On Griefing

Warning: this post contains links to sites that use some pretty strong language at times and several links are also NSFW.

Recently we received an e-mail from a reader asking what to do about “auction house griefing”. The reader said that any time he placed an item for sale in the auction house a certain other player would undercut him almost immediately. Our advice was to basically ignore the competitor and press on with normal trading. If that doesn’t resolve the issue after a few days, simply move your auctioning business over to an alt for a few weeks. Without an audience, or participatory ‘victim’, you remove a key component of the griefer’s game and render them irrelevant.

We assume this advice worked in that we haven’t heard anything further concerning the incident but it did get us thinking, what’s with all the hating lately?

While griefing has been an internet tradition since inception, it sure does seem that in the past few weeks the WoW anger level has risen to epic levels. Perhaps it was the natural result of forcing players to fight for colored eggs. Perhaps it was the result of encouraging selfish game play through poorly designed game mechanics. Regardless, the griefing doesn’t stop with world events and it certainly didn’t start there either.

Now we’re not quite sure where or when griefing began but you might argue that it is simply human nature. We can easily fathom a scene where one caveman leads another into the subterranean habitat of a prehistoric bear just for the sheer joy of later telling his caveman buddies, “Man, you shoulda seen the look on his face when that thing roared.”

MMO griefing certainly didn’t start with WoW. There are many examples of both the amusing (if somewhat tasteless) and the annoying variety. Some have built entire empires based on what’s often called the ‘art’ of griefing. Of course, when we start calling it art we also stop calling it grief. At that point it becomes a prank or a joke or some other term with a less of a negative connotation.

What strikes us most is that there are such a variety of responses to griefing. Sometimes the response is a compassionate “that sucks, sorry to hear that happened to you.” And, more often than not it seems, the complainant is met with cries of “QQ more noob.” The most common argument we hear is that the griefer is teaching the victim not to take things so serious- that this is, after all, just a game. The problem with this logic is that it lacks perspective. Sometimes griefing is considered criminal. At other times it is considered an act of heroism. Of course, at one point or another every MMO player is a victim of griefing in some form. It may be that person in /trade chat with the trolling comments while you’re trying to sell something or perhaps it is the guy that ‘stole’ your ore node. Either way, even the most ardent defender of griefing will eventually, himself, be griefed. Put another way, you never hear the target of griefing say, “Lighten up. It’s just a game.”

There are interesting perspectives on griefing all over the internet. Tobold’s got a good take on it. Last year’s AGDC conference kicked off an interesting discussion on the matter. The most recent issue of The Escapist features an in-depth look at griefing, particularly as pertains to WoW apparently. There are some hilarious examples of griefing crossing over into real life (while probably NSFW, that’s a must watch video there). About a year ago Wired Magazine did an interesting interview with a few notorious griefers (includes photos and yes, they look about as dorky as you’d expect).

Our own take on the matter from the WoWenomics team is that it has something to do with the Online Disinhibition Effect (summarized so flawlessly by Penny Arcade) mixed with the theory of the Monkysphere (in which proponents argue that we only have enough mental and emotional bandwith to care about a specific relatively small amount of people). We believe the best way to combat a griefer is simply to ignore it as much as possible. Getting angry or engaging them at all only feeds into their desire to cause strife in others. Threats and complaining will only exacerbate the issue.

As far as Blizzard goes, they remain liaise faire on the issue of griefing. Don’t look to them for resolution unless the incident violates the ToS. Even if it does, barring racist (or similar) comments from the offending party or other serious violations, the likelihood of a punishment beyond a slap on the wrist is fairly low.

All said and done however, it would be wise to remember that we all fall victim to this type of behavior at one point or another. Further, keep in mind that the internet isn’t always totally anonymous. And sometimes, just sometimes, a griefer will get his due.

Analysis of the Post-3.1 Economy

We’ve now had two weeks to assess the impact of patch 3.1 on the WoW economy. The general consensus has been that, while there were a few areas of opportunity, the Northrend economy overall is in a state of continued decline. We are certainly no fans of assumption here at WoWenomics so we chose a few items, specifically those items we based our own pre-patch predictions upon, to track with standard financial analytics. It is this analysis we share with you now.

When looking at the statistics below you may notice that there are three weeks of listed tests. The purpose of conducing three weeks of testing was to establish a baseline in the week prior to the release of the patch. Bear in mind that the day the patch was released to the (US) public was Tuesday, April 14th. The data listed below reflects the week of prices leading up to this date and the two-week period following.

Items we Predicted Would Rise in Value

Borean Man O’ War

3 week high: 40.84 on Sunday, April 19, 2009
3 week low: 18.51 on Monday, April 27, 2009
3 week average price: 23.22

Of all the items we predicted an increase in price for, Borean Man O’ War saw the biggest increase in value in terms of percentage increase. This was particularly true if you invested when we initially recommended a buy on this item.

