Start addresing the upcoming gold squishes

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February 27, 2019
bakkhos16

Start addresing the upcoming gold squishes

well, i think the title says its clearly.

i sugest warmane staff members to start preparing a plan on what its going to happen next year.
yes i know gold squish has just happened, but this was the 3rd year and a lot of things missed the point.

1st of all: as we all know, people ALLWAYS wants to make gold, and the announcement of the gold squish did just that, make people increase prices by up to 300% in some cases in matter of HOURS

but that was not the problem, nor the reason im addresing this post:

the real problem was that, in fear of a new year's squish, people increased the prices WITHOUT a gold squish announcement, as in shown here:

this is a list of the last year's prices of a couple of every day purchases in the AH for icecrown, i am NOT including hugely expensive things like mounts, blood queen's choker or battered hilt (yes that is expensive now) because those are not every-day purchases:

https://www.wow-auctionhouse.com/war...ronite&time=1y
https://www.wow-auctionhouse.com/war...um+bar&time=1y
https://www.wow-auctionhouse.com/war...s+rage&time=1y
https://www.wow-auctionhouse.com/war...l+ruby&time=1y
https://www.wow-auctionhouse.com/war...Zircon&time=1y

all these graphs show us the EXACT SAME TENDENCY, with very little speed variation:
in response to 2017's gold squish, the comunity started escalating prices by early NOVEMBER, reaching a peak at early december.
with 2019 aproaching and no gold squish announcements, item prices started to go back to normal (pre-november prices) and by the 2nd week of january it looked like it would stabilize rather soon.
or it would have, if in jan 17, 2019 you had not announced the gold squish
the reaction was immediate. prices skyrocketed to double its price in few hours, AND STAYED HIGH UNTIL THE GOLD SQUISH HIT!
now, with the gold halved, EVERYONE wants to sell their goods and now the prices are BELOW normal and aparently they WILL KEEP GOING DOWN!

eventually, they WILL stabilize.

this roller coaster of economy is, for what have understood, the kind of chaos warmane staff wishes to prevent.

to do so, i come with a few ideas:

1st: as the title sugests, dont wait until someone ASKS the staff if there will be a gold squish or not (as was done here: http://forum.warmane.com/showthread.php?t=393498 ). keep the community informed via the main page (as you did with gold squish announcement and as you are now with mercenary mode). that way we can (hopefully) prevent the kind of panic we had on last year's november, where the community just escalated the prices in preparation for something that did not exist at the time
2nd: as was shown in answer you gave me, there was no plans at the moment. well, this is the 2nd sugestion: make such plans BEFOREHAND. in 2 months time the decition went from a "we have no plans" to a "this WILL happen". either tell us "we are considering it" or dont tell us anything at all, which takes me to the 3rd point:
3rd: if you DO make gold squishes: make ROGUE ones. do NOT announce them, since, as shown in the graphs, people WILL try to compensate by escalating the prices, making the squish INNEFECTIVE. by not letting people know until its done, or at least by giving them very little time (i'd say 3 days is enough) you prevent people to take advantage.
4th: to keep items prices in check, and to help maintain gold quantities in order, you could try to implement a "buy items with ingame gold" kind of thing here on the website. by having a standard price of certain items you guarantee certain values, and by selling goods via trade you can make players spend some of their gold on the website, thus removing it from the game.

i ask the staff members to actually read the post seriously and let the community participate on the coments, rather than simply close the thread because they consider the suggestions innefective.
please, i beg you: LET. THEM. TALK.

lastly, i would like to add that i am by no means an economy expert, but if i can realize of this with such little knowledge i can only imagine what a true economist can do.
February 28, 2019
Sankyo

Since this is a forum where people post "Suggestions & Changes", and i am not no position of power to accept or decline this, what i am about to say is merely my opinion:

Now with your suggestions:

Quote:

Originally Posted by bakkhos16

1st: as the title sugests, dont wait until someone ASKS the staff if there will be a gold squish or not (as was done here: http://forum.warmane.com/showthread.php?t=393498 ). keep the community informed via the main page (as you did with gold squish announcement and as you are now with mercenary mode). that way we can (hopefully) prevent the kind of panic we had on last year's november, where the community just escalated the prices in preparation for something that did not exist at the time

They do announce things, keep in mind that this is a forum and that most people we are used to get answers from are Forum Moderators, most of them don't handle things in-game and aren't developers.

