What Level is Your WoW Gold Making Skill?

There are so many skills and abilities that are easily measurable in World of Warcraft. Character, Profession, Items, Durability, Progression levels and more are all easily tracked and compared. However, the ability to generate WoW wealth remains subjective at best. A player makes a few gold and suddenly starts thinking that they’ve mastered the gold making meta-game. So how can we tell how good a player is at wealth generation? What metrics do we use to measure gold making success?

In response to these, and other questions, we offer the following assessment chart.

The Casual

The casual trader is the player that posts the occasional item in the Auction House but for the most part finds the entire experience frustrating. When they do trade, they complain of ‘over priced’ goods (before they buy them anyway) and undercutters (and yet, they still will attempt to post). These are the players that selling items in /trade chat for half of what they go for in the AH just because they “don’t want to have to deal with the AH.”

Trading Tools Used: Begging, complaining and delinquent loans
Market Outlook: “There’s a market? Do they sell fruit and vegetables?”

The Apprentice

These are players who have developed an awareness of the gold making game but have no taste for participation themselves. They claim to make ‘enough’ gold for their needs through dailies and selling the occasional items in the AH. They lack a concept of pricing , market cycles, or marketing strategy. Often sells their profession cooldowns. More often than not, these players are also people that have been playing for a while and are accomplished at one or more aspects of the game.

Trading Tools Used: WoW.com, MMO Champion, a few generalist WoW blogs and buying gold for cash.
Market Outlook: “OMG get a life! Who needs that much gold anyway? You only need enough for your mount, riding skill and repairs. Why be greedy?”

The Understudy

Many serious gold makers start their journeys in the role of The Understudy. These are the people who farm relentlessly and supply others with their raw materials or provide dungeon run throughs or boosts. They are capable of making a few hundred gold a day and are usually happy with the results. At some point, however, The Understudy will begin to question just what all the materials are used for and will sometimes even ask around or start reading the WoW gold blogs. In fact, this awareness (that there is more to be had and a desire to get it) is the very moment at which they begin to progress to the next level of the gold making meta-game.

Trading Tools Used: Gatherer and similar farming mods, route planning and daily consolodation web sites and suggestions, upgraded fishing rods.
Market Outlook: “How does he have so much gold?”

The Artisan

This is the beginning of the journey to WoW gold master. The Artisan has a preferred method of making gold but is usually restricted to a single or very few markets. These players enjoy the gold making game and often are on the lookout for opportunities. They usually read at least one of the WoW gold blogs and stay up to date with coming changes to the economy. These players will have maxed out professions and usually a few very rare recipes. They buy and sell profitably and will often advertise their skills and goods in /trade chat.

Trading Tools Used: Auctioneer and possibly other AH tools, analysis and pursuit of the most profitable daily quests and activities.
Market Outlook: “I wonder if I can hit the gold cap? How long will it take?”

The Master of Markets

This trader is very similar to the artisan but takes their mastery of the Auction House to the extreme. These players often have multiple methods of supply for their crafting needs and strictly manage costs. They often dominate very specific markets and are always hunting for more. They understand the more complex aspects of WoWenomics and use spreadsheets, cost analysis and various crafting mods. They are restricted only by their supply and time investment limitations. They are often at least familiar with their biggest competitors.

Trading Tools Used: Auctioneer and related add-ons, QA2, Other AH mod and interface tools, the default friends list, personal banker guilds, steady supply of farmers and exploitation of trading noobs.
Market Outlook: “This current amount of daily profits is nice, but how can I make even more?”

The WoW Tycoon

The Tycoon is most easily defined by the fact that he is quite often not as aware of his competition as the competition is of him. As soon as the Tycoon logs in, his competition breaths a collective sigh and prepares for returned auctions. The Tycoon dominates market segments through a careful mix of scalable supply, demand interpretation, cost management and pricing strategy. They often have their methods of profit perfected and are impervious to all but the best competitors. At this stage of the gold making game, they also end up spending less time in the AH, since they’ve developed a pretty clear understanding of opportunity cost and will thus streamline their selling process. Generally, does not work for tips.

Trading Tools Used: Any AH interface mod (they’ve more than likely tried them all), pricing strategy and an in-depth understanding of scalability, multiple banker alts and guilds, mail, crafting and inventory management mods and tools, specific market domination.
Market Outlook: “This is too easy!”

Bear in mind that anyone can make gold in WoW. All players have a chance to eventually reach the gold cap. So this guide wasn’t created to say who is or is not capable of generating gold but rather to separate the beginners from the experts and to identify the tools, skills and mindsets of all levels of WoW traders.

It is also worth noting that all players, including those at the highest level of the gold making game, performed at the lower levels at some point during their WoW career. Anyone can progress beyond his or her current level with attentive study, practice and planning.

So… what level are you?