Eternal Earth

3 week high: 7.16 on Saturday, April 25, 2009
3 week low: 4.68 on Wednesday, April 8, 2009
3 week average price: 5.53

While we initially recommended investing in this item prior to 3.1 we amended our recommendation based on data that was released shortly before the patch was released. Yet, Eternal Earth still managed to increase in value over our testing period. Not a huge increase mind you, but an increase nonetheless. Interestingly, all three of the eternals we tested showed a spike in value on all servers in the days immediately following the release of the patch.

Eternal Fire

3 week high: 28.64 on Wednesday, April 16, 2009
3 week low: 18.97 on Wednesday, April 8, 2009
3 week average price: 21.95

Prices for Eternal Fire have remained mostly stable showing only a modest increase over the three-week examination period.

Eternal Shadow

3 week high: 6.89 on Thursday, April 16, 2009
3 week low: 3.94 on Wednesday, April 8, 2009
3 week average price: 5.19

Interestingly, all tracked eternals showed their lowest prices on the same date. As the price increased from both the date of our prediction and the week prior to the patch date, we consider this prediction a success.

Gems

Initially gems did not show much promise for profit following 3.1. Recently however, the gem market seems to be showing promise. This reflects the fact that players are now attaining more new gear through both Ulduar and Arena Season 6.

Glyphs

The profits to be made in the initial days following the release of 3.1 were meaningful and well documented. Our resident inscription expert remarks only that “things have cooled” significantly since then.

High-end Cloth- Moonshroud

3 week high: 96.45 on Wednesday, April 8, 2009
3 week low: 81.82 on Tuesday, April 28, 2009
3 week average price: 88.97

We chose to track Moonshroud for several reasons; the most prevalent being that we feel it has the highest potential for increase. That said, the price of Moonshroud has thus far not increased outside of specific price spikes described in our summary below. Further, the decline in price is representative of the decline of the other two types of high-end tailoring cloth. In fact, were you to lay the charts for all three cloth types over one another you’d find that they decline at an almost impossible to differentiate rate although the price points are different.

Icy Dragonscale

We chose not to track Icy Dragonscale statistically due to the fact that it experienced a very modest increase in price. In fact, the only remarkable thing about this leatherworking item, in our opinion, is just how unremarkable the price changes were. The prices of the dragonscales have remained at almost the exact same levels for the past three weeks indicating that, perhaps, the market had ‘bottomed out’ previously and this item has achieved some level of price stability.

Mana Regeneration Items

We did not track a specific item to represent mana regeneration as we feel there are simply too many options available to the player to enhance mana regeneration. We do note, however, that we’ve seen a modest increase in the going rate of +MP5 food and gems.

Popular Enchantments and Enchanting Materials

As we noted recently, we’re doing a brisk and healthy business in already-enchanted vellums. Beyond that, we are seeing server price spikes in specific enchanting materials but nothing consistent. If you’re in the enchanting mats business you’ll have to frequently check the AH so as to determine when best to buy and sell.

Relic of Ulduar

These reputation turn-in items have not yet shown a significant increase in price. They have performed instead in similar manner as the Icy Dragonscale listed above. The only interesting thing about these relics is that it is the single item that seems to have found a consistent price that is very close to being the same on all servers (the Icy Dragonscale, by contrast, is consistently in the same price range day after day but that price point varies from server to server). The Relic of Ulduar price is about 2 gold per item across every server tested. Prices for the past three weeks have varied by less than 5 silver from this standard on any given day and, remarkably, this remains the same price level whether the items are sold in stacks or as singles.

Titansteel Bars

3 week high: 102.39 on Tuesday, April 7, 2009
3 week low: 77.82 on Tuesday, April 28, 2009
3 week average price: 92.66

Titansteel Bars have been the biggest loser so far in our pre-3.1 assessment. Prices have continued downwards in steady decline for the past three weeks outside of occasional price spikes unique to each server.

WoTLK Flasks

Flask prices have not been specifically tracked as they are a different beast entirely. The two-for-one flask split further complicated the issue. That said, we made a huge amount of gold off of flasks with the release of patch 3.1 and will, perhaps, explore the potential for flasks in a future post. Suffice it to say, for now anyway, that flasks are one of the best items to apply the bid/ask strategy to as it can prove very profitable.

WoTLK Herbs

There was no significant increase in herb prices outside of the occasional herb spike. We theorize that the majority of the scribes and alchemists intending to profit from patch 3.1 bought their herbs earlier rather than later. Herb prices have remained, for the most part, consistent throughout the patch.

Items we Predicted Would Fall in Value

BoE Valor Bracers

The decline in price that we predicted for these bracers is difficult to quantify as there is no simple way to track all the various bracers available and the items are typically sold ad-hoc rather than pre-bought and resold on the AH. Anecdotal evidence, however, supports our initial prediction for decline in that the messages observed in /trade chat by all WoWenomics team members clearly shows the asking price for the bracers to be dropping.

