World of Warcraft Economy Report - July 2009

Down, down, down. The real world economy and the WoW economy seem to be taking the same plunge this month. Of all the methods I employ to bring in gold, only one is still bringing in what it normally does. All the others are continuing to plummet.

This happens just about every year around this time, so I more or less expected it, but it's gotten bad enough that I have temporarily stopped several gold making processes. There are several contributing factors to my server's dip, and I assume servers across the board are seeing similar situations.

School is out, so that always brings in a huge influx to the WoW economy, causing mass undercutting from May until August. But the worst time during this stretch is the end of July and beginning of August, because most people are all back from their vacations, so we respectively see the higher server populations.

Also, with 3.2 coming out, many of the item enhancement and raw material sales have gone way down. Many people used to making x amount of gold are instead finding themselves in a constant undercutting war with their competitiors. Infinite Dust alone is down almost 1g/per, making a full stack about 20g less than it was a month ago. Gems are down across the board too, as are leg armor/threads, and item enchants.

See my gold making methods / posts on Jewelcrafting, Tailoring, Disenchanting, and Herbalism.

Patch 3.2 will bring a surge to the need for all these items, but for now, people are dumping them at very low prices.

One tricky item that has baffled me continues to fluctuate up and down in price. Runed Orbs are selling for much less with 3.2 on the horizon. Where they were 1000g maybe a month ago, I've seen them as low as 600-700g now. However, once all those get bought up, I see them rise right back up to 1000g again. Very strange. As I have posted previously, I had to buy several orbs myself. Had I waited, based on what I've seen, I could have saved about 2000g.

One item that I would consider a bargain is the Darkmoon Nobles Deck (Darkmoon Card: Greatness trinket), which has been selling on my server for 4200g or less. Snatch these up at the lowest price, especially you ret paladins, as that trinket is still BiS for many of us. Piecing together a deck from individual cards may be even cheaper than that.

Herbs are aslo selling for much, much lower. While Icethorn is about 6g less/stack, Lichbloom has taken a 10g/stack dive, with the bottom dropping out on Frost Lotus at a loss of 10-15g/per. These will pick back up with 3.2, but for now, keep aclose eye on the market. Glyph makers might take advantage of these low prices, but even glyphs are becoming increasingly frustrating to sell at normal prices.

The only area still making me decent gold is bag making. For some reason, people are gobbling up the bags I'm continuing to make. Last Tuesday, I sold 62 Netherweave Bags and 9 Imbued Netherweave Bags. That was in three batches throughout the day. Everytime I logged on all my bags had sold, and netherweave was selling all day at low prices.

So, with school out and people cramming in as much playtime as they can, as well as the lull while waiting for 3.2, the economy has taken a little bit of a nose dive. I'm sitting on my hands for now, and I'm sure many others are as well. We'll see what next month brings (assumingly with 3.2), but until then, I think it's best to just watch the AH closely.

Khor