The Gold Machine

Finally Back - With a New Rig!

2011-05-23T09:43:00.000+10:00

It sure has been a while but I'm back at last.

Unfortunately my long absence was unavoidable as first I got smashed by uni deadlines for a few weeks and then my poor long-suffering old computer gave its last shuddering cough and died.

Pretty much my exact expression when it happened.

I finally got around to buying a new rig so I'm back! And what a magnificent specimen it is too since a mate and I custom built it ourselves. I won't go on and on about it but suffice to say I've gone from playing wow on the lowest graphics settings at 5fps to playing with maxed settings at 60fps!

My beautiful new baby

So anyway, expect some more posts about gold making etc soon as I kick things back into gear and turn the old gold machine back on.

Seal

Day 2/3: It starts to get interesting

2011-04-10T22:16:00.000+10:00

Due to a particularly busy weekend (the beer wasn't going to drink itself) I was only able to play for around an hour over the two days. But even with that minimal playtime things are starting to take shape nicely.

With such limited opportunity my main objective was to try out one of the strategies offered by another blogger in JMTC's most recent blogging carnival: How do you make gold with low Capital? Given my time constraints I opted for one that once set up would only take a minute to execute when necessary.

What I chose:

Given this criterion I went with a nice little strategy by Flux over at the excellent Power Word: Gold blog which involved selling vendor cooking recipes found in Stormwind to the horde via the neutral Auction House. I won't detail exactly how the strategy works as Flux says it perfectly so if you're interested check it out here: Making Gold Selling Alliance Cooking Recipes to the Horde.

So with my tactics outlined perfectly I ran my auction alt to the recipe vendor and bought the recipes in question and then sent them to another new alt who had drawn the short straw for the trek from the human starting zone to Booty Bay. Needless to say this trip was very painful as a lvl 1 toon with no mount, but 27 minutes (!!!) and 2 deaths later I was sitting safely on the dock in BB next to the neutral auctioneer. Having safely arrived I listed each of the recipes for 20g apiece, logged off and promptly forgot all about them.

A good 24 hours later when I logged back in to check mail and presumably re-list the unsuccessful auctions (I'm cynical at the best of times) I was greeted with the very welcome site on the left. Over half of the recipes had sold and I couldn't have been happier.

All in all the sales netted me about 120g profit thereby quadrupling my total gold in an instant. The best part about this strategy is the fact that once the initial outlay of time getting to Booty Bay has been spent, this is an activity that will take 2 minutes max to rinse and repeat as necessary as the auctions either sell or expire. Having it confirmed so quickly that the recipes will definitely sell is a nice weight off of my mind also.

Oh and I almost forgot the best part: All of the recipes together cost less than 1g to buy!

So far this is a perfect example of exactly what I am looking for in this challenge: cheap, effective, and quick gold making techniques that can be used by a player completely new to wow. Good on you Flux!

So with the first few days of my challenge behind me this is how my finances look so far:

So far I couldn't be happier with how I am progressing. With minimal playtime and no boosts of any kind (help from others, heirlooms etc) I already have over 150g and a quick and easy moneymaker locked away for continuing profits. I can only hope that each new trick I try is as good as this one.

The empire continues to grow!

Day 1: A New Beginning

2011-04-07T19:44:00.000+10:00

Well after a very little bit of research I decided my new home for this challenge would be the Aman'thul server - Alliance side. Why those? Aman'thul because it seems to have a decent population and alliance because the Stormwind auction houses look the most 'commercy' (yep, that was the basis of my faction choice). I like the idea of building an empire from a big stone bank instead of from a wooden shack, it'll go way better with my tuxedo, monocle and top hat.

So with my server choice made I stepped out into the world as a fresh human rogue (humans start right next to SW so this was a no brainer, plus the extra rep will save me money if i decide to buy mounts in the future).

Unfortunately due to RL commitments I could only spend about 40 minutes playing today so I didn't get quite as much done as I'd hoped. Having said that I did manage to train skinning and mining and grab a few nodes/pelts which I then threw onto the AH. This part was fairly dicey as I'd completely forgotten about posting costs but luckily I only had a few things to sell so I posted them all with a whopping 61c to spare.

As of writing this post I have made 3 sales bringing my grand total up to around 13.5g! It's a tiny sum in the scheme of things but given I started with nothing, over 10g in just over half an hour makes me very happy.

The first brick has been placed and now the empire will grow around it!

Noob Challenge!

2011-04-06T15:05:00.000+10:00

I have been inspired by this month's blogging carnival over at JMTC: How do you make gold with low Capital? to put my own startup skills to the test and see if I can build a tidy fortune from scratch.

The Challenge:
Start fresh on a new server with no heirlooms, no gold, no friends to boost me... nothing!
The only help I will use will be addons as anyone can get them whenever (sure genuine first time players might not know about them, but really with all the information and detailed guides out there it's not hard to work them out).

I will be updating my progress here whenever I play.

I would like to stay on an oceanic server to minimise lag so if anyone has a suggestion for my new home (Nagrand is my current home), or even a faction/race/class suggestion post it in the comments and I'll be happy to oblige.

Key to Success #2: Opportunity Cost

2011-03-28T21:18:00.001+11:00

Hey long time no see! I've taken a break from wow for the time being to focus on university but that doesn't mean I can't still provide some useful gold making tips while I'm away from the game (they'll just be a little bit more general).

So anyway on with the post:

Opportunity Cost?

The Skinny

Nothing is free. Every action you make in-game or out has an inherent cost attached whether it be time or money or whatever. Opportunity cost is basically what your resources could be doing instead of their current use. Using the pic on the right, the opportunity cost of going into door A is missing out on whatever's behind door B. In wow terms, a common misconception is that anything you farm personally is 'free' but this couldn't be further from the truth. If you farm 2 stacks of ore in 20 minutes sure you may have made 80g but that 80g has cost you 20 minutes that could be spent elsewhere. If you had instead used that 20 minutes to buy herbs, mill them and sell the inks for 200g profit then the opportunity cost of farming is the difference between the two: 200g - 80g = 120g.

