Tag Archives: frozen orb
Why frozen orbs aren’t a good investment
Recent [development notes] have announced that in an upcoming patch an NPC named [Frozo the Renowned] will be added to the game. This npc, an item vendor, will trade items for your [Frozen Orb] which up until now people have been either vendoring or auctioning for not much more than vendor price.
Players will be able to trade 6 orbs in for a [Crusader Orb], 4 orbs in for a [Runed Orb] or a single orb in for a [Frost Lotus], [Eternal Air], [Eternal Earth], [Eternal Fire], [Eternal Life], [Eternal Shadow] or [Eternal Water].
A lot of people have read this and had the obvious light bulb go off in their head. I know on my server people are already spamming trade chat with ‘WTB Frozen Orb – 15g/each’. In the auction house the orbs have already normalized at around 20g/each. They’re all wrong if they think this is going to turn out to be a money maker though.
Why? There’s a number of reasons, here are two big ones. First and foremost is that it’s a very obvious one-step change which means everybody is immediately aware of the ramifications and participation in stockpiling frozen orbs will be widespread. This will immediately mean nobody is getting their orbs for 6g off the auction house anymore, there’s increased demand for the orbs which is why the prices are already up.
Secondly the reason for this change is to address the already massive oversupply of frozen orbs in the system. Lots of players were ALREADY sitting on a lot of orbs from the recent random heroics change. Oversupply on such a large scale is going to damage prices and the extra consideration of lost AH deposit costs (due to being undercut) is going to also impact profit margins.
My conservative estimate is that around patch time we’ll see frozen orbs selling for around 17g and the eternals and frost lotus selling for not more than 5g above this. It’s not worth even looking at the Crusader and Runed orbs as I expect their value will be lower than the cost of the frozen orbs needed to pay for them.