Many WoW players have dreamed of big money in Patch 9.0. But Blizzard has coldly murdered many methods of gold earning.
The Pre-Patch 9.0 of World of Warcraft, which is supposed to prepare for the new expansion Shadowlands, is eagerly awaited. This is not only due to the major features like the Level-Squish, the new starting island or the numerous character customizations, but also to new opportunities to earn gold. However, Blizzard has now buried the most popular methods. A new fix in the Pre-Patch ensures that some ways of earning gold have become useless.
What is it about? With Patch 9.0, crafting in WoW is dramatically revised. Almost all old recipes can be upgraded through “Relics of the Past”. A pair of pants that was intended for level 10 can then become a good piece of armor for level 45 or higher. This not only increases the value of the equipment but also the resale value at the vendor.
What is the problem? Players researched on the PTR for methods to produce items effectively from cheap resources that they could sell for good profit at the vendor. It was practically a license to print money if it had come to that.
Alongside some bugs – such as an armor piece that can be sold for over 30,000 gold – there were many methods to get gold. The latest one required nothing more than a freshly created monk. The monk teleported himself via spell to the Kun-Lai Summit and could buy green items from a vendor there. These were disenchanted and then processed into new items, which would have led to a net profit of nearly 81 gold – every time.
This is how Blizzard fixed the problem: The developers have now found a solution to stifle these simple methods of gold earning in the bud. Instead of balancing all items and their values individually, a new, necessary resource was introduced. Anyone wanting to craft Relics of the Past must now buy additional materials from the NPC vendor. Each of these materials costs 5 gold. Depending on the rank of the relic, 1-25 of these materials are needed. For a relic at rank 5, the costs thus rise to 125 gold.
This nullifies any possible profit through the direct sale of the crafted items.
Many players are now dissatisfied: That Blizzard deactivated these methods with a fix just 6 days before the release of Patch 9.0 has caused some discontent. Many players have spent hundreds of thousands or even millions of gold to stockpile materials and process them with Patch 9.0. They anticipated a high net profit, which will now be absent.
In the coming days, materials like Thorium, Runecloth, or Leather are expected to flood the auction houses. After all, some players now have huge supplies of these that no longer have any recognizable use.
What do we learn from this? If a method of earning gold seems too good to be true – then it usually is. It was probably foreseeable that Blizzard would intervene here to prevent further inflation in World of Warcraft. It seems that we will only have to rely on tried and true strategies of gold earning. But surely, with Patch 9.0, some new ways will emerge to earn a gold piece or two – besides the 5 things to look forward to in Patch 9.0.
Are you among those affected who have stockpiled many materials? Or did you know from the start that this system would never come without restrictions?