It may seem like a fairly simplistic concept but it really is that simple. What it boils down to is ensuring that you spend your time on the most profitable activities possible. What those activities are depends on your tradeskills, market knowledge and server but with a little research and trial it is fairly easy to work out.

Where else it's important

Not only is opportunity cost important in terms of your precious time, it is also critical to consider when stockpiling as well. Whenever you buy a large amount of an item to put away for a future where it will be worth more you should consider other potential uses for the gold you spent. When you invest in the future that gold is tied up indefinitely until you sell the stockpile and cant be put to any more productive uses.

For example: if you buy 10,000g worth of ore today and sell it for 30,000g in three months you've made a 20k profit, not bad. However if you instead used that original 10k to buy items cheap on the weekends and then resell them for more midweek your 10k could be constantly growing and working for you as you can then reinvest larger and larger sums.

This is particularly important for those who don't have a massive bankroll as investing a high proportion of your total gold in stockpiling can be extremely counterproductive. As the old saying goes "it takes money to make money" and a 1,000g profit tomorrow that you can reinvest and continue to grow is worth so much more than a 20,000g profit in 3 months that is useless in the meantime.

My parting thoughts

The most important part of this theory is the fact that there is no universal solution; the most effective money making scheme for one player usually wont be the best for another. Working out what you are best at and cutting down on the less productive activities is the key to maximising your profit.

My snap decision - the results so far.

2011-02-15T12:05:00.000+11:00

Well, 3 days on from my Snap Decision post and hings haven't turned out quite as I had hoped or planned for in the original post. However that's the nature of speculation, sometimes it pays off big other times it doesn't. As the picture below shows, the whiptail market is still flooded with super cheap stacks and it is now mid week.

This would be a problem if my only plan for profiting from my speculation was to flip all of my stacks back onto the auction house. However, as anyone who's had success making gold in wow will tell you "there's more than one way to skin a murloc". So instead of re-listing the mountains of whiptail I had for a significant loss I set to using it in a more financially beneficial way. Not only did I listen to the suggestion from Faid of Nerf Faids of "Darkmoon cards gooooooooooooo!" but I also listed burning embers, inferno ink and blackfallow ink in various stack sizes, made a few mysterious fortune cards, and also a ton of glyphs.

As of writing this post I have made back all but about 4k of my original 15k investment. Not only that but I still have about 400 blackfallow ink left to make more glyphs with as well as about 75 more stacks of whiptail waiting to be milled and heaps of glyphs listed to sell.

What's the moral of the story?

Know your markets. If you are thinking of spending big gold (or any gold) on speculative items do your due diligence first. If it seems like a good deal that's great but make sure that you also have an exit strategy for if your plan falls through that doesn't involve wearing a big loss. If the item only has one use and that doesn't pan out you're screwed, however if the item has several uses the risk diminishes exponentially.

Trying something new

2011-02-14T12:06:00.001+11:00

As usual I made my rounds of the gold blogosphere this morning and found THIS post over at Alto's Gold"ish" Advice which basically details a guest post Alto wrote for JMTC about farming mobs while under the effects of [Potion of Treasure Finding]. Now I usually wouldn't touch farming with a 10 foot pole but Alto has found a great spot to farm using this potion so I thought I'd check it out myself to see if this would be viable for me as another layer of diversification. My results are below:

cash looted: 96g
vendoring [greys]: 71g
13 [green] items disenchanted into:
15 [Hypnotic Dust]: approx 75g*
8 [Lesser Celestial Essence]: approx 120g*
34 [Embersilk Cloth]: approx 100g*
18 [Volatile Fire]: approx 243g*
total: 705g
*these figures are based on monday morning ah prices so may be a bit skewed after weekend trading*

11 [Tiny Treasure Chest] containing:
25g cash
1 [green] item de'ed into:
2 [Hypnotic Dust] : 10g
52 [Embersilk Cloth]: 156g
15 [Pyrite Ore]: 150g
4 [Volatile Fire]: 54g
4 [Volatile Life]: 46g
10 [Volatile Air]: 200g
5 [Volatile Earth]: 67g

Grand Total minus 170g for potion: 1093g

So similar to Alto's results 1100g an hour isn't an amazing return, however I did gain 5 bars of experience in the process which took my paladin to lvl 84. Also I imagine that mid week the ah prices on most of these items would be higher as well.

I'm not sure I'd bother with this again as my time is better spent elsewhere (opportunity cost and whatnot) but it is certainly viable as a way to make decent low-risk gold to bump up your bankroll, especially if you are just starting to try and make some serious gold.

If you want to give it a crack, check out this post at Alto's excellent blog.

Snap decision

2011-02-13T10:42:00.001+11:00

I woke up this morning and did my usual rounds of the gold bloggers on my blogroll and found THIS post from Alto over at ALTOs Gold"ish" Advice. Based on Alto's excellent research (pretty pictures always help), it appears that the recent boom in supply of whiptail from the Uldum zone is over and the incredibly fast node respawn times are no more.

What does this mean for any aspiring Goblins?

If this truly is a hotfix and not just a really unlucky night for Alto, it means that the price of whiptail is going to go back up to a level similar to before patch 4.0.6's explosion in supply. With that in mind I quickly jumped onto my bank toon and purchased all whiptail stacks up to a cost of 100g per stack. The price of a stack of whiptail on my server before supply went crazy hovered between 140g and 200g per stack so I stand to make quite a large profit just by flipping the ~~130 odd~~ **Edit: 200 odd** stacks I just bought.

If on the other hand prices stay low, well I'll just have to be more creative in how I offload so many herbs to recoup my losses but you can be sure that inscription will play a central role.

Taking a leaf out of my own book.

