A new dimension
I’ve been watching other servers merge get linked and I’ve been kind of curious as to how the linking affects their economy. Starting this Thursday, Alleria, a high-pop server (my home) is linking to Khadgar, a low-pop server.
Some of the comments I’ve seen from low-pop servers (and one medium-pop) indicate that there are lot of "makers" but very few "takers", keeping prices low and sales flat. Here on Alleria, even common commodities like herbs can sell out, prices can get a bit up there, and things generally do move. Even at that, our prices on Alleria have been historically below the average for all realms ((Thanks, TUJ Realm-specific addon!)).
My own business has been brisk. I generally can’t keep the shelves fully stocked, I’m always playing catch-up. On average I pull in 25,000 GP a week. The glyph business has, surprisingly, remained a decent source of income, especially since Blizzcon ((I guess peeps are genuinely excited by things to come.)).
So what happens when Khadgar’s population gets to taste these waters? That … is the great unknown. Will they inundate us with an oversupply of all things? Will they be starved for goods? Will my counterpart on Khadgar be a total jerk, intent on driving me out of business? ((For the record, that’s been tried before. Go for it. I am Asia. Bring the land war.))
It’s all, at this point, rather exciting, from a glyph market geek point of view. My *hopes* are that it will be positive. I might even get to bring some glyphs out of retirement if prices pick up. But even if it goes the other way, I could take at least 25-50% market depression and still get along fine.
In a few days I’ll follow up, allowing things to stabilize – probably after the weekend.
Posted on January 29, 2014, in Cashey Money, Crafting. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
Not All Hunters 
Don’t think I saw a follow-up to this and I have a merge/consolidation coming on one of my servers, any feedback in terms of how your economy was affected and if so, was your server the big or little brother?
LikeLike
I haven’t compiled my numbers yet, since I planned on waiting a while for the market to settle. But overall it *appears* that numbers have dropped significantly, say 5% or so for glyphs and related bits.
I’m seeing a significant number of glyphs drop below my threshold and am considering a drop of 5% to keep things moving – but I’m also considering leaving minimum price where it is and not blowing time on slow-selling glyphs.
The number of sellers has increased threefold, hinting that Khadgar was a seller’s market, and that Khadgarians are very happy people right now. I’m expecting to see that number drop a bit, and was kind of waiting on that before I pulled the trigger on the follow-up.
So, overall, it’s a negative for Allerians, who had had a pretty robust economy, but it’s not a CRASH. Everybody still gets by, just with a smaller piece of the pie. So that’s okay, IMO.
LikeLike
And to clarify, I did mean to wait just a few days before the update, but the market showed no sign of stabilizing then, and is still kind of in flux. So I’m taking a longer view.
LikeLike
Oh, and I missed your question at the end, there. Sorry.
To answer: we were the bigger of the two realms. We had a stable and flourishing economy, with a lot of money changing hands every day. Looking at sites such as Undermine Journal, it looked to me that Khadgar had a very small market, more sellers than buyers, and a smaller population (RealmPop). With a higher seller per capita, that indicates that they probably have a lot of stuff stored away, not selling, that is now being dumped on the Alleria market.
So I’d say it’ll be weeks before things settle on most merges. I think that’ll be marked by a drop in sellers, indicating that the speculators have finally dumped all they can and have moved on to leave teh long term sellers to carry on. That is purely speculative (c wut i did thar) but has the basis of experience behind it.
LikeLike
Alright, useful info above even if just from a “eh, hard to say and YMMV anyway” perspective. 🙂
On my smaller servers, including the one being merged, I’ve done very well from a gold angle but it’s been a relatively high-price, low-volume, long-sales-cycle process… quite a bit of profit per sale, usually, but it can take weeks (or months) for something to sell since the market for buyers isn’t really there. Often I’m the only one actively selling in a market, though, which in the long term makes up for it and I’ve always viewed it from a long-term perspective.
I’m also on a larger server, I haven’t gone in hard there like I have on my other servers but that one is significantly lower margin (for instance, Living Steel is 300g there vs 450-500g on my other servers when Ghost Iron/Trillium is roughly the same price across all) but higher volume, I’m less interested in doing volume business (especially the multi-time-daily re-list game… *glares at glyphs*) but there’s still some gold to be made there. I’m personally not really planning for the merge, I’m not stockpiling or selling off, I’m sticking to my normal process… I just don’t know what anyone else is doing so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Sounds like you had a bit of a sell-off frenzy post-merge, if that happens to me I’ll just take a break for a bit &/or just buy out the cheap stuff, I guess.
LikeLike
Yeah, and it’s constantly changing. Tonight, our new friends on Khadgar opened up war on the glyph market … all glyphs have fallen below my threshold suddenly. No big thing, I’ve seen this before from the locals. I’m patient. 🙂
Gonna get interesting … but I usually see the bodies of my competitors float past, face down, in the sludge.
LikeLike