Undercutting crafted items that are "game drop" is a waste of time and money!

[Kes13a]

Different motivation. That was a pure money grab and had nothing to do with helping players out.

This.

Blizz went after some of the RMT market share. screwed up the markets but players were never a big concern anyway.

[Ftail]

Meanwhile me and my friends are celebrating the price drops and buying stuff for glamours we didn’t have before.

While it may upset you it brings joy to many others.

[DPZ2]

The thing is that developers of an online game should never ever interfere with the games internal economy.

The thing is, developers should never pay attention to the games internal economy when designing new items as rewards for current activity. That includes looking at "the market" to see how X will affect the price of Y.

Developers set a base for vendor-purchasable items and ignore the Market Board completely. To do otherwise is madness.

[Jojoya]

You never played WoW? They never interfered until they started selling that gold thingy. Developers interfering with the in-game economy is sure to piss off more players than if they didn't.

I did play WoW from mid BC to end of Legion. Blizzard was constantly interfering in ways you probably wouldn't recognize as interference either because it was part of their ongoing game design or other reasons were being given for the changes.

Changing drop rates or node yields interfered with sales on the AH. Changing the way stats worked interfered with sales of gear on the AH. Introducing heirlooms interfered with sales of gear on the AH. Restricting armor types to specific classes interfered with the sales of gear on the AH. Putting level caps ("this item has reduced/no effect for character over level 60/items over level 115") on use of enchants, gems and consumables interfered with sales of those items on the AH. Adding the disenchant roll option to dungeons when Dungeon Finder was introduced interfered with sales of enchants and enchanting mats on the AH.

I watched it all go down and saw how those changes plus many more affected the AH trends.

You want to know why the WoW token became a necessity to help keep new players from quitting the game within a few weeks of starting? Are you ready for this?

Transmog.

Veteran players were suddenly eager to get their hands on all those greens they had been ignoring since heirlooms were introduced in Wrath. What had been going for 20-30 silver suddenly shot up to 20-30 gold, or hundreds of gold in the cases of the "slut mog" items from the Vanilla levels (I can't complain, I had some no longer obtainable recipes for a few of those slut mog models, I got rich).

New players were relying on what had been cheap greens for their gear because the stat changes over the years had made the majority of quest rewards near useless if not completely useless. Now those cheap greens were prohibitively expensive for a new player starting out.

Blizzard for some strange reason thought new players would be happy to spend all their time trying to slowly level professions to make gold to buy gear they needed to level their class so they could level their professions farther to earn more gold they would need to get even better gear. Obviously it didn't work out because the majority of players don't pick up WoW to be a crafter with the limited time they have to play. They pick it up to "slay dargons [sic]", as a raiding friend of mine put it. New players couldn't make enough gold to buy the gear they needed to keep from being kicked from leveling dungeons. If other players aren't going to allow them to play the game because of things outside of their control, then there was no reason to stay.

Enter the WoW token so they had a way to get the gold they needed.

The interference was always there even if you didn't notice it.

[ForteNightshade]

They have to interfere to keep the game user friendly for new players who join the game late. Newer players who can't afford items because sellers are pricing them for veteran players with loads of currency accumulated will quit when they can't get the items they feel need.

I have yet to play a MMO where the developers haven't interfered with the markets in one fashion or another to make certain new players don't feel left out. If you're playing to accumulate wealth, you're just going to have to work harder.

To be fair, you can "interfere" in a way that doesn't utterly destroy the market. Using the Summer Indigo Shirt for example sake. If it was a rare Bozja drop or needed a good chunk of platinum coins, you accomplish the same goal without making it dirt cheap.

This actually wouldn't be as big a problem for crafters if their own endgame recipes weren't nerfed into the ground this expansion. Alas, the devs are more concerned with making everything easier to obtain than providing a solid endgame for crafters. Yoshida has openly stated he doesn't like items being listed for super high prices.

[Dzian]

I would suggest you look at some other content before you start blaming the relics fully.
The Firmiment also did this with the Moogle Lottery there. I remember there were a few items that you could make a decent amount of gil on that tanked hard because they added them in as prizes. The tomes as well have also tanked a few items.

Everything does it..

Moogles lottery thing.
Horde sacks from Palace of the dead /heaven on high.
Wanderlust tails rewards.
Retainer ventures.

All the same. Anything with any value gets absolutely destroyed. And it destroys contwntnin the process. Deep dungeons highlight this very well. For the first 2 maybe 3 days everyone's exploring every nook and cranny for every horde sacks they can get for rich valuable treasures.

Day 4 though the value of those treasures has absolutely tanked and forbthe rest of that contents life its just activate the portal and go go go getting the horde sacks is a waste ofntime because the markets have been so flooded you'll be lucky to get 500 gil for that cool primal weapon glamour or something such..

Content destroyed. Markets destroyed. And economy destroyed.

[Jojoya]

This actually wouldn't be as big a problem for crafters if their own endgame recipes weren't nerfed into the ground this expansion. Alas, the devs are more concerned with making everything easier to obtain than providing a solid endgame for crafters. Yoshida has openly stated he doesn't like items being listed for super high prices.

I agree with him to a large extent. Commonly used items should be low in price so players can get them as needed, not to mention it can actually benefit sellers by creating more buyers. I got rich in WoW by making things affordable where other sellers were more concerned with making themselves rich. It was a fun game to play to tank their markets while getting more players buying the items in question than had been buying them at inflated prices.

You would think McDonalds, Walmart and similar companies would serve as an example of how to get rich - sell high volumes at still profitable prices almost everyone can afford instead of selling at high prices few are willing to pay even if they can afford them.

But there still needs to be those items that more expensive, either because of scarcity of materials or time investment to produce the item. A lot of players are subtly influenced by the prestige of owning such items. When it's too easy to get everything you want, a game can quickly get stale and boring.

If sellers don't like SE's interference with the current markets, they need to accept responsibility for the role they played in driving prices so high SE felt it necessary to step in. SE has to think of the needs of all players, not just the few players out to get rich on a virtual game currency.

I will say that the limit on marketboard listings does not help things. It stifles competition that would have naturally kept prices lower in the first place. That's on SE's head.

[Prrringles]

If sellers don't like SE's interference with the current markets, they need to accept responsibility for the role they played in driving prices so high SE felt it necessary to step in. SE has to think of the needs of all players, not just the few players out to get rich on a virtual game currency.

Why? It's called supply and demand. There are usually only a hand full of players crafting certain items. Supply = low, price = high. Basic economics. All these items crashed now because of SE. Items that went for 1.5 mil are now going for 100k. Quaintrelle's Ruffled Skirt for example went for between 300-500k before it became a trash drop. Now it's going for 10k. Another destroyed item. I can go on. You know that indigo cloth is a rare drop right? It went from 300k to 50k within a few days. Again, I can go on. SE just destroys everything for crafters, EVERYTHING.

Edit: On the part of "SE has to think of the needs of all players" why are the coolest looking glamours locked behind pvp Feast wall only allowing 100 players per data server to flex it? Everyone knows Feast is just played by bots/cheaters/wintraders/hermits.

[Imora]

Different motivation. That was a pure money grab and had nothing to do with helping players out.

They did quite a few AH tweaks and killed the mobile AH to try to run off bots.

Crafted items were and still aren't a good source of income there. Raw materials are.

[Prrringles]

Crafted items were and still aren't a good source of income there. Raw materials are.

Never were. Only consumables and the mats to craft consumables. The only gear bought off the AH was maybe resistance gear back in the classic days. And even most of those were crafted by guilds.