The end

I've been thinking about this for a while now, yet I've waited for a long time before writing this post. That is also why I've been quiet for a while now.

I wont continue with WoW. It costs a lot of real money and it takes valuable time for something I do not enjoy anymore.

Feels quite bad since I actually got the blog running with a couple of readers.

My gametime goes out the 2nd December. I'm just selling everything I can. I went from 20,000 to 40,000 in about 1-2 weeks. I still got some cards and some gems left to sell.

The big problem is the glyph market. I got quite a big stock. Enough to make about 6000-7000 glyphs. I'm selling them as fast as I can but I'll probably give the rest away to a friend of mine when I quit.

I'm probably going to sell the gold to some website. I know how to find legit ones. Frankly, you can say it ruins the WoW economy, but it fixes my real life economy and I prioritize my real life economy. Also, I'd say the impact is quite small since it wont bring any more gold into the system since it wont increase the demand and there probably is enough supply.

Nostalgia

I'm going to tell you about the first time I actually started with making much gold("much" is relative to the amount of gold I had at the time when the story is told, which is about 1,000g)

I got a tip from Trowlcat. Unfortunately this is no longer a viable tip.

It was really simple, but I would never have thought of it myself. Buy mats for titansteel, get people to smelt titansteel, get mats for titansteel destroyer(or whatever titansteel thing that sells for most subtracted by material cost of course) and then sell it for about 1,000g profit.

I told this to a friend of mine and together we forged our plans. We would create a ton of titansteel destroyers and get a really big amount of gold(gold cap was not something that existed in our world at that time) and then we could easily create monopolies on all markets we wanted. We would own the alliance auction house and we would then move over to the horde auction house and do the same thing.

We were naive, we were "rich" and we were happy. I seriously miss that time. Every sold titansteel destroyer(in total about... five) was a success.

As I said, this is no longer that viable because of the high price of titanium ore.

The market was young(*cough*) and the market was ours for the taking.

As I said, I miss doing something more advanced than spamming the milling button(or prospecting button, if I want some variety) and finally get the epic flying mount I saved for. I still remember racing with Trowlcat, ending with an initiation rite that involved dismounting high up in the air and dying. Loads of fun.

There was the feeling of accomplishment that I've lost. Right now, the work is more monotone than farming(but more profitable).

Old post

I found an old post that I never posted. I thought I lost it but Google saved it. Thank Google for auto-save. I'm just going to post it directly. This was written before the patch with onyxia hit.

It's been half a week since my last post and the reason is pretty embarrassing. I forgot the email that I used for the blog(Hey! Don't blame me, it gets hard after getting your 10th email)

I've been thinking about the RP-perspective of the new Cataclysm expansion. Frankly, the problem has been there before the release of all the expansions. "Sure, you can tank Illidan, but you do need some better gear to tank Violet hold Heroic.". Now, there will probably be something similar when the new expansion comes out: "Sure you killed Malygos, one of the four dragon aspects, the keeper of magic, within two weeks of the release of Wrath of the lich king, but you need better gear for "

Now, I'm not a true Roleplayer myself, and it wont bother me that much. That said, I'm still happy for the reshape of Onyxia since I never got to try her before TBC(I was level 57 when TBC was released).

Game design as such, is a big problem from the designers point-of-view. Many people want more new exciting content. On the other hand however, there's old school players and people who joined to late to experience vanilla WoW in it's fullest and want to try it. These are the people who ask for vanilla WoW realms and cheer at the reshape of Onyxia.

So, I'm asking you, how much old content and how much new do you want in the next expansion?(Like 80% new and 20% old)

This is how I roll... but why?

I've seen this question asked in many blogs I've read. We strive for the gold cap, but there's no way we really need all that gold... unless we want more gold. Even if you ignore the wails of the goblin gods and buy all the social vanity items there are and stand around in dalaran to make socials drool over your awesomeness, you'll come to a point where you got enough money to support you for a LONG time.

Gold cap was enough to support Gevlon for more than 4 months and it just took him 100k~ Just don't forget that he paid 5k / week to the guild.