2011-02-13T00:11:00.000+11:00

Dropping off the top sellers list for Alliance Nagrand on The Undermine Journal this weekend has prompted me to take my own advice and expand the markets that I am operating in. To this end I dropped mining on my lvl 70 druid (who already has 450 JC) and picked up Alchemy as a transmute master should work nicely in synergy with Jewelcrafting. Not only this but I figured that the weekend was the perfect time to powerlevel a new profession thanks to an abundance of cheap herbs on the auction house. As a result I have been questing like mad today in an effort to hit lvl 75 and open cataclysm crafting as soon as possible which has slightly curtailed my gold making activities but the end result should be more than worth it.

My main reasoning behind this decision is the fact that I want to grow my earning capacity and as my first Key to Success post explains, diversifying is a great way to achieve this. Alchemy/JC was an easy choice for this due to the fact that ore prices have been steadily dropping lately while demand for cut gems is still strong. Guilds are starting to down raid bosses and need to fill all those empty sockets introduced to epics with patch 4.0.6 so there is plenty of opportunity for profit here.

Hopefully I'll hit lvl 75 in the next day or two and then I'll update shortly after that with the initial results and my impressions of sales so far.

Key to Success #1: Multiple Markets

2011-02-10T21:26:00.000+11:00

What's this all about?
This post marks the first in what will be an ongoing series of "Key to Success" posts. At this stage I am hoping to post one of these per week and they will be aimed at highlighting the fundamentals that any aspiring auction house goblin should know and use. So anyway, one with number 1...

Taking advantage of multiple markets.

The long and the short of it

Up first is a relatively uncomplicated concept to understand and implement. The short story is basically that if you sell across more than one market instead of putting all of your eggs in one basket, you will make a lot more gold. Diversification is the key to big time results for the simple reason that if one market tanks you still have several other markets to keep your profits solid until it recovers. In effect if you find an area is in a major slump your daily/weekly/monthly profits will not be too badly affected. On the other hand, if you have everything invested into one market and the bottom falls out due to whatever reason you are basically screwed.

How to go about it

Research is the key to success in diversification, find areas that will provide consistent sales on your server and then climb on board the gravy train. Finding these multiple markets does not necessarily mean finding the three or four biggest volume markets on your server as these typically have the most competition and are often rife with deep undercutting and generally frustrating behavior. The strategy that I have found to work best is to focus on a single big ticket area (in my case glyphs) as well as a bunch of smaller areas as well (bags, enchanting rods, darkmoon cards, ore shuffling, flipping etc).

This is a rough breakdown of my recent sales on the auction house from The Undermine Journal (a fantastic resource and awesome to see it back in action!). As it shows, I get a majority of my sales from the glyph market with about 1/3 coming from other sources.

I am not particularly happy with this as I am relying a little too much on one source for income so I am branching into other markets as we speak (my jewelcrafter/alchemist is a hair away from lvl 75 and all the cataclysm recipes). But still the basic principle is reflected in the above graph; if for some reason the glyph market takes a tumble one week I haven't lost 100% of my earning capabilities.

In my regular travails around the wow blogosphere I found a paragraph written by Markco over at his awesome site Just My Two Copper which sums up how to successfully diversify perfectly:

"Keep in mind that diversification does not mean equal attention to all markets. You should plan and set different amounts of crafting depending on which markets perform the best. No different then investing in the stock market, you wouldn't put all your money into the worst performing stock nor would you put equal amounts into every stock you invest in. Diversify but put intelligent analysis behind it."

That last sentence is the kicker. Backup whatever moves you chose to make with adequate research and analysis and you can't go wrong.

Darkmoon Faire Opportunities

2011-02-07T18:00:00.000+11:00

There are numerous opportunities for cash that come with the advent of the Darkmoon Faire each month which can increase your bankroll significantly for very little effort. Altolycus over at ALTO's Gold"ish" Advice has a great rundown of stuff within the faire boundaries itself so I'm going to focus on the Darkmoon Card side of things.

For Scribes
The first port of call for scribes is of course to make and sell your own darkmoon decks and it is pretty much a no-brainer: buy herbs and volatile life when it is cheap (especially on the weekend) > make cards > convert to decks then trinkets > profit.

There are 2 other ways that scribes can profit from darkmoon cards that can prove every bit as effective as making and selling completed trinkets.

1) INDIVIDUAL CARDS:
Selling cards individually on the auction house or over trade chat can net you some nice income if you don't have enough to complete a set or simply can't be bothered. Once again scribes can make these directly to post but there are a few other ways to help increase profits.

Firstly you can watch the auction house for any cheaper than average cards to flip (usually easy to pickup on the weekend). Secondly, if you get unlucky with the RNG in your crafting and only get the least valuable cards on your server (most stones cards on mine), you can try to trade them over /2 or create a dedicated card trading channel and advertise that. Doing this you should be able to trade away your less valuable cards for ones that will turn a nice profit when auctioned.

2) SELLING DECK TURN-INS
Yep. Although it seems like small potatoes compared to what you can make selling the cards, decks and trinkets themselves, you can make some nice bonus gold for no effort at all. It is super easy to do too, when you want to turn in your completed decks just advertise in /2 that you are selling darkmoone faire rep turn-ins for however much you think you can get. I tend to have most success in to 100-200g range but really, depending on the buyers on your server the sky is the limit.
One thing that must be considered when doing this to make it very clear to any buyers that you are selling the reputation only and the completed trinket must be returned after the turn-in takes place. Demand something as collateral if you want but make sure you are covered against the "haha thanks for the trinket n00b! lolz" people that are out there.

For Non Scribes - Flipping
Yes it's a fairly boring option but if you don't have a toon with maxed inscription buying trinkets off the auction house then flipping them for profit is still a viable way to make some cash. This is especially useful at the start of the darkmoon faire week (umm... now!) as there is generally an influx of trinkets as people have been sitting on their decks for 3 weeks waiting to turn them in.

The above picture is from my server this morning. The day before the faire started there was maybe one ore two trinkets TOTAL up for auction across the four different types. Not only this but during non faire times, each category sells for anywhere between 25% and 75% more than the prices above.