Dragonfin Angelfish

3 week high: 60.81 on Friday, April 17, 2009
3 week low: 44.16 on Sunday, April 26, 2009
3 week average price: 53.82

This item is in slight decline although it is not for the reasons listed in our initial assessment. Rather, the decline here is caused by over fishing. We’ve provided a more in-depth analysis of the post-3.1 fish market here.

Frozen Orbs

3 week high: 92.75 on Sunday, April 12, 2009
3 week low: 70.16 on Sunday, April 26, 2009
3 week average price: 88.23

Frozen Orbs continue to decline in value although it is difficult to differentiate whether this is due to the deflationary effect or because of the reasons mentioned in our initial hypothesis.

Mycah’s Botanical Bag

3 week high: 284.77 on Friday, April 10, 2009
3 week low: 159.18 on Monday, April 27, 2009
3 week average price: 225.16

This item has declined significantly since the release of patch 3.1. There is a steep drop in price a few days after the release that we attribute to the introduction of the new and improved herbing bag to the general WoW market.

In Summary

It should be said right off the bat that it is much easier to predict a decline in the price of an item in WoW than it is to predict a gain in value. This is mostly due to the previously established deflationary effect occurring within the overall game economy. Unfortunately you can’t short WoW items. So, while we did end up being entirely accurate in our predictions for declining value, this alone is not much to be proud of.

As far as our predictions for price increases go, we still reason that some of these increases may still occur as the new crafting patterns drop from Ulduar but, the fact is, the demand spike for materials will be small and short-lived. We’ve already seen examples of this on all of our test servers actually. Situations occurred on all four servers wherein the prices of a certain item like Ebonweave spiked significantly in a single test but prices were almost always normalized by the next test approximately12 hours later. These price spikes were not shown in the results above because they occurred at different times for each server and were thus normalized when combined with the statistics of other servers. What this does tell us, however, is that there is still opportunity for an individual to profit by timing their sales of specific high-end items with the spikes that occur on their own servers. Whether or not you’re interested or capable of watching your server’s economy that closely is, of course, a different story. We do advise that you check frequently, or otherwise liquidate strategically. We do not advise holding items for the long term as that strategy is counterintuitive to the overall WoWenomics game.

We will be continuing our testing and tracking of the prices of the above listed items (and a few others) over the next few weeks as we continue our analysis. If there is enough interest in these types of posts, we’ll put something together and share our results with you.

A Few Notes on Our Testing Methods

It should be noted that all of the listed prices are in the ‘Fair Price’ format, a price measurement scheme that is explained on our Terms page in detail. The listed value of items is the fair price of the items as listed in the Auction houses of four servers. The prices that we show are the average of the listed prices on all four servers. Prices were measured at two points during the day and on both horde and alliance sides. Thus, the final listed ‘Fair Price’ that we tracked and shared is the average of both day and night prices over four servers on both the horde and alliance sides. Prices were measured at the same time daily on each server for the sake of consistency. A fifth server was also tested but not factored into the above listed prices as a control test for our results.

On the day that patch 3.1 was released to US servers, April 14th, data was not recorded due to server stability issues. Therefore, the data listed for April 14th is an average of the day prior and following day’s data. Similarly, on Tuesdays following the patch, servers were unavailable for AM testing times so only evening data is listed. We don’t feel either of these averaged scores significantly affected the outcome of our tests and only mention it now in the interests of full disclosure and transparency.

On a personal note I’d like to send a big thanks out to the WoWenomics team members for measuring and recording their data and returning it in a clear and timely fashion.

Post-3.1 Quick Observations

Just a few quick observations to assist your weekend trading. The following events are notable to us because we’ve seen these changes on five different servers, which tells us that these are consistent WoWenomic trends, not just single server anomalies.

• Eternal Life prices have taken off. All servers show at least a 100% increase in going rate from the weeks prior to patch 3.1. If you have a stock of these it may be time to sell although many of us feel the price can still move a bit higher.
• The continuing decline in the fish business due to massive over-fishing has now spread to the Guru’s Elixir market. We advise, for you turtle hunters, to follow our guidance in our initial post on the matter and target Borean Man O’ War pools or Dragonfin Angelfish pools.
• The Book of Glyph Mastery continues to lose value as we predicted it would in our feature on the item a week ago. We’ve actually been studying the loss in value quite closely and will share our results after we complete our testing cycle in a few more days.
• Our flask business is very strong. All five servers show prices above half of what flasks were selling for pre-3.1 (the common expectation was that flasks would be half the old price since they split 2 for 1). In related news, four out of five servers showed an increase in price for Frost Lotus. None showed a significant increase in Northrend herb prices however.
• Prices for Saronite Ore are at the lowest levels we’ve seen since the launch of WotLK on every server we checked- on both Horde and Alliance sides.
• Our enchanted vellum business increasingly shows impressive returns. The high-end, end-game enchants are solid winners as are several low-level enchants as twinks fight to stay relevant. Blank vellum prices have, however, gone down significantly but this only helps our enchanting business.
• We are seeing occasional spikes, at different times on varying servers, in demand for high-end cloth and Titansteel bars. Prices will spike and then return to a lower level as more players try to get in on the action. We assume the price spikes are related to the drops of patterns from Ulduar. We further expect that prices of these materials will continue to spike, and possibly increase overall, as the guilds progress further into the instance.

