… for patch 2.0.1/expansion, gold prices on the RMAH are seeing even more of a spike (last I checked, it was $4 per 100 million). I believe (but probably not even 75% accurate) that back in November 2013, gold was around 50 cents per 100 million.
Its price has been steadily rising during the PTR/closed beta cycle where gold was soul bound (but prior to the developer play test with Don Vu, there had been no official statement about whether or not, gold would continue to be bound to account). With Vu confirming this, many players (based on play testing, the acquisition rate of gold in 2.0.1/expansion, the potential costs of enchanting), are stocking up while they can. Part of this could lead to a supply/demand imbalance especially as March 18th draws closer.
Gold botters may have initially been dumping their inventories over the first 2-3 months, but with prices going up at this current clip, it’s likely the largest gold botters, will be making a final gold botting push, and selling them at these higher prices in order to make a huge profit. On the other side, players who have several billions (from playing the AH), may end up selling some of it (basically, re-allocating some of that gold across the player base). Blizzard through this process, also gets a final cut (commodities have a 15% transaction fee) on these RMAH gold transactions. It’s basically a brilliant move to milk as much money out of the RMAH in these last few weeks (by tailoring the in-game gold sinks to give the illusion that one will be better off with a large amount of gold).
The reality though is that over time (once trillions of gold is removed out of the economy by these gold sinks), that the in-game costs, will be revised where it is better balanced and in-line with drop rates (if done properly, gold will still feel valuable, but also not a significant necessity). I’m personally not for tuning the new patch/expansion based on a small fraction of those players who do have multi-billions of gold (as there are other ways to accomplish this objective). But there is no sense in suggesting such solutions with this development team.
As for the amount of gold I plan on bringing with me, that depends on how much higher the price of gold reaches. I have zero intentions of buying any because I believe this whole thing is being driven by the above-mentioned ulterior motives. Unlike many, I never played Diablo III as Auction House Simulator I (i.e buying and flipping items). My main funding came from selling a few very decent items on hardcore, and then eventually doing a hardcore to softcore gold exchange. Beyond this, I’ve never had more than 3 billion (in softcore) gold across all of my accounts. Thus I have a couple hundred million in both hardcore and softcore; depending on how high 100 million goes for in the next few weeks before the AH shuts down, I may transfer some of my hardcore gold to softcore, and then cash out enough gold to cover the cost of my Collectors Edition (basically being the one and only time I’ll actually have used the RMAH).
I have several other accounts but due to the amount of soul binding (which basically makes the muling that I was using most of them for, difficult), they’ll all remain at vanilla. As mentioned before, I have no plans on selling any of my current gear (most of it isn’t high end anyway). I’m just going to outfit them on characters in my other accounts sort of like a time capsule as to what my 1.0.x legacy gear was like.
