Blizzcon Gold Earning Updates & 10.2 Tips

Hello! This week we digest what was announced around gold making and look ahead as to what this could mean. We also reflect on the Region Wide Auction House and its impact and discuss ways of making gold with 10.2 PVP gear and other methods.

Blizzcon Gold Making News

With Blizzcon over, there's a huge amount of information to digest and unpack. Many will be looking for information around gold making and there's a few snippets here and there to talk about, but much of it is simply too early to tell what it means for the gold making landscape. It will take a few more deep dives once playable versions become available and we can digest what's to come.

• Professions

Not a huge amount was said about professions, it's simply too early to tell at this stage. It was asked during the group interview with Morgan Day. As in expansions in the past, professions are tied to the expansion, so new points and perks coming in WW. At a high level, they're happy with how professions play out, but some tweaks with stats/crafting orders, but happy with the system foundationally. Will iterate and continue forward.

So, not really much to talk about here. Professions in Dragonflight had a complete overhaul and largely the system is a lot more engaging, but the hardest barrier to entry was the time-gated knowledge and woefully inadequate Trade Chat for connecting players and crafters to then get into Work Orders.

We did hear a bit of new information in the post show Q&A. New spec points are coming to Professions. Inspiration stat is being looked at. Looking at ways of increasing availability of crafting orders, possibly NPCs putting in crafting orders.

Listening to this makes me think Professions are here to stay in their current form, but with a few tweaks. The same with Mr. GM's interview where he asked about professions. The current plan is for The War Within to have its own version of the existing Profession talents system, so players who really love professions will be able to learn talents, spec into specialized things, and use the Work Order system in the next expansion. The Work Order system is confirmed to carry forward, though they've heard a lot of player feedback and so they're looking for ways to make them better. Archaeology is a profession that needs a lot of love. Nothing to say right now, but stay tuned - there's stuff in the works.

So, a few tweaks here and there, maybe some NPCs to prop up Work Orders. Inspiration and crits are being looked into, but on the whole there's not enough information to talk about. The feel I get is that region wide will be more and more a thing as time goes on as the barriers between servers and factions get eroded.

• Early Access

People who buy the Epic Edition pre-order get to play 3 days early was quite the controversial announcement! Includes everything in the Heroic Edition. Plus, you’ll have guaranteed Beta Access and Early Access (3 days) to The War Within†. You’ll also receive 30 days of game time, Squally, the Storm Hatchling pet, Sandbox Storm Gryphon toy, and Deepdweller’s Earthen Hearthstone effect. Also includes an additional 250 Trader’s Tender (1000 in total) to use in the Trading Post††.

Whilst many may think "oh well, I can wait", others may struggle with the FOMO and decide to purchase. While it seems to address player power won't get a leg up ahead of time, for gold making the early bird most certainly catches the worm so this could be essential to kick start your gold making at the start of an expansion.

Alt Friendly Warbands

The phrase "Basically, Account Wide Everything!" pretty much sums up this new feature and it's a massive convenience boost to gold makers. Having an account wide bank and reagent bank is going to be amazing for a crafting army. The account wide reputations and renown is also going to be a major factor when unlocking recipes for alts and an easy way to gear up alts only adds to this feature. Account-wide gold in 11.0! Currencies and material bank also part of the warband, wow this is such an amazing system!

Overall, this is going to be a fantastic quality of life upgrade. I do hope there is a way to integrate this into the Work Order system, so that you can effectively have a crafting warband and easily connect with players and Work Orders through a shared system. Perhaps something for later. Manthieus has a great video going through his early thoughts on what's been announced so far..

Personally, I'm very excited for what's to come with the new expansions. As a player, I may scale back my operations and focus on just a few niches all depending on how much time I have available. With the region wide Auction House, competing with players with much more time resources is never that appealing. I'm going to focus on enjoying the game and story with gold making being a side income.