We’ve got an in-depth post-3.1 analysis coming soon. Be sure to stay tuned to find out exactly how markets have behaved since the release of this patch.

‘Bid’ and ‘Ask’ and a Day in the Life of a Wall Street Trader

She arrives early, maybe after a quick workout or a cup of coffee, but always with enough time to get a feel for the markets before they open. She skims the financial papers and the news wires and listens to internal reports from her firm on expected market movements for the day. By the time the trading bell rings, indicating markets are now open for trading, she’s already got a feel for the pace of the day and a plan of action as to how to achieve profit. Some of her peers will be trading for the long term; others will be looking for a quick turnaround. She has a plan in mind herself, and will work towards that purpose all day. She quits the day early, soon after the markets have closed, but her mind is constantly racing as to how to improve her game. For trading is a mindset, not just a form of employment, and goes well beyond the boundaries of nine to five.

Wall Street is obviously a very different game than WoW. But it is, indeed, a game nonetheless, and it is in this overlap that we can learn a few things that might apply to building riches in World of Warcraft.

There are many, many different types of traders, all in different markets and with varying approaches towards reaching their profit goals. And, less we come off as ethnocentric, it should also be mentioned that the vast majority of the world’s traders don’t actually work on Wall Street, but in one of the many other trading hubs throughout the world. However, regardless of where a trader conducts their business- be it their bedroom or Broadway- there are certain tools and terms that remain consistent to all players in the game. And here again we see some overlap with WoW.

At the heart of these trading rules is the bid/ask system. It is with these simple terms that a trader can set the parameters by which they think they can profit. Put simply, a bid is the amount for wish a buyer is willing to pay for an asset. The ask price is the amount the seller will sell it for. Both terms are in absolutes meaning that the bid price is the maximum price the buyer will pay and the ask price the minimum equivalent on the seller’s side. The difference between the two is called the spread. We’ll summarize quickly here:

Bid– Maximum amount you are willing to pay for an item.
Ask– Minimum amount you are willing to sell an item for.
Spread– The difference between the bid and the asking price.

When first you log in to do your daily WoW trading, get a feel for the market(s) that you’re involved in (or wish to be involved in), and decide on a limit in price (a bid) that you’re willing to pay for the items in this market. As you’re doing so, also decide your selling (or asking) price. You should, of course, be both a buyer and a seller in WoW at all times. You may not do both every day, but by having a set price in mind for each end of the trading equation, you can always generate profit, even when prices are moving downwards. This is a much more effective means of trading items because, just as on Wall Street, it removes all emotion from your trading and thus increases your profit potential. When you just “look for good deals” or “buy it when you want it” you may make choices based on your emotions, instead of logical and profitable decisions. Put another way, your ‘wants’ and what ‘looks good’ can change day-to-day and minute-to-minute even but, by deciding on pre-set bid/ask amounts, all emotion is removed. It either meets your criteria or it doesn’t. This is also another example of an area in which a tool like Auctioneer can help you trade profitably.

Having decided on your bid amount, you simply buy out any items priced below this threshold and bid on any others that have bid prices below the threshold. Alternatively, if the markets are up, place the items you wish to sell for your on the AH for your asking price. If you set your AH bid amount different than your buyout amount (which we don’t advise) then the bid amount of the item should be your ask price. Otherwise your ask price is the amount for which you set AH auction to bid/buyout.

Just be sure that your spread covers the amount of the auction house cut and every sale you make will be profitable. The only real trick then, is deciding on realistic levels of bid and ask. Of course we all want to sell items for twice as much as we bought them for (or more) but this is unrealistic, and the goal is to actually sell the items while the market is high, not to keep losing money on AH deposit fees. Items with no deposit fee are exempt from this and may be placed on the AH with a bit more of a longer term outlook if you wish.

By way of example, let’s talk about Titansteel bars. We select this item because we have heard from many readers that they have been ‘stocking up’ in anticipation of patch 3.1 and they want to know when the price is going to rise and it will be time to sell. Well, to that we say, “When you say stocking up, what was the cost of either creating or purchasing the bars?” Often the response is between 70 and 80 gold. We next want to know what the fair price (or average ask price in Wall St. terms) of the bars is on their server at the moment. The common answer is in the mid nineties. So the answer as to when to sell is then ‘now’. If you can make 15 to 25 gold on a single item, and you have a bunch of them stocked up, then sell. It is more profitable to continue producing or buying the bars at 75 gold and reselling them for a modest profit than it is to hold them all and wait for ‘the perfect time’. Or, in the words of the English essayist Samuel Johnson, “Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.” So, sell when you can make a profit and stop waiting for that perfect time that may never come. Remember that WoW, like Wall Street, is a long-term game and the goal of the profiteer is to build wealth steadily and consistently, not in a single day. Yes, there will be times when the market will be higher than you recently sold for, or lower than what you bought an item for, but so long as you do your research, the steady income beats out the big sale any day.

