Blue Posts, Brimstones

Over the last few days, the metaphorical bottom has fallen out of Brimstone prices. They're torpedoing towards and all-time single-day low (9,200 gold on 11/9/12) faster than Keanu Reeves on a Greyhound. If there were a "consumer confidence" index associated with Brimstones, it would be lower than Congress's approval rating (zing!).

While speculators continue to dump their stockpile of Brimstones for dirt, let's mix in a couple of Blue Posts for context:

11/20/2012 Lylirra:
"We're also exploring ways to improve the worth of Brimstones, as well as crafting in general."

This post caused the first wave of Brimstone speculation, and the ideas it hinted at (new crafting recipes, where Brimstones would theoretically be a crafting reagent) have since come to fruition. Though the new recipes have been pretty successful, the goal of improving the worth of Brimstones has not. Yet. There's reason to believe that one of two things will happen: 1) Players continue to craft amulets, perhaps at an increasing rate once they roll the comparatively easy-to-nail BiS bracers and spaulders. 2) The Brimstone crafting sink fails, and Blizz starts exploring other ways to make Brimstones more valuable. Now, of course there's option 3) Brimstone prices stay low, and Blizz couldn't care less. The drop in price suggests that more and more players believe option 3 is the most likely to play out. Personally, I'm not sold.

Now let's look at a blue post that went somewhat unnoticed a few days ago:

2/26/2013 Lylirra:
"Overall, we feel like we've been making the item game better with each new patch, and definitely have plans to continue to that process. Some of the areas we'd like to focus on for the future include making Legendary items more "game changing" while still being powerful enough for players to want to equip them, introducing more meaningful gold sinks, and continuing to provide players with reliable ways to gear up outside of the Auction House." 

Sure, it's just a few nibbles, but that's how these things work. First of all, it puts changes to Legendaries firmly on the table--maybe even the addition of new ones as well. And where is there the biggest dearth of useful Legendaries? Well, in crafting of course! No ilvl 63s, nothing worth rolling more than a few times (Cain's set, Helm of Command--which could be valuable if EHP mattered more, but Monster Power made it an afterthought). Plus, "gold sink" has become synonymous with "new, BiS crafting recipes." And gearing up outside the AH? The hits just keep coming! So is the writing on the wall? It's hard to be totally sure--it always is with Blizz--but it's food for thought, at least. A blue post stating that they'd like to increase the value of Brimstones--even if it was months ago--is a little like the Federal Reserve stating that they'd like to explore ways of increasing the price of Apple's stock. Could you resist buying some cheap shares if that happened? I know I couldn't...