MMO-Champion has just reported that one of the Shattered Sun NPCs on the Isle of Quel’Danas (Shaani, the Jewelcrafting Supplies vendor in the Sun’s Reach Harbor) will now sell all the raw epic gems for 15 badges.
Image from MMO-Champion.
Very interesting.
These gems are currently only available in Mount Hyjal (mined from gem nodes after the first or second boss) or Black Temple (from trash mobs). They sell for hundreds of gold on a typical Auction House. 2.4 was already going to reduce their value, by virtue of giving away a bagful of them with a number of pre-MH boss kills – Magtheridon will drop a bag of 3 of them, for instance.
However, selling them for badges means that almost everyone, except the truly solo player, can expect to get their hands on them – although not necessarily straight away, when you consider the fact that most people will want to lay out hundreds of badges on the new Tier 6-equivalent gear as well.
Furthermore, most of the recipes to cut them currently require Mount Hyjal faction, and the remaining recipes are BoP drops in Black Temple. All the existing epic gem cuts will now be accessible via Shattered Sun faction from Friendly to Exalted.
I’m very happy with these two changes. Anyone who knows me has heard me rant about how unreasonable it was of Blizzard to put the entire epic tier of a crafting profession in the hands of endgame raiders alone – I’m glad Blizzard’s doing something about that.
Now I can only hope that 25-man bosses will drop a reasonable number of badges, come 2.4, or we’re all going to be so starved for badges we’ll still be running Karazhan in 2009.
Wow, just… wow. As a jewelcrafter I can’t help but be kinda happy with this change – it always slightly irked me that some stuff was only available to a small subset and that the prices being charged for some of the gems was astoundingly high if they put them on the auction house.
There’s so much of 2.4 I’m looking forward too… Thanks for the frequent updates!
im not sure how to feel about this i understand that its giveing the none hardcore raiders a chance to be leet alsow but its taking away from the people that have worked so hard to get where they are and to have the rest of the wow comunity espeialy the casual players get the shit that i have worked hard to get for next to nothing is a big kick in the balls i think that blizz should still reward the hard work and time that alot of us have put into getting as far as we have…im not asking for anything big but really ya the title Hand of Adal is so freakin homo im not at all impressed that after this long of busting my ass i get i nice slap in the face and i really didnt have to play for the last year i could have done somthing else and still been at about he same spot with hardly any effort
FYI its 8;15 am and i havnt slept yet so plz excuse the lack of punctuation and the horible spelling
I’m very happy indeed as a Lock trying to wade through Arena without the benefits of Hyjal/BT gear—2 Resilience difference from +8 to +10 doesn’t seem like alot, but when Lock gear has 3 Yellow slots (+2 more Yellow sockets from PVP neck and bracers), that’s potentially another +10 Resilience I’m missing out on.
Gnutz – no, it’s not taking anything away from them at all. No-one is taking away their epics, nor their access to gear, nor are they rewriting history to undo their achievements. Now the slower-paced people are getting _access_ to the same content; they’re not getting it for free.
When it comes to stuff like epic gems and the like being more widely available, /that/ is something they should have done from the start. No other profession is restricted to non-epic crafting until Tier 6 content.