As we sign off, let’s go back to our Wall Street trader for a moment. Her title is more descriptive then it initially suggests. She is, indeed, trading her assets. At times she is a seller (when the market is high) and other times she is a buyer (when the price is right). There is actually very little skill involved beyond knowing how to set her bid and ask limits based on the information at hand and adhering to this regime without the impediment of emotion. See if you can’t muster a bit of this same mentality in your WoW trading and be sure to let us know how this approach works for you.

What’s With all the Gold Seller Spam Anyway?

We’ve received many reports over the past week from players concerned about the recent mass influx of gold advertisements on their servers. Many readers had questions about the meaning of such advertisement in terms of the effect on the WoW economy or Blizzard’s enforcement policy. More to the point, fellow WoW players have asked us, what’s with all these adverts lately?

First, to be clear, we’ve stated before that we don’t support gold selling or buying. There are many reasons that it is a bad idea to do business with these companies and gold is easy enough to make in WoW if you simply do your research. We do, however, understand the motivation to buy gold for those that can afford it. We won’t go into great detail here but suffice it to say that just as there is opportunity cost in WoW, there is opportunity cost in real life. Many players with the financial means simply decide that rather than spend a few hours a week of their precious play time on building in-game wealth, they’d rather spend a few dollars to get the same results. The equation becomes beneficial when you can make the real world equivalent amount of cash as the gold you’re buying faster than you can make the gold in WoW. Or, alternatively, when the real world money actually doesn’t cost you anything so the risk or loss to you personally is nil (think a person with their parent’s credit card) the gold buying equation can seem beneficial. So, we don’t support the actions of gold buyers but we do understand the motivation. Easy money… who can’t get with that?

We took the liberty to chat a bit with a GM (yes, we waited over 48 hours for a response) about the adverts, just to see what Blizzard is telling their employees about these advertisements. After getting through the standard form letter stuff: “Blizzard is firmly against such advertisements…” “ We are working to resolve the issue…” “Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention we encourage you to do so using our in-game spam report feature…” “Blah, blah, blah.” We left the conversation with the impression that Blizzard is either powerless or otherwise lacking the resources to fight the gold selling advertisements effectively. In short, it would appear that the recent influx of WoW gold sellers has little to do with Blizzard themselves. They’ve not changed their policies or stance on the issue, their tools are as effective (or ineffective) as they’ve ever been, and no game mechanics have been changed that would (visibly) make selling gold for real world money easier.

So if it’s not a change on Blizzard’s part than the increase in gold selling advertisement activity is on the part of the sellers themselves. We’ve stated previously that we are not fans of gold sellers. But we do know a bit about their business. We’ve researched them before and have come to understand a few things about how they work. It is not typically a high margin business. There are very few titans of industry and, for the most part, the people doing the selling are certainly not sitting on piles of real world money. Much to the contrary, the business is much more like a sweatshop, with employees working long hours for little pay and having to deal with moral ambiguity. What this means to us is that if these companies are choosing to spend their precious resources on more advertising, even with the knowledge that these accounts will be banned regularly, they must be predicting an increase in the need for their services. We can all probably guess what players might need more gold for in the wake of 3.1 but that is not really relevant in for the purposes of this discussion.

The increase in the number (and importantly, diversity) in these adverts means that there are many companies making such predictions. In this sense, we actually see the increase in gold seller advertisements as a sort of a good thing. Good in the informational sense anyway. No one is a fan of being spammed either privately or in a public channel. But it has to be said that the increase in these types of advertisements does allow us to gather insight into the demands of a much larger player base then even our three test servers or extensive WoW social network allows. It’s just common sense that, even though we write and think about WoW finance every day, the gold sellers are much better aligned with the actual financial needs and desires of the WoW player population.

Again, we are not fans of gold sellers or their business. We’d be much happier if they were simply gone and our /trade chat windows went uncluttered (leaving more room for Chuck Norris humor no doubt). In fact, we encourage you to report any and all gold selling advertisements as soon as you see one pop up. But, as traders, we’d be wrong to simply react emotionally and not take the information we are seeing into consideration when evaluating the economy as a whole. That information, this time, is that the gold sellers (people acutely in-tune with the financial needs of our fellow WoW players) are seeing or otherwise predicting an increase in demand for gold. With that demand from players comes desperation. With that desperation comes some excellent deals for WoW traders to profit on. So, report their spam messages… then go search the AH for some sweet deals. A good trader sees opportunity where others only see spam.

