Wednesday, December 5, 2012

How Many Mogu Lives and/or Gold is a Ring Worth?

In my last post I discussed the idea of Blizzard adding a new ring vendor who sold 509 rings and suggested that people would value the ring at different amounts.  To be "fair," I spoke about both paying in gold or killing Mogu for drops to use as currency instead.

So now let's see what people actually think!  Inspired by a suggestion from Stubborn of Sheep the Diamond .  Again, to summarize the scenario:

Pretend Blizzard has added a new vendor in your faction's "capital" in Pandaria.  This guy sells 509 rings that are unique-equipped as a set, so you can only use one.  Also pretend you're a reasonably new level 90 who is looking to acquire gear (likely for raiding, though perhaps to get into LFR or simply because you like gear).

We'll also assume that the ring is perfectly itemized for your spec (or the vendor offers a variety so you can pick the best).

There are two potential methods to pay for the ring.  The first is to kill Mogu for a drop (one drop per Mogu so you can't make a group and grind them incredibly efficienctly) and the second is to pay gold.  What I'm mainly looking to find out is the threshold at which you go from saying "Yeah, that ring's definitely worth getting" to "You'd have to be crazy to get that ring."

There are a pair of polls on the right hand side of the blog, it'll be interesting to see the results.

10 comments:

  1. What type of player are you looking to study?

    My answer would vary differently if i'm casually playing (or an alt of a hardcore player), or various levels of raiding.

    There's also an added level of uncertainty, because some players are really bad at understanding something like opportunity cost (as well as being unefficient at making gold).

    Also what else is available, as far as BoEs, BMAH, etc?

    If there was a chestpiece for 200k on the BMAH, chestpieces have a larger item budget. That can also effect the decision. (if gold is a limit).

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  2. My value for such an item would be high when I think about the raw ilevel implication, but low due to the opportunities to gain similar level gear far easier or cheaper from other sources. Why over-pay for a 509 in one item slot when you can gain multiple items for that Alt or new main character?
    That said, I'm also cheap-ish when it comes to gear and have a low tolerance for grinding. At the moment I would not pay gold for a 509 Ring unless it was really well priced, due to there being so many other avenues for upgrades.

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  3. Arianity:

    "What type of player are you looking to study?

    My answer would vary differently if i'm casually playing (or an alt of a hardcore player), or various levels of raiding."

    I'm expecting responses from all sorts, I'm sort of wondering if the responses will clump at general points. Like a bunch at the low end and a bunch at the high end but not much in the middle.

    I'm already regretting not making the Mogu body count higher.

    If we assume you could kill 1 Mogu every 15 seconds, that's 5000/(60*4)= 20.8 hours to grind out the maximum. Even if you made 2.5k an hour (I'd consider 1k an hour to be pretty decent and most players probably make 300-500g) that'd still only be the equivalent of 50,000g.

    "There's also an added level of uncertainty, because some players are really bad at understanding something like opportunity cost (as well as being unefficient at making gold)."

    Absolutely.

    "Also what else is available, as far as BoEs, BMAH, etc?"

    I assumed the current situation plus the new vendor. BMAH is random, but I've never seen a chest on it. Neck/wrists/belt/boots from what I recall.

    TyphoonAndrew:

    "That said, I'm also cheap-ish when it comes to gear and have a low tolerance for grinding. At the moment I would not pay gold for a 509 Ring unless it was really well priced, due to there being so many other avenues for upgrades."

    It's mainly a question of at what level of gold/effort you view buying the ring as mandatory and when it switches from mandatory to being too high to be reasonable.

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  4. For me personally, I too have a low tolerance for grinding and am fairly cheap (these dailies are going to be the death of me). I'd gladly spend 20+ hours raiding to get my chance at new gear, but I'd never do the equivalent gold grind for it, and I'd kick and scream and drag my feet to do some sort of daily grind for it.

    But I just wanted to put in my 2 cents and let you know that your blog is so far awesome and incredibly thoughtful, and I'm looking forward to reading more from you!

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  5. Understandable. Imagine if valor gear was gated behind catching 10,000 fish or something.

    And thanks!

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  6. I think it becomes a matter of, the more hardcore, the more it's worth.

    For a hardcore player, well consider this - they'll change professions ever tier to min-max them even though the gains aren't huge. So the opportunity to get a heroic ring would be worth a lot, especially considering the benefits. If the ring is perfectly itemized for the class, than it is also probably best in slot.

    On the other end, for a player that can't even be bothered to do lfr each week who may be just starting (casually leveling and gearing), the answer is not much at all.

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  7. Yeah. That's one of the main points of this post and the previous one, that the hardcore player you mention will almost certainly consider the ring mandatory. The LFR player, however, will not.

    And both of them are right in their own way.

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  8. This is a really cool poll! However, I think you should also factor in WHEN in the expansion you are. For example, I paid 20k for a Darkmoon trinket and 10k for a 476 hat...in the first week of raiding, to boost my gear up for my team's first attempts. I now have an alt I am gearing at 90, and I don't even bother capping her valor each week because there's no real rush to get her into the content. Several months into the tier, I wouldn't consider paying more than 2k for items I spent 10x that on in the first month.

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  9. Oh, definitely. And the same is true with the dailies and rep. At this point, no one "needs" to do them (besides having enough lesser charms for the elder charms) because they ceased to be relevant about a month or two into the expansion for competitive raiders.

    That's another excellent point about how context matter when discussing these things.

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