Since I'm neither a hard-core raider nor a vanity-loving social, I don't really need the gold. I could probably survive on my current stash until I lose interest in WoW. Still, I keep on going. I take risks and my gold amount fluctuate.

To answer the question, I have to think about what I've learned. What did I actually gain on my market activities?

* My epic flying mount.
I was actually really broke in TBC. I got my epic ground mount right before the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. It was a gift from a good friend of mine. I paid about half of the gold for my normal flying mount and got the rest from friends.

My epic flying was the first mount I actually paid for, all by myself(Normal ground mount was 100g when I reached level 40, that was a LOT of gold back then).

* Market knowledge
Say what you want, but this has certainly been something I've learned from. Sure, I knew the concepts of Supply and demand before I started using the Auction house, but not how to use information with Supply and demand to gain gold. The term of opportunity cost however was quite new. In my head, I already knew the principle, but I wouldn't obey it. In TBC, farmed herbs were free.

Having a developed market like the Auction House in World of Warcraft with spikes and drops is just what I needed to get a good view. Read all the theory you want, but a living example is always going to be needed to fully understand the theory.

* Boasting.

I have to admit, deep inside of me, there's a social. This being cares about the opinions of others, he likes attention and boasting is a must.

Slipping details to Real-life friends like: "Well, last night was a good night. I got about 8k gold." is something that happens.

* Freedom.

Freedom to buy what I want, gear my new level 80 mage up, do what I want. Freedom to be rid of the need to do dailies and farm to get what I want(Although, am I really free? I'll talk about that later)

These are the only reasons I do what I do. I'm reaching for the cap, but I'm not positive I'll reach it. I could if I wanted to, but of the reasons I mentioned, there's not one of them that requires me to reach gold cap... except maybe the boasting part.

Tricking the idiots.

Being, or trying to be, a goblin relies a lot on using/abusing M&S(Morons and slackers). Now, most of us doesn't care, we don't feel sorry for them. But what if we trick them some more?

I advertised in trade, giving away free gold making tips with inscription. Basically, what I told those who asked for it, was to buy eternal life and Snowfall ink and craft northrend darkmoon cards. I also slipped the fact that a nobles deck sells for about 4.5k gold. Now, from the M&S's point of view, 4,500g is a lot of gold and he doesn't understand the concept of supply and demand which means it'll take weeks to sell that nobles deck when he gets one.

So, even though those I sold it to were level 38 and 56 with inscription below 200, I sold 10 snowfall ink. I insisted on selling them right now, since next patch, their price would sky-rocket 400%(Or, so I said), so they should buy it while it's cheap.

I sold 10 snowfall ink for 15g / each while they were on AH for 9g / each. Is this immoral? Isn't it what we do every day basically? Tricking them. We sell vendor items for 10g+ and we dominate the markets with our knowledge. We know that if everyone was smart, there wouldn't be much profits to be made and we thrive in their stupidity.

So, the question is: Was it immoral to do what I did? I lied about the price sky-rocketing and I sold it for higher than AH price. I, for one, don't see it as immoral, but I'd like other opinions.

Crashing the market and killing the competition.

These last couple of days, I've noticed a decrease in profit from glyphs. Since I'm not undercutting, but just letting them be on for 48h in a row, I never see the names of people who undercut me. I know the names of two big glyph sellers on my server but no more.

Anyway, I guess the MMO-champion guides had some impact on my server, so I'm going to try to clean it out. What to do:

Empty out AH from northrend herbs, or at least so the ones remaining are really not worth it.

Undercut DEEP

I was going to wait with this until I had a bit larger stock, since I'm unsure about the stock of my large competitors. If I make them leave too, it's just a bonus. Anyway, my stock was bigger than I thought and I filled 3 guild bank tabs with herbs. This should give me almost 12,000 ink, but as always, my math is faulty(3 tabs = 3 * 96 stacks = 288 stacks = 5760 herbs, about 1.5 ink each. Now, while writing this, I realized I counted with 1.5 ink for each herb, not for every five herbs. 5760 / 5 * 1.5 = 1728 which sounds much more reasonable)

Always good with some math in the evening.

