I hope server GMs have data about how much gold is in circulation and how much has been generated between each squish. If players generate more gold than is removed by squish then we still have inflation in our economy.
Maybe thats why we have noticed slight drop in quest rewards and boss drops. To futher limit gold supply to bring inflation close to 0 after each cycle.
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Forum Veteran
I understand the prices raising of things which drop rates have been fixed. People sold Frost Lotuses to vendors, now they cost a lot. Exploit with green drops were fixed, so now infinites and cosmics cost. But what is observed is overall price raise over the years since first squish that edited gold drop rates. Some things are even 300% up and they drop the same as always. Lets say a thing cost 40g in 2016 or whenever gold rates were changed. Now they cost 240g or more.
Amount of gold created or deleted over the year is irrelevant, what matters is how much gold is in market circulation. This is why few weeks after the squish market prices go to, as some people said, "normal" and stay there for few months. Yet all that time gold is created, but somehow prices are not raising at a constant rate?? Explain.
There is logical and indisputable explanation and mechanisms that make it happen, few of those:
Gold is pushed back into economy, instead of gold being effectively drained out and sitting in bags.
Everyone stores wealth in items, using gold only for pressing needs.
Consequence of this is huge demand for items and low demand for gold. This creates inflation, with every year it will get worse and worse. I'm not talking about pre-squish inflation here, which is another negative.
This will end in people creating their own currency, like it always happens in these kinds of scenarios. Be ready to pay in Frozen Orbs for your sockets and enchants. I'm not even sure if ability to sell gold for coins will save us, there is a limit to coins you need, at least we have second thing that gives at least some value to gold.
Conclusion, it's bull****, squish exists for other reasons, I mean, if you need to sweep the floor and you spin a few donuts with your muddy dirtbike in that room, it doesn't become clean --- would you do it again, keep doing it? When there is too much bull****, look at the factual outcome and assume that was the intent.
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Before squish prices don't matter because essentially, there were either too high for no reason (scam/greed) or too low for a good one (no one needs it).
Not long before the first squish, prices were quite healthy. but things changed for the worst rapidly, because people don't like losing their gold so they doubled (inflated) the prices to make up for the loss of gold (squish ). Now price may be going up, a little is expected since gold is harder to come by and mats harder to get. (rates fixed). Inflation is the result of the gold squish, not from hoarding mats or gold. If someone is rich in the game, what does he do ? he gives it up for silly things and to the left and right because there is no point to gold.
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I failed to mention that if you add the coin system it gets worse. players will always compete to sell gold wich leads to gold inflation or gold losing its value.
that's why warmane use squish to maintain value of coins. not gold. coins value must be high so players wants to donate...
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Forum Veteran
Hoarding mats is a reason for inflation - that is a fact, there is no way to deny it. Someone rich in game uses portion of their gold to make more gold/sell it for coins and stores the rest in materials(increased demand for materials that otherwise would go to people that would actually use them = prices raising).
Personally, I'd rather keep my stuff in gold that would just sit there, never to be used(100% drained out of economy), but I can't do that. so now I have tabs with primos and whatever **** with good value-per-stack. I will never use them, they will sit there forever and what we get is materials are drained out of economy instead of gold. Kind of funny, if you ask me.
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The gold squish is hitting me really hard as well. This year, I’ve only been online once a month for a 3-hour raid. During that time, I’ve only had expenses—spending gold on potions, flasks, buff food, etc.—but never any income since I was only online for the raid. :(
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If the squish wasn't effective, they would've stopped doing it. Yes, prices and the market get all wonky around the squish but the trade off is better long term. Do you wanna pay 30k for a blood queen's crimson choker, or 100k?
A good example is Classic wow era server (vanilla forever). Prices got out of whack there so much that it hurt new players and became very difficult to afford anything. The squish hurts new players a little in short term, but long term it is better to keep things you will eventually buy from AH staying at affordable prices instead of paying 100k for a crimson choker boe, or 500 gold a pop for 1 potion of speed. If you are a veteran then you know about the squish and have the knowledge to plan around it. If you go into Feb/March holding 200k gold as a vet, then you weren't thinking ahead.