So there you have it, a couple of ways to make some nice gold while the darkmoon faire is in town. If I've left anything out or got something wrong feel free to let me know in the comments, otherwise stay tuned for more posts soon...

Auction House Junkies FTW!

2011-02-06T18:08:00.000+11:00

Following in the footsteps of many distinguished gold bloggers before me I would like to add my two cents on the new podcast by Cold and Wes called Auction House Junkies.

As the name suggests this is a podcast which should be right down your alley if you are reading my gold blog (which you are) as Cold and Wes bring their goblin ideals and ideas straight to your earholes.
While it's still a little rough around the edges they have managed to put together a very interesting and detailed two shows so far and it's clear that the guys share a good rapport and are also very knowledgeable about making wow gold.

It is a very easy podcast to listen to while I mill herbs and do my daily auctioning routine and the cameos from Hagor da Goblin have me in stitches every time - hilarious!

Keep up the good work guys!

New name, new focus! Also, Darkmoon Cards and big $$$

2011-02-05T20:00:00.001+11:00

I'm Back!

After a fairly long hiatus I've decided to return to the blogging scene with a more refined focus. From now on this blog will be about the subtle art of making a Scrooge McDuck style vault full of wowgold for my toons to swim around in as I push towards the new gold cap of 1,000,000g.

Or ski in if they so desire.

Hopefully along the way I can share some useful and interesting tips for all the other budding goblins out there. So with that out of the way, lets talk gold.

Darkmoon Cards

I've been hovering at around only 5k liquid lately as I have invested very heavily into making the new darkmoon cards. I haven't been keeping proper records of my spending on herbs and volatile life stacks but at a guess I would have spent around 60k gold total. The reason I've been putting all of my eggs into the darkmoon basket so to speak is the fact that there is still a very limited supply of the various trinkets on my server. As I go about my daily auctioning routine I generally check the prices of these trinkets only to often find that there are none for sale at all. Coupled with the extremely limited supply is the fact that this early in the expansion and with only the first tier of raiding available there are very few substitute trinkets so demand is high as well. It is basically a no-brainer: make cards > turn them into trinkets > profit.

What I have gotten in return and the usual sale price per item on the ah on my server for the completed trinkets (as I will be turning in the cards and selling the trinkets themselves):
- 3 x Hurricane Deck (30k+ each)
- 2 x Earthquake Deck (15k each)
- 2 x Volcanic Deck (30k+ each)
- 1 x Tsunami Deck (35k+)

Total if all sell at the above prices = 215k for a total profit of 155,000 gold. Not bad for a few hours spread over a few weeks.

The darkmoon faire starts tomorrow and given that it's the weekend herbs and volatiles are super cheap so I may even manage to squeeze out a few more decks to pump up the profits even more.

The state of dungeons past, present and future

2010-09-29T18:25:00.002+10:00

This post was originally a comment on Windpaw's most recent blog Blame the Casuals over at Shock and Paw, but due to its length I figured I might as well make a post out of it. In that post Windpaw talks about the reactions to the 'hardening up' as I call it of dungeon content in the upcoming Cataclysm. While Windpaw agrees that heroics in particular are very easy in Wrath often to the detriment of the playerbase, he (she? not sure...) correctly points out that this is the most profitable way for Blizz to operate as casuals make up the majority of wow players and as a result the majority of the money made. In the end it comes down to a happy medium of keeping both the casual cashcows (no offence intended, I am one of these) and the hardcore minority satisfied.

I couldn't agree more. Hopefully Blizzard finds that happy medium between the faceroll that heroics have become in the later stages of Wrath and the super hard progression of BC.

In the beginning Wrath heroics weren't easy and things like the faction specific boss in the Nexus could decimate a pug with a well timed whirlwind. As Len points out though, the ilvls of gear has inflated to such a degree that of course content designed to be a challenge with ilvl 200 blues and quest greens will be a breeze for ICC geared supergroups.

The problem comes through the fact that the new tier of badge rewards for heroics scales past the most recent raid content when a new patch drops. In BC you had to grind your way up through Kara and ZA etc in a logical progression to the next step - there were no shortcuts to the hardest raid of the time. Now that you can ding 80 and jump from quest rewards to ToC25 standard (or better) gear in a number of days without necessarily seeing the inside of a raid the disparity between 5 man heroics and the top content becomes that much more polarised.

In BC (on my server at least) the raiding guilds were fairly evenly represented across all levels of raids from the entry level Kara to the top-flight Black Temple/Sunwell. In Wrath these days there is no middle ground, you are either in the top available raiding content or getting cheap shinies through heroics to get into the top tier content. The only time I see people running a raid that isn't ICC these days is either for the weekly quest (which is a 5 minute blitz of one boss then everyone disappears in a puff of smoke), or to get mounts and achievements etc.

One of many, many deaths in Karazhan

Having been alternately a hordcore 4 night a week raider and a casual zero night a week raider over my 3 years in wow I've been able to see both sides of this particular coin. The guild I was in in BC had to grind every inch of Kara beginning with weeks on the first boss Attumen and a slow progression through the entire place. Only after we had that well and truly licked could we move up and start again on the next level of raiding content.

Comparing that to my raiding experience in Wrath there is a massive difference. Take for example my 10 man guild's entry into ToC 10 when it was first released. The first few nights we struggled through, but by a month in we were knocking it over in under an hour, or running a full alt run and not going much slower thanks to the gear those alts could grab from a few days of heroics.

It is a tough balancing act to find a nice place between the hard grind progression of BC and the insta-gearing in Wrath.

I'm not sure that making heroics super hard is the answer here. It is inevitable that the longer an expansion goes on, the easier heroics will be to clear thanks to increasingly geared players and the individual boss strategies being ingrained in muscle memory after x number of runs. Sure hard heroics will be hard to begin with, but sooner or later they won't be hard any more.

