Sometimes little changes in WoW go unnoticed until they hit the crowds. There is no uproar or even bad comments about this small little change: disenchanting items of a certain level now need a certain skill level to do so. So you need skill 225 to disenchant epics.
Whats the deal? First many players had disenchant twinks. They sent all their greens and blues they don't need and aren't soulbound to him to be disenchanted, selling the essences. You only need skill one to do so, in fact you can skill all the way up to 75 by simply disenchanting stuff.
Many power gamers with tons of epic armor sets in their bank are sometimes reskilling an easy to learn skill like herbalism or mining for disenchanting. They clean up their bank, sell the nexus or essences, and reskill to the original. Expensive? Worth it.
Now thats history with the new patch coming in.
What does it mean for gameplay: you need a good enchanter with you on raids, otherwise you loose considerable money for BOP items you don't need. For big raids never a problem, but for random raids? You trust ONE enchanter to keep all the essences and distribute them afterwards? Not me. I can see some bad stories coming up here.
The major point however is this one: the enchanter now controls a monopole. Let me explain: Blacksmiths need ore. So they skill mining and supply themselves, or can buy the supplies from another miner or the auction house, easy.
An Alchemist need herbalism to find the herbs he needs for potions, or someone else does it.
What about Enchanters. They have both in ONE skill. They are the ONLY ones who can make their raw material with the same skill they do the echantments.
This means basically that essences will get VERY expensive as they are the only ones to create them, and control who gets them.
The price will skyrocket. Most essences in the auction house are from disenchant twinks or random raids who sell their essences from their runs. This will be reduced considerably as not all random runs have Enchanters with them. In fact not very many do enchantment anymore as the skill doesn't earn enough money as herbalism or alchemy does. So essences will get rare, prices will skyrocket.
The current price drop in nexus crystals for example is temporary. Its fueled by the Burning Crusade expansion as new enchants are intoduced who no longer need nexus crystals. But see this: when those are being used and supply are short level 60's will need nexus again, and prices will stablize, but at a much higher price than before.
All this could be prevented or made "fair". Let the Enchanter disenchant in the trade window. Of course BLizard never implemented this as it will be abused to its extreme. Thats the primary reason Blizard doesn't allow it. Let me give Blizard a suggestion, free, I won't charge for it :)
Let enchanters create power orbs which have x charges. They can sell those to other players. Orbs have the power to disenchant one item per charge. Orbs can be made with various levels for the item levels in question.
Simple. Effectice, prevents the abuse Blizard fears. But destroys the market value of enchanters.
I made my choice. I am skilling my enchanter now. I want to be part of the monopole. Lets make money with the system ^^
