Post 60-- There's No Joy in Victory

[FoxBat]

Crafting should be the game's major gold sink, but right now it's cheaper to buy things on the AH than to craft them yourself.

If mats are worth *more* than the items they produce, then mats are in one sense working very well. People are buying them for reasons other than the actual expected return value for using them. The worst case scenario economically would be that mats are slightly cheaper than the items they produce, as this is the bare minimum amount of gold sinking they can do. (Any lower and people would start buying mats instead of AH items, pushing back towards equilibrum.) This could be for any number of reasons, whether the cost of new players leveling up the smith, or just the number of people getting lost in gambler's fallacies, either way mats > items is a good sign. Imagine if the items produced were actually worthwhile, then the mat value could be even higher yet!