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.