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Wowhead Economy Weekly Wrap-Up 319
WoW
Publié
17/03/2024 à 13:00
par
SamadanPlaysWoW
Hello! Welcome to the 319th edition of the WoW Economy Weekly Wrap-up!
This week we discuss potential developments in bot technology and what effect bots have on the economy in WoW. We also discuss best uses for TSM in both Retail and Classic and how to make effective use of it's strengths. Plus, we dive into some Classic fishing locations in Wrath while preparing for Cataclysm Classic.
My name is
Samadan
and I'll be your guide through the World of Gold Making!
Is Botting Ruining the Economy?
An interesting thread appeared over the forums of
r/worldpvp
about recent developments of using AI to read the screen and provide automatic feedback..
I know there has been a lot of talk about bots and how bad the situation is.. but everyone needs to know its about to get way worse. Enter AI.
Take a look a Google's new research paper on SIMA:
https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/sima-generalist-ai-agent-for-3d-virtual-environments/
The most important quote from the article:
"Our AI agent doesn’t need access to a game's source code, nor bespoke APIs. It requires just two inputs: the images on screen, and simple, natural-language instructions provided by the user. SIMA uses keyboard and mouse outputs to control the games’ central character to carry out these instructions. This simple interface is what humans use, meaning SIMA can potentially interact with any virtual environment. "
It won't be long before solutions like this are out in the open and undetectable versions begin to pop up. Since SIMA actually plays the game by looking at the screen and entering keyboard and mouse inputs it will look like human behavior. At first it will be rudimentary.. but gains in the next 3-5 years will completely change gaming. This isnt publically available for now, but competition will come.
This is an unwinnable fight. Truthfully I fear that it may ruin competitive games altogether. Wow PVP is no exception. Where there is money to be made, bots will follow. They'll work completely different and will be insanely intelligent.
Edit:
There is a massive difference between this and a pixel bot. AI watches every frame, and the changes inbetween frames. Then it
understands
what is happening and makes inputs through keyboard and mouse to meet its objectives. Its literally doing what your brain is doing. All it needs to do is watch the screen.
Now, of course botting has always been prevalent in a game like WoW. It's been there since the start. We even now have features such as
Comp Stomp and Follower Dungeons
to help populate the game for the solo player. This is by no means a bad thing for many as is opens up the ways different people like to play the game.
How does this affect the economy?
As an Economy blog, this is the interesting part as to what can we expect and how does it affect the economy of the game? In many ways developments like the above would largely make no difference due to what has been happening since the beginning.
Bots were developed to make gold to sell to other players.
In the early days, gold was hard to come by and things like mounts were expensive. The only way to get gold consistently was by farming herbs/ore/dungeons to sell to vendors/AH and thus create the money to pass onto the players. Enter the bots and off they went farming anything repetitive that could be done to generate gold which players had a need for.
Over the course of time, the game has evolved to reduce the easy/repetitive methods to get gold.
Vendor prices of items has massively reduced over time, especially from old dungeons.
Vendor shuffles has been balanced with expensive vendor reagents (remember Relics of the Past?).
The region wide auction house has crashed the prices of commodities to the lowest common denominator.
It's always been a balance of the flow of money in vs. money out.
What do players have a need for gold these days?
It can be used to pay for gametime.
It can be used to buy BoEs.
It can be used to pay for carries.
It can be used for expensive mounts like the Brutosaur.
Is this something we have always been used to with the economy and making use of those that farm the herbs and ore at rock bottom prices? What would happen / how much does it already happen on the Auction House? Is this more an issue in other areas of the game like PVP?
Bruh I played 2019-2022 classic and retail, trains of bots on both and it never ended. Just kills my drive to farm or grind anything whenever I see it.
I don’t expect anything to change as many “AAA” games are like this, and a big company isn’t going to spend resources on stopping something that generates revenue.
Also that’d be a nail in the coffin for me as a PvP player. I love WoW PvP but it has always been neglected by devs when it could be so much better with a little more attention. But paying to lose rank against competent bots? Naw I’m good man.
It's already been ruined for the longest time, not just from bots but also just the game design shifting, making tons of items lose a lot of their value. People rarely want to buy anything besides mats these days, and nearly every method of making gold that was simple and relaxed has been run into the ground. I honestly don't even know what could fix it at this point, outside of some kind of huge item sink or something.
