A quick catcher-upper: in WOW 3.3, if there is an enchanter with a suitable skill level in the group, group members will be given three options when loot drops: Need, Greed, and Disenchant. Disenchant is a fancy way of saying “Greed, but I want the enchanting mats rather than the item”. If you click Disenchant, you are treated exactly as if you had rolled Greed, and roll along with the other people who rolled greed, but instead of Spellweaver’s Skullcap of the Skunk, you’ll get seventeen Infinite Dust in your bags. (That I initially typed “Arcane Dust” should tell you that I don’t deal with enchanting very often.)

This is being implemented because in WOW 3.3, you’ll be able to PUG with characters from other servers. This sounds awesome in theory, but in practice it’s limited because you can’t trade items to characters from other servers. That includes enchanting materials. So the common practice of letting the enchanter in the group roll Greed on the drops, and then disenchant at the end of the run and hand out the proceeds, won’t work if you have someone from another server in your group.

There are four main objections I have seen to this. They are:

  • The game is using my tradeskill without my consent.

Well, no. The game is using your level of skill with a given profession to trigger a flag in the system; if the flag is triggered, the game does the disenchanting. You don’t have to do anything. Your profession isn’t being used. You’re just toggling a yes/no switch.

  • Sometimes I don’t want to give my fellow party members enchanting mats, because they haven’t earned them.

I will be blunt: you are a douchebag who needs to put the game down and spend some time in social-acclimation classes. These folks come highly recommended.

  • If anyone can generate enchanting mats, the market for them will go down.

      • You haven’t thought this through. Here’s how economics works: People roll Disenchant because the mats sell better than the gear itself. The supply of enchanting mats grows slightly (but not very much; as a rule, roughly the same amount of mats is going to be on the market – it’s just going to be coming from different people). The price drops. People roll Disenchant less because the mats aren’t selling as well. The market price stabilizes at slightly under the original rate.

      So yes, instead of 100g for an Abyss Crystal you might get 95g. Forgive me for not feeling particularly sorry for you.

      • If people can roll to disenchant, I should be able to roll to get the contents of mining nodes, herbs, and skinnable mobs.

      Nope. 100% wrong. Here’s why: you can’t pick up a Saronite Vein and cart it back to a vendor to sell. End of story. Without an enchanter in the group, the gear’s still there to pick up and sell. Enchanters just make it easy to turn gear into mats; this is especially true of BOP gear, which – in the absence of an enchanter – can only be vendored.

      Without a miner, that Saronite Vein might as well not even be there. Without an herbalist, every single Frost Lotus in the instance goes to utter waste. Without a skinner, those worgs will just lie there and rot.

      The only valid comparison is suggesting that maybe cloth (Frostweave etc.) should have a Need/Greed/Bolt option, and if you want to suggest that, well, be my guest. I suspect that that and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee, but you’re welcome to try.

      The bottom line is this: the Disenchant option is an unqualified positive addition to the game, and the people who are complaining about it either haven’t thought it through or probably shouldn’t be interacting with other human beings.

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