What I'd love to see in Cataclysm is some method that finds players progressing through raiding content more instead of just skipping it all to zerg the latest and greatest instance. I'm not saying we should go back to the days of banging our collective heads against boss walls because they were the next step in the chain, but some method to keep content that is not brand new relevant would be nice. There are a number of things that could help with this:
- reduce the number of emblems (or whatever the new reward system is called) gained for each heroic/raid to slow the gearing process from its current lightspeed.
- reduce the frequency of new tier gear being released or at least limit some of it to raid drops only.
- make some raids sequential ie. in order to enter one raid you must have completed a certain assignment in the previous tier's raid (sort of like old-school attunements but not so rigourous and time consuming).

These suggestions may be totally unrealistic etc etc, but I feel stuff like this will help to stretch out content and keep it relevant. You will never be able to stop the uber guilds from blitzing through content the week it's released, and likewise other less skilled/time limited players will always struggle to some degree. However this way progression raiders will still get a challenge from cutting edge content, the middle band will progress at a slightly slower pace and casuals will still be able to see new content and progress and gear too, albeit slower than the lighning speed they are now.

What do you think?

-Seal

Once in a lifetime

2010-09-28T15:48:00.000+10:00

Saturday was an incredible day. A once in a lifetime experience.

I happened to be one of the 100,018 people at the MCG who witnessed only the 3rd ever drawn AFL Grand Final, and the first in my lifetime. It was a truly incredible experience and I am extremely glad that I got up and queued for a seat at 4am the morning of. I'll be there again this weekend for the rematch and seeing that I am a supporter of neither St. Kilda or Collingwood (thank god) will happily cheer for another draw.

How does this relate to wow?

Well it got me thinking about the one-off events that occur in-game. I remember with great fondness the zombie invasion that preceeded the launch of WotLK. It was totally unique event whether you were desperately defending your home city against relentless waves of the living dead or (like me) laughing over the corpses of the Stormwind audctioneers before running off to turn more heroes into mindless killing machines. Basically it was full to the brim with win. It was fun.

Darkshire has had its share of troubles in the past

Another one that comes to mind is the opening of the gates to Ahn'Qiraj. I started playing after BC was released so unfortunately couldn't get involved with this one but from everything I've read about it, the AQ questline and resulting world event was a truly epic undertaking. It took the cooperation of luterally hundreds of players and several months of effort to complete and all the way through was chock-a-block full of pure win.

The most players I've seen in the same place at the same time outside a city

What I'm getting at was the fact that these were truly unforgettable, once in a lifetime events. Compared to most other facets of the game they took unprecedented amounts of cooperative effort and caused world changing repurcussions. Running through a Stormwind almost totally devoid of players or NPC's only to be chased down by a pack of zombies gave me a shiver down the spine moment and I'm sure hordes of epic bosses pouring forth from the just opened gates of AQ would've done the same if I was there to see it.

The reason I bring it up is that I feel Wrath hasn't had one of these moments yet. The closest thing I can think of is the Wrathgate questline which culminated in an amazing cutscene movie and a quest into the depths of undercity with your respective faction's leaders. The difference however was that this questline didn't require the cooperation of even 2 players to follow to its epic conclusion. It was merely a series a single player quests with a super cool ending. The other one that springs to mind is the battle for Gnomergan (alliance side) which opened up a few weeks ago. This was cute for sure, but it felt fairly uninspiring. I didn't kill or even attack a single enemy and Gnomer was saved. There was no player cooperation or coordination required (although, staying behind Mechatorque did require coordinted yelling at various people) and the NPC's did all the work.

What I'm desperately hoping for is a throwback to these old-school epic server wide events. I'm hoping that the pre-Cataclysm event will be as awesome as the zombie infestation before Wrath and will engage the entire server. Blizzard is very very good at making things feel truly epic but I'd love something that captures the minds of entire factions on the server and shakes people out of the anti-social tendencies we've picked up as the game has become more and more streamlined. As much as I love 15 minute random heroics with 4 silent killers at my side sometimes it's just not enough.

The most rewarding things in life are those you have to work hardest to achieve.

-Seal

Nothing much happening - A call for topics!

2010-09-23T15:13:00.002+10:00

In case you can't tell by the obvious lack of posts rolling out, there isn't much going on in wow at the moment. Along with almost everyone else out there I am more or less in a holding pattern until Cataclysm or at least 4.0.1 is released. I guess I've just lost that loving feeling for the time being...

The mustache/aviator combo: compulsory in every 80's movie

Having said that however, I have still been playing the auction house trying to stockpile some stuff to craft/sell in cataclysm (netherweave and frostweave for bags, glyphs for the big reshuffle etc) as well as making enough through sales of various whatevers to cover all my investments.

So anyway I am issuing a call for ideas for stuff to blog about. Throw anything you want me to tackle in a comment for this post. No topic is too small, none to broad. If you want to try and confuse me* so I chase my tail around the page for an entire post, have at it... the possibilities are endless!

*Ideas by Jonesy will be screened thoroughly before being accepted.

State of the economy/my wow wallet

2010-09-15T11:44:00.000+10:00

Following up from my last post on the 3 stages of an expansion I have been hitting the auction house lately to keep things interesting in the winding down of wrath. I've continued in my attempts to goblin it up and make some nice cash before the Cataclysm release date is announced and the bottom falls out of the market faster than a redhead getting sunburnt on a hot day. I've enjoyed pretty good success and over the past week I've pulled in almost 15,000g which given the fickle state of the Nagrand AH and my relatively small knowledge the wow economy is an effort I'm very pleased with.

So what's been hard about it then you might ask?

Nagrand suffers from saturation and/or AH campers in most markets you can think of (glyphs rarely get above 4g etc) whilst mats that based on my reading around the blogosphere should be realtively cheap are very expensive almost all the time. An example of this is the fact that the combined price of saronite ore and eternal earth mean the saronite shuffle is only profitable if you luck out and get one-off cheap prices. Campers are a bit of a strange but annoying issue as they are very haphazardly hitting markets like glyphs, enchanting scrolls and runescrolls for a few days at a time and then dissappearing again. All in all this makes for a highly volatile market for most of the items that are bread-and-butter sellers.

