What if all items from previous expansions became BoE instead of Soulbound?

[TheWorkingTitle]

Anything that was previously Soulbound from a previous expansion (pets, mounts, gear, or otherwise) is now Bind on Equip and sellable.


What implications would this have on the economy and the game as a whole -- a net gain or net loss? Would it ruin the sense of prestige these old, Soulbound items still possess?


What is your take on this? Would you be for something of this nature or not?





Personally, I would be. I think it would appease all the people wishing they had older, unobtainable items by giving them an option to purchase it from an original owner. It would also drastically stimulate the economy (enormous gold sinks, tons of gold exchanging hands, etc.), and most importantly it would make completing previous expansion content such an incentive when there's now innumerable new items of value to sell that you couldn't previously. While there is definitely a sense of prestige lost, I think all the positives boons this would bring outweigh it. And I speak as someone with many of those prestigious items.

[TheWorkingTitle]

Doesn't this eliminate the whole "the journey is the reward" aspect of getting transmogs or whatever? I mean, if you can just buy everything on the AH, it's a lot less impressive to put together a unique set.

You can already do that with plenty of things. Take the Pet Meta Achievement collections. They might take weeks of runs through multiple raids. Or you can just buy it all off the AH.

It's more of the same. And I don't really think there's much journey to be had farming a raid from 10 years ago, 1-shotting every boss hoping they drop.

[Razion]

There's already a metric crap-ton of BoE appearances and mounts and so on you can get on the AH. But there may be some market for some of the really rare mounts that people haven't been able to get. It's pretty nice inherently that if you go back and farm old content and get something you already have but is really rare, you'd be able to give it to a friend or something. Gives a reason to go back and do old content - either for other people, or even just the chance to sell something really rare.

I imagine a lot of fun heart-felt stories of people who receive gifts after trying forever to farm something and now suddenly a friend can go out and perhaps get it for them by grinding or buying it. It may remove a bit of the prestige of a lot of the old really rare mounts and stuff, but with how many mounts there are already in the game it's not like you're ever seeing a lot of the same mounts all the time anyway. Plus, with how rare the mounts are as they are and with how inflated the prices may get on the AH to reflect the desire to get these mounts at least initially, it may still be pretty rare to see these between people having all those other mounts to choose from and the hill of still having it grinded by someone or bought.

It may become pretty hard to go back and farm open-world mounts like Time-Lost if people are able to sell it. But there are already mounts that pretty much work like this. If anything it kind of breathes life into old zones and content that isn't being run, and gives people reason to go back and do old content that they may have otherwise fully collected if they want to. But because the drop chances for these rare things are still low, they can still feel incentivized to go after what they want to as always.

Also, for stuff people haven't collected it gives the choice of potentially selling things if they see no value in collecting it themselves. Equally, if you happen to get lucky with something really rare and don't really care to collect it, you can just give it to a friend or sell and make a pretty coin for it. That's pretty neat I think.

All around I think I'd like it a lot. I think it'd be good.

[TheWorkingTitle]

There's already a metric crap-ton of BoE appearances and mounts and so on you can get on the AH. But there may be some market for some of the really rare mounts that people haven't been able to get. It's pretty nice inherently that if you go back and farm old content and get something you already have but is really rare, you'd be able to give it to a friend or something. Gives a reason to go back and do old content - either for other people, or even just the chance to sell something really rare.

I imagine a lot of fun heart-felt stories of people who receive gifts after trying forever to farm something and now suddenly a friend can go out and perhaps get it for them by grinding or buying it. It may remove a bit of the prestige of a lot of the old really rare mounts and stuff, but with how many mounts there are already in the game it's not like you're ever seeing a lot of the same mounts all the time anyway. Plus, with how rare the mounts are as they are and with how inflated the prices may get on the AH to reflect the desire to get these mounts at least initially, it may still be pretty rare to see these between people having all those other mounts to choose from and the hill of still having it grinded by someone or bought.

It may become pretty hard to go back and farm open-world mounts like Time-Lost if people are able to sell it. But there are already mounts that pretty much work like this. If anything it kind of breathes life into old zones and content that isn't being run, and gives people reason to go back and do old content that they may have otherwise fully collected if they want to. But because the drop chances for these rare things are still low, they can still feel incentivized to go after what they want to as always.

Also, for stuff people haven't collected it gives the choice of potentially selling things if they see no value in collecting it themselves. Equally, if you happen to get lucky with something really rare and don't really care to collect it, you can just give it to a friend or sell and make a pretty coin for it. That's pretty neat I think.

All around I think I'd like it a lot. I think it'd be good.

