Feature Pack Speculation

In less than 3 weeks time ArenaNet will ship the September feature pack to players worldwide. This isn't the first time we have gotten a major feature patch, in fact only 4 months ago in April we got a huge patch full of features. Armed with the knowledge of the previous feature pack, we can speculate as to what will be included in the upcoming pack in an attempt to profit from early investment. If you have forgotten what we received in April then you can view the full list on the official website here - just scroll down past the upcoming patch notes. I will list the main features that were potentially very profitable below:

• The Megaserver System
• The Wardrobe System
• Sigil and Rune balance

The introduction of Megaservers primarily had an impact on the harvest rate of top end crafting materials. Nodes that were originally being mined daily server-side had been abandoned. This is because the Node spawn locations were no longer predictable and as such, mining runs would take three or four times as long, thus they were no longer profitable and players moved onto different farming spots. However, it was the less obvious crafting materials that saw the biggest change, mainly because items like Orichalcum and Ancient Wood were still highly demanded for the process of maxing out certain crafting disciplines. As such, T6 Nodes were still farmed at a lesser rate, as shown by their price hike. But it would be the byproduct of mining runes, crafting ingredients such as Orrian Truffles and Omnomberries that took the biggest hit. These items are not even close in terms of demand and so their sell price was not worth searching for them - but they are still used ingredients in some common food nourishment's that a lot of players use. Eventually their prices would double over 3 months until the introduction of Foxfire Clusters which saw players flock to Orr and discover these nodes again. Sometimes you have to think outside the box to profit the most..

The wardrobe system is a mechanic that allows you to store any given skin, be it weapon or armor, into your account vault which can then be used on any character for a fee of a transmutation charge. What did this cause? A sudden demand on skins that were previously ignored. This included pieces of armor that could only be obtained at lower levels in the game that had low supply and previously very low demand. With this change, the prices of these and other armors and weapons shot through the roof. I remember seeing a level ~25 piece of masterwork gear going for around ~1 gold on the trading post. Again, this was a feature that was potentially very profitable by applying simple rules of supply and demand.

The last and most important, or at least potentially the most profitable was the Sigil and Rune balance changes. This saw a total rework of some upgrade components that would mean going from being barely even used to the most demanded of them all. This was in fact the case with Superior Strength runes. Although these runes were not ignored before the April feature patch, they were clearly not the most popular - showcased by their ~50 silver price in mid March. However, after the patch in mid April and a few weeks to let it sink in, these runes had hit a ridiculous ~14 gold each! It should be noted that this particular speculation was not a complete gamble as to which rune was going to fare the best post-patch. If you look at any stat market in the game you will see a resounding victor in popularity - anything to do with power and the Berserker meta. As such, targeting power-based runes and sigils is a good bet, as it is unlikely that ArenaNet will overhaul an upgrade component entirely to change which stat it provides.

So, what can we learn from April? It is unlikely we will see any changes to the Megaservers or the wardrobe system, those are here to stay. However, it is absolutely possible that we see some more balance changes to gear. It is inevitable that we will eventually see some nerfs to runes such as Superior Strength and even Traveler. This is largely in part due to the usage in PvP, although Strength and Traveler runes, among others are used by a large majority game wide, and so in comparison to other runes these may seem overpowered. In turn we could expect some buffs to other upgrade components, it will be these changes that we should be most interested in. Keep a close eye on this official release page for information on any changes, however, sometimes speculation on your own accord can be the most profitable - I'll leave that up to you!

Keep checking back here, as I will be posting my thoughts on information that will be released daily on the official Guild Wars 2 site in the next 2 weeks.