The Weekly Marmot - Why the BMAH Worries Me

[Toypop]

Now, if they have infinite sets of gear up there for purchase day one and the team that has the most money wins server first because they bought out all the gear first...well that's a different matter. I don't think we're in any danger of that, however.

Indeed. Ignoring the unknowns about the range and quantity of gear, as far as we know this gear won't even start to appear until 2 months into each tier so there would be little impact on top teams. There is a lot we don't know but I think we can say with certainty that Blizzard won't allow this to impact on progression races.

As to your question about why people care...

Lore and co will play the prestige card on that one. Personally I feel that is irrational as in a computer game virtual prestige assets don't improve your chances of breeding in the same way that a large house or BMW would. However if they get that prestige feeling from gear it is not my place to judge and I will respect the fact that for whatever reason it matters to them.

I would not want to do anything or recommend anything that has a negative impact on their gaming experience.

[Toypop]

gear is more likely aimed at guilds and they are probably thinking that raiding guilds would used bank funds to purchase gear for their raid progression.

I remember Lore said in another thread that his guild bank isn't overflowing with gold to purchase such items as they use it to fund purchases of consumables, gems and enchants and the like.

It has taken me until now to realise the significance behind that. A lot of players that buy their own pots, gems and enchants complain about the higher prices - at least that is what they do when you call them out on the lack of such items in pugs.

For a large percentage of players inflation is not the rate at which a rare mount has increased in value. Rather they see inflation in terms of the prices paid for every day consumables such as pots, gems and enchants just as families view inflation as the increase in the price of food, gasoline and utility bills and not the rate of price change for business jets.

These players are of course competing with raid guilds for said items on the AH. If raid guilds were spending gold on this gear they would indeed have far less gold with which to inflate AH prices of those items. Exactly what Blizzard are hoping will happen.

[feralminded]

I personally am nowhere near as annoyed by this as lore even though I do believe in the power/importance to the game of prestige ... however I do concur that current PvE/PvP gear is the only consistently valuable thing they could really put up there to drain the economy (something that is sorely needed). I do believe that a middling/careful approach could split the difference here efficiently. If the drops were delayed say 4-6 weeks and were restricted to maybe the belt/ring/back/neck slots and were put up at a fairly conservative pace (1 item of each primary stat per week) then I doubt it would hurt anything at all and likely most of the purchases would either be done by rich guilds or rich raiders ... but it would be far less likely for a non-raider to even field interest regardless of how rich they were. On the other hand if the best weapons or trinkets or chest/legs/head pieces started showing up 10 times a day ... different story.

That said I concur with Toypop ... the economy needs this in some form. The fact that is may exist in a distant, pvp flagged area is just gravy really. I want bartertown ffs!

[Mwawka]

Lore and co will play the prestige card on that one. Personally I feel that is irrational as in a computer game virtual prestige assets don't improve your chances of breeding in the same way that a large house or BMW would. However if they get that prestige feeling from gear it is not my place to judge and I will respect the fact that for whatever reason it matters to them.

Honestly, I don't even think it's about prestige. It's about having something to work towards. Games are fun when you have a goal. That goal can have many forms (get my pet to max level, max out my fishing rep, kill end boss heroic, get a meta acheivement mount, get a title, be in BiS gear, get to gold cap), but it's having something to work towards that makes the game fun. The problem is that I don't believe all goals in the game should have multiple avenues to achieve. I don't think it's a great alternative, because I don't believe making gold and buying something has the same personal reward as actually going through the game process of earning it. I have plenty of gold and could purchase items from the BMAH, but I actually don't want current gear to be part of that. I prefer the feeling of being rewarded for my effort... I don't consider gold making an effort (It's formulaic and easy, just a time sink).

Now if Blizzard did find a way to make raid gear available to those who have suffered terrible RNG, then I'd be fine with it and I'd be fine if they made it a gold sink, but don't make it available if you haven't put in some effort to get it through raiding. The idea that everything needs to be available to everyone is one Blizzard needs to get away from. They seem to have done a great job to give plenty of non-raiding end game options to their player base. Leave raid gear to those who raid. There does need to be some reward to the effort required.

