Soulbound items in WoW

jim5000 · 19 Oct 2006 at 11:58

Does anyone else hate the whole 'soulbound' business in WoW? I think it's really annoying that you can't use an item then pass it on to someone else (either sell or give) when you no longer need it. Bind on pickup is even more annoying! Sometimes you get a quest reward you can't use but know others people that they would be perfect for, but you can't give it to them!

In BC, blacksmiths are going to be able to create epic items but only the creator can use them! They should make it really hard to get the materials, but you should be able to make them for others!

It's the one thing I hate about the game; Diablo worked fine without having soulbound items, what is the thinking behind it?

Azraeluk · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:03

If you could just buy the best soulbound items, people would just buy gold and then buy the items, and everyone would be carrying the same epics.

I think the souldbound works just fine.

kola · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:04

I hate it to , but it's trying to minimise people ebaying gold

Dunks · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:05

jim5000 said:
It's the one thing I hate about the game; Diablo worked fine without having soulbound items, what is the thinking behind it?

I wouldn't qo quite that far

Kheldar · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:09

yep its a reasonable way of making some item you have to actually work for yourself.

sure sometimes i'd like an item to be not souldbound or BoP. but in the main it works fine imho.

jim5000 · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:09

kola said:
I hate it to , but it's trying to minimise people ebaying gold

If people are really that sad that they want to ebay gold, then let them. Out of the hundreds of thousands of people who play WoW, it will be a tiny minority who are that desperate to get ahead that it won't make much difference to the vast majority of players, and wheras soulbound items really annoy me :mad:

Puppetmaster · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:15

the only time i want it different, is when some fool need's on a roll for something they dont need by accident and win it. Atleast they could trade it withsome.

Mercutio · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:26

Aye making a bind on pickup item (BoP) work like a bind on equip (BoE) until its either equiped or a minute expires would be rather good in raids/groups.

Having an expensive (like 400-500g) "additive" you put in a weapon/armours materials listing that made the item BoE (rather than BoP) would be rather cool.

The same could be possible with enchanting/alchemy - have an expensive skill that allows chanter/alchemist to break the soulbinding on the item. Rare/Expensive weapons could then be passed on to other characters without loosing the money sink - the economy would still work and ppl would be able to get some of the rarer stuff once ppl didnt want it

ins0mn1ac · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:30

the BoP idea is great, means you cant just buy stuff that takes others time to get, IE clearing dungeons for loot

Azraeluk · 19 Oct 2006 at 12:34

agree there deleted, its stuff you acutally have to work for.

I disagree that a small percentage of people would buy gold on fleabay, its a very widespread thing in game. I have trusted guildies who've looked into purchasing gold, just to keep up with others that do.

Dont fool yourself theres always people out there with more money than sense.

Murf · 19 Oct 2006 at 13:23

The soulbound system is fine as it is.

If it didn't exist then I'd spend ~£50 on gold, and promptly buy the best stuff. Then 10 mins later I'd realised there is no point in the game anymore as you don't work for anything and cancel my sub.

All my BoP stuff I've had to work for, and it's worth it.

wordy · 19 Oct 2006 at 13:44

:edit: Bah wrong thread

Sem · 19 Oct 2006 at 13:47

Azraeluk said:
If you could just buy the best soulbound items, people would just buy gold and then buy the items, and everyone would be carrying the same epics.

I think the souldbound works just fine.

i agree
at first i didn't like it but as i got higher in level i realised it is good for balance purposes

saint_jw · 19 Oct 2006 at 14:11

I've got my T2 shoulders therefore people know I've done Chromaggus. A friend on the same server has his T3 head, swanky looking Priest halo thing, so people know he's done whichever boss in Naxx. Take away BoP and that all goes out the window. There's enough things that goldfarmers can sell for silly amounts without adding all the Raid loot to it.

Robert · 19 Oct 2006 at 14:14

Making all items as you say would be a total farce. You should have to work for the items, otherwise wtf is the point in playing WoW?

jim5000 · 19 Oct 2006 at 15:25

Ok, maybe some items should stay soulbound, but at the moment practially everything is! Every item that is non-standard is soulbound, and there is plenty of low level stuff that BoPs in the lower dungeons like the deadmines and things which it would be nice to be able to sell.

Keep the elite quest items as soulbound, but the vast majority of stuff needn't be. It would be nice if smiths and the new jeweller professions could make great items that they could sell...

Anim · 19 Oct 2006 at 18:01

most crafted items arent bop, theres just a few items that are and the key point is the recipe is NOT bop.