6 Tips for Profiting from Fishing In the Wake of 3.1

The prices of Northrend fish over the last few days have dropped dramatically. With prices in the range of 40-60 gold on most servers, the three fish used to make Fish Feast in particular were always a good source of income to the profit-minded WoW angler. With the changes to the fishing profession introduced in patch 3.1 however, things have changed.

Currently, all of the prices of popular fish are deflated. We attribute the price drop to a significant increase in supply with minimal increase in demand. In fact, a quick look at the Warcraft Top List, spread over 7 days, shows just such an increase in looting of high-level fish. The reason that fishing has become so much more attractive to the average WoW player is primarily because Blizzard has made the profession more attractive in the form of new mount drops from fishing, easier fishing (pools more visible and cast time reduced) and the introduction of daily quests with some pretty attractive potential rewards. More players fishing means more supply. And, as we’ve mentioned previously, when supply is increased and demand is not- a drop in price is often the expected result.

At this point it is difficult to determine the correct course of action. The WoWenomics team is split down the middle as to how to proceed for maximum profitability. It should be noted that we are also part of the problem in that every one of us is completing the daily quests and fishing for the new mount, thus further increasing supply on our servers. Half the team thinks the best move is to sell every catch, which insinuates a further belief that the prices of fish will not recover. The other half are bullish on the fish market and are, in fact, buying up the really inexpensive fish put up for sale on the AH by all the ‘casual fishermen’. The belief here is that the market will ultimately recover somewhat as the casuals devote time and interest to other things and supply again drops. So, the best course of action is left for you to decide. At this point the only thing we know for sure is that prices are, in fact, dropping. That said, here are a few other interesting notes about the fish market that we’ve noticed over the past few days:

1. Of all the available Northrend fish, Dragonfin Angelfish has retained its value best. Prices for this particular type of fish remain strong because our initial 3.1 presumption, that there would be additional recipes that awarded the same benefit as the popular Dragonfin Filet, did not prove true. Thus, if you are going after the turtle mount, you might want to focus your attention on Dragonfin pools. In doing so you not only have the same chance at the mount as you do with other pools, but your profit potential will be much higher than with other areas.
2. For similar reasons, you might also consider fishing in Deep Sea Monsterbelly Schools although the market for these fish is much more susceptible to a price drop when over supplied due to limited usefulness to WoW chefs. Similarly, fishing for Borean Man O’ War could prove an attractive way to spend your time depending on the prices of Black Jelly on your server.
3. If you’re not already a cook yourself, you might want to start working on that skill. The best way to continue profiting from fish right now is to sell the cooked (as opposed to raw) fish. If you absolutely can’t stand the thought of spending your WoW time cooking (but you can somehow bring yourself to fish?!?) then consider teaming up with a friend or guildmate that is a cook and maximize your profit.
4. Another opportunity for profit is with the Fish Feast. Many players didn’t notice the change, but Fish Feast is no longer bind on pickup and can now be sold in the AH or otherwise traded. This change has a secondary benefit of reducing guild and player bank clutter. On a related note, even if you’re not a chef or a fisherman, a responsible raider will carry a few of these in her bags during raid times to share the financial burden with whomever normally supplies the meals during raids.
5. The secondary market for fish related items could also see some changes. We expect to see an increase in supply for both Pygmy Oil and Pygmy Suckerfish but not necessarily Guru’s Elixir. This only strengthens our initial assessment of this item. We don’t, however, predict a noticeable change in the prices for various lures and Elixir of Water Walking as these items are fairly well supplied on all the servers we checked.
6. In related news, there may be a slight increase in the price of Northern Spices as patch 3.1 introduced a new way for cooks to spend their awards in addition to the fact that more players are leveling their cooking skill.

As the old Irish saying goes, “May the holes in your net be no larger than the fish in it.” Good luck out there.

Tips on Making Gold from Connection Issues and Content Distractions

“When Life Hands you Lemons…”

There is a huge gold-generating opportunity in the issues relating to connectivity caused by the 3.1 deployment. The lower population, server issues and connection problems are, of course, annoying if you’re trying to make gold or quest in ways your are used to doing it but they also give us additional opportunities to profit if you’re willing to adapt and think on your feet.

–First and foremost, many of your competitors are not around. Take advantage of this and dominate your market. We’ve already told you the AH is up and running and fully functional. Don’t miss out on this golden opportunity to have limited competition.

–Our resident enchanter wants us to point out that, according to her testing anyway, vellums with the new staff-exclusive +spell dam enchant are in extremely limited supply in her server’s AH and thus, are highly inflated in price. We took a look at some of the other new items and found several of the new tailoring PVP cloaks and a few more of the blacksmithing trainable items. But, we have to agree, there seems to be limited supply of the staff enchant vellums.