[Theotherone]

It's not a real money supply there's no reason to "drain money" from the economy; every vendor price is fixed and the only free market is player to player or the AH. If Blizzard was concerned about too much gold in the system, they could reduce the gold cap to 250,000 for example and boom, gold is drained from the system. The thing is there is not gold in the system; players hording 999k gold has no effect on the money supply becuase nothing has been taken out of circulation since gold just appears. I think this whole idea of inflation comes from the mouth breathers on the Official Forums who have no clue about the general idea of money supply.

As for the BMAH, doesn't effect me one way or another; I'll get my gear from raiding and while I'm on a bit of mount kick these days because of an end of expansion bucket list, I could care less if they're sold on the BMAH.

[Mwawka]

It's not a real money supply there's no reason to "drain money" from the economy; every vendor price is fixed and the only free market is player to player or the AH. If Blizzard was concerned about too much gold in the system, they could reduce the gold cap to 250,000 for example and boom, gold is drained from the system. The thing is there is not gold in the system; players hording 999k gold has no effect on the money supply becuase nothing has been taken out of circulation since gold just appears.

That is really well said. Money sinks won't reset the economy. The possibility of gold cap money sinks makes me think there will actually be more inflation as the few who control the AH try to make more gold in order to buy the next item on their wishlist. The rich sellers control the prices, the buyer is really at their mercy in WoW at the moment. I know there is competition, but there is definitely a level of unspoken collusion among the AH players.

[ChampStanley]

From my perspective I am only interested in gold sinks to restrain inflation.

I think this may be the intent of the BMAH, but I really don't think it will suck enough gold out of the economy. The gold sinks that were effective were the ones available and attractive to everyone, not just the super-rich. Epic riding in classic and epic flying in BC were effective because although they were optional luxuries, they were worth every copper. I couldn't buy either the moment I hit 60 and 70, but I did work towards both and gladly paid what were then considerable sums of gold for the huge quality of life improvements.

The mammoth in Lich King was less effective, probably because it wasn't as useful in a world where flying mounts rule and you could take advantage of its chief benefit just by being in a group with someone who had one.

Blizzard clearly decided to make getting gold easy, I earned hundreds of thousands of gold during cataclysm without even trying. It would've been nice to have something worth buying with it.

I'm sure a few people would gladly drop huge sums on the BMAH for a heroic BIS belt, but I bet most folks won't care. I don't think draining the super-rich will have that big effect. I can't really think of a new form of money sink other than to make Pandaria flying have very high cost or really jack up the cost of training.

The only conceptual problem I really have with the BMAH is that I think blizzard should not sell gear, mounts, titles (lol) from the current tier, or even the current expansion. That market belongs to the players and should stay that way. I'm neither a buyer nor a seller of raid loot, and have no pony in that race, but I don't think the BMAH should mess with a market that already exists. Everything else is fair game, however.

[Harikari]

Let's not forget the most effective gold sink in the game - the one where a player with 700k gold quits playing!

[Harikari]

Zaryhm speaks on BMAH:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/5836323843

[Luathlan]

I dont think we can so easily dismiss the impact even a handful of these heroic level items could have on progression raiding. Even if they wait till world firsts are reached before putting said gear up for auction, those with money are still going to have an artificial advantage over those who dont which will skew the guild rankings. Soon server firsts would be reliant on having guild members sitting on the BMAH buying out every potential upgrade with gold farmers feeding them money constantly. At this point serious raid progression is no longer about player skill, raid composition, and strategy, but about who can buy the better gear faster. This would pollute the entire process by which progression guilds acheive prestige and perhaps even recruit new members, because at that point serious raiding guilds would be required to recruit members not just for their skill at their chosen class but also for their gold earning potential. Raid progression then becomes a test you can buy your way out of, and that is a very sad situation.
Delaying the availability of these items to try and mitigate this problem wont work either, as their will never be a point in which the availability to artificially increase your toons power doesnt adversely impact the natural gear build up and skill based progression that defines progression raiding. The argument that purists wouldnt feel the need to purchase said gear is also completely bunk as folks will always take advantage of any means available to gain an advantage. In the end the only way to avoid destroying the very process which makes progression raiding enjoyable is to simply remove this gear from the BMAH. Let the fat cats buy vanity items and item skins with their gold and leave raider progression alone.

