EverQuest 2 Game Update Blog

Rijacki wrote:

BUT, as an example, a T3 carpenter item which can be made for a few silver (including buying the resources on the broker) can be sold for several gold. Same with any teir for carpentry. They don't need a corner on the whole container market. AND mages and some priests don't need to be penalised by not being a fighter or scout class.

I have both a tailor and a master carpenter, though the tailor is only in the 50s at present.  The tailor can easily sell some of the broadcloth vests, sackcloth shoulders, and general mastercrafted cloth armor for quite a large profit … if I had the time to keep these in stock I could be quite rich, even at level 50.  So I think that claims that tailors are impoverished are not quite the case.  The carpenter got so bored of making strong boxes for all my friends and guild that I long ago swore off ever making them to sell on the broker, and hasn't suffered in the slightest for it.

However, I think it is important to keep in mind though that sales vary a lot between servers.  Carpenters on the roleplay servers can probably turn a much higher profit than on some others.  Tailors may also have an advantage selling appearance items there.  Any crafters on PvP servers seem to have a pricing advantage due to rarity of crafters.  Etc.  There are people in this thread and others who firmly believe that both (a) carpenters have a ridiculous advantage and make a fantastic profit, and (b) carpenters are utterly useless and have nothing that sells.  Also, (c) tailors are very well off and have lots of desirable and profitable items, and (d) all tailor armor is utterly undesirable and nothing sells but hex dolls.

None of these people are necessarily wrong, they are all telling the truth about what they have observed.  But there are both behavioural and environmental factors that can play a huge part in the performance of both classes (all crafting classes, in fact).  Behavioural – obviously, knowing your market, knowing what sells on your particular server, and making the effort to keep it in stock; and environmental – what server you're on and what its market demands are.  Simply making whatever you're levelling up on and slapping it on the broker is never going to optimize your profit, and there is no change we can reasonably make that will make this behaviour profitable.  What we do hope is that both carpenters and tailors have a wide enough range of items that will appeal to different situations that any player on any server has the ability, if they put in the effort, to find items that sell well.  This obviously isn't easy to do but I'm reasonably happy that both tailors and carpenters are in this situation and I don't believe the backpack changes are going to imbalance this.  I could be wrong – and if I am, then we'll ponder plan B – but it won't be possible to know this until the changes go live.

Thanks again for all the input and opinions, which help very much to examine all sides of the issue before deciding the best solution.