The Shape of The Mogging Market And Staves

Today's guest post was written by Keelhaul from Disenchanting Azeroth. If you would like your guest post featured on Power Word: Gold contact us at powerwordgold@gmail.com.

First, a few market observations. After an initial wave of BoE sales, things have slowed down a bit.  I half-expected this because transmogrification is likely going to move at the pace of a typical adoption curve.

The Transmogrification Adoption Curve

This feature is going to be big enough that it warrants looking at the potential for change in the market in such a fashion. Learn more about the Transmogrification Curve after the jump.

Now You're Thinking With Curves 

Innovators - It's going to be extremely slow at first, because you need your buyers to first adopt the rationale behind transmogrification. You'll have your innovators that have already gone through MMO Champion and other resources with a microscope to determine which items they want.

Those are likely the buyers any of us are currently experiencing.  They're going to be random and prices they will pay will be unpredictable.  This is likely why the Singing Crystal Axes I sold a week or so ago went for 10k, I happened to have an Innovator customer who knew exactly what they wanted.

Meanwhile I'm seeing a number of new sellers on various auction houses getting in on the potential market for transmogrification, but I don't see much movement.  A variety of weapons are now priced pretty high, and they appear to be sitting with a few exceptions.  This is to be expected, because I doubt we've even entered the Early Adopters stage of the adoption curve.  4.3 will need to hit first.

Early Adopters - The Early Adopters likely need 4.3 to tip. They need to see the feature right on their screen before they risk spending gold on an item.  So I would recommend if you're posting items now to sell for transmogrification, lower your expectations - but not your prices.  There will likely be no point to undercutting because only Innovators are buying.  You're better off waiting for 4.3 to hit to be able to tap into the growing market for BoEs as the Early Adopters enter the market.

Early Majority - If we're going to see a surge in BoEs, it won't happen until the cities, dungeons and raids are peppered with Innovators and Early Adopters showing off their wares from transmogrification.  This will tip the Early Majority population to kick in, and this will likely be when the boom (if there is one) will hit.  Barking in trade chat could pay off big time during this stretch.

But at any rate, sales are projected to be slow right now because of this.  So be patient, pick up items that we project will have value if the price is right, and avoid investing in items we recommend you avoid.

Cures What Ails Ya!

Another sign of an underdeveloped market growing on the AH is the amount of snake oil being thrown up for sale.  We're seeing a variety of items posted for high prices that don't actually have any stats, and to our understanding, an item needs to have stats in order to be transmogrified.  In addition, we're seeing identical models being sold at polarizing prices.

For example, we've seen a Blade of Wizardry posted for 10k and Teebu's Blazing Longsword posted at 250k.  The reality is both items will convert the same result for transmogrification.  So there's a lot of snake oil out there, and unfortunately for uneducated buyers, the advantage is currently in the seller's hands.  This will likely even out over time, but seller's strategies are currently inconsistent and the market is unstable.

Going forward, we'll try to provide a comprehensive list of BoE recommendations based on our ongoing evaluations.

What (Not) To Stockpile

So Staves...

World of Warcraft Staves Visual Analysis (Click to Enlarge)

What To Get:  If the price is right, it's worth picking it up and stashing it away until 4.3 hits and the Early Adopters/Early Majority are in-play.

1) Exodar Life-Staff (Grade:  A).

Exodar Life-Staff (Click to Enlarge)

2) Zulian Ceremonial Staff (Grade:  C).

Zulian Ceremonial Staff (Click to Enlarge)

What To Forget:  Avoid picking these up for transmogrification, they share their model with too many other items in-game, their aesthetic is too close to everything else attainable in-game or they are current content and prices are already too high.

Everything else.  Literally every other BoE.  Leave them alone.  Don't get sucked in by an epic Elemental Mage Staff or a Glowing Brightwood Staff sitting on the AH for 500g.  You're wasting your money if you expect to be able to flip it for a profit.

Hope this helps!

-Keel

Thanks once again to Keelhaul for taking time to put together a few suggestions as well as give us their insight on how the mogging market could shape up over time. If you are interested in World of Warcraft aesthetics be sure to give Keelhauls blog Disenchanting Azeroth a read along with our sister blog Warcraft Looks.

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