-Luathlan

[Ion]

Zaryhm speaks on BMAH:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/5836323843

More accurately: here.

To quote (for the lazy):

No one should count on this even being close to a viable option for gearing up a character. If you can raise that kind of gold in the game, you're going to have much better success paying your way into raids for gear than hoping the right items appear for you in the black market AH (which doesn't include set pieces), hoping you can afford to outbid everyone else on your realm, and hoping you're the last one to bid before the auction ends.

Sure, it'll have some of the best rewards for sale. But that doesn't mean it'll be remotely reliable for one person to gear up quickly. It's the black market, after all.

Ultimately the system is going to benefit the extremely wealthy and the extremely lucky. But in all likelihood the benefits won't at all be consistent, even for those who can pony up the gold.

[tawnos]

I don't see the problem with ashes of alar or rare drop mounts like that. They needed to be left in the game to insure that when you started the game doesn't have a major impact on some of the metagames like mount, pet collectors (since the time you started playing the game is not a skill or talent of any kind to be rewarded and should never affect anything in-game). Now they are just a matter of the same type of repetitive farming some people seem to think gold-farming is so I don't see any problem with gold-farming as an 'alternate progression path' to obtaining old mounts that are current obtained by going in and soloing kael with a death knight tank. Or slogging through the pile of human misery that is cross-realm pugs for e.g. the mimiron head or lichking mount. Really I find the BMAH a great way of removing that impediement of repetition and over reliance on the kindness of the RNG gods on the path to getting old rare drop mounts.

If the heroic mode gear is available immediately I can see it as a problem, but imagine if tier13 heroic gear were thrown up on the AH now. I can't see that being a huge problem. The type of people who might do a quel'delar type of quest could be doing something at a similar level of effort to get a piece of heroic mode gear. People who can't ever get the shared loot tank ring to drop might be another good market. If guild progression was somehow affected by the BMAH that might be a bad thing but I don't see releasing heroic mode gear late in the tier as a problem.

As a question though, following the same logic of 'one progression path should be able to produce the same types of rewards as another' how can you justify guilds being able to sell heroic raid runs? I don't claim that it can be stopped, but should it not be equally repugnant to see guilds using their ability to clear heroic raids to instead receive monetary rewards? The fact that this is perfectly acceptable should call into question whether it is really logical to be bothered by the opposite occurring.

[Leucifer]

As to your question about why people care...

Lore and co will play the prestige card on that one. Personally I feel that is irrational as in a computer game virtual prestige assets don't improve your chances of breeding in the same way that a large house or BMW would. However if they get that prestige feeling from gear it is not my place to judge and I will respect the fact that for whatever reason it matters to them.

I would not want to do anything or recommend anything that has a negative impact on their gaming experience.

Agree with the final point. Don't want it to have a negative impact on enjoyment for anyone. Though, the whole "chances of breeding" thing kinda makes me giggle. The "prestige" card will be played. Let's face it. There will be have's and have-not's. WoW's royalty shall demand their cake.

Honestly, I don't even think it's about prestige. It's about having something to work towards. Games are fun when you have a goal. That goal can have many forms (get my pet to max level, max out my fishing rep, kill end boss heroic, get a meta acheivement mount, get a title, be in BiS gear, get to gold cap), but it's having something to work towards that makes the game fun. The problem is that I don't believe all goals in the game should have multiple avenues to achieve. I don't think it's a great alternative, because I don't believe making gold and buying something has the same personal reward as actually going through the game process of earning it. I have plenty of gold and could purchase items from the BMAH, but I actually don't want current gear to be part of that. I prefer the feeling of being rewarded for my effort... I don't consider gold making an effort (It's formulaic and easy, just a time sink).

