I didn't expect a massive increase in sales or profits in the first day or two, that's not how this particular market is set to work.
If you think back to when those epic gems were introduced, there was little interest in them so prices were not impressive. Then in the second week, the quest opened for jewelcrafters. Every jewelcrafter in the game who wanted the recipes to cut those gems, needed to turn in one of each of the six raw epic gems and many players were replacing all their old gems on their gear with the new epic gems. So in those first few days, the prices of those gems went absolutely insane and people made millions. Within a few days a large majority of people had what they needed and from there on out it was just maintenance needs which was significantly less so prices came back down to more reasonable prices. The insane gold rush was over pretty fast.
Now lets have a look at the Antorus raid schedule:
- November 28: Normal and Heroic
- December 5: Mythic difficulty and Raid Finder wing 1
- Dec 19: Raid Finder wing 2
- January 2: Raid Finder wing 3
- January 16: Raid Finder wing 4
In these first few days, only people in raiding guilds running normal and heroic will even have the opportunity to get a piece of gear. That will generally also be people mostly on their mains as well. There is also the new pvp season that will produce some gear for some players in the first 2 days. Sure that will equate to some sales, but nothing super exciting.
As more time goes on, more people will have an opportunity to get their toons into this content. Lots of people don't always have time to play the game in the first 2 days of release of new content. Some people can only play on the weekends. After mains are geared, then comes the alts, alts in guilds and alts running through lfr. lfr will produce lots of gear for toons.
So I'm expecting my sales related to legion consumables (Gems, enchants, food, flasks, etc) to be a more slow sustained market that slightly increases over the coming days and weeks, as more of the player base gets into this raid.
More experienced goblins are banking on newer goblins panicking and offloading their stock early because it makes it easier for us in the long haul, we have to deal with less competition and it allows us more opportunity to do soft resets and sustain those resets for a longer period of time and receive a better investment. We know that newer goblins are not in the position to have the level of stock needed to last through weeks and months of this stuff. We have been buying
Cristal del caos like crazy since Argus dropped a while ago and they were extremely cheap. We knew once the raid came out, most people would have finished anything they were trying to accomplish in Argus and move on to the new raid. The massive CC supply from Argus will slow and prices will readjust.
The same
when the primal sargerite vendor came out. Tons of people had loads of
Sargerita primigenia and they were left building up on everyone's toons, sure some people used them but lots didn't. The vendor comes out and bam all the toons with excess primal sargerite turn them into the vendor for raw gems and the prices of all the epic gems tank so hard. Totally expected and all the goblins were waiting for it and bought enormous quantities of those super cheap gems because we knew once players burned through their excess supply primal sargerite, those gems would slowly rebound as less and less players are having any need or interest in doing stuff in Argus. That leaves us goblins with a healthy supply of super cheap gems that we can sell in the new raid, so we have been holding the vast majority of them for the raid. Just taking advantage of that one simple opportunity will make some goblins millions of gold.
Many goblins have been preparing for this raid for months. Those goblins who only started stocking up in the last week or two were probably buying mats a little more expensive than they needed to. That can make it harder to be competitive with someone who prepared early. I'm sure there are plenty of goblins out there like myself that jacked up prices in the last week or two before this raid to bait the goblins who had not yet prepared. You should recognize that there is an opportunity to also make some nice gold in the week or two before a raid or event like this occurs.
I doubt many serious goblins would bother resetting those markets for the first few days of the new raid because it just doesn't make much sense to do it. So I imagine some people were expecting someone to reset those markets and make them super lucrative for the raid reset. I imagine some people did a little bit of resetting but it can't be sustained because the demand is just not there in the first day or two. So don't be surprised to see markets sitting near the same price as they were pre raid release. In fact most goblins would want prices to stay where they are in the beginning to encourage other goblins who lack the confidence and patience to dump their inventory early. As more panic ensues, they will dump it cheaper and cheaper, even willing to take a loss to recover at least some of their investment. If it gets cheap enough, we will clear it out for you, hold it and sell it over the coming weeks and months.