WoW Classic's Black Lotus regulation doesn't fix the wider economy
WoW Classic’s 20th Anniversary servers have had issues with the cost of the Black Lotus herb. It’s practically the only herb that can be locked down quite like it is. It’s a rare drop used in practically every useful Flask in the game. Sure, these are pretty much optional. In theory, the community has made Flasks a mandatory part of raiding — likely because of how top-tier progression pushing guilds used them in the past.
The Black Lotus problem has led to an incredibly high price on most servers in WoW Classic. Even if it’s come down some, it’s still averaging a ridiculous 80 g a piece. However, it’s not really just Black Lotus that’s the issue. Prices are high pretty much everywhere in the world of late-game consumables.
WoW Classic’s economy issues are more than just the Black Lotus problem
So what’s the problem with WoW Classic’s Black Lotus? Blizzard Entertainment has looked into it repeatedly in the past, but due to bots and gold farmers, the most important herb in late-game content, Black Lotus, has had a pretty inflated price across all 20th Anniversary servers. Thankfully, most flasks only use one at a time, but if you’re going to make several, they’re at least 80 g each.
Since these are rare and hard to farm, it becomes much easier to simply buy them — whether on the auction house or third-party websites. After all, that’s what many of those farmers are doing — collecting these resources and selling them on illicit websites, alongside gold, power leveling, and other services.
However, it’s not just Black Lotus-based items that are high-priced. Let’s look at some Elemental Resistance consumables. Greater Arcane Protection Potion goes for around 33 g, and so does Greater Frost Protection Potion when these cost a pittance to make.
Dream Dust is on average 70s, and Dreamfoil averages for about 1 g. Sure, Dreamfoil is expensive to buy if you’re making Flasks — they can take 30 Dreamfoil! But for these, it’s practically nothing. Depending on which megaserver you’re on, things can cost so much more. I’ve heard of Mountain Silversage and Plaguebloom being incredibly expensive.
If it’s a late-game consumable, the odds are high that it could have an exorbitantly high price. Part of it is gold botters/farmers, sure. It’s also on the people who buy gold from gold sellers on the WoW Classic servers or buy Black Lotus from those other websites. Many players in this group are called Raidloggers — players who only log in to raid and then just log out again.
While at face value, there’s nothing wrong with Raidlogging per se, if you’ve got all the materials you need, it can be harmful to the economy. These are likely the people who are going to buy gold, buy mats off of third-party websites, and ultimately drive the prices up on the auction house.
There’s truly nothing wrong with being a Raidlogger, though — if there’s nothing else in-game you want to do but log in, hit the Auction House, and then raid, that’s fine. But when people start spending tons of real money on gold/resources, that can hurt the economy.
With more players Raidlogging, fewer are logging on to farm their own materials. This ultimately creates a greater need to buy on the auction house, and thus, the prices just continue to rise.
The cost of Black Lotus is almost always high because bots are farming it up and charging high rates. Other players who manage to get some will probably charge similar prices, and the market just stays high due to the scarcity/length of time spent farming. You want all that time to be worth it, after all.
I do think that making the Black Lotus more accessible will help in WoW Classic, but it may not completely solve the problem. It feels like the overarching problem is how prevalent gold selling/buying is. Gold sellers appear to really control the market. Even if you add layers to the game, that will just encourage bots to farm all the layers anyway.
Unfortunately, I don’t know how to stop gold selling in WoW Classic to help stop the Black Lotus issue — or at least slow it down to where it’s not such a serious problem. I do hope that Blizzard’s upcoming solutions to the Black Lotus problem will reduce the overall cost of consumables, but I’m not sure it will.
Check out our other WoW Classic guides and features
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- 3 Reasons to pick WoW Classic over Retail in 2025 (and 3 things Retail has going for it)
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