Now if Blizzard did find a way to make raid gear available to those who have suffered terrible RNG, then I'd be fine with it and I'd be fine if they made it a gold sink, but don't make it available if you haven't put in some effort to get it through raiding. The idea that everything needs to be available to everyone is one Blizzard needs to get away from. They seem to have done a great job to give plenty of non-raiding end game options to their player base. Leave raid gear to those who raid. There does need to be some reward to the effort required.

I like Mwaka's point regarding a fix for terrible RNG. It could be done with gold, or valor points in a way where, "you have killed boss X.... you have access to item Z. Cost of item shall decrease by Y amount for each kill of boss X". That way, you have a proportional control.... not just instant access to gear. I can tell you, I'd damn well have considered dropping gold to get my crappy-ass 346 shoulders upgraded back a while ago. I couldn't get a drop out of anything to save my life. It took months for me to even luck out on the 353's. I would have jumped at the option.

As for the issue around "presitge", meh. It's still going to be a game of "I'm better than you nya nya nya nya nya." You have to realize that for some people, the goal of progression through a raid might very well BE gear-dependent. Not everyone is a super star, and some will earnestly benefit from a gear bump, which would aid their goals. For other's, it's maxxing out their toon to the utmost the toon can be. And yet for others, it's simply the ego-trip of "I'm so awesome!!!!!" Making all of these co-exist peacefully....... I'll take wagers on Mid-East Peace first. Raiding is a big ego trip for a lot of people, and you will always face that hurdle.

It's not a real money supply there's no reason to "drain money" from the economy; every vendor price is fixed and the only free market is player to player or the AH. If Blizzard was concerned about too much gold in the system, they could reduce the gold cap to 250,000 for example and boom, gold is drained from the system. The thing is there is not gold in the system; players hording 999k gold has no effect on the money supply becuase nothing has been taken out of circulation since gold just appears. I think this whole idea of inflation comes from the mouth breathers on the Official Forums who have no clue about the general idea of money supply.

As for the BMAH, doesn't effect me one way or another; I'll get my gear from raiding and while I'm on a bit of mount kick these days because of an end of expansion bucket list, I could care less if they're sold on the BMAH.

Inflation doesn't merely relate to the availability of gold in the game, but to the rise in the general level of prices of items/services in any economy. It's a relationship between what a unit of money and the good that can be acquired.

The simple reality is that gold became easier to acquire, and thus became devalued. A good example of this is dailies. Dailies in Wrath were values at X. When a daily rewarded X amount of gold and it took me 20 minutes to acquire X, it had a value inherent to it. Items were then valued against the amount of time invested in gaining X amount. When Cata released.... that value went up to 2X. The cost of the items in turn, went up a proportional amount.

That's only one aspect of it. When the demand for items went up, say.... drop gear from Firelands, and people purchased the initial AH items, people found that, "OH! That item was listed for 10k yesterday and sold. I'll bet someone else would pay 12k!" Thus, the market climbed due to the demand for an item. Things only leveled out when people slowed their purchase habits. Prices didn't decline though. They held steady at what became the perceived market value for an item. Prices on items really only declined as the demand for them declined. HOWEVER..... the next tier of items that were of similar function/purpose would then take on pricing similar to or higher than the previous tier (see valor bracers).

You're right in that, the person hording 999k gold has no effect, but it's not because the money is taken out of circulation. It's because they are hording it, and not exercising their purchase power. As soon as that person exercises that, and spends 2k more on an item than it was offered for the previous week, THEN they have impacted inflation, because those watching the market now know that people are willing to pay even more.

There's more to it than simple circulation at play Theo. You have to account for other factors like supply and demand.

BMAH could have an effect on this still and drive inflation further, and in ways not expected. By introducing another market that competes with the AH, it may introduce another way for people to judge an item's worth, driving up/down the price of items available on the AH to their perceived value in comparison to a competing item on the BMAH.

More accurately: here.

To quote (for the lazy):

Thank you Ion. Some of us have trouble accessing this at current locations.
A true gentleman..... bent upon the destruction of mankind.

[Lore]

I honestly don't think the BMAH makes (or is intended as) an effective gold sink. It's more likely to add gold to the game (by encouraging players to earn it and save it up) than it is to actually lower it. And while 500k is a lot for one person, it's still just one person of the thousands on a given server.

