Spirit of Harmony

Professions: Living in Perfect disharmony.  We want crafters to be out in the world adventuring instead of camping out in front of an auctioneer.

I can only think of a couple of times that I joined a general QQ chorus and they generally revolved around real names or real id.  But this one ... ugg.

This is designed to raise prices for most players and encourage more casual crafting and discourage anyone likely to be reading this blog.

There are several types of player in the game that get involved in the market in a serious way.

• Casual gatherer.  This person picks up loot, and sells it.  Sometimes at the auction house; more often at a vendor.  These farmers do not gather a lot individually but there are a lot of them.
• Casual crafter.  This person makes their own gear, and that for their guild/circle of friends.
• Casual buyer.  This person goes to the AH to buy stuff and complains about how expensive everything is.
• Dedicated farmer.  The majority of players - when they need gold, go and farm on their gathering toons to sell later.  I have poor friends and those running GKP runs doing this.  And the bots/gold sellers do it too.  These players do not like the risk involved in crafting and putting items on the AH.
• Dedicated crafter.  The core readership of this blog.  You like your bargains, know different ways to buy and sell.  You love the grind of crafting (even milling and glyphs) and generally dislike the grind of the world out there.  You keep the prices down by your wars with each other.

With the changes for (sic) spirit of harmony, dedicated crafters will not be able to be dedicated any more. will need to be out there more often.  You might have a regular raid, but the chances are - most of us are not interested in spending 7 days/week raiding/dungeoning or even questing.  Blizzard has said - that for most professions and most items - dedicated crafters are not welcome.

Now; what drives prices down so that Joe Average can afford items. Two or more dedicated crafters in competition with each other.  Leave me to my own devices and remove competition, and I will charge what I like.  And what I like is far more than what regular competition will let me get away with.

Since I started playing there has been restrictions on starter gear in the form of Chaos or Frozen orbs.  At the start of the expansion when we are interested in running dungeons these have been fine.  Later on they were turned into tradable items, and crafters kept crafting.


But by sending crafters out to farm their own gathered items, you remove the main buyers of farmed items.  Yes, before, many crafts were restricted by drops from end dungeon bosses or raiding bosses, but more and more crafting is being bound this way.


For those that like simply to farm, or simply to craft (and there are a lot of each), then this direction is unfortunate.

The winners will be those that farm their own mats, then craft their own gear.