10.2 Gold Making

With the release of 10.2 this week, many have returned fresh off the hype of Blizzcon and are ready to jump into the new content. There are a bunch of fresh videos from YouTubers going through some tips and tricks of what to look out for. First up, Penguin2gt has a video highlighting things to do early on and getting set up with recipes. Next we have Manthieus with a rundown of the various new things including Skinning drops and similar recipes and PVP notes. Finally, TheLazyGoldmaker has a rundown of how a fully decked out Enchanter can maximize profits in 10.2 with weapon enchants. At this stage, those that are already deep into their professions can look to new recipes to help fill out their professions and others have options of the staple Dracothyst/Cloth cooldowns and World Quests / Races to fill out alts.

Gold Farming Ruined

u/Mangerthas shared their feelings about how the experience has changed the way they liked to play the game...

This is mostly a rant about the region wide auction house, but I’m also opening it up for discussion. Feel free to challenge me and disagree with me, but this is how I feel.

I’ve been playing wow since Vanilla. I love this game. I got into gold farming in legion because there was a 250k gold Blazing Hippogryph on my AH. I learned all that I could about gold farming and farmed up and bought it! It was a huge achievement. I realized I loved gold farming as a way to relax after doing pvp. (Btw yes I’m very pissed everyone was given my crowning achievement for free…)

My main gold farming was always farming materials. I would skin. Current content and old content. (Think warbear leathers jormungar scales, savage leather, etc). I would also mine and herb old and current content (leystone/felslate, obsidium, whiptail) I would also farm non-profession materials like felcloth, tomes of polymorph, etc.

I made millions of gold. Some mats I was getting 60-100k an hour even if they wouldn’t sell for a while.

Then came the region wide auction house. And it was all ruined. Why? WHY! Prices became literally rock bottom. They knew what mat prices were like on high pop realm. Imagine a region wide AH, prices plummeted. Skinning probably getting hit the worst because of the addition of 2x4 farms for skinning.

Skinning supports leatherworking. Leatherworking creates demand. The demand from leatherworking is the same as always. But adding 2x4 farms skyrocketed the supply of leathers from skinning. Supply rises, demand stays the same. And that means… prices drop. Plummet in fact. Made even worse by a region wide auction house.

The region wide auction house has gutted all mat farming. The most you can make mat farming is like 10-15k! And that’s high end. I used to buy tokens like candy. And now my income has dwindled to nothing but gold from world quests.

Region wide auction house has ruined a huge aspect of the game, all so that I can buy potions and flasks for cheaper? Woohoo I guess?

I miss the days of just gold farming mats while I watched Netflix. I miss the days where I could buy my friends the new expansion because I had so much gold.

The only way to make good money now is crafting professions or selling boosts. I am a title m+ player but I never found a group to boost with, so that never happened.

You can make money transmog farming. But I am on a full pop realm and I wouldn’t make any money with transmog without undercut scanning multiple times a day. Which I don’t have the time or interest in doing. And the recent transmog series on this subreddit showed that it actually isn’t that much gold per hour anyway.

They would probably never revert it… but please revert the horrible region wide auction house.

While I agree the landscape of gold making has changed since the introduction of the Region Wide Auction House, I can see how it benefits the wider player base by making commodities much more accessible. For me, I simply chose not to compete. It wasn't fun anymore. I found new ways to enjoy old gold making methods in Classic.

Cata Classic Items Removed

With the announcement of Cataclysm Classic, u/Zjar has been thinking about items soon to be removed from Wrath Classic...

With Cata classic announced, I figure now's the time to farm items that will be removed from classic, to sell for much gold later on. All the lists I keep finding are recipes or quest items that aren't tradable. The recipes I have open on a tab. The items I can slap on the auction house like removed swords, armor, etc I cannot seem to find. Anyone got said list?

There is of course such a list thanks to the ATT community as many of these items are seeing a return in Retail and so we go full circle! Whether players in Classic will miss these items and there be a demand for them in future remains anyone's guess. What will you do?

• Conclusion

Now's the time to conquer the 10.2 update content and WowCarry will help you with that, check out how here. Until next time, Happy Goldmaking!