Realms Permanent gold sink

[xblazze]

Greetings Warmane staff, Forum members.
I was thinking about how you could counter the inflation which naturally comes when servers on a expansion are running for a really long time. I thought of one specific "method" which could help a lot actually.

The method i thought about was buying boxes via a ingame system for your gold. This may sound standard, but hear me out please before you immediately say "no".
The reason why it should be done is due to the non-custom content rule. Warmane will never implement custom content and putting a NPC let's say in Stormwind would put a strange feeling to some people.

The coin shop is around for buying TCG mounts, Tabards, pets and other vanity items. However, you can only get them for coins (except for the Roosters).

If you make these "boxes"/"crates" purchasable for let's say 5-10k gold (yes, really that much, it's not a matter of draining 1k gold from a relatively poor player to begin with) and add items like "Tabard of the Protector" (pre-bc event), the Undead Slayer sets (pre-wotlk event) some already not expensive items from the TCG etc., i could see a huge potentual. Humans tend to like rare items and to gamble, especially if a player has a big chunk of gold they may want to have something unique that lets them stand out of the crowd.

I know you could just add items like this to the Coin store, however you can sell your gold for coins on the trade market which just transfers the gold from Player A to Player B which is not putting the gold out of the economy.

I hope this makes sense. I am open for any suggestions even if you do not agree with me :)

Cheers

[angrylol]

Economy has been pretty stable almost half a year now, that is pretty great, means squish and anti-bot efforts work.


What I think would be effective[talking about Icecrown]:
1. Dropping gold drop/reward rates to x1.
2. Increasing reagent prices by some percent.
3. Reducing drop rates of gray vendor trash.

However, that would be major step back of idea of what Icecrown is all about and why people play there, which would have major negative impact in long run.

P.S.
"it's not a matter of draining 1k gold from a relatively poor player to begin with"
Actually it's completely false. Just think about how much gold people sink when they repair gear, every single char is affected and mandatory. Reagents for spells. Vendor materials for professions. Deposit costs and tax using AH. Spell training. Those are the big chunks of the pie. 5'000 gold vendor "get-rich-fast-scam-boxes" would be 1% of that.

[xblazze]

Well thanks for your critique, I can follow what you are saying.
But if you decrease gold rates on Icecrown to x1, it would mean with the x7 exp rates beginners will it have so much harder. I was more talking about countering inflated auction house prices. Take the gold squish for instance. I can only speak form a Lorderon's player perspective, stacking Primos won't work that well since people won't have much money, there are better sources. Also if not much gold available=people don't have much gold to buy 500g per stack of herbs (exaggerated) so prices will go lower, but the items will still be valuable if you know what I mean.

The items you would get from these boxes should be soulbound aswell, not a "get-rich-fast-scam-box", target should really be players who could buy the entire AH and not for people who can not even afford a stack of Cardinal Rubys.

[angrylol]

Yes that's true. Overall on Icecrown prices are dropping over time in AH since it stabilized few months after last squish. So what does that mean? Gold amount in economy is good. Gold goes somewhere, either sinks out or collects dust in fat vaults or both. Prices are affordable - epic gem is under 200g. Flask is under 80g. Players can easily create some 100g per day just by doing one RDF, not to mention all the goodies, reagents and stuff that can be sold. Within week player can bling out their char with top enchants and gems without breaking a sweat. I think this is the point where players start to accumulate excess gold and prices will start to spike up and the need for "next squish" starts to show.
So, as you said, some stuff in some form could be great to sink it out gold. But tell me why you think there should be that extra step - buy "box" and get tabard. Why not just get tabard? Instantly hints to some form of deception, doesn't it?