Don't freak out

Ever since Blizzard announced that gems will be random and there will be less gear that takes enchants, I have seen a lot of gloom and doom in the gold making community. On the surface, it does seem like they may be killing the golden geese of WoW. While it's way too early to tell for sure, after doing some thinking and even number-crunching, I'm happy to stay in both markets moving into Warlords. The only way I didn't drown in the combinations and permutations and get totally confused was to tell myself a story. A story about the luckiest hunter in the world...of Warcraft.

He's strictly a PvE raiding hunter. This hunter is lucky. He gets every drop. Literally every drop from a tier. He always puts the same haste enchant on his gloves. And he collects two sets, so that he has optimal secondary stats for both of his specs. So under our current gear system he gets:

• Raid Finder gloves
• Raid Finder off spec gloves
• Flex gloves
• Flex off spec gloves
• Normal gloves
• Normal off spec gloves
• Warforged gloves
• Warforged off spec gloves
• Heroic gloves
• Heroic off spec gloves
• Heroic Warforged gloves
• Heroic Warforged off spec gloves

I told you he was lucky. Anyway, under our current gear system we have a chance to sell him 12 enchants each tier for his glove slot. Not bad. Until you look at the lucky hunter's possibilities under the Warlords system. He's gonna get all the gloves listed above, but there will also be Warforged (whatever they end up calling it) Raid Finder and flex drops, so we're up to 14. Any time he gets gloves with either a random gem socket or his favorite tertiary stat he upgrades and enchants them (28). Then he starts collecting the drops with a gem socket AND his tertiary stat (42). There's more than one tertiary stat he likes, so he's building a second set of that (56). A gem slot for each of this set brings us to a whopping 70 opportunities to enchant this guy's gloves each tier. Almost six times as many as the current system. Even if there are half as many enchants in Warlords, we still have nearly triple the opportunity we do now. Imagine how many possibilities there would be if this guy decides he wants to collect all the tertiary stats! I tried to calculate that, but it got into scientific notation pretty quick. We haven't even considered PvP gear, two sets of non armor gear for hybrid classes, etc. I think it's safe to say we will still have plenty of opportunities to sell enchants in Warlords. Gems are going to be random, so it's a bit different, but in the example above we have at least 28 gems sold as opposed to 12 in the current system. More than twice as many chances per slot per tier. I'll take that all day!

Obviously this is an extreme, unrealistic example. Nobody gets this many pairs of gloves per tier. The point is I can't see any scenario where we don't get more sales opportunities to enhance gear under the new system. I certainly don't see the gem or enchant markets collapsing. If you disagree, feel free to drop out of those markets. Especially if you're on Aerie Peak.