The Loot Council- November 1, 2009

The Loot Council is regular column highlighting interesting and informative posts from around the WoW finance blogosphere.

This Week’s Links:

• Pwnwear talked about one of the key changes coming in Icecrown. If this change makes it into the game, be prepared to respond by selling the appropriate items (hint: +stamina items will be increasing in value significantly).
• CSAHF issues a warning to those players that are considering entering the hard-core gold making game. Good advice there.
• The Greedy Goblin outlined his pricing strategy very clearly. If you’re interested in the deep undercut strategy, this one’s a must read.
• WoW Alone shared a fantastic account of how to deal with the new reality of inscription.
• Another WoW solo style blog, The Army of One, discussed strats for taking down ZG all alone. Have to admit that we didn’t even think that was possible yet.
• Armory Data Mining compiled an awesome list of the most popular races and classes and combinations thereof in WoW. Very useful if you’re ever trying to figure out what the most popular items and enhancements might be.
• The WoW Economic Review launched their blog. Go check them out.
• Tella from Hit the Cap reassured the Enchanters our there.
• A Gnome’s Conquest comes through with some timely advice for the Day of the Dead Event.

Note that the above blogs are not listed in any particular order outside of the way the team brainstormed them. Please let us know if there are any sites that you feel we should feature and we will do so in a future edition of The Loot Council.

Funny Money- Halloween is for Nerds (And That’s Why We Love It)

Halloween now safely behind us, it is time to have a fun look back at the best geeky moments of our favorite holiday.

• Check out the Geek-O-Lanterns. Which one was your favorite? Ours was the Death Star. Ha! Freakin’ Awesome!
• High-tech costumes were all the rage…
• …But there were some standouts of the low-tech variety as well.
• The Apple Store’s treats were really tricks. Still pretty cool though.
• Want to freak out the kids that come to your door next year? Just build one of these.
• Looks like the folks from The Today Show learned a thing or two about the dangers of drunken Ewoks. Meh, probably not but it was still the most entertaining thing we’ve seen on that show in years. It’s not every day that you see an Ewok dry-hump Al Roker’s leg.

The Top 10 (Murphy’s) Laws of WoW Trading

Sometimes things just don’t go your way as a trader. Sometimes it seems as if the world is against you. We call these situations, the Murphy’s Laws of WoW trading.

10. If you really need a farmable material, and set out to go farm it, you will find lots of other materials but very little of what you are looking for. You will see, however, your guildmates finding lots of your target item in whatever zone they’re in. They will proceed to say things like, “Oh look, more Titanium. I wasn’t even looking for that tonight. LOL!”

9. Flying to that same zone yourself will only ensure that neither of you find any more of the target material.

8. Identifying a new, underserved niche market, that no other player has sold in for months, will always bring competitors who wish to supply that same market at exactly the same time.

7. The one item that is selling for an abnormally high amount on your server and you also have in stock and available for sale at the moment will also be the very item that your guild leader, significant other or best mate will be selling at the same time.

6. If you read that X item is a great investment or selling opportunity on one of the WoW blogs and set out to invest in this item yourself, you will quickly learn that you were the last of many people to read this advice and the opportunity will be long gone.

5. Hoarding an item for sale at a later time will ensure that that item never significantly increases in value. Instead…

4. …The item you decided not to hoard and have little supply of will spike in value.

3. Your farmer will disappear. Inevitably. The likelihood of their mysterious disappearance increases as your dependency on this person for your supply increases.

2. The higher the amount of the deposit on an item, the less likely it is that it will sell in a single sales cycle.

1. The percentage of completion of posting your auctions is proportional to the percent chance that your main competitors will log on. Thus, once you have posted 100% of your auctions, a competitor is 100% sure to log on and undercut you on each auction.

Any of these ever happen to you?

The Bulk Test

It is sometimes difficult to spot a good deal in the auction house. Sure, there are those times when something is obviously under priced but there are many other occasions of items at ambiguously attractive prices that we are just not 100% sure about. The problem is greatly exacerbated when the item for sale is outside of our normal trading niche. Another factor is that we are human- As much as we’d like to pretend that we are entirely analytic and cold calculating traders, we are still all humans and can make mistakes based on emotions or other impairment.

One way to help avoid such mistakes (aside from not taking large positions when you’re drunk) is to conduct what we call The Bulk Test. Before you press the buy button, ask yourself, “Would I buy this in bulk?” If you’re willing to purchase one or a few of an item, would you be willing to do the same deal with hundreds or thousands of them? Putting aside the issue of actual demand, if the very idea of this item at this price in bulk quantity makes you balk then you’re probably not getting that good of a deal. If, on the other hand, you find yourself saying, “I wish I could get thousands of these at this price,” then you’ve more than likely just found yourself a good opportunity.