Back to the market, I was lucky, all the herbs were quite overpriced but not ridiculously so. It will give me about zero profit, but I got 20k gold + all the enchanting mats from last weekend and other various stuff to finance this with.

Enchanting report

Saronite ore is Found mostly in Icecrown where it turns people insane by the whispering Yogg-Saron. I'm supposed to spend a night with 9,000 saronite ore and just hope it wont drive me insane? I did, here is the results:

Now, how do I sell all this without flooding the market? It'll take time for sure. I'm thinking of waiting for a while for the enchanting mats prices to go up. Greater cosmic essence lies at 11g and infinite dust at 3.5g.

Almost reached gold limit!

Unfortunately, that is the wrong gold limit. I'm down at 9,000g which is a change of about 10,000g in 3-4 days. I'll start by blaming the gnome. That rich bastard got about 5-6000g just to gear himself up and he's still squishy! Some of the gold went to level up engineering from 100~ to 350. The mithril and thorium is expensive. I'm waiting with the last part(that require about 290 cobalt bars and 350 saronite bars, Ugh >.<) until I'm a bit richer.

It's not all lost though, I got 30 epic gems(waiting for a friend of mine to cut half of them, the other half is already cut and lying on the AH), a nobles deck, 7500 saronite ore and 1½ guild bank tab with various high level northrend herbs.

I also got 240 eternal earth and a big bunch of green gems to make into jewelry, looks like this will be another long night.

Quiet.

Well, I ran out of gametime a couple of days ago and just got it back. Therefore, I haven't really seen the impact of the mmo-champion post(link)

Now when I'm back, the impact is shown. Adder's tongue prices up from 14g / stack to 24 g / stack. Lichbloom is quiet the same(about 22g / stack), Icethorn was up in 30g / stack but is now down at 17g / stack.

Eternal earth is up like 250%(from 5g / stack to 13g / stack)

Infinite dust went up like on most other servers, unfortunately I had no stock with infinite dust to sell when it was high and now it's down to normal rates.

This has no huge impact on me, but it's still an impact. No more money from saronite ore. I haven't got enough eternal earth to turn my stock of green gems into jewelry and I wont buy more with the current prices.

I used to rely on Adder's tongue for pigments, but now icethorn is cheaper, so that's what I'll buy if the prices go down low enough.

However, I still got a couple of farmers that sell saronite ore, titanium ore and eternal earth for less than AH prices so I'll manage.

On a not so related note, my mage is now level 80. When he reached 80, he had 10k health, 12k mana and 800 Spell power. So, how do I gear him up? Hmmm, guild is looking for a dps for Ulduar 25 man in the middle of the night. Sure!

We were only looking to do one more try on razorscale. It went something like this: Oh, he did blue fire under me, let's move! Bam! Dead. I got one tick of the fire and got hit by the fireball just after.

I thought that was the end of it, but I got a battle res! Sure, there was a more useless mage who was dead, but I'm a gnome, right? We got razorscale down and I got Collar of the Wyrmhunter.

My life's work is un-done!

Made my trade macro for selling the crystals. Used it several times and then got a whisper for a guy who wanted to buy it all. Now, I'm not quite sure if I want to do it. I posted 700 shadow crystals on AH and sold 200 to the same guy. Now, I noticed how my gold was going down quickly. The deposit fee on shadow crystals are 1g 50s and I was putting buyout on 80s.

Since the whole idea with posting on AH was because I wanted to flood the market for fun, I wasn't expecting any great profits, however I was not expecting losses. That's why I stopped the posting which limited the shadow crystals that I posted on AH to 700 instead of 1000.

My gold buffer is getting bigger. I sold a nobles deck for 4k and got a blue wand in the deal(that's one dream shard more!) This was a great relief since I've been trying to sell it for one and a half week. I still got one more nobles deck to sell. I made one from inscription and bought one from AH for 3.5k with the intention to resell it.