Well said. This is exactly how I envision it. I haven't been back to Tempest Keep in a decade since getting A'lar. Similar experiences for other mounts, pets, gear, etc. I would definitely try farming it again to sell a second Ashes for some coin. And I also have mounts that are highly coveted that I couldn't care less about. I wish I could let someone else enjoy it (and be compensated for it! lol)

[khazmodan]

Blizzard would never do this unless they lowered the drop rate of those items drastically and it would only include items dropping after patch release. Blizzard knows that this has to produce more money in either tokens sold or months of game time paid for to farm those items.

RNG is in the game to motivate people to give Blizzard more money.

[TheWorkingTitle]

Blizzard would never do this unless they lowered the drop rate of those items drastically and it would only include items dropping after patch release. Blizzard knows that this has to produce more money in either tokens sold or months of game time paid for to farm those items.

RNG is in the game to motivate people to give Blizzard more money.

I think this sort of change would both create a ton of buzz and bring back a substantial amount of subs to at least check it out. That's making money, no?

[Whitedragon]

Doesn't this eliminate the whole "the journey is the reward" aspect of getting transmogs or whatever? I mean, if you can just buy everything on the AH, it's a lot less impressive to put together a unique set.

Only for people who put value in that, some just want to collect interesting things, and the "how" really doesn't matter to them. Also one can assume rare drop items will be worth a pretty penny so it's not like it will take no effort to get them ether, you are just paying with a different kind of time investment.

[Azerate]

No.

Regardless of age, what is BoP should remain so.

I think this sort of change would both create a ton of buzz and bring back a substantial amount of subs to at least check it out. That's making money, no?

No it wouldn't. It would just make it way less interesting to collect stuff for people who currently care about it because the meta would change into gold making and buying everything you don't have. I don't want to play this kind of game, it sucks.

[TheWorkingTitle]

No.

Regardless of age, what is BoP should remain so.



No it wouldn't. It would just make it way less interesting to collect stuff for people who currently care about it because the meta would change into gold making and buying everything you don't have. I don't want to play this kind of game, it sucks.

What meta?

And just because it is sellable, doesn't mean it will be available in abundance. There are very few of certain items, so you're not guaranteed anything by having the gold. Personally, for some items, I'd only accept trades. A rare mount for a rare mount, for instance.

[Soeroah]

IMO they should let us spend 1000g to learn an item from previous expansions as transmog regardless of any other rules. not current items, cuz that's a problem, but older stuff I don't see the problem, and it'd remove a bit of hold from the economy.

[Chromell]

In that case I'd make a fortune selling all the mounts I got as extra drops, including both old ZG mounts.

[Hellobolis]

i wouldn't mind as long as its from 3-4 expansions ago, since you can usually trivially solo farm stuff from 2 expansions ago and small group farm stuff from last expansion.

but if prefer to have group loot instead of personal loot in non-current content.

[Azerate]

What meta?

And just because it is sellable, doesn't mean it will be available in abundance. There are very few of certain items, so you're not guaranteed anything by having the gold. Personally, for some items, I'd only accept trades. A rare mount for a rare mount, for instance.

The collecting meta. Currently in WoW you have to farm different types of content to get mogs/pets/toys/mounts. If you make them all tradeable, then like I mentioned above, it just defaults to spamming the quickest money making method and buying everything. It stops being about actually getting the item, it becomes all about just buying it. And that sucks.

Also, most currently available collectibles (yes, including mounts) are only rare because they are BoP. With drop rates at 1-3%, these items would flood the market and become just another cheap purchase. If one person farms something at 1% chance it's rare-ish. If 1000 people do the content that drops the 1% thing - you get multitudes of it. That would completely remove whatever prestige there still is in the 1%-type drops.

Just look at the examples that we've seen in the game - like the BfA world drop mounts. They are ridiculously rare on paper (think 1/4000 or 1/5000) but the fact they were tradeable made them just another purchase on AH, for a fairly low price as well. All of those were like 50k each at the end of BfA on my low pop server.

[loras]

Anything that was previously Soulbound from a previous expansion (pets, mounts, gear, or otherwise) is now Bind on Equip and sellable.


What implications would this have on the economy and the game as a whole -- a net gain or net loss? Would it ruin the sense of prestige these old, Soulbound items still possess?


What is your take on this? Would you be for something of this nature or not?





Personally, I would be. I think it would appease all the people wishing they had older, unobtainable items by giving them an option to purchase it from an original owner. It would also drastically stimulate the economy (enormous gold sinks, tons of gold exchanging hands, etc.), and most importantly it would make completing previous expansion content such an incentive when there's now innumerable new items of value to sell that you couldn't previously. While there is definitely a sense of prestige lost, I think all the positives boons this would bring outweigh it. And I speak as someone with many of those prestigious items.