Sometimes you’ll still make mistakes but this simple way of looking at opportunities can help us make better trading decisions. We are not sure why looking at an item from the bulk perspective can give traders a clearer understanding of value- Our suspicion is that the mind plays tricks on us by suggesting, “Well, if I’m wrong it is only a few gold lost” whereas with bulk quantity this is no longer a factor. But perhaps it would be best to leave those sorts of discussions to those that bloggers more apt at studying the psychology of WoW gamers.

The Loot Council- October 25, 2009

The Loot Council is regular column highlighting interesting and informative posts from around the WoW finance blogosphere.

Comings and Goings

• Seth of One Copper has moved over to his own hosted brand new site. Go check it out and give him a warm welcome.
• We regret to inform that Nassira of Diaries of a Marksman Hunter is closing shop. Stop by and wish her luck.

WoWenomic Links

• Caffeine, Smokes and AH Fees blog comes through with an awesome post on dealing with AH campers.
• Troll Shaman attacks Greedy Goblin. Seriously though, he makes some good points.
• Tobold makes some good points regarding just how ridiculous Blizzard’s new anti-gold buying page is.
• Take Over Your Server with some great advice regarding D/Eable Wintergrasp gear.
• The Rags to Riches blog ventured onto the PTRs to test out the new disenchant loot option. They’ve got results and screen shots to check out for those interested.
• Think you can’t learn anything from video games, We Fly Spitfires proves just how valuable your game skills are in real life.

Note that the above blogs are not listed in any particular order outside of the way the team brainstormed them. Please let us know if there are any sites that you feel we should feature and we will do so in a future edition of The Loot Council.

Funny Money- One Man’s Trash…

This weekend one of our team members did a lot of PVPing to pass the time while the AH was down. Now he generally enjoys PVP so we weren’t surprise to hear that this is how he spent his time but we were taken aback when he said that he found an item dropped by one of the mobs in Wintergrasp that reminded him of a girl he ‘dated’ in his college days. The drop was just a common junk item but we began to understand his meaning when he further explained that the ex-girlfriend’s name was Cyrstal.

AH Issues Resolved

It would appear that the ongoing AH issues we reported on yesterday have been resolved. While scattered reports of AH instability and missing items remain, our own investigations have found nothing conclusive. The items that were ‘missing’ were returned to the AH if they had time left on their auctions or to player’s mail boxes if the auctions expired during the outage. This includes items that were lost in both ‘waves’ of disappearing goods in the AH resulting in some fairly skewed market pricing data due to wide price ranges for many items.

Compensation

We do not expect to be compensated for the lost deposit fees in any form. While it would be a nice gesture, we suspect that it would be a significant drain of resources for Blizzard and therefore not worth the effort to the company.

Cause of Issues and Ongoing Concerns

We also do not have any information as to the cause of the issue or the likelihood of it happening again. This is the most concerning aspect of the ordeal to us as having a stable, functioning and, most importantly, reliable Auction House is a cornerstone to successful MMO trade. Our GM ticket was answered (after a 20 hour wait) with a form message prompting us to check our in-game mail. The in-game mail message was a generic form letter apology and statement of the issue’s successful resolution.

Further Problems

If you have further issues with the AH the people at Blizzard would like you to use this forum post to make them aware. Please note, that this thread is not the forum to vent your frustration or ask questions but rather the best place to make the developers aware of ongoing issues. There are plenty of other places to rant over on the official forums.

Further Reading

• Our post on Profiting from Server Instability.
• WoW Confidential with gold making tips concerning this event.
• WoW.com on the missing items issue

Breaking News- Some Servers Experiencing Missing AH Items

Ongoing updates are listed at the bottom of this post.

Every realm we surveyed this morning reported experiencing rolling restarts. Most reported this happening more than once. Several, however, also reported experiencing ‘missing AH items’ after the latest restart.

It appears that, for a few select realms, the AH was cleared of ALL items. New auctions can be listed, but the old goods were not returned to players, nor are they relisted in the AH- They’ve simply gone… missing. We’ve logged into one of these realms and have put in a ticket to speak with a GM about the issue. WoWenomics would like to know where the items went, if they will be relisted or simply returned to the user and if the deposits on these items will be refunded. Naturally, the GM’s are experiencing ‘high ticket volume’ on these servers so responses are delayed. Stay tuned for an update on this issue, hopefully some insight into the cause and how the ‘missing items’ issue has been resolved.

UPDATE #1: The issue remains unsolved. Auction Houses were back up for a few hours on most realms but missing items were not returned or relisted in the AH. New items could be listed, but old ones are still in WoW limbo. A forum thread was started and a blue left a few comments concerning the issue but gave up somewhere around post #190 (it was over 300 last we checked). The TL;DR version of Blizzard’s stance is the predictable “we are aware of the issue and working…” Of note, the blue poster responds that all items will show up again in the AH or mailbox but, so far, this has not been the case. Further, many of the AH’s that were back up are now, again, unavailable. This time no items can be seen or posted and the message returned is the ambiguous, “Internal auction error” we’ve become so familiar with. For what it is worth, we’ve had a toon on one of these servers with a GM ticket open for over 8 hours. No response yet. We will continue to investigate.

