Strapped for Cash
I was reading an interesting post on Terra Nova today, Endgames and Expansions, regarding the nature of raiding and endgame and what will happen to WoW after the raid cap changes in BC. That’s another discussion, but one of the comments made me think about an encounter I had recently. The comment to the Terra Nova post was “The only explanation that matters is that although 40 man raids are very enjoyable for the people who do them repeatedly, esp later content such as Naxx etc. They just don’t make any money.”
My encounter involves being inspected by a lower-level character while waiting for a boat.
“How much money do you have?” he asked.
“That’s quite a personal, and probably rude, question.”
“I’m just asking because you have all epixx.”
There you go. If I was able to place all the items that I had on my character on the auction house, I would no doubt be able to retire to a beach community and live a life of sloth and margaritas from then on. But you can’t sell your hard-won epics, can you? And when was the last time that you got a BoE epic drop in a large instance? I don’t know about anyone else’s raiding experience, but my Naxx-raiding main is a huge gold drain. The amount of cash that I come out with is rarely enough to cover repairs on most instances, and on wipe runs (we’re fairly new to Naxx) repairs will run me 25-30g per night. I hate to spend what non-raiding time I have grinding, as I have a much-loved alt that is almost at 60. I’d also like to have some time for AV.
So where, then, does the cash come from? Repairs have to be paid for somehow, and pots, and everything else that you need for endgame raiding.
And that, I suppose, relates back to the issue of no 40-man raids in BC. Yes, I will miss the complexities of being part of a coordinated 40-man group; I think it’s quite an achievement. But smaller instances are more lucrative. You can easily make more from a Strat or Scholo run than you can from Naxx…and perhaps that is the reasoning behind the decision to change endgame raiding.
What do you think?
I believe it all depends on the looting rules for the raid.
In my case, our guild rolls on Epics and the bank keeps everything else. When an epic drop that is BoP is not rolled on, the epic is sharded and the nexus crystals are sent to the bank.
If you were to roll on al loot that you obtain and the shards that you create, there is a chance that you will make gold in a raid that is on farm status.
Right now, you are right, raiding is an investment of gold and time which it’s main retribution is epics and, more importantly, fun.