What do you think? Has the presence of bots impacted your gameplay? Do you thing it will get worse with AI developments?
Don't Forget Disenchant Searches
This is a helpful reminder from
TheLazyGoldmaker
that using TSM disenchant searches is a very easy method to get started in gold making, especially all forms of Classic...
The great thing about this is that is doesn't take a great deal to get started other than levelling up your enchanting skill to whatever level you need to be able to do the particular disenchants.
Remember, this works on a law of averages, you won't always get the exact profit shown, but it will average to the same amount over time.
TSM in Retail & Classic
Returning players familiar with gold making in the past may be wondering where
TradeSkillMaster
fits in the gold making process and that the landscape of addons looks like now?
tl:dr - TSM is alive and well!
Ok not trying to start a war, honest legit question here.
The Tradskillmaster website seems almost empty of content, daily deals, etc. are all empty.
The addon itself seems to have some serious issues with crafting (though auctioning works fine as far as I can tell) .
I'm not angry, please don't misunderstand, but I'm not seeing the engagement and enthusiasm from the community in general that I used to, and I'm hearing a lot about tools like craftsim.
In my own experience I had trouble getting even basic mats to sell at default settings (ore, cloth, leather, that almost always sells).
In retail, Dragonflight is TSM still the "goto" auction addon?
I'm more than willing to accept that the problem is me, I haven't played in almost 2 years, and a lot has changed. I just want to know if I should be expending my effort getting TSM to do what I want (especially with the Website/great-deals not working) or if I should be concentrating my efforts elsewhere.
FWIW: for me, it's not necessarily about making a ton of money (although that's nice) it's the process, the AH as almost a mini-game inside WoW, flipping low auctions etc, that experience in and of itself was fun for me.
It's a common perception and more related to how the landscape of gold making has shifted in retail since Dragonflight. It has largely become a customer service model with Work Orders as opposed to a skills model with professions as it was previously. These days in Retail
CraftSim
is used to calculate profits of one off crafts using optimal combinations of Knowledge Points and ranks of commodities ..
TSM is great for creating crafting lists and posting large amounts of items on the Auction House. This still works great for transmog and non commodities as well as being essential for all forms of Classic AH play.
Well since you've been away so long you might have to relearn the landscape especially after cross server trading. Think now you have to figure out what TSM is strong for and look for the other tools people are using.
People are using things like PBS and API snipers to scan multiple realms to get "good deals." If you're looking for a bunch of things that are posted slightly lower than what they normally sell for then TSM is still probably the best it just takes a really long time to scan.
E.G. I use API sniper to tell me what servers I need to log for speed items every hour, I log on that server, then use TSM scan to find the item for me. It's not a general scan, it's a targeted scan (only looking for a few items) with TSM since it's the best for finding it once I know what server it's on.
There's other tools around for "good deals" just have to find them e.g. the one below still uses TSM data anyway:
https://saddlebagexchange.com/wow/best-deals
https://saddlebagexchange.com/wow/shortages/commodities
There is a lot more to TSM as well in terms of managing inventory and mailing between characters which makes it very good for what it does. This is more apparent in Classic over Retail as many of the gold making models such as hoarding low price commodities in a guild banks and gathering and pricing based on profit margins is still very much viable compared to Retail.
So in summary, it's very much alive and being developed. The ways we make gold are changing and it's a question of using the right tools for the job. Retail has a combination of CraftSim and TSM, in Classic TSM is very much king of the gold making empire.
Fishing for WotLK Classic
An often overlooked profession is Fishing as it can be a chill way to make some gold in both Retail and Classic.
Seren Games
has some great potential spots in Wrath Classic..
Fishing and Cooking are great secondary professions and Wrath Classic has some great daily quests to keep you working towards max level with some very useful rewards along the way such as the
Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat
and
Chef's Hat
Further Reading
Most of this information was discussed and originally posted on the
/r/woweconomy
subreddit or in the accompanying
Discord Server
.
I hope you found this useful and If you have any suggestions or feedback, please do say so in the comments below..
Until next time, Happy Goldmaking!
Samadan
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