How have I combatted these huge (small) problems?

The main strategy I've used is something that works as well in wow as in the real world: diversification. I have maxed (or near enough to it) tailoring, jewelcrafting, enchanting, inscription and alchemy (transmute spec) and I make and sell items from all of these instead of just focussing on one or two things. As a result, if the glyph and enchanting scroll markets are pushed down by a camper or for whatever other reason are not as profitable as I want, I can sell bags and gems etc and still turn a good profit. As you can see in the pictures below of my beancounter data on various items my profits are spread across a lot of different areas so if a particular market collapses I only lose a small portion of my overall earning power.

Along with crafting and selling up a storm I've also begun stockpiling a few things in preparation for Cataclysm:

- Netherweave bags: these currently sell for between 7.5g and 20g but given the massive number of worgen that are bound to be rolled there will be a massive increase in demand for these puppies and it is a goldmine in the making.

- Runecloth: the same goes for runecloth as for bags. A big number of those new ~~werewolves~~ worgen are going to want to rep up fast through runecloth turnins.

- Ink/glyphs: with the changes to glyphing in the new expansion there will be an explosion of demand for all glyphs at the start of Cata as well as a ridiculous increase in the cost of mats for a while so a decent stock of the various inks and glyphs is easy money.

So the basic moral of the story is that if you want to make money in wow ensure you every avenue available to you as putting all your eggs in one basket will always end in tears sooner or later. Oh, and also Cataclysm is an absolute goldmine in the making so get onboard the gravy train!

-Seal

The 3 stages of an expansion (denial and acceptance not included)

2010-09-12T16:32:00.000+10:00

I know, I know, I haven't posted in ages so as an apology here's an extra long one.

I was talking to my GM the other day and he bemoaned the fact that I've been extremely lax and haven't posted in quite a while. I told him that if he gave me an interesting topic to write about I'd get off my proverbial and pump out some word soup. So here it is, a topic courtesy of Litter:

The game cycle from expansion to expansion.

This struck me as a particularly pertinent topic since we are all, as a wow community holding our collective breath in anticipation of a release date announcement from Blizzard for Cataclysm. Having rolled it about in my brain for a few days after the initial discussion with Litter, I decided that each expansion can be broken down into three key segments so strap in, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

1: Cataclysm's out KA-BOOM! (the post x-pac explosion)

General:
This one pretty much speaks for itself. The initial post expansion time is more or less totally insane. Servers' active populations go totally ballistic as old players come back to the game and current ones take time off work/school and basically do whatever they can to play as much as possible. Server instability can be an issue and don't even think of logging in without expecting a long queue (followed by a devastating disconnect if you happen to have logged previously in a major city). From a general play perspective this means you will never struggle to find a group for [kill random elite with 5 buddies] quests, random dungeons or whatever else and everyone is basking in the afterglow of masses of new content.

For a guild this is also an exciting time. Old guildies who took a break or stopped playing completely may be dragged back in by the lure of all the new shinies. There is a wealth of new content to experience together as you all rush to the new lvl cap and then furiously gear up for those first raids.
While its a great time to be in a guild with people you enjoy playing with, this time in the cycle can be tough on a guild's leadership as every man and his dog suddenly has the time and willingness to raid. It is often a very delicate process to determine the raiding make-up and it is almost guaranteed that at least one person will be unhappy to miss out.

This is also a crazy time for the in game economy as tradeskills receive an influx of new recipes to make and materials to farm. In this initial period mats in particular experience extreme inflation as all those with previously maxed skills push to the new trade-skill level cap. It's a great time to have gathering professions as even the most common items will sell for outrageous amounts. I remember when Wrath dropped I was selling stacks of borean leather for north of 80g, oh how I miss the good old days. In short: you can make a fortune early on with minimal effort or knowledge just ah everything you pick up.

2. The custard donut days (the smooth middle bit)

This period is the time where most aspects of play stabilise. There are daily quests to be done, random dungeons etc. and everyone knows what they're about. Servers are much better behaved with all the issues caused by massive numbers of players on at once a thing of the past.

These are the golden days for guilds. Typically this is a magical time for guild leadership as the core raid group is stable and bosses surrender their loot with willful abandon. Provided your guild isn't a complete mess you will progress to some degree and everyone will be happy. Foam sword fights in raid lobbies and pranks on druids by binding them on vent are frequent and hilarious.

This is also a great time to make money if that's your bag. The rampant inflation of the early days is over and prices settle down to some semblance of equilibrium so anyone with tradeskills and any amount of common sense can make gold.

Basically, the middle days are nice.

3. The beginning of the end (nope... that's pretty much it)

The third and final segment of the expansion lifecycle is like that girl you hooked up with at a random party and then dated for a little while: She seems pretty good to begin with, but soon the cracks (annoying laugh, slightly jealous etc) start to show and things degenerate until you've got a crazy stalker on your hands. Well maybe that was a bit over the top, but the general point is that for the most part its a downhill lside to the next expansion once the beta begins.

Everyone slows down because really, whats the point of grinding for that shiny new axe when the best weapon in the game currently will be replaced immediately by a blue or a quest green. For some guilds, the burnout experienced by running the same content for months on end is slow death-sentence. It's one of those unfortunate circumstances where guilds can be victims of their own success and implode once their goals are accomplished. It is extremely hard for officers to keep restless guildies motivated to raid the same content week in, week out for months on end (or a whole year in the case of ICC).