I like the idea, honestly there is no more journey that is necessary in doing outdated content. It's really just about time and experiencing it at your leisure.
And if it has to be experienced in a particular way then there's always achievements or timewalking.

So yeah, go for it, it allows people to bypass absurd droprates as well, while keeping it interesting for some who got lucky on the rarer drops while being unlucky on the common ones.

[TheWorkingTitle]

The collecting meta. Currently in WoW you have to farm different types of content to get mogs/pets/toys/mounts. If you make them all tradeable, then like I mentioned above, it just defaults to spamming the quickest money making method and buying everything. It stops being about actually getting the item, it becomes all about just buying it. And that sucks.

Also, most currently available collectibles (yes, including mounts) are only rare because they are BoP. With drop rates at 1-3%, these items would flood the market and become just another cheap purchase. If one person farms something at 1% chance it's rare-ish. If 1000 people do the content that drops the 1% thing - you get multitudes of it. That would completely remove whatever prestige there still is in the 1%-type drops.

Just look at the examples that we've seen in the game - like the BfA world drop mounts. They are ridiculously rare on paper (think 1/4000 or 1/5000) but the fact they were tradeable made them just another purchase on AH, for a fairly low price as well. All of those were like 50k each at the end of BfA on my low pop server.

I don't agree with your meta premise. I gave an example to an earlier poster dispelling that. It's the exact same thing, only you can purchase it from another player if you want.


And I think whatever prestige is left in expansions old 1% drops isn't worth preserving compared to all the pros this idea would bring to the game

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I like the idea, honestly there is no more journey that is necessary in doing outdated content. It's really just about time and experiencing it at your leisure.
And if it has to be experienced in a particular way then there's always achievements or timewalking.

So yeah, go for it, it allows people to bypass absurd droprates as well, while keeping it interesting for some who got lucky on the rarer drops while being unlucky on the common ones.

Definitely. More and more of the playerbase obtaining said items is inevitable as time passes. There's only a small finite amount of them in existence anyway, and an even smaller percentage of those people would sell one in my opinion.

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i wouldn't mind as long as its from 3-4 expansions ago, since you can usually trivially solo farm stuff from 2 expansions ago and small group farm stuff from last expansion.

but if prefer to have group loot instead of personal loot in non-current content.

That's a fair version of my idea. I actually brought this up back in 2015 - https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ere-trade-able

But I kept it strictly to Legacy Mounts and Pets with multiple exceptions.

[kranur]

I think this sort of change would both create a ton of buzz and bring back a substantial amount of subs to at least check it out. That's making money, no?

Yeah I'm sure people who quit will come back to buy mounts from AH and farm old raids for gold.

[TheWorkingTitle]

Yeah I'm sure people who quit will come back to buy mounts from AH and farm old raids for gold.

Well it does make running old raids quite a bit more viable than they are currently for gold making. I know people that quit because of the vendor gold nerfs from farming raids because that's how they paid for their subs.

And it makes all the old content more relevant and lucrative to commit time to. I'm sure there's a sizable chunk of players that spent the majority of their time in old content and quit for various reasons.

[Lochton]

Anything that was previously Soulbound from a previous expansion (pets, mounts, gear, or otherwise) is now Bind on Equip and sellable.


What implications would this have on the economy and the game as a whole -- a net gain or net loss? Would it ruin the sense of prestige these old, Soulbound items still possess?


What is your take on this? Would you be for something of this nature or not?





Personally, I would be. I think it would appease all the people wishing they had older, unobtainable items by giving them an option to purchase it from an original owner. It would also drastically stimulate the economy (enormous gold sinks, tons of gold exchanging hands, etc.), and most importantly it would make completing previous expansion content such an incentive when there's now innumerable new items of value to sell that you couldn't previously. While there is definitely a sense of prestige lost, I think all the positives boons this would bring outweigh it. And I speak as someone with many of those prestigious items.

It'll send half the auction market tumbling down either by flooding the market or because people can get it themselves on a main to give to an alt.

[TheWorkingTitle]

It'll send half the auction market tumbling down either by flooding the market or because people can get it themselves on a main to give to an alt.

The market would obviously change, but what do you mean by tumbling down? And what does one gain by getting it on a main and giving an item to an alt?

[bloodmoth13]

its not a terrible idea but it makes AH gaming possibly the most efficient way to get rewards instead of actually playing the game. The last thing this 'game' needs is more ways to avoid gameplay.