One of the great things about taking
all these screenshots is the ability to look back accurately. I was
looking at my old screen from a week ago Tuesday. I had 145.5k.
Today I have 172.4k. That's 26.9k in 9 days days. That's alittle
under 3k a day with about half an hour a day spent on average—our
nearly 6k an hour of work. Plus, I have a bank brimming with ink and
quite about of infernal ink to use.
Interesting my total glyph worth had
dropped to 35k and then jumped up to 70k. I also noted that one of
my new competitors (can in this expansion) probably had been buying
cheap glyphs out. On one hand, I regret they are gaining inventory
at cheap price. On the other, they are doing all the work and I am
coming in and undercutting them, so that's good too. We aren't a
cartel...we didn't talk about it, but we are more like gas stations
both matching each other's (in our case) inflated rates.
In an early entry, I talked about the
barriers to entry in the glyph market. That's why this type of
behavior is occurring. I know I've seen blue Blizzard posts talking
about how unhappy they are with the glyph books from Northrend. They
could very easily make these all researchable. I would actually be
okay with the change. The complainers would simply have to spend
more time researching (and hopefully get bored during the long
research times. Unlike say the gem market, where only a few cuts
matter, there's usually at least 9 glyphs for every spec that are
best. There's some overlap especially with minors and majors, but
primes are almost always unique to a spec. I would never try this
with gems because there's just too much competition. You can
certainly make money with gems, but that is by activating fighting
the opposition. It is too broad based to actually form a cartel.
The second threat to the inscription
market is the possibility that Blizzard would remove prime glyphs.
There was some talk about how they were unhappy with prime glyphs.
This makes sense. The average person doesn't know where lava burst
or lightening bolt does more damage. This person relies on some
outside source to figure out which is a bigger portion of their
damage. Worse yet, if this hypothetical person doesn't have any real
way of knowing and can easily make the wrong choice. If encounters
are balanced around making the right choice...then the person is
doomed for failure. (I remember seeing a resto druid without
Nature's Swiftness or Swiftmend during Wrath. I pitted them because
they were trying to operate without a full tool kit. )
Deep down, Blizzard wants us to have
difficult, but succeed. That's why you see content being nerfed down
and stacking buffs like the ones for ICC and Dragonsoul. The current
model of inscription really doesn't fit this model. (This is also
why you don't see long grinds of experience or even the ability to
meaningful progress your character outside a few small venues—mostly
quests, then dungeons, then heroic dungeons, then raids (with crafted
gear and rep gear tucked in the list) and then a more narrow route
for pvp...just sometimes crafted, then a two week hazing while you
build up resilience from the honor gear in battle grounds or Tol
Barad, followed by arena or rate battle grounds. World pvp might be
fun, but it isn't productive and isn't present on most servers. If
you look at older games like Everquest, there were a myriad of ways
to progress your character through solo quests and older items that
were simply broken. (Clerics in that game used the same main hand
weapon for something like a decade straight, because the click effect
was so valuable!)
It is my prediction that Blizzard will
do what they have hinted at and eliminate prime glyphs. Glyphs were
divided between prime and major in Cata because Blizzard didn't like
how prime simpily override major for pvers. There was no meaningful
decision making process. Just like their changes to the talent trees
were ultimately failures and Blizzard simply wants to scrap them with
Mists of Pandaria, I believe that prime glyphs will be eliminated. This simplifies the bulky glyph system and makes it more accessible to the average person. Their inability to fix the issue with Northrend books seems to be less of an issue because the new system will have fewer glyphs in it. Also, with fewer glyphs, the barriers to entry lessen into inscription. These are all goals Blizzard surely has.
Perhaps I sound paranoid, but I believe Blizzard doesn't like us gold mongers. The removal of epic gems from ore is an example of this type of behavior. Of course, this just lead for the prices on red gems to increase (on my server they went from 50 to 300 to 500 gold each!). Similar things happened with not allowing epic gem transmutes. After all, Blizzard has a good reason to loathe us. When people flip things in the AH or the like, essentially, we are making it harder for the average player to make money. They would much rather we do dailies to make cash and actually experience the content, rather than buying and item and reselling it for twice the amount. Anyway, I am digressing.
If you agree or disagree, I would love
to hear your comments.
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