To Blizzard's credit they have gone some way towards combatting this by introducing achievements and hard modes into Wrath content. My own guild Scrubs n Nubs has been a beneficiary of this and I can appreciate the brilliance behind it. As a semi-casual 10-man raiding guild Scrubs had cleared all 10-man content with the exception of LK hard mode about 3 months ago. What followed was a two month headbutting contest with ol' frosty pants which ended with Arthas down and our raiders haveing cleared all 10 man Wrath content and sporting shiny new "Bane of the Fallen King" titles (a rarity on my server). Now if it wasn't for hardmodes being introduced (along with the strength of the guild's leadership), Scrubs would've completed all 10 man content 4 or 5 months ago and been stuck in that no-mans land between expansions.

Not only is there a raiding no-mans land before a new expansion hits, the economy also declines more and more rapidly as an x-pac approaches. This is both a problem and an opportunity as while the tried and true methods for making gold *cough* saronite shuffle *cough* slowly become unprofitable, there are endless opportunities for a shrewd investor to stockpile items that are cheap now but will skyrocket once the new content is available. (I won't detail stockpiling here as there are lists all over the wow blogosphere).

All in all, the nearer a new expansion gets, the more rapidly the winding-down effect occurs for the previous content and that is the third and final stage. Everyone who hangs around and doesn't take a break has different goals they want accomplished before new content drags them away, but these tend to be fairly insular and don't engender social play as much as activities in the earlier stages.

So there you have it! That's my take on the expansion life-cycle I hope you've enjoyed the ride.

-Seal

PS. In the interests of encouraging someone, (anyone) to comment here's a question: what's your stage 3 like at the moment and what are you doing in the lead-up to Cataclysm? (My next post will be what I'm doing until Cata drops)

Update time

2010-08-25T15:03:00.000+10:00

I haven't posted for a while so I figure it's time to mention what I've been up to lately.

I've continued in my attempts to make some nice cash before Cataclysm drops and have added a bit of diversification to my budding enterprise. In addition to my current inscription business (mostly vellums and runescrolls at the moment) I finally levelled both alchemy and jewelcrafting to max on some alts. So mostly I've been having a go at the old saronite shuffle and throwing in the odd transmute and hoping that my transmute mastery procs some extra goodies.

It's too early yet to gauge if the profit from the shuffle is worth the time spent but I should get a clearer picture over the next week or so. With that all said and done I'm currently sitting on a little over 15k as well as having just spent 5k on epic flying for an alt which was a reward for all my good work.

Now that I have a bit more spare time I hope to see those numbers start to tick upwards more rapidly in the coming days.

-Seal

Of Worgen, Death Knights and Wankers

2010-08-14T15:29:00.000+10:00

A mate of mine suggested I do a post on what he considered the most universally hated class in the game: the Death Knight. Now I personally don't mind DK's so I was interested to find out why Jonesy thought they wqere so despised by the playing community - and him in particular.

His response was that when Wrath hit every man and his dog started playing a DK. This of course meant that all the rude, ignorant, chip-on-their-shoulder idiots were playing them as well which lead to largely unpleasant and unenjoyable random dungeon running almost every time a DK was involved. Now don't get me wrong neither he, nor I are saying that every Death Knight player is an obnoxious 12 year old but it did seem that the majority of DK's encountered outside of a well put together raid were muppets.

Pictured: Muppets

Now this perception may just be a product of the fact that, as a general rule bad players attract a lot more attention than good players especially in a random dungeon. I personally never point in guild chat out that dps who was pumping out solid numbers whilst never pulling aggro or the healer who never went OOM and kept everyone 100% topped up. However I do point out the chump doing half the dps of the tank who stands in every fire/ooze/ice patch the entire run. Hilarious and often frustrating incompetence is far more noticable than an efficient silent killer.

This leads me to the point of this post: Will this happen with Worgen when Cataclysm hits?

With the undoubtedly massive numbers of people (me included) starting fresh Worgen toons in the new expansion it goes without saying that at least some of these people will be hopelessly ignorant players. As such, I can't help but wonder whether Worgen will be the new DK's in the esteemed eyes of Jonesy, myself and many others. Will the actions of a minority of the new werewolf players stand out so much that seeing a couple of the furry little critters zone into a random dungeon will precipitate mass eye rolling and groans of frustration?

What do you think?

-Seal

Gold Making Update

2010-08-10T16:58:00.001+10:00

Farming in Silithus is still working well for me as Encrypted Twilight Text continues to sell fairly regularly for around 6g each not to mention all the runecloth and green items that drop too. Along with this I have started skinning the Scorpids on my way between camps (there are 3 different kinds I think) for Rugged Leather which sells for around 20-25g a stack. Along with that, there are mithril ore deposits all over the place which is a nice bonus as Mithril in both ore and bar form sells like crazy.
At this rate, I will continue farming in Silithus into the foreseeable future. I can't see the demand for Encrypted Twilight Texts droping as stacks can be turned in for Cenarion Circle rep so there should always be a market for them with rep grinders looking to avoid spending extra time.

On top of that I've jumped back onto inscription in a limited capacity through buying when the herbs are cheap and spitting out Armor and Weapon Vellums which are both selling pretty well too.

So the running total for about a week and a half is 12.5k... yay!!!

Over the next few days I plan to power-level jewelcrafting (it's about lvl 200 at the moment) so that should contribute to my profits nicely once it's up to speed.

-Seal

Getting a little excited.

2010-08-07T18:00:00.003+10:00

I just finished reading Chase Christian's latest Encrypted Text (see it here) about his rogueish experiences in the Cataclysm beta. I have one word to say...

...Awesome

And now some more words: Chase's impressions of the rogue's skills additions and modifications made me very, very excited about playing a rogue come expansion time. Although it was a long time ago when I levelled Sealskjaers to 80, my enduring memory of that time is of buying half a bag of food every time I went back to town. As all other non self-healing classes will agree, sitting down for 15 odd seconds to replenish your health bar is a repetitive excercise in frustration. Not any more though!

With the addition of Recuperate and Deadly Momentum to our bag of tricks the days of sitting idle are long gone. Not only do we have a self-heal ability, we are compelled to be chain pulling engines of mass destruction.

Pictured: Chain pulling engines of mass destruction.