[Tisel]

Here's a crazy idea. What if they implemented some kind of "raid rating" system? Kind of similar to an Arena system. So that when a high tier item pops up on the BMAH, people who are actually working through the content are still the only ones that can get it. It still becomes and alternate progression path, but it's not a free epic to anyone who spams their dailies anymore.

[Lore]

I'll also add that limiting it to bracers, belts, boots, and jewelry helps things quite a bit. At least now we know that you won't be able to get a full set of gear out of it.

[Spotnick]

Maybe they should just sell TCG loot in the BMAH.

Or other Blizzcon goodies.

[hp2]

I think that Lore's economic presentation is lacking. He discounts the fact that the BMAH does control the supply and minimum bid -- Blizzard can monitor and adjust both accordingly. If Blizzard does not want people to get heroic gear for less than 100k, they can set the minimum bid to 100k. If Blizzard thinks that item proliferation through the BMAH is too high, they can limit how often items show up on the BMAH.

Lore's assertion that the BMAH will add gold to the WoW economy instead of removing it is also incorrect. If the method for a player to amass gold is to play the AH by buying low priced items and marking them up, when someone purchases the marked up item, gold is being transferred from 'potentially hundreds' of players on a server, funneled into a single player who then purchases an item off the BMAH for > 100k gold and removes it from the system.

I think that Lore's insistence that the BMAH provide 'unique' items is misguided. Adding more items to the game = developer resources. If new items were added and there was no demand for them, the BMAH would accomplish nothing. By making it heroic raid gear, there is a known demand. Imagine if the present day six boss loot in Dragon Soul (random rings + trinkets) were available from the BMAH -- guilds with massive gold reserves would be incentivized to make purchases. Individual raiders like yourself who only sit on 50k may become actively involved in playing the AH which would in turn collect gold from other players and then remove it from the system once you decide to purchase that tanking ring for 100k which never drops off the first six bosses.

I don't think PvP rewards will ever be available from the BMAH because you can't carry dead weight on a PvP team. A heroic nine man raid may be able to carry a tenth person; a heroic 24 man raid may be able to carry the 25th person -- a four man arena team can not carry a fifth; a nine man rated team can not carry a tenth.

As Zarhym posted, the BMAH is not an effective method for gearing out a character. Seeing the random person on your server in full heroic gear = you know they are a heroic raider. Seeing the random person on your server with only two pieces of heroic gear = you will think they bought a run from another guild or wasted their gold on the BMAH -- both scenarios will look identical.

Lastly, I still think that the BMAH will be cross-server. This will expose items to the maximum amount of competition (drives up demand = drives up prices) and minimizes the amount of monitoring that Blizzard has to perform (Blizzard only has to set minimum bids and item appearance rates on one global BMAH instead of multiple BMAHs located on multiple servers).

-HP

[tawnos]

I honestly don't think the BMAH makes (or is intended as) an effective gold sink. It's more likely to add gold to the game (by encouraging players to earn it and save it up) than it is to actually lower it. And while 500k is a lot for one person, it's still just one person of the thousands on a given server.

Doubtful. It might encourage more people to play the AH and/or farm mats to get the gold they need to compete in the BMAH, but of course none of these activities actually add gold to the game - in fact playing the AH is itself a significant gold sink. Unless someone is deluded into thinking they can compete on the BMAH by running dailies or dungeons that actually generate gold there is no reason to expect it will cause extra gold to be legitimately created. Such gold-generating activities will continue at the same pace as always and the activities that actually accumulate gold (rather than generate it) will be the only things affected. The only way I can see the BMAH not functioning as a gold sink is if it encourages the goldsellers to duplicate gold, which I'm not even sure they have a method of doing (hence why they duplicate items to sell for gold to sell for rl $).

[Aggathon]

I have to agree with twanos. This is clearly designed to be a money sink, there's no other reason for it. I don't really see this as being any different than buying gear from a guild, and this way the money disappears from the economy rather than continues to circulate in it.