The Current Ecnomical State of ARR

[-BlueGreen-]

I did say "eventually". And apparently what I meant was "in a few days".

I know you're being sarcastic, and I was being slightly unrealistic given that the content is so new, but that's also why I continued on by examining the costs of the anima weapon, which is inferior iLvl-wise and has been out a while. My basic point isn't so much that the prices aren't affordable within days of release, but rather that they're so slow to come down to reasonable levels that even being one patch outdated doesn't cut it. Want to gear up to pre-3.0 i110 in level 50 gear? That's affordable enough last I checked, but what would be the point? It's pretty obsolete and the 3.0 i115 gear is much easier to get the materials for.

The problem with your economy is almost certainly due to a low number of Endgame Crafters on that server. Either your server is small and a few people are holding a monopoly, the market isn't Crafter-friendly (Low mat costs, plentiful amounts listed, etc.), or others have taken the exact same stance you about the Specialist system.

I suspect it's a mix of those reasons, but given how crafting doesn't involve forming an 8-man static I would think that the ratio of crafters to non-crafters should be relatively similar across all of the servers. Although, a question: How does low mat costs/high mat availability hurt crafter-friendliness? What I've found so far is that if I need something for a craft, it's generally available and reasonably priced on my server unless it requires specialization.

The best explanation I can honestly give you is that since the start of 3.0 SE has been trying to appeal to all types of Crafters, including HC Crafters.

...

I can't really find a non-Elitist way to say this, but the drastic changes to Crafting since HW release has effectively separated the HC Crafters from the Casual Crafters, and there is a VERY small number of HC Crafters even when compared to HC Raiders.

If that first part about SE's goal in this is accurate, then your closing statement acknowledges that SE has failed and that they need to re-evaluate the path they're on.