I know a lot of people are bemoaning the fact that Blizzard are making classes and the 3 specs within each class more generic to fit in with their whole "bring the player no the class" ideology. However Blizz seem to have taken a step in the exact opposite direction with their redesign of the rogue talent trees. I may be completely wrong - and if I am feel free to ridicule me in the comments section - but with the rogue talent redesign not only do we have greatly decreased downtime, we have three increasingly unique specs to choose from.

Where once there was stealth killing (subtlety), stealth lite (assassination), and very little stealth mostly hack and slash (Combat) there are now three very different paths to choose from where hacking down armies bad guys is concerned. Now we have subtlety's super stealth ninja, assassination's tricksy master poisoner, and the head-on juggernaut of combat and ultimately, three very different playstyles to choose from. With any luck this means combat's old 1 1 1 1 2 levelling style is well and truly dead and buried.

With that all said, I can't help but be excited for the release of Cataclysm. Now the only problem is deciding which spec to choose.

-Seal

Makin' some gold

2010-08-06T09:37:00.002+10:00

I am a shameless spendthrift when it comes to the auction house. If there's gold in may bags, odds are that gold is going straight to the AH to buy some new shiny goodies for my army of alts. After all, my level 23 priest shouldn't have to go barefoot or hat-less through the early stages of the game. It's just not proper I say!

Having said that, for the last week or so I have been trying to earn and save... yes save a nice hoard of gold in preparation for Cataclysm and the massive spending opportunities therein. It has not been easy. Those leveling enchants and non BoP quest items whisper sweet nothings to me every time I hit up the AH to post some more loot for sale. However my willpower has been rewarded as I have made around 10k gold, that's right 10,000 big ones in the last week not to mention the value of all the other bits and pieces I currently have for sale. As a player whose biggest bank balance before this point was 8k. To say this is a little exciting is an understatement along the lines of a random telling me that my level 8 might be a little low to solo Hogger.

The following is an account of said understatement:
Random: Hey wanna group for Hogger?
Squishy lvl 8 Me: Nah I've got him covered.
Random: Are you sure? You're only lvl 8 and he's lvl 10 elite.
Me: It's cool, watch me beat him down.
Random: Such a shame... *wipes remains of lvl 8 Seal from his cape*

But Seal, how did you amass such vast wealth?
I'm glad you asked.

Step 1: Clearing out the junk.
Thanks to my 5 level 80's I had a massive amount of random items like mid level enchanting mats, random cloth stacks and lowbie cooking recipes like Recipe: Lean Wolf Steak. So all of these went over to my forgotten protection warrior/makeshift bank toon and went up for sale. This pile of seeming junk netted me almost 2k over a few days as it all slowly sold.

Moral for step 1: Don't sell stuff you pick up because at first glance it looks useless. Sometimes those random nothings have great value to other players so put them all on the ah. Even sales of 50s add up if you post enough items.

Step 2: The Silithus Shuffle aka "the real moneymaker"
So here it is after paragraphs of me getting distracted: the method that has made me rich, well relatively rich anyway. I just jumped on my 80 rogue Sealskjaers, emptied my bags and headed to Silithus in southern Kalimdor. Once there I moved between the 3 Twilight's Hammer camps and slaughtered at will. These guys drop runecloth which sells for around 5-6g per stack on my server plus occasionally a lvl 55-60 green item which can be disenchanted into Illusion Dust or Greater Eternal Essence both of which sell for upwards of 40g per stack.

These 2 are just bonusses though as the real moneymaker is the Encrypted Twilight Text which drops about 33% of the time from any Twilight's Hammer baddie. These puppies are a a flat out fantastic earner. I sell them for around 6g each in stacks of 5 and for the last week at least they have all sold as the shot below shows.

On my server nobody else is selling them and they are super easy to farm as the respawn rate of the mobs is fast enough that you can continually clear the 3 camps with no downtime. As an added bonus the Twilight Prophet wanders around and she drops 7-10 in one fell swoop. Thats 60g worth from 1 mob!! As a result I can farm 600-1,000g worth of stuff in an hour with absolutely no hassles.

Moral for step 2: Silithus is awesome! Go there and check it out for yourself, Brian Fantana agrees that "60% of the time it works every time".

Anyway I'm off to Silithus to make some more cash. Bye

-Seal

Elling Trias: Master of Cheese/Master of Time Travel!

2010-08-05T16:16:00.000+10:00

I actually paused to read the quest text in SW on my priest alt only to find that the funky smell hanging round Elling Trias in the Stormwind cheese shop isn't just mouldy cheese, it's prophecy too! (Mostly its mouldy cheese)

A man with an eyepatch is suspect enough, but when that man is also a time travelling master of cheese my dodgy meter goes right off the charts.

Beginnings

2010-08-05T15:56:00.000+10:00

Seeing that this is the first ever blog post that I've ever done... ever I guess you'll be wanting the who and why.

I'm a 23 year old Aussie bloke from Melbourne who works a bit, studies a bit and plays casual World of Warcraft with a night elf rogue main. I've been playing wow for almost 3 years now on the Oceanic Servers and am currently in the rockingest guild on Nagrand: Scrubs n Nubs.

Sealskjaers the night elf rogue is my main, but I am an compulsive altaholic with 4 other 80's: Paladin, Warrior, Mage and DK. Along with these I have a handful of other toons in various stages of leveledness (editor's note: leveldness may or may not be a word) that I keep meaning to go back to but always end up getting distrac... hey shiny red ball!

Why blog you ask?

Why not? I've been reading wow blogs for ages now and they really enrich the overall wow experience so I figured maybe I could join this awesome community and entertain *fingers crossed* some people while I'm at it.

Well there you have it. The getting to know me bit is over to stay tuned for an actually interesting post soon.

-Seal

PS. I apologise for the rudimentary nature of the site at the moment. While I'm young enough to not be totally computer illiterate the finer points of technology often elude me. Hopefully it'll come together over the next little while.