Does WoW really need a goldsink?

[bufferunderrun]

imho thing like the bmha are fine even the big mount is fine, but asking someone to spend 80k to craft a mount with professions is plain bad, those mount should require farming materials not buying npc gold sink material.

[spinnaker]

Yes, it provides an open-ended grind for players and helps regulate the economy.

[Giscoicus]

we have what, 7M subs right now? Imagine if one day, all 7M players went and did just ONE level 90 daily. That is about 133 MILLION gold (19g for the quest aprox is my best memory, it may be more) that has gone into the market. Without gold sinks as simple as repairs (maybe 3g each for the quest? probably less) there would be much more money floating around. And the gold desparity between those who do the dailies all the time and those who never do would be ridiculous. No real crafting gold sinks and AH moguls will be sitting on multiple goldcapped toons AND guild banks.

[Manhands]

If people have 1,000,000g, then charging them 900,000g for something cool is the actual value. "Goldsink" is just a made up term...so young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie, and have a job.

[Knslyr]

it's impossible for a new player to buy old mats due to rich alts

Its possible for them if they know what sells. However, as a new player they probably wouldn't know which green items ppl would pay loads of gold for transmog.
Few days ago when I leveled an alt I found 2 green items which I sold for a total amount of 1500g.

[melodramocracy]

The game should have gold sinks, but they should be entirely optional.

Acquiring gold for the sake of having gold is boring as fuck, and not remotely interesting enough (as currently presented) for me to want to partake in, even if it means skipping content (I never saw the brawlers guild in this expansion, for example, as I simply refuse to get into a bidding war for an invite).

All high AH costs do is compel me to level alts to create all the things I need.

[Deleted]

it's impossible for a new player to buy old mats due to rich alts

no, you've got it the wrong way around. players get rich by selling the old mats at high prices. them being rich to start with is completely irrelevant. like i said, supply issues, if nobody is selling the old mats, they get to set the price. i only recently leveled JC myself, and i didn't lose out on money. quite the opposite, i leveled it WITH mining and sold all my excess at high prices because nobody else sold them, therefore i chose how much they were worth.

i am in agreement that it is impossible for a new player to buy old mats, but rich alts have nothing to do with it, anybody can set the price by gathering the mats to begin with

[GamerDude40]

That's impossible. Without a way to remove currency from the market, it accumulates and drives up prices by lowering the value of goods.

The proper way to "regulate" the market is to control the supply of money by ensuring that money is entering and leaving the economy at an acceptable rate. This helps control inflation so that purchasing power is strong. Blizzard accomplishes this in a few ways: preventing huge transfers of gold by server transferring, preventing mailing gold cross-server (excellent move), monitoring large transactions to catch gold sellers, and providing gold sinks to move money out of the system.

As a result, on most large servers, the prices aren't wildly out of control. We don't want WoW to turn into Nigeria, who was issuing trillion-dollar notes.

Well with cross realm BoA mailing i think having gold attached with a BoA should be allowed. You can put a limit on it to daily, weekly, monthly or one time only and also for how much sent. That would help people starting out on new realms or helping the other faction they play.

[Csnyder]

Lowering the gold cap does the same thing so no, its not necessary. They add items at 150k+ (more if you're talking BMAH) for the 1% because they allow the gold cap to be so high.

lowering the gold cap wont do anything, i can just get more bank alts

[subanark]

Blizzard has gotten rid of the traditional continuous gold sinks. Rather they just provide really expensive items that most players can't afford. Those that do gather enough gold to buy that stuff and more usually just collect gold for the heck of it, and they themselves act like a gold sink. Although it occasionally happens, where rich players crash the economy, it's usually just temporary and it's impact is limited.

Generally, if you aren't grinding gold, you are going to have a little bit more than what you need to survive on, and that extra can be used to buy up an item you would otherwise farm out yourself.

Personally, I started MoP with around 120K gold, and I currently have 160K gold, and that includes the fact that we have guild repairs, and the guild pays for enchants and other crafting stuff. I pretty much never use the AH. Yet, there are some vanity items that I cannot afford, much less all of them.

[Pancaspe]

If you don't have Gold Sinks, what is the point of being rich?

[ablib]

Yes we need gold sinks. It's not really a matter of opinion.

[jetersky]

Absolutely. I just wish they'd have more gold sinks that weren't completely random (BMAH), and more that were just from vendors/professions (such as the Yak/JC mounts). Heck, I think they should add in gold sink titles (such as "of the Shattered Sun") that you can buy for a large amount of gold after hitting exalted with a faction.

[Azrile]

If there isn´t anything that is out of your price range, or if there isn´t anything that feels a little ´sting´ to your wealth when you buy it, then gold just becomes a meaningless part of the game.

This whole gold-capped talk is similar to heroic raiding.. yes, on the forums we talk about it... but those people are the vast minority of players. The majority of players would have to carefully consider ( read - GAMEPLAY) regarding buying a mount for 10k. Those are the types of decisions that make the game interesting.

Very very few players bought one of those onyx cat mounts without mulling it over carefully. And probably a lot more struggled to earn enough gold to buy it because they wanted one.

[Deleted]

Maybe it's just me but I still cringe every time I have to pay a few hundred gold for some gems, enchants and flasks after a raid - even though I've been sitting comfortably at around 70k for months now (I seem to break pretty even doing the things I do). So yeah, anything that keeps the inflation from getting worse is fine by me

[Schwert]

I don't mind gold sinks;

But I still think the BMAH is a stupid idea.