WotLK Almost every gold making related aspect reduced by at least 1/3?

[Bomesssor]

Hello,

First of all, don't get me wrong. I'm not mad about these changes because the market will regulate itself accordingly anyway, invested time will still yield the same value. I just want to know if these are indeed happening and that they were intentional.

This is not my first post adressing this matter, I'm waiting for other players' confirmation that this thing is not only happening to me. I didn't make any changes to my UI, no new addons, no new client no nothing. Quest gold rewards, cloth drop rates, milling, disenchanting prospecting drop rates etc.. have all been reduced by at least 1/3. I made a bug report about Icethorn not giving Icy Pigment at every mill (like it used to) and the answer was that "I must've struck bad luck". Well, when you mill 5000 Icethorns and evaluate the results I don't think luck is a factor.

The fact that gold gains from quests (this includes the money you get from the quest itself and the money in containers, like the champion's purse for example) have been reduced by 1/3 was confirmed by other players as well and many bug reports were made, non of them resulted in an answer yet. People just want to know if this was intentional or not. One thing is for sure, it was not announced, was not mentioned in changelogs/devlogs or anything.

But it's not just the quests. I've been utilizing and combining many professions togehter to earn gold for years, like the good old JC/Tailoring+Ench combo, or just some regular prospecting, disenchanting or milling. The drop rates of the uncommon items from these have been reduced, at least for me. These items include uncommon pigments, uncommon essences, uncommon gems etc etc...

I have been keeping records for years and I can prove to a 100% certainity that cloth doesn't drop as often as it used to, disenchanted items don't give as many uncommon essences as they used to give, milling herbs doesn't give as many uncommon pigments and prospecting doesn't give as many uncommon gems.

I've made a test run in Outland, where I usually farm cloth and used to be able to get around 2000x cloth per hour. This time, based on a 10 hour long farming session (so the sample is big enough) I got around 1300x cloth per hour, same spot, same character, same gear, same everyhting. Then, I made items from them and disenchanted them, and I found that they gave almost 50% lower uncommon essence (Greater Planar Essence in this case) drops.

The same goes for Milling. In the past years I was able to get a decent Azure Pigment/Icy Pigment ratio when milling WotLK herbs. This time I did a test again, invested over 100k gold to Darkmoon Card materials including herbs, I bought the herbs at the same price I always do, and after milling they yielded only 63% of Snowfall Inks compared to the usual amount. We're talking about over 5000 Icethonrs and 5000 Deadnettles and Tiger Lilies, so the sample was more than big enough.

Am I the only one noticing this?

This means people in this profession will have to buy almost twice as many herbs to mill, this will mean increased demand and herb shortages, which leads straight to increased herb prices, which will not only affect the price of Darkmoon Cards, but also the entire flask and potion market will have to raise their prices as well. Same goes for all the other professions were drop rates were reduced.

People will soon adapt to this change and Darkmoon Trinkets will cost at least 2x more compared to their current prices, but I think even 2,5-3x more because not only will people have to buy almost twice as many herbs to create a Darkmoon Card, but because of the increased demand the herb prices themselves will rise.

Of course the market regulates itself, the profits are still going to be made, but for newbies wanting a decent starter trinket from the AH this will certainly be unfortunate. A Greatness Card is already 6-8k, now it'll be 13-15k+. The reduced gold from quests completed at level 80 won't help them either...

[Bomesssor]

Update:
In the meantime I've been getting confirmations from other players that indeed everything is reduced!

Nothing wrong about these changes but please at least make an announcement and give reasons why!