UPDATE #2: 12 hours since our ticket was opened, still no response from Blizzard GMs concerning the issue. Also no more blue posts in the forums. There was, however, the following message was recently posted on the Status Alert page:

“SERVERALERT:
October 24, 2009 8:50 PM PDT

We are aware that players across several realms are having trouble accessing the Auction House or viewing their characters’ posted auctions. These items have not gone missing, however we are actively working to restore the Auction House to its intended functionality. In the mean time we do appreciate your patience and will keep you apprised of any updates we are able to provide.”

Some players are reporting there auctions have been successfully reposted in the AH and those that expired returned via in-game mail. Others are reporting that they’ve now lost items two or more times since the AH was wiped clear at least as many times on there servers. We still have no direct word from Blizzard concerning the issue or when all players will have their items returned. We continue to monitor.

Cheap Eats

Look, everyone loves a tasty, high-quality meal. It’s always nice to head out for a fine steak and a glass of wine but sometimes the situation calls for a quick burger instead. PUGs, PVE questing and Battlegrounds are fine examples of this- certainly not steak time, but still no reason to go to battle hungry. But don’t go to the expense of burning your best food for PUGs, BGs or a few lowly mobs, save that stuff for raids and more difficult encounters. If all you want is to have a food buff (particularly the stamina component for use in battlegrounds) just purchase or cook up some of the cheaper versions of your favorite foods.

Flexibility is key when finding ‘Cheap Eats’. Even if you’ve got your heart set on +Spell Power food, be willing to accept +Spirit, Crit or Haste instead. No matter what way you still get the Stamina buff and a little something extra to boost your other stats. Also, as long as we’re talking about flexibility, don’t forget to look in the AH for the uncooked version of the food you’re after as well.

Keep in mind that a large part of keeping these foods cheap to craft is attaining spices as inexpensively as possible. While not all lower level foods will require the spices, it helps to constantly keep an eye on this item in the AH for deals. We find at least once a week some idiot will post a stack of Northern Spices for less than half the going rate. Even if we don’t need them at that particular moment we’ll scoop them up for later use or simply repost them higher. It’s easy money.

Finally, the profit-minded WoW trader will be interested to learn that there is often a significant disparity between the prices of this lower-tier uncooked and cooked food. Look at this difference as an opportunity to conduct some profitable market corrections. Develop an understanding of both the base costs of preparing the cooked food and the timing of the sale cycle for the food and use this knowledge to exploit the market.

Here is a short list of a few of our favorite lower-tier (and often very inexpensive) cooked Northrend foods:

• Cuttlesteak- Many WoW fishermen pick up Cuttlefish while doing one of their daily fishing quests. Since the material is utterly useless beyond cooking into steak of feeding to hunter pets, it often gets dumped in the AH at near vendor sale prices.
• Baked Manta Ray- This one is great because it grants a buff that is beneficial to both casters and melee (haste) and does not require spices.
• Grilled Sculpin- Another one that requires no spices to craft. Nice boost to AP. Watch the market closely, however, as the fish required to craft the item are also a key component of Fish Feast so sometimes it is better to sell the raw fish than to cook into this item.
• Blackened Worg Steak- What’s that you say? The buff is useless? Not at all… pop one of these prior to your Wintergrasp farming runs and never be surprised by a gank-seeking enemy again. Of course, maybe you’re the ganker in which case this might prove even more useful for finding new targets.
• Pickled Fangtooth- The raw fish required to craft this item are often vastly oversupplied and extremely cheap on the AH. Pick them up and cook them up and keep your mana up. Again, no spices required at all.
• Snapper Extreme- Requires 3 raw fish AND spices but the fish are extremely oversupplied to such an extent that the crafting cost is often little more than the cost of the spices and your time invested.
• Worm Delight- Another ‘no spice’ recipe with a buff that can benefit all classes and builds (Crit). This one used to be more expensive until more players started regularly killing worms for the Sons of Hodir. These days a savvy trader can find the raw materials on the AH at a much lower cost fairly regularly.

P.S. (free bonus tourist info): If you happen to be visiting the New York area sometime, be sure to check out Luger’s steak house (linked above). There are a lot of great joints in the city but this place is a bit out of the way so many tourists miss it. This New Yorker favorite has got a fantastic authentic Brooklyn atmosphere and serves up one of the finest steaks you’ll ever taste. Even the burgers here are great (and relatively cheap). This is not a paid advertisement, just us telling you where you can find a great meal during your visit. Not that we would complain if you invited us to come along for a bite mind you (hint, hint, nudge, nudge).