So I read this post on woweconomy the other day, and I thought it is a very illustrative post about the typical goldmaking patterns.

The post

The post is here by someone who is really struggling with goldmaking, and is seeing losses across the board on his or her professions. There was a lot of discussion in the comments and I feel like a lot of it misses the main reason, which is quite simple and literally repeats every patch.

Players eventually stop needing loads of things

Simply put eventually players stop buying a lot of the power increasing items. This happens due to a combination of characters getting geared enough that they don’t get upgrades so they don’t need enchants or crafted goods anymore as well as players finishing their seasonal goals and taking a break. We are now at the point where most casuals are finished with the season, and mostly only mid to low end mythic raiders and hardcore m+ players are in progression mode. These players are now regardless aproaching the ilvl cap and will typically not be looking for upgrades from professions any more. The one thing they are still buying is the one concentration niche that is still good: alchemy consumables.

This happens every patch

This pattern happens pretty much every patch. The degree to which profit margins collapse will vary of course, but the general trend happens every time. Players in the thread were blaming a lot of different factors like multicraft, but the reality is that profit margins shrink over time in any market that players graduate out of.

But there is another factor

Midnight does have another factor as well, which is the ability to gradually upgrade your crafting tools. Players who have farmed enough abundance will have epic upgrades to their crafting gear, which does give a significant boost to profit margins. So if you are running on rare or a mix of rare and uncommon there might be profits in the recipe that isn’t profitable for you if you have your character maxed out. This is particularly true for any non concentration crafting where you will need to have the best possible tools as well as all possible knowledge point buffs to be competitive currently.