Vixen · 19 Oct 2006 at 18:21

You are very naieve if you think that goldfarmers do very little to the economy. They push up prices for everything to a point where people feel forced to buy gold or spend their entire lives farming themselves to get something. I sold an enchanting recipe a month or so back for 600g, and was told that if I'd waited I could easily have made over 1000. I very much doubt that would be possible if people weren't farming constantly.
The only thing that I would change about bop/soulbound stuff is the ability for them to be disenchanted. Some items sell for very little to a vendor, but the things they disenchant to would be very useful. I know that as an enchanter without guild support, I struggle to get the items that I need for my skill

.

Velocity219e · 20 Oct 2006 at 02:51

Vixen said:
You are very naieve if you think that goldfarmers do very little to the economy. They push up prices for everything to a point where people feel forced to buy gold or spend their entire lives farming themselves to get something. I sold an enchanting recipe a month or so back for 600g, and was told that if I'd waited I could easily have made over 1000. I very much doubt that would be possible if people weren't farming constantly.
The only thing that I would change about bop/soulbound stuff is the ability for them to be disenchanted. Some items sell for very little to a vendor, but the things they disenchant to would be very useful. I know that as an enchanter without guild support, I struggle to get the items that I need for my skill .

yes on Thunderhorn we recently had such a bad problem with goldfarmers (lots of accts. got banned and the AH database halved in a couple of hours) and it completely screwed the player driven economy, its getting better but very slowly, I used to make a reasonable chunk of cash doing mining and selling ores and bars to engineers and smiths making between five and ten gold for stacks of various ores, now because of this massive influx of materials the value has fallen through the floor (twenty thorium for a couple of gold) Iron for about the same

obviously I have speculatively cashed in on this and bought shedloads for bank alts

if it doesn't sell here then Thunderhorn is almost always on the migration list >: )

and thats not even mentioning the people that constantly try and screw the AH prices by listing single items for 1s bid / 99g buyout and cancelling the auction before it ends (presumably to skew auctioneer data) fortunately a ticket to GM's usually gets them all removed and the player suspended for a while .

I also know leatherworkers, alchemists and Enchanters which have the exact same problems with material costs being completely ruined, and usually if people can't make a profit crafting off the materials they tend to ask for excessive crafting fee's (we have prices for crafting from 50g to 1200g!)

and this has all developed in the past 4 - 5 months when we had our most recent farmer invasion.

Also bot harvesters :\ sometimes I wish I'd joined a PVP server with those in mind. we have at least five per sparsely populated area for each faction, its ridiculous. the get spotted banned and replaced almost daily, and they just follow a little area killing looting and killing again :\

Vixen · 20 Oct 2006 at 05:20

Velocity219e said:
yes on Thunderhorn we recently had such a bad problem with goldfarmers (lots of accts. got banned and the AH database halved in a couple of hours) and it completely screwed the player driven economy, its getting better but very slowly, I used to make a reasonable chunk of cash doing mining and selling ores and bars to engineers and smiths making between five and ten gold for stacks of various ores, now because of this massive influx of materials the value has fallen through the floor (twenty thorium for a couple of gold) Iron for about the same

obviously I have speculatively cashed in on this and bought shedloads for bank alts if it doesn't sell here then Thunderhorn is almost always on the migration list >: )

and thats not even mentioning the people that constantly try and screw the AH prices by listing single items for 1s bid / 99g buyout and cancelling the auction before it ends (presumably to skew auctioneer data) fortunately a ticket to GM's usually gets them all removed and the player suspended for a while .

I also know leatherworkers, alchemists and Enchanters which have the exact same problems with material costs being completely ruined, and usually if people can't make a profit crafting off the materials they tend to ask for excessive crafting fee's (we have prices for crafting from 50g to 1200g!)

and this has all developed in the past 4 - 5 months when we had our most recent farmer invasion.

Also bot harvesters :\ sometimes I wish I'd joined a PVP server with those in mind. we have at least five per sparsely populated area for each faction, its ridiculous. the get spotted banned and replaced almost daily, and they just follow a little area killing looting and killing again :\

I took up mining recently because there was no other way I could fund my runed arcanite rod. Since players have so much money now, arcane crystals go up at 25g+ and they sell because it's "nothing" to a lot of people. I have made a fair bit of cash leveling, but I found that 20 bars seem to sell for 2g regardless of what they are bars of, which is rather frustrating when thorium vendors for almost that.
While I was leveling my mining, I saw so many unguilded rank 1 BM hunters killing the same things over and over, it's just depressing. I report as many as I can, and the level 1s who stand outside the bank in Org/IF and advertise gold for sale, but it still seems like they are doing nothing.

There was a really good post about farmers on the Frostmane forums a while back, saying how to spot the bots and how to annoy them, but I doubt it is still there.