Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Profiting from Tankard O' Terror design flaw

I don't know if it was because they had to hotfix it in, or whether somebody at Blizzard had been celebrating Brewfest too heavily in RL, but now the current holiday event boss has a serious design flaw: Among lots of bind-on-pickup trinkets, mounts, and a dagger, Coren Darkbrew now also drops a bind-on-equip iLevel 226 dps mace, the Tankard O'Terror. What's the flaw you ask? Well, it is the ONLY iLevel 226 bind-on-equip weapon in the game.

Now the only boe weapon with that kind of stats should be extremely valuable. Which it probably would, if it wasn't so dirt common. Whoever designed the drop rate made the Tankard O'Terror "rare" compared to a typical drop from a typical raid boss. But apparently forgot that any given player is looting a typical raid boss only once a week, but is looting Coren Darkbrew 35 times a week, because he resets daily, and can be summoned 5 times for every group. Even on my underpopulated Horde side I was able to pick up a tankard for just 4k gold, and then we went and bought one for my wife's Alliance shaman for a measly 1.5k gold on another server. That is cheaper than iLevel 200 crafted weapon!

I did spend the gold now because I was afraid Blizzard would hotfix the tankard again to be bind-on-pickup. If they don't do that, we'll probably see the price for the thing drop even further over the next 10 days. That opens up the possibility for serious and easy profit: Supply of Tankards O'Terror will stop when the Brewfest ends. Demand for the best boe weapon in the game should remain solid. Thus by just banking the tankard for a month, you'll probably be able to sell it for 10k gold or more easily. Unless of course Blizzard is planning a deluge of welfare epics, with the Headless Horseman dropping the next iLevel 226 boe weapon this year, and similar event bosses and epics getting added to more holiday events.

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