How gold-intensive is the Castle Nathria/general Shadowlands launch preparation in comparison to both Ny’alotha and the BfA launch/Uldir race?
Although you'd think that the answer is that this raid is much, much cheaper than Ny'alotha, the actual answer is that it is less, but by less than you may think. The shortest version is that in Ny'alotha we spent 258 million gold and this time around I expect us to spend about 170 million.
There's a few reasons for this: professions no longer crafting heroic ilvl gear and coins disappearing have decreased the amount of tradable gear tremendously. Previously, going into heroic week with 7 coins meant you would receive on average 1.75 pieces of loot from those alone, plus whatever you were lucky enough to have drop regularly (25% per boss, so 3 pieces from a full clear of Ny'alotha). In Castle Nathria, a full clear only nets 1.5 pieces total, which is less than what coins alone yielded previously. The net effect going on here is that BoEs are a tremendous part of what makes characters strong early on in the race - nearly every character will need all 4 pieces available to them, which is something you've rarely bothered with previously. Previously the idea has been to nab the items with good stats and sockets (and good corruption for Ny'alotha). This time around, it'll basically just be a quantity game.