Milled 3.3k herbs yesterday and made into ink which I crafted into glyphs. I realize now that I should probably get another bank alt to sell glyphs for me.

Onyxia

So, my brother killed Onyxia yesterday. Short story: The 310% mount dropped, my brother got it. I think it's one of the first. There's 4 screenshots on WoWhead. He sold it to another guy in the raid for 10k. Some might find it stupid, but I don't know what to say. We all got different goals to achieve in WoW.

I got a friend who's all about achievements, he's farming mounts and reputation for those achievement points because that's what he likes. He thinks my brother is crazy for not keeping it.

Me on the other hand, I don't care about achievement points, I care about utility. The mammoth with two passengers and repair/vendor on it got utility but the rivendare mount got no utility. Sure, the Onyxia mount is 310% instead of 280%, so it got some utility but for a person without epic flying skill who's not even close to getting it, selling the dragon to pay for your epic flying skill might be the best choice(although he could probably have haggled the price up 50%)

I probably would've kept it because of the extra speed bonus, the extreme rarity and the awesome looks. Sometimes, you have to make exceptions.

I finally found an addon that opens ALL my mail instead of the first 50. It still takes time between each batch with 50 mails, but it's automatic.

I'm noticing an price increase in farmed materials like northrend herbs and ores. Adder's tongue went up from 12g / stack to 22g / stack and does now cost more than a stack of lichbloom. I still got a large stack of herbs that I intend to mill tonight, so I'll be fine for a while.

Origin of Trowlcat

Since I've been slacking with posts, I'm going to tell you the story of the name of the blog, Trowlcat.

There once was a small night elf baby(By night elven standards, that is. He was still two heads higher than an adult gnome). He was living a happy life in Auberdine and was unaware of the fact that Blizzard was planning on ruining his hometown in their next expansion.

One day, he got a sudden urge to do something with his life. Like chasing after a flag in a sawmill all day long, or rushing to a dock on a small rocky island. This urge was natural for elves in his age, and he went to darnassus to get proper training. He was going to become a Druid!

He stayed in Darnassus for several years and quickly realized the truth of becoming a druid. You specialize in an animal, and copy the behaviour and form of it.

A short time after(which is not really a short time, counted in Furbolg years) when the night elf was the height of three gnomes, he could finally join force with the might heroes he had once seen on TV.

He fighted for his life, for the challenge, but most of all for the epics. Until one day when the Gods calling themselves Blizzard, superior even to Algalon the gnome eater, announced throughout the world of Azeroth, the coming of dual specializations.

The day came, and the so called dual spec were implemented. The young druid felt a power he had never felt before. He was more balanced than before. He could be both a tree, and an owl. He was a trowl!

Days went by, and he was growing impatient. He was stronger than he had been before, but he wanted more! He trained himself to the extent of his abilities. He became agile and flexible. He became a cat! He marked the change in druidic history, a legend among legends, he became a Trowlcat.


Okay, enough of the story-telling. The real story was in guild chat and went something like this:

Me: Hey, want to heal Naxx?
Him: No, I are owl!
Me: Owl go tree, please?
Him: Owl can be Tree!
Him: Trowl!
Me: Trowl go cat too?
Him: Raaah!
Me: Trowlcat :O

I hope you enjoyed the story though.

My life's work is done!

First of all, I'm sorry for not posting anything for a week. There was a nice and big post but it apparently disappeared. I also forgot my email that I use to log onto the blog.

Now, my life's work is done. What is that you wonder. I'll show you:


Now, what should I do with it? I can vendor it of course. Although, I could also cut it and sell it for more. However, 2000 gems takes a while to cut although the profit is more than double. I'm thinking of advertising in trade. Something like: "WTS JC work. I'll sell you green gems for 40s each. These can be made into cut gems and sold for 50s each(or 1g if you get proc) This is easy profit for little work. I got 2,000 gems so make your order now."

I am also thinking of buying the services for people to mill and make ink for me. I'm a lazy goblin and I think it's going to be a good investment, with less time used on repetitive, half-afk stuff, I'll have more time to do other things, like expand into other markets.

