I did inventory the other day. Outside of the infinite amounts of junk I have smeared out all over my alts I noticed that I had about 10k in gold laying around.
With my hunter, mage and death knight still a ways away from level 77 I quietly acknowledged the fact that I wouldn't have to worry about where the next 2 or even 3 epic flyers would come from.
In fact this time around I wouldn't even have to liquidate any of my assets and can reasonably expect to have another 5k gold through prodding around on the AH for maybe an hour every couple of days long before any of my 3 higher level alts gets to 77.
So looking at the current state of my characters and looking at purely what they 'need' in riding skills to get epic riding and epic flying I am looking at a grand total of almost 50k gold for all my alts left to gather (10 chars in total).
That 50k gold includes everything all my characters could ever want from riding and that is assuming you see epic flying as a requirement rather than a nice to have.
50k definitely sounds like a lot... but given that I already have 10k of that number and it took me about a month with very little effort on the AH to get 5k I could realistically achieve the 50k mark by the end of the year without putting any significant effort into making gold whatsoever. Significantly less if I just devoted a month or two to gold making activities.
I considered putting effort into the gold making process but then it hit me: Assuming you've already bought all the epic flyers you could possibly need and your professions are maxed what is there really left to buy?
A mammoth?
A chopper?
A couple of flimsy rings?
A gigantique bag?
Soap on a rope?
Some other random vendor stuff?
Most of everything else is either tied into some kind of badge/seal/token/honor/rating system or doesn't require gold to get but instead requires effort a.k.a. time. Worse still there is nothing that would allow me to trade in my gold to save some time in that regard.
So what does one buy once one has bought all the 'essentials'?
There's no gold sink big enough that would keep taking your gold and paying you off in a way that you would want to repeat it indefinitely (i.e. gold -> honor might be a start).
Repair and travel cost barely factor in at this point. Sure repair costs can be painful if you have no gold income from anywhere and you run instances all day but that's really a choice you make when you choose that particular lifestyle.
Gear comes from instances, from badges or from honor and arena rating none of which I can buy with gold. Titles come from achievements which translates to effort rather than gold and anything cosmetically interesting seems to come from an obscure trading card game which only kind of comes from gold... if you were allowed to sell gold for cash.
That indeed leaves a rather paltry selection of mounts, rings and arbitrary vendor junk...
So depending on the amount of alts you have there is actually a virtual cap on how much gold you can have before it becomes essentially nothing more than a little number on the bottom of your main bag. And even that number will stop climbing at 2^31 copper because even blizzard thinks that by the time you have that much gold you really should quit or seek help or some such thing.
So, did I miss something or is endgame gold really worthless?
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7 comments:
Well you could amuse yourself by giving away welfare gifts... to friends, guldies, random people, whatever. Or like Gevlon does, supporting a progressing guild that you think deserves it. But yeah, especially if you like me don't fancy the idea of a huge mammoth, there definitely is a limit of how much gold you possibly can spend in endgame activities.
Well, there is always alts - I have 5 80s with epic CW flying and a 73 and 63 on the way.
But there is some nice BoE gear: 3k for the Stonewearer legs for my shammie; I am waiting till the cost comes down but 1k for bracers for the pally or Shammie. I am watching for the metrognome belt for the pally that is currently 3k. The Plate Girdle of the Righteous takes 6 Runed Orbs and another 6 for the Treads of Destiny. Now that would have cost over 36,000g a month ago but will soon be half that on my server. Stormserge jewels are 900g.
So right now for my main spec I could spend 1+3+10+10+1 or 25,000 per toon per spec (i.e. double it if you wanted holy and prot ). Reenchats will add some. This includes no vanity purchases; just gear that is better. Not a whole lot better; diminishing returns and all. but an upgrade for me at least . For me, the 8,000 for the ring would be an upgrade as well.
But if you want to get some (less than half their gear) BoEs for two dual spec toons, that would be about 132,000 gold
Naturally, one would want to vendor all this stuff in a few months when 3.3 ships. lol
@Larisa: I tend to shower the few guildies I have in gifts whenever birthdays or holidays come up. Then again I tend to just craft things from my material stock. Sure it ends up being 'worth' 500g for a gifting session but it effectively cost me nothing due to my ever-increasing stockpile of raw materials.
@Hagu:
Me and gear always had personal issues. I have difficulty investing a boatload of resources into gear that's bound to be outdated in a patch or two so I generally prefer things I can just snag from an instance or the occasional BG rather than buyable BOEs. My raiding investment is a lot lower than average and as a result I have near 0 requirements. People accept me for the dungeon tourist I am when I run instances with them :P
That said I suppose I could just keep piling up gold and then start buying my gear. But there's no real need since gear flows in easily from other sources and so my gold basically just sits there waiting for characters to hit level 77.
Personally, I'm doomed to spend thousands of gold on AH pets, like the Horde Agrent Tournament pets for instance, going from 1500 - 5000g on my server right now. :(
@Drazmor: I didn't even know there was a market for those. I have about 100 seals rotting away because ... well... the only thing worth buying are the pets :P
Gold in wow is just another resource. I am rather stingy with badges, I don't want to "waste" them, but my guildies have told me I'll be swimming in them before I know it. Its worth is determined by what you can buy with it, and being able to use it on endgame viable items reduces the time-value of those items. If a few hours of easy farming produced endgame quality epics, everyone would have them. Blizz wants your time, so they make other resources which are more time dependant.
@larisa, The mammoth is not for riding alone; I use other mounts. But as a forgetful packrat, it is very nice to be able to clean out bags, repair, and buy reagents whenever I need. ( Or someone else; mage claimed he did not have reagents for table, out comes mammoth ) Last week I got roped into taking a 28 thru RFD/RFK; so instead of them walking from Ratchet, we both went at epic riding+crusader speed.
@CtF: yeah there are the two sides: one is this virtual gold is of no use outside the game so might as well be spent; maybe when we have player housing you will need income to avoid forclosure just like in the real world. :-( The other side is that no equipment or accomplishments will mean much of anything as soon as the next patch/expansion ships.
@fish - re "If a few hours of easy farming produced endgame quality epics" - a strong case could be made for the belt & boots, and a good case Darkmoon Greatness and perhaps ring as not only being endgame quality epics but BiS. And Gevlon could certainly buy any one of them with a few hours of his time at the AH.
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