–With more people playing through the new content we also see a lot less of the ‘casual traders’ posting in the AH meaning opportunities are ripe for taking over niche markets.

–The other side of more people focused on content instead of profit is that there is a greater need for consumables. Runic mana and healing potions are both selling very well on all three of the servers we checked.

–Now is probably a great time to hit some of the more popular farming areas. Go to your favorite location and loot in relative peace while everyone else is either having issues with login or focused on newer content.

–One reader told us he’s making a pretty decent amount of gold just standing in the argent tournament area and offering ports on his mage either back to Dalaran or to other cities (never underestimate the power of the lazy to boost your bank account). He claims to have made a macro advertising ports to any location for 6 gold each.

–As many players are still having issues with the patch, we’ve seen a whole bunch of investment opportunities in the AH. In some ways, it is similar to a late Monday night buying spree… since many players can’t get in or are otherwise too occupied to visit an auction house, there are lots of under priced items that normally wouldn’t be there. It’s a great time to be a bidder. This issue is exacerbated by the problems many are reportedly having with auctioneer.

So, go forth and make some gold (and lemonade if that’s what’s called for) and make the most of the situation, as a good trader should. We’ll be posting a comprehensive guide for post-3.1 opportunities within the next 24 hours. Be sure to check back in soon!

Five Tips for Protecting Your WoW Business From 3.1 Bugs

We are receiving widespread tips from concerned readers informing of us of rampant bugs in the game after the patch roll out. Complaints range from the expected (Realm and zone crashes, instability and add-ons not working as expected) to the not so easily foreseen (missing mail, auction house crashes and quest/quest item peculiarity). We’ve spent a little time on various servers now and can confirm some, if not most, of the issues that were brought to our attention.

It is the unexpected issues that concern us most as fiscally responsible traders. Specifically, issues with the in-game mail system and the auction house makes us nervous about losing items or, perhaps even worse, gold. /gasp!

Five pieces of advice to protect your business:

1) We can’t bring ourselves to suggest to NOT trade. We’re trying to say it. But somehow getting our resident typing monkey, Jederus, to specifically say the words “stop all trading” is, apparently, impossible. That (not) said, we do advise using extreme caution if you are doing any auction house trading at least until mail and AH issues are resolved (we’ll tell you the instant we change our stance on this). At a minimum, keep good records and perhaps even screen captures of any posted sales or purchases. This type of documentation will go a long way towards attaining satisfying resolution with Blizzard’s support staff should you incur an error or loss of items while utilizing the game’s AH or mail system.

2) Preferably, do all trading face-to-face to whatever extent that is possible. Scribes in particular will have a hard time resisting the urge to trade as glyphs are in such high demand given the implementation of dual-specs. Again, if you are going to trade during this period of instability, do it face-to-face and save yourself the AH headache.

3) Remember to complete your transmutes/smelting/or other crafting skills you have on cool down as soon as you can. With all the talk of 3.1, new features, and instability it is easy to overlook this essential component of your business.

4) Given the current reports of mailbox bugs, you may wish to empty your mailbox if possible. We are well aware that many players use the mailbox system as their ‘free additional bank slots’ but bear in mind that leaving items in your mailbox right now may result in lost revenue. If you MUST use your mailbox for storage, at least take everything out and re-mail it to an alt. Take screenshots prior to hitting send.

5) Finally, we are hearing many reports of Northrend specific crashes. To this we advise setting up your trading hub in a faction capitol city at least temporarily. This will prevent any business interruption in your face-to-face trades. We recommend that you DO NOT use Shattrath as your hub, despite theoretically higher stability (much lower player population in Outland) because it will be more cumbersome for potential customers to get to you in the event that Northrend goes down on your server.

And one small prediction:

–We’re going to go on record and predict an emergency maintenance from Blizzard in the very near future. We think this maintenance will take longer than a simple restart as issues appear to be varied and widespread.

Is it 3.1.1 time yet?

All About Patch 3.1- Profit and Profiteering

Well patch 3.1 is here and despite ongoing server issues and some miscommunication, we assume that the servers will be up and running and we’ll be playing the game we all love again some time within the next few hours relatively soon.

As such, the following is a summary of some of financial guidance available concerning profit and the new patch:

–Our own initial predictions were documented in the second part of our Northrend Economic Assessment.

–This guidance was amended slightly as the patch (and patch notes) matured as we learned more about the amended profession and crafting changes. In the same column you can find information and analysis (was well as some incredibly useful links) regarding incoming changes to WoW professions.

-We shared some of the most informative posts from the WoW finance community on their various 3.1 predictions and financial guidance in the inaugural column of our regular Loot Council feature.

-We produced a piece on analysis and speculation regarding the impending changes to reagent requirements for crafted items.

-While not 3.1 specific, our recent conversation with Tobold mentions the phenomenon of MUDflation and our take on WoW deflation which we feel will be very relevant post-3.1. You may want to take a look now and refresh yourself with these concepts.