Done?

First day with a lot of glyphs posted and 200 sold. Not good. Why not? My QA options was not properly adjusted since I miscalculated the minimum price to post glyphs for. I sold glyphs for 1g instead of 2.5g. Now, there's apparently a guy that noticed, and bought about 100 of my underpriced glyphs. I'll have to get him out of the market later.

I'm getting low on gold(sitting on about 15k) and I tried to sell one of my nobles in trade chat, no luck though and I'm still stuck with two.

I did some more arena today, and after our slowdown this Tuesday, we went up quite fast. We're at 1210 rating now and climbing. Today's score was 13 - 5 if I recall correctly.

I'm going to have to focus more on Jewelcrafting during the next couple of weeks since my glyph business wont be very profitable. I'm going to snatch all herbs that are not overpriced and make a lot of glyphs and sell them right over minimum price, as long as there are some big glyph producers left.

Crafting day

So, today is crafting day. I'm expanding my glyph business so I'm making a lot of glyphs, I don't know how good they will sell though. I'm wondering if I made more glyphs than I got ink to do. I might run out of ink of the sea.

My 4 x 32 slot inscription bags are not enough anymore. I ran out of bag space when I was buying parchments.
I did some more arena yesterday. We're starting to slow down, although our win count is still higher than the loss count, and I'll make it stay that way. I'll blame things such as, my partner having a headache, low fps, stupid mistakes(from blizzard's side, I would never do anything wrong *whistle*). We broke 1k rating yesterday which was an achievement for us. Our next goal is 2k.

Yesterday's milling brought in lots of snowfall ink which resulted in 27 darkmoon cards. The cards gave me enough for new nobles, undeath and chaos deck. I checked the nobles deck and it was on for 3.5k, I bought it up and put my on for 5.5k. I'm most likely going to sell the deck I bought for about 1k more than I bought it for.

The work continues

My firewall was pretty much broke all the time last week. We finally changed the disk to a new computer and it's almost working smoothly.

This however, leads to me being a tad of schedule. When I wrote my introduction, I was prospecting saronite. The saronite is now prospected, the jewelry is done and the jewelry is undone(into shards and dust).

Now inscription comes to mind. I've been getting lots of adder's tongue for like 13g / stack and I've been buying like 5000 adder's tongue. I already milled 2000 two weeks ago but the pigment from the last 3000 is being turned into ink as I write.

I'm thinking about creating more types of glyphs. Normally, I take all glyphs with two stars or more on wowpopular, but since I'm not lacking the ink, I'm thinking about creating 10 of all useful glyphs.

Unfortunately, I will not be done with glyphs today. Ink will be done soon, then I'm going out for a couple of hours before returning to do some arena with my fellow feral druid. Glyphs and darkmoon cards will have to wait until another day.

Introduction

Every blogg needs an introduction. Things about me:

• I'm a discipline priest on Bloodhoof-EU.
• I'm a wannabe goblin(greedygoblin.blogspot.com)
• I raid when my guild needs me(Raiding Ulduar/TotC)
• I pvp with a feral druid, started this season and it's going pretty well.

Right now, it's going to be a long night. I bought about 3000 saronite and I'm prospecting it as I write. It's going to give me a nice bunch of gold in a couple of days. I had a nice night a couple of weeks ago which made me 10k in about 4 hours. I sold a nobles deck and 800 infinite dust, so it was basically a one time thing. I'm now currently at about 20k spread out on a couple of toons.

Raiding: I just raided Trial of the Champion 10 man with my guild, first time ever. It went okay although we wiped on the jormungars because of lots of small errors.

Pvp: I did pvp in TBC and also in all seasons in wrath of the lich king. Short story is that I failed in all seasons. This time is different though, we're at about 30 - 6. My partner got hot streak last week and I got it yesterday.

Right now, it feels like I'm just rambling on about nothing. Also, prospecting saronite at the same time didn't work. I better end my introduction right here.