As many of you may well know, the maximum amount of gold a character can hold is 214,748g 36s 46c. There are ways to surpass this amount of total gold using personal guild banks or spreading them across alts.
A blue post recently stated that they are aware many players may be able to attain the maximum amount of gold (especially this late in the expansion) and are looking into possibly raising the gold cap limit in Cataclysm.
Direct quote:
To answer your question though, increasing the gold cap is a definite possibility for Cataclysm — though nothing is set in stone yet.
This would make gold hoarding more convenient for us gold makers and the other benefit is when you’re buying Mount runs for 150k gold and IC BoE’s for 25K you want a little more room to play with. However it does make me wonder, does blizzard “expect” a lot more players to be surpassing the gold cap one cataclysm comes out?
Inflation
The only way for players to gain more gold is if the “value” of gold drops, but we all know that thing like BoE drops, arena rating buys, paid guild runs for achievements or mounts are all set by the “market” and what people consider worth it, to charge the most they can or to pay what they are willing to for the value offered.
The other costs though seem to be going down, such as the recent frozen orbs change that has allowed an item considered at the end of 3.2.2 worthless to suddenly have a 20-30g value again. It is as if Blizzard dumped gold into the pockets of players who’ve held onto these and added an extra amount of gold received when running heroics or dumping older emblems into orbs.
Removing cooldowns brings down the price of goods, adding dailies and weekly quests into our everyday playing lives also brings a lot more gold into the economy.
The only thing that is keeping gold from inflating in cataclysm is when all old items we have on us from Northrend suddenly lose pretty much all their value and then players want the new stuff that we can go out to farm. There might not be that much new stones/herbs and other trade goods however since the level cap will only rise by 5 levels. It isn’t work speculating now before the test servers are available.
Gold Sinks, Epic Flyer Costs, Consumables
The other major economic factors that will determine how much gold players accumulate is whether we’re going to have to buy another “epic” flying ability, like maybe the ability to fly in the old world on an epic mount will cost 10,000g?
The existence of having to constantly but enchants, gems, glyphs and flasks and the way the materials are sourced and supplied will determine the inflation rate in the next expansion.
Time will only tell, all I know is that I’m going to gain as much gold as possible before the expansion comes out so I can purchase all the materials needed to get realm first max professions and craft/buy any end game gear right away or the cool gold sinks blizzard is bound to include in the game, maybe 50k+ gold sinks this time?
I have anywhere from 350-400k depending on how many goods I’m dealing with these days and I still only own 1 gold sink item (Mechano-Hog) other than epic flight for all my alts. The mammoth might be nice to have, but I honestly don’t see the appeal most of the time–this is all coming from an avid achievement whore as well. If they want to reduce the amount of gold in players’ pockets, they’re going to raise the bar quite a bit in Cataclysm.
One thing to keep in mind with inflation is that every time someone loots gold off of a mob, they are increasing the total gold supply, which inflates the currency.
Changes in prices from patch to patch likely don’t have anything to do with inflation and are just simple supply/demand. When a new patch comes out that makes items obsolete, then it’s just an issue of supply/demand. (The items are easier to get, so the supply increases, and the demand decreases, since people are buying the better items, instead.)
Money sinks such as the traveling tundra, mounts, training new skills, and even repair costs, are deflationary, meaning they decrease the total gold supply. (Since the gold is not being exchanged to another player who could then spend it, and instead is being exchanged to an NPC, who will never spend it again.)
In any case, the gold cap does need to be increased, and I’ve described why the gold cap exists, and a way to increase it on my blog.
.-= Sarama´s last blog ..The Gold Cap – A Detailed Explanation =-.