out of the economy with this expac lots of people with lots of gold are spending instead of easy farming and BMAH is taking Millions and Millions out.

Not on my server! Countless T3 and pets have had zero bids. I got the Drake of something winds (stonecore) for the min bid, 20k. =\

[kingriku]

Not on my server! Countless T3 and pets have had zero bids. I got the Drake of something winds (stonecore) for the min bid, 20k. =\

On my server its always sold out every single item.

[Deleted]

Not read too much of this thread but think blizzard made a smart move generally with gathering, most gathering resources are very easily attainable, driving down prices of ore/gems/herbs/inks and stopping the gold goblins having to about their 'cataclysm' routine of making easy money. Moreover they shifted the gold emphasis onto items such as motes of harmony thus strangling the standard 'goblin' and allowing the regular player to earn reasonable amounts of gold and going a small way to evening the gold playing field. Also it encourages people to go kill mobs and thus actually play the content. So to op if there was a crash it was probably intended.

[Endus]

First, when Cata came out, shortly after wasn't there a reduction in the herb nodes? Im thinking it was specifically only whiptail in Uldum that was reduced, but maybe there was more.

Whiptail was reduced, but to put it in perspective, Whiptail was essentially respawning faster than you could travel to the next node, so people were sitting in one spot and gathering more Whiptail than they could by farming "normally". That's what was hosed. Gathering itself hasn't been that significantly changed from Cata, really; the big difference is that during the first few weeks, less people have level 90s they'll run a bot on. So you either get "OMG, nodes are too plentiful" or "OMG, I can't find nodes because of all these bots" complaints. It's the former until it's the latter, basically.

Second, when have potions/flasks ever made money? In my experience it is only the specialization procs that make you money. But the demand for flasks was never high enough to consider making 20 of your own flasks, maybe getting 5-10 procs, and selling them. You would be sitting on that inventory for quite a while. It is an OK option to do this alongside other auctions, but alchemy was never close to a primary income maker in Cata.

The last time I remember the flask market being lucrative except as a side business was during TBC, when you could also chain-use potions. Otherwise, it's been transmute specs all the way, for Alchemy money making.

And even then; the barrier to entry is so low the profit margin is basically your procs, not high prices per item like you see with glyphs or gems.

[Freedom]

I made 4 decks for 62k total today including buying scroll CDs, and only one of them was an Ox. 1 of each. If you are complaining about this you don't know what you are doing.

[SamR]

The market crashed due to botters.

The market crashed because only idiots with too much gold would spend 30g for a Ghost Iron Bar.

I've gathered a shitton of Ghost Iron in MoP and only recently with the lower prices have I used any of it on my BS and Engie. It made no sense to use it even though I gathered it myself when there were impatient rich players out there would were paying 15-30g for it.

Anyone with any past experience in WoW gathering knew that Ghost Iron is way more prevalent than any metal has ever been in WoW. Even more so than in early pre-gather-nerf Cata. The prices were completely unsustainable once the super rich moved on.

No econ chart you put up could ever explain the craziness of MMO players with more gold than time throwing massive amounts of it just so they can max prof skills ASAP. It's like throwing up what the price chart for beanie babies(or Tickle Me Elmo or any must have toy) looked like around Christmas time back when they were "the" gift everyone wanted and trying to do tradition economic analysis on the price movements.

[Monteverdi]

A lot of it is hackers and farmers, I imagine. I bought up about 20 stacks of silkweed for 3g60s B/O a few days ago. Either that stuff was just farmed like crazy, or somebody posted them for the wrong buyout and I benefited from their misfortune.

[SamR]

Whiptail was reduced, but to put it in perspective, Whiptail was essentially respawning faster than you could travel to the next node, so people were sitting in one spot and gathering more Whiptail than they could by farming "normally". That's what was hosed. Gathering itself hasn't been that significantly changed from Cata, really; the big difference is that during the first few weeks, less people have level 90s they'll run a bot on. So you either get "OMG, nodes are too plentiful" or "OMG, I can't find nodes because of all these bots" complaints. It's the former until it's the latter, basically.