-And finally, we gave you our last minute assessment of the available information on 3.1 around the net with the intent of separating fact from fiction. We’ll revisit a few of the issues mentioned in that post as the patch matures on the live servers.

In the coming weeks we will be posting the results of our predictions backed by statistical evidence. One of the things we pride ourselves on, in both WoW and real world finance, is offering complete transparency. We’re certainly not afraid to mention when we get things wrong explain our thinking when questioned. Any financial analyst (again, WoW or otherwise) that says they don’t make mistakes is either not really giving specific investment advice or otherwise pulling the wool over your eyes. We will post three results posts, at different intervals to show exactly how things have changed. Until then, thanks for checking in and, as always, we welcome your suggestions, feedback and questions in the mean time.

3.1 Changes to Crafting Reagent Requirements

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post regarding the 3.1 crafting list from WoR, we wanted to point out another fantastic 3.1 WoW professions tool that works nicely with the resource from WoR: The Reagents Changes List from MMO-Champion.

Sorted by profession, this tool allows crafters to see what source materials will be changing with the implementation of patch 3.1. Take a look at the tab for your chosen profession and make note of items that you may now need (or, as in most cases, no longer need) to craft some of your most popular items.

The following is our quick assessment, by profession, of some of the key 3.1 crafting materials changes that we suspect may have an impact on the WoW economy or your finances in particular:

Alchemy-
The two most notable alchemy changes are
1) The removal of Fire Leaf as a required reagent for the Flask of Endless Rage. Right off the bat, we can estimate that this will bring the price of the Northrend attack power flask more in-line with the other three current end-game flasks. Further, we also predict a significant decrease in the going rate of Fire Leaf and suggest you sell them off now while you can still get top dollar for them. As we expect the rage flask to also drop slightly in value, you may also consider selling off any stock you have now and re-crafting them again later when they no longer require Fire Leaf and, are thus, cheaper to make.
2) The removal of vials as a necessity when crafting several types the various alchemical oils. Expect marginal impact beyond slightly lowering the crafting cost of the oils themselves and thus, a small increase profit margin when they are crafted for purposes of profit.

Blacksmithing-
The two most notable changes in materials to blacksmithing are
1) Reduction in amount of Enchanted Thorium Bars required for two items. This could marginally reduce the price of these bars but we don’t really see an impact given the outdated nature of these older items.
2) Removal of Jet Black Feather, Bloodvine, and grinding stones from several items. Again, we see minimal impact here and will file these changes in the ‘too little, too late’ folder.

Cooking-
Two notable changes
1) Most older, pre-WotLK, items have had their spice or purchase reagent removed. This should allow for cheaper or faster leveling of the cooking skill but will have minimal economic impact.
2) The inclusion of at least three new cooking recipes (although the list from MMO-Champion doesn’t list them as new, we assume that Pumpkin Pie and Slow-Roasted Turkey are new items as well) that call for new reagents. The economic impact of these items will depend on how the new reagents are attained. Our theory is that, given the seasonal nature of these new recipes, they are part of a future in-game holiday event although a quick look at the proposed Noblegarden achievement list provides no additional guidance.

Enchanting-
Enchanting will be getting an overhaul in terms of a significant decrease in the amount required materials for many popular enchants. The complete removal of Nexus Crystals from several items will reduce demand and price for this type of crystal so you may wish to sell your stock of them now. The most glaring change we notice is the overhaul of the Lifeward weapon enchant. The incoming changes will reduce the cost of this enchant from approximately 400 gold to close to 20 gold. That’s a major change and may increase the popularity of Lifeward. Again, many other enchants are also having their material requirements reduced, possibly reflecting Blizzard’s intent to make this profession less of a gold sink and easier to level.

Engineering-
Minimal changes and minimal economic impact. Minor reductions in some source materials. Overall this reflects Blizzard’s stance that Engineering is “working as intended.”

Inscription-
Many new glyphs added. As these new glyphs become more common they may positively affect the prices of Northrend herbs and inks.

Jewelcrafting-
Several new recipes and reduction in required materials for one item. Also possibly reflects the “working as intended” stance from Blizzard.

Leatherworking-
The most notable change to the leatherworking profession is the significant reduction in the amount of the various types of leather required to craft many older items. This, perhaps, reveals that Blizzard intends for this skill to be a bit easier to level but also leaves skinning as a profitable gathering profession in a little bit more dire of a state.

Tailoring-
A few reductions in materials requirements but what stands out to us most is the removal of Ironweb Spider Silk from many recipes. This should significantly reduce the cost of this type of spider silk which already didn’t sell particularly well.

Good luck in your crafting efforts post-3.1. Thanks again to MMO-Champion for the handy resource. We’d also like to take this opportunity to remind our readers that you can find permanent links to MMO-Champion, WoR and many other informative sites on our resources page.