As you said, there were two years where we had gold squishs, so it was "becoming the norm" for us, so i think it's normal that people thought that last year was not gonna be different and even without the announce, the will increase their prices.

If we take into account what you said about "the comunity started escalating prices by early NOVEMBER, reaching a peak at early december." It took people a month to set their maximum prices. What i am trying to say here is that it was not gonna be different even if they announced it 2 or 3 months before if the prices are gonna escalate anyways in that timelapse. Because this year that was the time people had since the announcement.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bakkhos16

2nd: as was shown in answer you gave me, there was no plans at the moment. well, this is the 2nd sugestion: make such plans BEFOREHAND. in 2 months time the decition went from a "we have no plans" to a "this WILL happen". either tell us "we are considering it" or dont tell us anything at all, which takes me to the 3rd point:

Quoting the answer he gave you, "There are not plans currently for that."(highlight by me), he said "currently", so even if they decided about that the next day, his claim stand correct. What he didn't say was "There will be no gold squish"

I found this thread with an answer (the most "recent" t i could find with a Moderator's answer) about the gold squish, on December, 20 (1 month after they answered you) which proves that at that time still there was not plans for that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bakkhos16

3rd: if you DO make gold squishes: make ROGUE ones. do NOT announce them, since, as shown in the graphs, people WILL try to compensate by escalating the prices, making the squish INNEFECTIVE. by not letting people know until its done

I disagree with this, as you, i am no economy expert, but a decision like this would make (in my opinion) that we have always high prices on everything because people would never know when one would happen. And also people would come to the forums and complain every time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bakkhos16

or at least by giving them very little time (i'd say 3 days is enough) you prevent people to take advantage.

Same as before, because i dont think most people would like (or care) to have their gold reduced (by any ammout) and i talk about the casual people with less time to play and/or gather gold for something specific, like the Master Riding, that it's the most expensive thing that that comes to my mind that people like that should worry about first.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bakkhos16

4th: to keep items prices in check, and to help maintain gold quantities in order, you could try to implement a "buy items with ingame gold" kind of thing here on the website. by having a standard price of certain items you guarantee certain values, and by selling goods via trade you can make players spend some of their gold on the website, thus removing it from the game.

While i support the idea of the implementation of any gold sink method, i dont think it would be something that can make any item have "certain values", because that would mean that those items could be sold in-game, and that would create another market with a different target.

*Final note: sorry if my english is not the best
February 28, 2019
theonemoh

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sankyo

While i support the idea of the implementation of any gold sink method, i dont think it would be something that can make any item have "certain values", because that would mean that those items could be sold in-game, and that would create another market with a different target.

Not if they make the items used to sink gold high-demand BoP items that cannot be re-distributed. Do refer to the thread I opened yesterday suggesting some of the sort: http://forum.warmane.com/showthread.php?t=399586 Permanently vanquishing 500 - 75,000 gold for the sake of quality of life or cosmetic perks wont affect the game in any way shape or form and said items would be actually sought out for their actual values, not leaving a bittersweet taste in anybody's mouths.
March 1, 2019
Disktrasa

I thought the Gold squish was also an addition to keep the gold farming bots away from out servers.
As well as the AI bot.
March 1, 2019
Anyone0

Gold squishes don't work on people who have gold. They only work on people who don't have much gold. During the month between the announcement and gold squish, I was selling gems for almost double the normal price. And the profit was at least 3x the normal amount. Right before gold squish I bought some items that I will sell later and get back 85-90% of the gold I spent on them. I have not lost 50% of my gold to gold squish. Gold squish has helped me double my gold instead.

Even if gold squish was announced only 3 days in advance, I could get 85-90% of my gold back. If gold squishes were done with no announcement, I would just store those items instead of gold and sell them when I need gold so I don't lose any gold. Nothing prevents gold farming bots from doing the same too if they wanted to store gold for longer time. But I don't think they do that anyway.

If getting gold out of the economy is required, gold sinks would work much better since they don't let others profit from them and people can choose if and when they want to spend their gold.