It wasn't just Whiptail. In fact, Whiptail still maintained a OK spawn rate after the nerf. The biggest hits were to Twilight Jasmine(in TH) and Heartblossom(in Deepholm). The number of nodes of Twilight Jasmine was so insane that it was selling for significantly less than Cinderbloom at the beginning of Cata. Like an idiot, I didn't even bother farming them because they were so abundant and went off to farm "lesser" herbs. The nerf came and TJ became super difficult to farm and the price shot through the roof. Heartblossom spawns were killed, too, but there were some phasing tricks you could do if you stayed in earlier phases that allowed some OK farming.

[Bigbamboozal]

OP, you are one serious dood. I know it's sort of off topic, but you work in the financial industry or trading yah? This is your version of laughs for practice where real money isn't on the line yah?
Either way, it's admirable, and a little frightening....
Just as long as you remember this a virtual market crash. I'd hate to see your toon try to off themselves by jumping off the towers in AV, it would hurt, but it would take WAY too long
Besides, I'm sure things will shape up a bit with a new patch for a while before diving like a commercial jet performing it's swan song.
In the mean time, fire sale!

[Deleted]

I'm surprised your surprised OP, the main buyer for herbs was raiders, including myself I couldn't be bothered to go out into the world and farm herbs for my flasks/pre-pots, so i bought them off AH. With the introduction of the farm, I can just plant them daily, and never have to buy them again, I can even get golden lotus's off my farm.

As to the other stuff, you answered yourself, DMF would always raise the price of herbs, now it's gone, herbs really don't serve much purpose, of course they will crash. You're playing the AH wrong if you think there's going to be a profit in herbs, besides making DMF cards which will soon pass too, the silvermoon AH is already flooded with pages and pages of the same trinket.

[PowerGamez]

Where are you finding scribes who part with their cooldowns for cheap? On Illidan, scribe cooldown (Scroll of Wisdom) went for 1.5k-2k last I checked.

Having multiple scribe alts is very handy

[Paranoid Android]

I had a post about this awhile ago. While its understandable prices are going to go down with more 90's and more flying mount people farming I still think Blizz is killing professions. Like I said in my post I am an "old school" gold maker in that i spend a good hour or so farming herbs and ore and put it on ah. Now with of course the flying mount waaay back in TBC and along with guild perk of gettin more per node or herb it is going to flood the market. Along with this is alchemy being able to create as much trillium as you want from ghost iron bars thus really easy gettin your living steel cd everday. Then of course is my inscription and milliing which now I can now take my Ink of Dreams and turn in for Starlight Ink, thus kinda hurting the card market.

I know this is a losing battle I am fighting because most people want there raw materials cheap and plentiful so the minority is going to get shut out. when I do farm I can basically fly around in one area and load up on herbs and ore with very fast spawn rates and closeness of nodes and herbs (I am on a medium popular server). I look at in relation to real life: Most people don't grow their own tomatoes and then make sauce, thats why they pay a price at the grocery store. To me that's what my service brings but again ease of gettin herbs/ore kills the market.

[Freedom]

I haven't even touched my ret pala herber and in the start of Cata he was my main money source, made something like 4-6k gold an hour early on if I was lucky, 3k normally. Now farming isn't worth shit. Especially with Midwinter dumping their entire herb stock....

Even old prof stuff is down a lot, less than a gold for Briarthorn, one of the herbs that used to be really expensive. I haven't looked at fel iron stuff though.

[Endus]

I know this is a losing battle I am fighting because most people want there raw materials cheap and plentiful so the minority is going to get shut out.

This is self-normalizing. As prices drop, the profit/hour of farming drops, meaning fewer people will find it worthwhile to do so, meaning supply diminishes, and prices rise again. Bots weight this a bit since they require little effort to run, but those running bots again will feel less desire to risk it if the profits aren't as high.

We're dipping low, but unless the trend continues for months, it's not a major change in the market. And even if it does, it just means the market's shifted; it does that, even in the real world. See horse breeding, before and after the rise of the automobile, for instance.