wow economy skyrockets

[sperks]

When do you guys and gals think that prices for mats will go through the roof? I think maybe 3 or 4 days after launch to give time for people to get high enough lvl to start power lvling professions.
What mat do you think will bring most profit? Titanium ore? Cloth? Herbs?

[ZeroWashu]

When do you guys and gals think that prices for mats will go through the roof? I think maybe 3 or 4 days after launch to give time for people to get high enough lvl to start power lvling professions.
What mat do you think will bring most profit? Titanium ore? Cloth? Herbs?

Look at the recipe charts to see where the earliest you can craft the next tier, this gives you the mat cut off point. The biggest road block to all new crafters is getting to 300. The mats for 250-300 are going to be nice and pricey, at least they were the first few days after 4.01 dropped as many started new class combo characters. I made a good money there. One thing the designers did not do is fix the curve for leveling crafting below 300. Some recipes and their mat requirements (I am looking at BS) are just obnoxious. Mithril Mithril Mithril.

Then look at BC 330-350 as this has never been fixed. Any special items needed BC post 350 aren't going to be needed, same for Wrath 425+ items. Meaning titanium and such is useless.

[Liameyna]

I don't think old materials will go "through the roof". Need for them is going down pretty much and most professions can use the new materials to skill up from 425+. No real need for titanium, blue/epic gems, imbued frostweave, frost lotus or any pre cata herbs anymore.
Prices will go up a bit, like vanilla material prices did, because few people are farming them... but even this could change depending on how many people roll new characters.
Prices for the new materials on the other hand will be pretty crazy the first one or two weeks, I presume.

[Jupiter II]

The price for Cataclysm herbs and ores is going to be absolutely insane. I'm going to powerlevel them both over the weekend so I can swim in cash come Cataclysm.

[chipsky]

I plan on spending some cash on alts early in Cataclysm... having overdone the auction hording (sic) for the later part of Wrath, I have two characters full on gold to buy up special and not-so-special items. Show me the goodies!

[Oevaag]

I'm gonna say volatiles. All the crafting prof's would appear to need them and in high numbers.

[fushio]

The price for Cataclysm herbs and ores is going to be absolutely insane. I'm going to powerlevel them both over the weekend so I can swim in cash come Cataclysm.

Not so sure about that, at least about the ores. Maybe it's only me, but the number and accesibility of veins seems to have increased greatly since the shattering, especially the mitril and the torium ones. I was able to collect a one and half a stack of torium ore while walking from timbermaw tunel to everlook, in winterspring, mining only the torium deposits near the road, in no more than 5-6 minutes. When I farmed torium for my blacksmith/jewelcrafter alt, I can remember spending almost half an hour (more if i was not the only farmer in the zone) for the same amount, in the same zone. I can only imagine how easy will be farming old world mats when we are finally allowed to fly in azeroth.

[Grimboozer]

Right now on my server, outland herbs are getting up to insane prices. Going for as high as 300 gold per stack. I'm fully thinking that this will be the case for a while cause so few people go back to farm outland, and unlike the low level azeroth herbs and ores, node spawns weren't increased.

[Deleted]

I suspect that Vanilla mats won't skyrocket like they did in BC and Wrath for several reasons:

1. you can't go 3 steps without stumbling on ore. I did WPL and EPL on one of my 80s just to see the new quests and came back with stacks upon stacks of iron and mithril. I think just running through one cave yielded 1 stack of mithril, and it was a tiny cave. The whole time I was there I went straight from quest to quest - no farming laps, no sightseeing, no detours which would have facilitated gathering unusual quantities of ore. I remember farming mats to level her engineering a couple of years ago and getting mid-level ores was excruciatingly slow and boring.

2. Loads of 80s are doing the new quests, some just to see them, and some for Loremaster (everything's a lot more fluid now). It's a good time to stock up for an upcoming alt.

3. New alts will be questing to 60 instead of abusing LFD and BGs. I leveled 2 new toons since the beginning of Wrath and my questing was sporadic at best because I couldn't stomach the same old running around. Now, you actually have multiple incentives to quest - much better flow, early mounts, loads of FPs, no more "take this letter across 5 zones and then run back" quests, etc. It's very easy to gather while you quest because many veins spawn close to quest areas.

4. Azeroth flying.

I do agree, though, that BC mats will probably skyrocket, since you can hit 68 with minimal questing. Cobalt and saronite will probably be more expensive as well, along with common Northrend herbs and borean leather. Titanium - not likely; starting in Wrath, new recipes were available 25 points below the previous max to help people level without expensive (former) end-game recipes.

[santoslhalper]

I'm holding on to miscellaneous mats because:
-they aren't selling now (and if they do sell it's more trouble than it's worth to sell them)
-I think that they will appreciate (on average) in Cata due to gold inflation if nothing else.