For economy focused players, It is a good time to play the AH and try and buy things low and sell high and figure out which items you can profit from, but it's high risk high reward.
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It's a matter of who buys those Crimson Chokers. Only reason why they cost 30k now is because people store them, not buy them for use. If they said "there will not be squish and never will be again", chokers would sell for like 7k for the next year. That would eliminate 95% of buyers and it would be buyers market, not sellers as it is now. Who would post them for 100k if there is no one who buys them for that price?
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You have to be either loaded with gold or unhinged to use 20-30k worth boe neckpiece that isint even BiS. At this point chokers can be compared with irl government bonds - low risk, low reward investment
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It kinda is pre-bis for nearly every caster(hpala,rsham,mage,lock,balance, even SPR, disco) and is a good way to invest and wear it, like yes you can wait for same neck from icc DB HC 10m, but to get there people often ask for 5.8+ or even 6k+ GS which is hard to get with some 232 neck, and on top of that you can be out of luck getting it for weeks, meanwhile you can farm gold for 2 days and have pre-bis neck that you change for 25 BQL HC one maybe in half a year if you are raider in guild, or more then a year if you are just casually pug raider without luck. On my 6.5 multiple chars that was pretty much always last item that I got, or I got som many gold that I didn't need so I just sold for coins and bought that goddamn 25hc neck.
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Just buy Crimson death charger, whooly rhino or bunch of chokers/hilts before taking a 2 year break? If you have 100k gold and you dont plan ahead then i that case you dont care about those 100k gold in the first place.
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Gold squish means nothing to some of us. Im sitting on 210k. They will half that amount. So ill be at 105k.
Next I could sell the endless stockpile of mats and BoEs I have and make all my gold back. If I chose not to sell my mats/BoEs I could just donate and buy 100k with coins and be back at 200k.
Get rich in game and the squish means nothing to you. Make good money IRL and the gold squish means nothing to you. $100 is nothing to me, can make that in less than a day at work. Gold is extremely cheap when you make good money IRL.
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Gold squish does nothing to veteran players, we keep our "money" in items since the first squish, years ago. Its only a bit annoying to buy flying/banktabs/dual talents with every char once a year with the remaining surplus gold before it gets squished.
It only fks over newbies and makes the economy unpredictable.
Btw inflation is even good for new players, since learning spells, mounts, flying etc are all fixed prices, so the higher price you can sell your green boe item that dropped or the rock you mined the better, even on low levels. Chokers and other boes also are not affected since you have to sell the same amount of gathering mats or frozen orbs from rhc or gems from rbg/wintergrasp for them, doesnt matter if they go for 503103 billion gold even.
The only negative is if you get your gold solely from daily quests or normal quests, but that method is not worth it anyway, and it even got stealth nerfed further recently.
So all in all i dont understand why warmane do this squish thing still, but it sure doesnt help newbies or the economy even the slightest.
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Another thing came to my mind since i posted:
Me before the squish (the first one , many years ago) : Well i have a lot of random things in my bags, time to sell them and earn a bit of gold, then later when i had a lot of gold i bought random things like chopper or pets or sthg.
Me now in 2025: I have a lot of random things in my bag ,lets send the frozen orbs/gems/whatever to my storage alt, the enchant mats / greens or blues to my enchanter for disench...etc
This is a silly example but i am sure im not the only one that thinks like this now, thanks to the yearly squishes. The economy is not "spinning", items arent circulating that much because everyone just keeps them in storage (reducing the supply in the market) , and since we (at least I) dont do anything with these items, I wont sell/trade them so i wont have a bunch of surplus gold so i wont buy many items like in the past either (or at least pets or cosmetic items), so the demand also is reduced.
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So this is why after 10 years of without playing my characters have no gold lol
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